I call him Papa.
For the last twenty-two years, that’s how I almost always refer to my husband. It actually started at Mid-Atlantic Leather in 2002. We were in a scene and his whip was stinging my back, and in my agonies, I called out, “Oh Papa!” He paused for a moment and said, “I like that. It’s so old-worldly.” As our relationship grew over the year, the name stuck. It’s grown out to the point that all our friends even refer to him as Papa Joel. The dynamic of our relationship was set.
In October of 2002, as we made plans for me to move to Pennsylvania and live together, we discussed what the structure of our relationship would be. We decided very early on that there would be a power dynamic where he was the dominant in the home and I was going to be the submissive partner. I was going to have responsibilities like housecleaning, cooking, and groceries; he would handle finances, taxes, and the house.
I was going to be the boy, and he was the Papa. It’s very rare that he calls me by name, and when he does, it’s often like when your parents called you by your first, middle, and last name––there was something up and usually it wasn’t good. Since that time, we have a well-established Daddy/boy relationship, and it’s worked for us for over two decades. There are a lot of families for which this occurs, yet everyone has their different way of looking at it.
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Vince Andrews wrote the book that has helped establish the community for leatherboys, The Leatherboy Handbook. He sees the relationship dynamic as something like this: “There are some boys that are very big into S/M and some that are very big into D/s. Or there are some boys who have no interest in either one! But they absolutely want to serve you and clean your house and suck your cock. You really have to think about the umbrella that makes up our community and all the different facets, and you have to understand that there is a type of boy in each. There’s the weekend warrior who wants to be Daddy’s boy for the weekend only, walk out the door on a Sunday night and then become the individual they are for the rest of the week. The scene sets the standard. Now, how long we are in that scene or that headspace, that’s what I think sets the real standard. The D/s leatherboy with his nurturing Daddy figure, they’re going to be in a 24/7 dynamic. The S/M leatherboy will be there for the duration of the scene, and as we get older it’s not going to be that long. However, I think they complement each other very well.”
Granted, not everyone applies themselves to the leather S/M Daddy/boy dynamic, but there are a lot of crossovers. Be it the boy in a monogamous relationship or the Daddy of a poly household, you can find a space in your life for a man you care about.
Daddy Doug Brown is a man I’ve come to know over the last several years, and his family casts a very broad net. When I asked him, he explained, “We have a total of eight family members. My two partners that I am in a triad with are my boy Mark and my slave Porter. I have other boys as well who are part of the family. I also want to interject that the difference as a Daddy or a Master is that as a Master, I have expectations of the slave to be more, shall we say, on call, than I do for the boys. There are the people who I mentor who are not necessarily part of the family. But I appreciate that they come to me for mentorship. That mentorship is, again, either as a leatherboy or as a person. A lot of people have, either because they were gay or because of how society has been, missed good parental structure. Or they had families that were toxic. Or they were unsupportive. I think that for the younger gay man or the gay man who has not had that, those who can find support from somebody more experienced—they’re drawn to that. To me, that’s what I offer. Love, understanding, sometimes a flogging, sometimes a whipping. But they always know I’m in their corner.”
Daddy Doug has been a Father Figure in my life and helps encourage me and my work. One of his boys, Glen “Woody” Wood is also a creative sort, and Doug is also one of the people he encourages to make his art. “I’m a digital artist. I have a website and I do a lot of commission work. Daddies tend to be my subject matter. It varies according to my audience.
“A Daddy/boy dynamic to me is a nurturing, caring person. He oversees my journey in the kink world. I’ve been married for 19 years, together for 20. My husband is disabled. When I met him, he was into leather and the whole nine yards, but as his disability got worse, he became less active. He recognizes my needs and allows me to seek them out. He knows I need it to balance me.”
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How does a Daddy identity then fit into the real world? If Glen and Doug find it in whippings and creativity, then someone like Gary Wasdin, Leather Archives and Museum Director, says it brings balance both to his work life and his relationship. “My Daddy identity does very much fit into the work I do at the Archives, because I only have one life and one dynamic and I’m the same person for everything I do. I’m very much a Daddy in all aspects of my life. I’m in charge. I’m making decisions. I’m the boss. However, I’m trying to be thoughtful and kind, considerate of others’ opinions and what others are doing. They’re really all facets of my life.
