By grace, my sight grows stronger and I will not
be a pawn for the Prince of Darkness any longer

Hello, and thank you Marissa for the introduction, and thank you all for being here.

My name is Dylan Neal, and I am, in no particular order, a lawyer, a slaveowner, and an abolitionist. I'd like to talk to you this evening about how I ended up in this contradictory place, but let me be clear: the story I'm going to tell isn't my story. It's the story of a guy named Joe.

I met Joe when I was six, the day I came home from the hospital after another operation. I had a congenital heart defect, and by that time I'd already had eight different surgeries. I'd spent more time in hospitals than I'd spent at home, and I'd had almost no interaction with kids my own age--which kind of worried my parents. Their solution was to go out and buy me a best friend.

They called me into the living room, where they were standing with a kid who was maybe a year younger than I was--he was really skinny, so it was hard to tell. My mother said, "Dylan, this is Joe. He's going to be living with us for a while; hopefully he can keep you company." He gave me a hesitant smile. I smiled back and asked if he wanted to see my new game console. For the next twelve years, we were pretty much inseparable.

Because my health was so fragile, my parents tried very hard to shelter me from the more unpleasant realities of life. Everyone in the household staff--including Joe--was forbidden to tell me that Joe was anything other than my friend. Joe himself was an expert--at five!--at deflecting awkward questions, like the time I asked him why he always wore that necklace, even when we went swimming. I didn't ask many questions, though, because Joe was the best thing that had ever happened to me. We did everything together: playing, eating, even sleeping, with Joe on a bed next to mine in my room.

There were three events that I think of as pivotal in terms of shaping both my relationship with Joe, and my own moral center. The first was a year after Joe and I met, on our first day of school. Joe and I were dropped off and met by two women who ushered us into different classrooms. Before lunch, the teacher told us that those of us who had slaves would be joined by them during lunch. She also said that for the time being, our slaves would be eating at the table sitting next to us, and she reminded us that we were not to physically reprimand our slaves in the dining hall.

When we got to the dining hall and our assigned tables, almost every seat had a kid standing behind a chair. All of them were in dark pants and white shirts that were open at the collar to show the same kind of chain necklace that Joe wore. Joe was standing behind a chair that was evidently for me, and he pulled it out for me and started serving my food, just like the staff at home did.

As soon as we got up, I grabbed Joe's arm and demanded to know what was going on. He gave me a look that I was going to learn very well, that blank, completely neutral expression devoid of any personality or sense of self, and said, "Ask your parents."

When we got home, I went straight to my mother and asked her what a slave was, and why Joe was acting so weird. She called my father in, and after they'd argued for a while over whether or not they should have told me sooner, they sat down with me and explained that a slave is a person who works for you, but instead of getting paid, they live in your house, and you're responsible for making sure they have food and clothes and someone to take care of them if they get sick--and in exchange, the law says that you own that person.

That made no sense to me--how can you own a person?

My parents' answer was that slaves aren't really people; they're different, more like pets. My mother made the point that like with the the horses; it wasn't right to be cruel to them for no reason.

When I pointed out that Joe was my friend, my mother took my hands and explained that Joe's mother and father had more children than they could afford to feed. In order to give Joe a chance at a better life, his parents sold him.

"He's only my friend because he has to be?" I asked them. That's what I was taking away from this, and it really scared me, the idea that maybe Joe didn't really like me at all. Even when my parents assured me that of course Joe liked me, I wasn't convinced. I went back to our room, fully prepared to ask Joe to tell me the truth. When I opened the door and he looked up with that blank expression....I realized that I was afraid to hear the answer, so I didn't ask, then or ever.

That is the essence of the slave system in a nutshell. The slave learns to hide his feelings, to never display genuine emotion in the presence of a master. The master learns that the slave will always be hiding his true feelings, so he'll always be suspicious. In the process of forcing others to think of themselves as less than human, we sacrifice our own humanity, and we create a world where trust is impossible, even between people who know each other intimately.

For the next couple of years, when we were at school or around anyone outside my immediate family, Joe was the perfect body-slave-in-training. When it was just us, he was my younger brother and best friend rolled into one. He had an incredible imagination, and was great at coming up with outrageous scenarios for us to play with--snake hunters in the Amazon, pirates fighting space vampires--he could use words to build a world that would keep me entertained for hours.

