Jack Rinella's Kinky Info Page

Welcome Back Mr. Benson
Issue 42, 1992

There are places where fantasies come true, where dreams become real. Some of those places are hidden between the pages of our favorite novels, poems, and short stories. The mystery of story?telling transports us into a different world, a different feeling. For a brief moment, we are somewhere, someone else. Mr. Benson does just that for me.

I remember first reading some of John Preston's classic novel of SM in the pages of Drummer Magazine. I bought a copy of the book as soon as it was available. Nine years later, in its edition reprinted by Badboy Press, Jamie and his master Mr. Benson have lost none of their appeal or force.

Sure, Mr. Benson is dated. The pre?AIDS narrative seems impossible ?? there isn't a condom in the whole book! Jamie still comes off as stupid; Mr. Benson, too perfect. I'll never find his penthouse apartment and they won't ask me to join the "tops club" in Manhattan.

But none of that detracts from the power and insight of Preston's work. It influenced me then and it still does...

Let me quote from the jacket copy of the book:

"Mr. Benson is the compelling story of a young man's quest for the perfect master and an exacting education in life and sex that only a master can give him. Young Jamie is a lonely clone in the discos of New York, always looking for Mr. Good Bar. Instead, he finds Mr. Benson. Jamie is led down the path of erotic enlightenment by the magnificent Mr. Benson, learning to accept cruelty as love, anguish as affection, and ultimately, this man as his master.

"A classic erotic novel from a time when there was no limit to what a man could dream of doing..."

I don't think that the person who wrote that copy understands Sadomasochism. I think the world of Leathersex, homomasculine relationships, and voluntary slavery is foreign to his (or her) experience, because the jacket copy omits the more powerful aspects of the book itself.

Mr. Benson is about coming of age, of creating a relationship, of being and growing in love. I know that because I had a slave who was my "Jamie".

It was in Autumn of 1984 that Mark asked to be my slave. For the next 14 months he was my Jamie; I was his Mr. Benson. We read Mr. Benson and used it to help define our relationship. I expected obedience, service, and pleasure from him. He looked to me for gratification, companionship, and the meeting of deep and mysterious needs. Mostly though, he loved me and that love made everything (almost everything) we did a pleasure. Before it ended, I loved him as well.

Because our relationship was long?term, we developed trust and intensity. These are important qualities lacking in most short?lived SM encounters, one night stands based on physical attraction and sexual need.

Mr. Benson admits that "My cock loved all the attention it was getting. But I knew there had to be something else I wanted... As I stood there and looked at [Jamie] playing his little clone games, my plan started to take shape. Here was a tabula rasa. Here was an unformed personality. This was a boy I could take and turn into a man. Just the man I wanted."

Because Jamie was dissatisfied with the "pretend" tops that cruised the bars, he was willing to give himself to Mr. Benson. This surrender wasn't without thought, trauma, and indecision, but he eventually gave Mr. Benson the gift of himself. For his patience, training, and domination, Mr. Benson got a man he could love.

Love is really what SM relationships are all about, of course. The general public, and possibly even most of those into the Leather scene, miss the point of why we "play" with restraints, discipline, and domination.

We Leather folk, like everyone else, want the kind of reality we find in the pages of romantic literature to become the reality of day to day living.

Can it happen? I can't answer the question for you. For myself, I've had enough glimpses now and then to make me keep trying. Once in a while it has been as Mr. Benson said: "The feeling... is mystical, or as close to mystical, as I'll ever experience."