TRIGGER WARNINGS: Lengthy discussion of incest fantasies from the perspective of a twenty-seven-year old gay male and a gay male father of a heterosexual son. Mention of Ronald Reagan’s sex life.
CALLER: Hi, Dan. I’m a twenty-seven year old gay male, and my question is about fetishes and kinks. As long as I can remember, I’ve been enamored with guys that are older than I am. Specifically, I love it when they call me “boy” or tell me that I’m a good boy or you know that kind of a thing. It goes as far as that I can’t cum until my partner tells me, you know, “cum for me; be a good boy and cum for me”. So what I’m asking is how does one go about finding people who might be into a more in-depth roleplay of like father-son and such kinks?
[Brief pause as DAN calls CALLER]
CALLER: Good afternoon.
DAN: Good afternoon, it’s Dan Savage; how are you, boy?
CALLER: [surprised] Oh, hi, Dan! Wow. [Laughs] I’m doing well.
DAN: I hope me calling you “boy” didn’t give you an erection in a public place that’s embarrassing.
CALLER: No, not at all.
DAN: It’s not just the magic word. Someone just can’t call you boy, and you’re like, schwing, ya know?
CALLER: No. It’s kind of like, you know, cumming and getting fucked, it’s tied to that
DAN: I had a question for you. The daddy-boy thing is pretty well-established in gay-land. Like, there are a lot of older guys who think of themselves “daddies” and there are younger guys who are into them and call themselves “boys” but it’s very divorced from the whole actual biological or adoptive father/son thing. It’s not an incest thing. It’s kind of the father-figure thing, the paternal older, wiser more domineering dude, and some submissiveness and erotic degradation, right? That’s what that’s about.
CALLER: Right.
DAN: And sometimes the religious right freaks out. They’ll point to daddy-boy porn or daddy-boy dirty talk—and furiously wank to it as they point to it on their websites and they’ll say, “Ahh!! Evidence of the depravity of the gay male community. They’re eroticizing and promoting incest and pedophila.” And it’s just bullshit. It’s like, Ronald Reagan called Nancy “mommy” for some reason…right? And some part of their relationship was tied to the mother figure as an erotic figure, as a sensual figure, but divorced from the actual mother-son shit hopefully in Ronald Reagan’s relationship. I don’t—OK, we have to get off Ronald Reagan’s dick—we’re backing away and we’re setting it down and slowly backing away from Ronald Reagan’s dick.
But the way you ask the question: I’m curious. When you say, you’re curious how you find someone into more in-depth roleplay of father-son, are you saying you’re looking into actual, explicit incest roleplay?
CALLER: Totally. Like, I’m [indistinct]. Dad comes home; I’m doing my homework; and this is really cheesy, but he decides to have “the talk”, and then I get curious and then I’m like, “can you show me?”
[DAN and the CALLER laugh]
DAN: OK, well, that’s a higher bar to clear. ‘Cause there’s a lot of guys out there, older guys, and younger guys, who are into like the sort of daddy-boy vague hinting-at, but the actual going to incest roleplay. For a lot of people, that trips up a wire that deflates erections and dries up pussies. Because you get to actual incest roleplay, and people can’t, in the moment when they’re fucking around and they’re trying to do this roleplay thing—and we’re not endorsing actual incest, any more than we endorse actually owning slaves, because some people are into Master/slave roleplay. People get to that, and they attempt to say, “My son,” and all they can think about is their own father or their own kid, if they’re one of those gay men out there who has sons. And that’s kind of a not-sexy kind of circuit braker.
CALLER: I see. So is this something I should just bookmark for my own jack-off time?
DAN: No, I mean there are guys out there who will do this and who enjoy it. I’m just saying they’re scarcer. They’re gonna be a little thinner on the ground than guys who can do daddy-boy dirty talk, which is divorced from actual fathers and sons. You want to go to actual fathers and sons dirty talk,—
CALLER: Totally.
DAN: Not just older, stronger, more domineering father figure dirty talk.
CALLER: No, no, no; I want like full-on roleplay.