“I am in charge, but with my boy, it’s also a very soft, kind, caring, compassionate relationship. It’s always fit better for me, where I can be rough and tough and then go back into the cuddling, caring, and nurturing side of it. Sort of like being a soft dom. It’s that sort of balance. One of the best ways I describe it is, with my current boy, that when someone watched one of our videos, he was doing a podcast while commenting online, and he described it perfectly. Saying ‘this Daddy was wailing on this boy. Punching him and fucking him, rough and really abusive, and so hard…and then it ends and suddenly it’s loving and caring, warm and sweet,’ that fit perfectly! Rough, hard, aggressive, then tender, soft, care.”
Many of the men I interviewed while researching this article, spoke of the need to be caring and nurturing as part of being a Daddy. For the boy, it was often brought up that you need to be attentive to Daddy’s needs, and more. Leatherboy Tyler Fong: “As a boy, I am always curious. You need energy. And always, service. Be focused. Be good at anticipatory skills. Assessing the situation and seeing what the needs are, then just jumping in. Since I practice BDSM, I do submit to various forms of play. I don’t necessarily consider myself a submissive to any one person or specific individuals, but more to the situation. I can submit in a scene, I can submit in an event while I am volunteering, but it’s of my choosing.”
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When attending events, be they contests or runs, there is always a variety of men to observe and talk to. My friend Marlon was in agreement with Tyler. “To be his best boy, I think the qualities you need are loyalty and the eagerness to please. My best quality that I have to offer is service. I like to take care of my Daddy. Even when he doesn’t realize he needs to be taken care of. That can be anything from washing his dishes when dinner is over, or doing his laundry, or cleaning the car out. I just like doing those things for him.”
But Marlon also mentioned something else that was a situation often at odds with more of the typical Daddy/boy partnerships—a reverse differential in age. “I have a Daddy now. First off, he’s gorgeous. What attracted me most to him was that I think we needed each other in the sense of him wanting experience being a Daddy because he’s fairly new to being a Daddy. And for me, it was finding the perfect Daddy. So, it was a perfect match. He’s a young Daddy, I am 56 and he is 40. But he’s Daddy as fuck.”
Probably more than the age difference is when you come into your boy identity late. You suddenly have to make up for lost time, as Corey Araujo did. “I first identified as a boy at 55. Prior to that I simply identified as gay. I had a relationship before that, but it was non-kink. Then I started reading Bound and Gagged and Drummer magazines and thought, ‘Hey these are kind of interesting. I wonder what this is about.’ Then I discovered MAL, CLAW and Delta. I started off at the top of the chain of kink events.
“I am currently a boy to a Daddy, living with him full-time. I met him at Delta ten years ago, while in line for dinner. I would come down for weekends and then I was visiting him when the first COVID lockdown hit. He said I’m not going to put you on a five-hour bus ride back to where you don’t currently have a job. It’s only two weeks, just stay. Two weeks turned into two months, two months turned into two years, and then it became ‘why don’t we just change your address?’ I started living with him. He’s just a year-and-a-half older than me.
“What I was looking for in a Daddy is somebody who understands me and gets me. Who knows what I want even when I don’t know that I want it. Paying attention, and knowing what the boy wants and knowing what the boy should be doing even if he doesn’t want to. Finding ways to convince him to do the things he doesn’t want to do.”
Being a good Daddy isn’t necessarily defined by age. One of the preeminent leather Daddies and legends of our time: Peter Fiske. After being mentored by another legend, Daddy Alan Selby, Peter entered his own Daddy/boy relationship. As he told me, “My prime relationship in the 80s after Colter Thomas was my boy Charles, who was seventeen years older than I am. I used to call him my Daddy, my boy! He was old enough to be my Dad, but he was my boy. Not my slave, just my boy. He served me, he submitted to me, both sexually and for BDSM, but he didn’t obey my every command, and it was never 24/7. It was more of a lifestyle. Even though I was seventeen years younger, I was his Daddy.”
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In some cases, being a Daddy is not something you take on, but something bestowed upon you. Master Ochumaré found he was becoming recognized as a Daddy before he recognized it in himself. “People have come up to me and called me ‘Daddy’ unprompted. I actually get ‘Sir’ more often, but occasionally they’ve done ‘Daddy’. It’s the way I carry myself, the silver goatee, my voice. Sometimes I kind of laugh because I don’t always see what other people see in me, or the way that I talk or how low my voice is.
