by Patrick Mulcahey
I could never master my Master
or be a slave to my slave
— or could I?
My friend Andrew is honest, funny, cultivated, wise, twisted, frighteningly smart about things I’m dumb about, and a plausible candidate for King of Switches, if such a title existed (and didn’t already belong to Race Bannon).
So a few years back when he met Frank — tall, hot, furry, athletic, witty, dazzling smile — we his friends were happy for Andrew, we slapped his back and whispered “What a catch!” Only tact and discretion kept us from asking what exactly he had caught.
Was Frank a Sir? He had kind of a toppy bearing. But then, so does Andrew. So do a lot of men who bottom. Was Frank a boy? He definitely had that cute-and-rascally thing going on. Well, okay, Andrew does too. Still, when you saw them together, sometimes there was a hint of formality, some current of D/s — but flowing in which direction?
And which flavor? Daddy/boy? Andrew is warm, cuddly, patient, nurturing, the father you wish you had. Frank, though, has that classic DILF look. He’d make a fun, twinkly, sexy, “Go long for this one, boy” coach-type dad. Could they be Daddy/Daddy?
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t need to have everyone safely pigeonholed and woe to him who tries to escape the mental box I put him in. Still, authority-based relationships are my big kink. I don’t jump to conclusions when I see a guy in a neck chain or a Muir cap: maybe he just likes the way it looks. But when I see those symbols intentionally deployed by someone who I know understands them the same way, I try to respect the message they’re sending — if I can figure out what it is.
Which I thought I had, when I saw Andrew in a collar. Then I saw them both in collars. Then I saw Andrew in a Muir cap. Then I saw Frank in one. Fucking with our heads, were they?
All my questions dissolved and went away the day Andrew called Frank “my kemmering.”
Ursula K. LeGuin’s 1969 masterpiece, The Left Hand of Darkness — one of the great sci-fi reads of American Lit, for me — takes place unknown hundreds or thousands of years in the future. The planet Gethen is populated by a human or at least hominid race genetically manipulated to be ambisexual. Their reproductive cycle lasts 26 to 28 days. They are asexual until hormonal changes kick in, around day 18, and by day 22, they enter kemmer — similar to estrus, the fertile period in female mammals, with one big difference: the Gethenian may become male or female.
To quote one of LeGuin’s fictional scientists:
“When the individual finds a partner in kemmer, hormonal secretion is further stimulated (most importantly by touch — secretion? scent?) until in one partner either a male or a female hormonal dominance is established. The genitals engorge and shrink accordingly, foreplay intensifies, and the partner, triggered by the change, takes on the other sexual role…
“No physiological habit is established, and the mother of several children may be father to several more.”
The phrase vow kemmering means to create a pair bonding, extralegally but generally for life. Your partner in such a vow is your kemmering. His or her gender in kemmer may change monthly or yearly or once in a decade, and so will your own.
(The social implications for Gethen are interesting. There is no such thing as rape. Sex is only possible, mechanically, if both parties are in kemmer and consenting. Anyone in the workforce may be obliged to take childbearing leave; there are no “mommy tracks.” There are no gender roles, no psychosexual weirdness in a child’s development: no Oedipus myth. All who study Gethen marvel that war is unknown on the planet.)
“The future, in fiction, is a metaphor,” LeGuin proposes in her introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness. Yes. I think Gethen is a metaphor that shines a light on two important truths about our own nature.
1. The erotic identity you claim is not you.
Our identities are not as fixed as we like to pretend. Call yourself Master, boy, Domme, bisexual poly switch, you remember a time when the label was alien to you: you were drawn in other directions. The Top who denies ever bottoming; the musclehead who never lets on he was the fat kid nobody wanted to play with; the trans man who feels compelled never to speak of his girlhood, even the happy times — we stunt ourselves when we deny being someone who did things we would never do now, enjoyed pleasures that now would be nuisances to us, or worse.
What if we didn’t have to forgive the people we used to be? What if we simply accepted that all of what we see as our former wrongness was actually part of our rightness, just the way we are made?
We are the sum total of all the selves we’ve discarded and the shifting roles we once took up and then put away.
2. The erotic identity you claim is a collaboration.
Master, Top, partner, bottom — I’ve embraced each of these labels at some point in my life, briefly or enduringly. Identity is not a fact but a function, partly of time and circumstances, but chiefly of the influence of those you allowed into your heart, your head, your bed. We are all at least a little bit provisional. We continually create each other.
I retrieved a Recon message the other day from a stranger that said, in full:
I want your big boots on my shoulders as I pound your hole.
I laughed, but I didn’t send back any snarky response about my profile and his reading comprehension. Maybe he sends that message out a dozen times a day. Or maybe he knows what I know: that no doubt somewhere in the world there’s a man (person?) who could induce me to say “Okay then!” to that proposition. I haven’t run into him (her?). But I do embrace myself as a makeshift creation, and I’ve already got the big boots.
So does Andrew. So does Frank. I’m happy they found each other. And I suspect the way they’ve repurposed “kemmering” just might be useful to us all.
published by permission, @copyright Patrick Mulchaey
source: https://leatherati.com/kemmerings-2086bb527e44