DAN: You can find it. There are lots of people out there who are into it. It’s gonna be harder to find. I think, just to strategize with you, if you really wanted this: the place to start is with someone who can tap into just the daddy-boy divorced from actual fathers and sons and incest roleplay, and really enjoy that with him. Then roll out the roleplay scenarios I’ve always fantasized about with daddy-boy such as like the one you just rolled out and see what he says. He might say “yeah, that’s too much for me”; or he might say, “that turns me on”; or he might say, “you know, until I started messing around with you I probably couldn’t have gone there. But because I feel good about you and safe with you and you’re sane and you’re fun, let’s give it a whirl.” But if you had led with that initially—like, I’m looking for someone to pretend to be my actual father—that guy who might get there with you eventually would not be able to get there with you if you had led that out the gate
CALLER: Should I just keep hanging out at like CCAttle’s [a bear bar in Seattle], strolling around for Dad types?
[DAN laughs] DAN: Yeah, you know, you’re a gay guy in his twenties. I’m sure there’s lots of gay guys in their forties and fifties who would be tha-rilled to be approached by you, so approach! It’s not that hard to identify as a boy. You can get t-shirts that say boy; you can get dog collars that say boy; you can get baseball hats that say boy. You can be very explicit you’re a boy-identified mid-twenties gay man, and then that’ll attract the guys that are appropriate. And then you’ll see. But you have a boyfriend, too, right? Didn’t you just say? [Transcriber’s Note: I have listened to this segment ad naseum and he NEVER mentioned his boyfriend until Dan brought it up.] How does he feel about this?
[During the following spiel by CALLER, DAN mutters words of sympathy, support, acknowledgement, and understanding.]
CALLER: Yeah, well, he lets me call him Daddy and he calls me boy, but knowing his traumatic childhood, I don’t try to go there. I haven’t really brought it up with him, because he was molested as a child, and I’m sympathetic to that and I get that. That was a terrible experience. But, uhh…he’s OK with me going out and playing. I wear his collar. We’re part of a pretty good network of leathermen here in Seattle. But this whole daddy-son roleplay isn’t something I pull out or ask people to do because of the stigma around it. And so, you know, I don’t want it getting around to the entire leather community to be—”Oh, y’know, Johnny’s boy is really into this daddy-son roleplay thing”. Because I think that could bring up some really negative things from my partner’s past.
DAN: That’s very caring and empathetic of you. Your partner also has a right to…I don’t know, not to be informed, but you should respect his history, you should respect his trauma—and you are. You should also respect his agency. There are some people who’ve had trauma, sexual trauma, and have interests or kinks that mirror it—or even for some, replicate it. There are some people out there, who are very healthy people, who are able to re-live and be in control of now what they were not in control of then and mine (mind?) it.
CALLER: It’s almost like a therapy.
DAN: But, but, you don’t spring this shit on people, and you have to be very careful in how you role it out and how you ask for it. I don’t think you have anything to be ashamed of. And when you bring it up with your partner. (And there’s lots of father-son particularly comic-books incest roleplay porn out there). There would be a way to broach this subject with your partner and see how he feels about it. Maybe he’s gonna say, “I’m never, ever gonna go there; it’s triggering”, and then you drop it—for-eh-ver. But you can raise it in a context not of, “can we do this”, but “This is a thing that is done.”
CALLER: Ahh, gauge his reaction.
DAN: Yeah. You’re not saying to him, “you’re gonna fail as a partner to me if you don’t go here”…’cause you don’t feel that way. You’re just saying “this is a thing people do” and see how he reacts!
And one last piece of practical advice to you. When you wanna upgrade someone you’re playing with from daddy-boy to father-son, it really helps even if it’s a lie—and I hope it’s not—to just say, “I have no interest in actual incest with anybody that I’m actually related to. It’s not about wanting to fuck my dad, or my brothers, or my cousins, or uncles, or anything.” And that’s true of most people who have incest fantasies. They have incest fantasies sort of around the mother/father/sister/brother/uncle/aunt -esque type, but not—you say “What about your actual aunts?” and they’re like “No!”
[CALLER echoes, “No!” and laughs]
DAN: Not my actual aunt! Like, if Kate Bundy had been my aunt…right? Yeah, no.
[DAN and the CALLER laugh for a good minute]
DAN: Good luck to you.
CALLER: That’s fucked up. [Laughs] Thanks, though, Dan. I appreciate it.
[ADVERTISEMENT plays]
Source from about 14:55ish to 15:55