Guest Blogger: Victor J. Banis

Baby Daddy

By Victor J. Banis

The story is told in my family that on the day when, as a toddler, I took my first faltering steps, one of the uncles gave me a dubious look and said, "But he walks kind of funny, don’t he?" And the reality is, people have been looking askance at me ever since.

I can look around at this site and see that in truth I don’t quite belong here. Which troubles me not at all, in large part because I don’t think I’ve ever quite belonged anywhere. I’m just not a belonger. I am the classic loner, fully at ease only when I am by myself, never altogether fitting in, uncomfortable in crowds (for me, three people constitute a crowd). I think this is in large part how I became a writer. Even as a child I was engrossed in studying those foreign-to-me creatures who shared my planetary existence and were so much better than I at living in it. It is easy to see from this how it happened that my writing became very much character driven. I got to be very good at reading those creatures. If there is a blessing in all this, it is that I can say in all modesty I am almost never wrong in my assessments of others, though there have been times when for one reason or another I was willing to pretend to myself. Love can be like a ski-mask to a bank robber.

Well, what, you may ask, does any of this have to do with the subjects of interest on this blog? Hmm. It doesn’t—and it does. Because, as I confessed earlier, I don’t quite fit in here either. I have no personal interest in bondage or discipline. There have been any number of persons in my life who would like to have tied me to the bedposts, but none that I felt confident would ever get around to untying me. S & M. Oh, goodness, from my point of view, pain hurts. I am a devout coward. Leather and uniforms? In leather anything I look like an extra from Barbarella, and no matter how macho the uniform, I resemble nothing so much as a lesbian WAC. Albeit a quasi-butch one.

This is not to say that I stand in any kind of judgment of those who are into these scenes I grew up in a conservative Bible belt community in the very conservative 40s and 50s, so when I began, early in my writing career, studying and writing about human sexual behavior, it was very eye-opening. I quickly came to see, however, that it was all but impossible to define normal or abnormal sexuality. People are all different. I realized there was nothing anyone could imagine in the way of sexual behavior that someone at that very moment wasn’t practicing and enjoying it – and, as it happened, it was probably one of my friends. None of whom want—or need—my approval or disapproval.

Which is sort of the point I’ve been dancing around. I have been exposed to almost every kind of sexual aberration one could think of. It doesn’t bother me in the least what other people do, so long as, for the most part, they aren’t doing it to me. A long-time and very dear friend liked to eat feces. When he told me about it and asked if I was shocked, I said no, but I would very much rather we didn’t kiss in the future. And we did not.

I have a great many friends in the leather community. I used to sing with my friend Heidi her anthem, "Whips and Chains" (and our other favorite, "It’s hard to say I love you, when you’re sitting on my face.") When I lived in Los Angeles, a friend owned a very popular leather bar on Santa Monica Boulevard, and though I did not wear the leather regalia (I was more into jeans; I can send a pic, if you like) I was always welcome and even invited to the "closed door parties." Read, orgy nights. Some saw me as a potential Daddy, some as a Daddy’s Boy. Whatever. I also learned early on that if I managed to be what the other one wasn’t, I’d have twice as much fun.

I used to hang out, too, at the old Falcon’s Lair, then "the" place for the L.A. leather crowd, where I knew most of the bartenders and lots of the regulars. And I can tell you frankly, my failure to adhere to the dress code did not hinder my chances of success. By the way, I was at the Lair one night when a young man came in who sported the most impressive bulge down the inside of one thigh that I think I had ever seen. Heads snapped about, eyes widened. He was the center of attention.

I can’t say exactly what it was that produced that bulge but I can tell you for certain that it was not a permanent part of his anatomy because after a time whatever was holding it in place (a safety pin, one supposes, though in this instance that nomenclature proved erroneous) gave way. The tubular shaped bulge began to slip down his leg, leaving a conspicuous and growing gap between its end and where it had begun at the crotch.

All eyes remained on him, but the smiles were turning into something more humorous. The young man grew increasingly puzzled, until finally some kind soul approached and whispered in his ear. Red-faced, he fled, never to be seen again.

Standing next to me was a handsome hunk in full leather regalia. The two of us laughed so hard together that we found we must go outside to get our breath back. And then we…oh, but that’s another story, isn’t it? I will just say, he didn’t find my jeans and tee shirt objectionable at all. Of course, once we were back at my apartment, they vanished in a trice. And so did all that leather. And just as I had long since discovered, underneath it all we weren’t so very different after all.

People aren’t, you know.

Victor J. Banis is the critically acclaimed author ("the master’s touch in storytelling.,.." Publishers Weekly") of more than 160 published books and numerous shorter works published in the U.S and abroad, in a career spanning nearly half a century. Read more at http://www.vjbanis.com