Race is one of those wounds that attracts Lee. "I like topping white men," Lee admits. "I work through a lot of power stuff. As a little gay boy, a little Japanese-black boy, a boy who looked like a girl, I had my power suppressed a lot." Lee says his white slaves unconsciously gravitate to his Eastern half: "It seems easier for a European-American man on a spiritual journey to identify with an Asian master than with an African master ... I can be the Buddha, the teacher." Sometimes it's not a Buddha scene, though, so Lee has access to a uniform collection -- "guards, military, fascists -- very strong images."

A monk in a sexually playful religion, Lee reminds me of the Artist Formerly Known as Prince when he takes his S/M worldview to its spiritual conclusion: "I'm always topped by the ultimate top, my God, my universe."

Lee first met Perceval at a men's healing circle weekend three years ago, but they did not enter their master-slave relationship until a few months ago. Perceval watched how Lee ministered to someone he was flogging in an S/M clubhouse and afterwards approached him. Perceval said that he was usually a top -- a "daddy" to several "boys" -- but he wanted Lee to top him. Lee was honored at that abdication of power and sensed that the two could have some enriching scenes.

Perceval is not Lee's only boy, but he's the boy with the most cake right now. They get together several times a week. "Master is hot, beautiful, sexy, erotic, exotic, hypnotic, commanding, vulnerable ... magnificent, magnanimous, generous with the riches that are his," Perceval writes in a 20-page story called "Myth in Four Movements" about the affair. In the piece, he weaves together third-person accounts of their ritualized sex scenes, several myths, including that of the Arthurian knight Perceval, and his own recently unearthed memories of childhood incest and rape. Perceval, a wiry 57-year-old with a white beard and guarded blue eyes, shows up at Lee's apartment wearing a suit and carrying two bunches of yellow roses. He hands one to Lee, then kneels and tongues Lee's feet extravagantly.

We sit on the floor of Lee's "play space," an attic empty except for the floggers and a few sitting cushions for the interview. Though they address each other as "Master" and "Boy," Perceval and Lee act more like teenagers in love, nuzzling and grinning at each other. Lee seems more "Daddy" than "Master," and more maternal than either. He rests his big hand on Perceval's chest and directs his breathing when Perceval recounts the most horrific details from childhood. Perceval is in his fourth year of "recovery work," with a psychotherapist, a massage therapist and a very understanding wife all helping him. All three know about his relationship with Lee and applaud the results.

Lee says his form of domination resonates with victims of incest and child abuse as well as the larger group of gay men who "still needs to hear his father or his church say, 'You're OK.' When I hear that boy, I stand in as the father who approves of him." Shame about being gay -- a denial of sexuality -- strikes me as very different from the over-sexualizing of incest and abuse, but Lee believes they're "on a continuum. Both are erotic, both are done on physical and psychic levels to people."

What's hardest for me to grasp is that sexual abuse can be healed with rough or dominating sex. Sexuality is one of the things child abuse steals, along with childhood, strong emotion and, often, the will to live. Like many incest survivors, Perceval has attempted suicide several times.

Lee and Perceval say they are uncrossing sexual wires that have been snarled since Perceval's mother began pushing enema hoses into him and dragging his naked body up her naked body -- starting when he was 2 and continuing for 10 years. Perceval recalls, "My mother was either amorous or punitive, and I never knew from moment to moment what it would be. She would treat me like a lover in the one mood and fuck my ass with something that hurt when she was in the other."

Lee explains why his relationship with Perceval is the most fulfilling part of his life now: "Nothing stops me but my own limits ... I can say 'Boy, do this' and ... even if it's making me breakfast, he's doing it because he loves me; he wants to show me his gratitude for the safety I give him, for teaching him about himself and helping him get through pain and trauma. ... I can't say I understand how that all gets mixed together sexually, but it is, and it's very powerful when I role-play something and it feels really real."

Both men use the word "conscious" a lot, and the myth they're building together seems too conscious, too theatrical to possibly achieve the slow "work" of 12-step groups or therapy. Yet being Lee's "boy" has awakened more dead parts of Perceval than anything he's done in the four years since his father died and he began revisiting his pre-teen years. Perceval says the play with Lee -- which they also call "the work" -- is successfully "recording over certain messages." But only the details of his story can convince me.
salon.com | June 1, 1999

In two weeks:
Sexual healing -- Perceval rediscovers the joys of hard-ons and tears.

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