“‘Daddy’ in a sexual manner is like a turn-on. Someone will say ‘Thank you, Sir,’ which is something I really like, especially when I’m doing impact play, but ‘Daddy’ is one of those sort of naughty things, because you’re not talking about incest…you’re nowhere near that at all…but to me it’s sort of this: ‘he’s going to take charge and he’s going to work you through whatever he’s going to work you through in that play scene’ So actually, the word ‘Daddy’ is like a positive sexual trigger to me.”
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As told by many of the folks I talked to, BDSM runs throughout the Daddy/boy community. But what stops many of the Daddies from taking the leap to Mastery? Daddy Doug, whom I mentioned earlier, splits his family into parts where he is Master to some and Daddy to others. But my Papa, when we first started discussing the parameters of our budding relationship, quickly jettisoned the idea of him being my Master. Too much work, he said. Darrin “Doc” Murray is a Daddy who told me that his stable of boys was numerous enough that one of them keeps a spreadsheet for him to help him keep track of them all. But he looks at Mastery as a step too great. “I have no interest in ownership and the responsibility that goes along with it. I don’t have interest in running somebody’s life. The term ‘Master’ is what I see as more of an ownership, more of a responsibility, more running somebody’s life. I see my relationship with boys as definitely in a dominant role; typically, what I enjoy is finding what can push a boy’s buttons, figuring out what his kinks are, and how to push those buttons. I’m a kink generalist. As one of my boys said, I can figure out what their key codes are and use them. It’s not quite a service thing though. There’s very much a control behind that. One that I really, really enjoy. At the same time, it’s more of a respectful, collaborative kind of relationship. In a scene, it’s not really a safe word that I use, but if I’m in something rather intense with a boy, the cue for me is for them to call me Daddy if they’re feeling uncomfortable or if they’re feeling afraid, if there’s something going on that they’re feeling problematic. Even if they’re in a CNC (consensual non-consent) scene or somewhere else.
“I had a boy once after a scene where I was degrading, spitting on him; I had given him a major wedgie. His underwear was hanging out the back of his pants. I made him walk through a hotel lobby, showing a visible boner. It was a pretty intense scene, and at the end of all this, he said something that I think was probably the best compliment I ever got. He said to me ‘I don’t know how you do it, Daddy, but I have never felt more respected by a Daddy than I do with you.’ It was one of the most touching, most important things that ever happened to me.”
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There is one Daddy who is a man I have had an ongoing relationship with for almost twenty years. His form of being a Daddy is to bring boys into what he calls his “Mentor Boutique.” And he gives them lessons for a lifetime when they come to him. Daddy Robert lives in Copenhagen and has several boys across Europe. He says he’s never had to look for them. “I don’t find these boys, they find me. I’m kind of thinking why this is. I’m thinking it’s because I have a life which they can tell I’m very happy with. My life is very well put together, functions wonderfully, and I’m able to have personal mobility. Although not physical mobility right now. I think they find this attractive. These boys, when they leave the home, when they leave their adolescence, they are looking for a guiding star, someone who can light up the darkness and show them where they have to go. That is my role.”
But his guidance isn’t a joyride. “I can’t give you a life, but I can put you in a position where you can get one for yourself. If you want to come into my little Mentor Boutique, I have two rules. The first rule is: when I talk, you listen. You don’t talk, you listen to what I tell you. The second rule is: if I give you a task to do, it’s done—you do what you’re told. You don’t give a rebuttal or say you won’t do it. If you follow precisely what I tell you, you will end up in the place where you can create your own life. Otherwise, I will throw you out of the Mentor Boutique and you’ll have to fend for yourself.
“The most important thing to understand is that my boys are there for a period of time. I call myself the “pater familias.”
Daddy Robert’s boys stay with him, the longest for over eighteen years now. What Robert, and all the other gentlemen I got to speak with when piecing this story together, helped me understand was that under the very big tent of Daddy/boy relationships is a wide spectrum of men and how they look at things. Be it the boys who are looking for that special guidance, or the Daddy looking for a man they can care about and mold, perhaps in a 24/7 family relationship (monogamous or polyamorous), the potential for a long relationship is there. I’ve got a Daddy and we’re in love, and for us that’s what matters the most. Seeing the variety of men I got to talk with while researching this piece, they gave me faith that there’s always someone out there for everyone. All you have to do is find the puzzle pieces that form the frame of your Daddy/boy jigsaw.
Author: Tim Brough
Photo Credit: DRUMMER Archives – Inked Kenny