It was one of those games that indirectly led to the second of the three life-changing moments for me. This one is hard for me to talk about, because even now, almost thirty years later, I'm still ashamed of what I did.

We were playing spies, and I got the bright idea to pretend to "hack" the computer in my dad's office. Joe reminded me that we weren't supposed to go in there. "I'll get in trouble," he kept saying. I pushed, and finally he caved to my pressure. I started poking at my dad's computer...and then the screen went blue.

When my father came home, he called us both into his office. My mother was there as well, and they both looked angry. My dad asked whose idea it had been. I panicked, and pointed at Joe.

I could tell he wasn't convinced, and he asked me again. Once again, I lied. My mother warned me that it was very serious, and that if Joe was really responsible, then he was going to be punished severely. At that point I felt like I couldn't back down so like Peter, I betrayed my friend for a third time and insisted that it had all been Joe's fault.

My father went behind his desk and got out a thin rattan switch. Joe took his pants and underwear off and pulled his t-shirt up and leaned against the wall. Dad had never once raised a hand to me, so I was completely unprepared when he brought the switch down on Joe's ass. After the first few strokes, I could see that Joe was bleeding. I wanted to throw up, and I started to turn around and run to the bathroom, but my mother grabbed my shoulders and held me still, forcing me to watch.

Joe managed to stay quiet at first, but by the end, he was sobbing and screaming. When my father finally said it was done, Joe slumped to the floor and curled up into a ball, still crying. Andy, the groundskeeper, came in and picked Joe up and carried him out.

I was in tears too, but my mother was there to hand me a glass of water after I was done throwing up, and she had me sit between her and my dad on the couch. I stammered out the truth, which they already knew: that I'd talked Joe into going into my dad's office over his objections, and I'd been the one on the computer when it crashed. My mother looked at me sadly and said, "We know, Dylan."

I demanded to know why they'd beaten Joe. My father told me that part of Joe's job was to keep me from getting into too much trouble and that he'd have had to punish him for not doing that regardless, but the reason he'd been so harsh was to teach me a lesson about honesty and the consequences of my actions.

That didn't seem fair to me, and I said so.

My mother tried to explain that slaves were different, that they needed clear direction and rules, and that being fair as a master meant providing that structure and a consistent, stable environment. She told me that I had to be able to trust that Joe would serve me to the best of his ability, and he had to be able to trust that I wouldn't order him to do things he couldn't do.

"He's going to hate me!" I said.

"He'll probably be angry, and he'll be right to be, which is why you're going to apologize to him where everyone can hear it," my father replied.

I wouldn't realize until a lot later how unheard of that was, for my parents to make me apologize to a slave. What I did notice, when we went into the kitchen, was the way Andy and Kim and Sharri and all of the others I'd known all my life looked at me with undisguised contempt in that split second before the masks went back up.

Joe was sitting on a stool, eating a bowl of ice cream. His hair was damp, and he was wrapped in an oversized bathrobe. I knelt on the floor in front of him--which I think surprised everyone a little--and told him I was sorry for pushing him and sorry for lying and that I'd totally understand if he was mad at me.

He just sat there watching me for a while, and finally said, "Want some ice cream?"

The third moment happened when I was fifteen, in my second year at boarding school. We were allowed to bring one male body slave--it was an all-boys school--so of course Joe went with me. He was my shadow, following me to classes, meals and sports practice. The school was pretty progressive, so he actually had two whole hours to himself after dinner each night.

I'm sure you've all heard the stories about boarding schools, and what goes on at many of them. The expectation is that your slave is there to serve you in all ways, including sexually. If you're polite, then you're also expected to loan your slave out if your friends are interested. I had managed to avoid doing that, because I just didn't like the idea, but finally, one of my friends asked directly, and I didn't feel I could say no.

Now, let me just say here that the two things that allow me to look in the mirror to this day are that Joe and I were both the same age when we started fooling around--and it was exactly that at first, two boys exploring our sexuality--and that as far as I know, I never forced him to have sex. In other words, the best you can say is that I'm not a rapist. When that's a marker of a relatively ethical person, you know a society is in trouble.

Anyway, when I told Joe that Mark wanted to borrow him, he nodded, and said that this would be good--for me. Apparently people were saying I was collar-whipped--that Joe was the one giving the orders, and that I was too easy on him.

I couldn't believe that this didn't bother Joe. He pointed out that it wouldn't be the first time he'd had sex with someone other than me, and it wouldn't be the last. Not only did he have mysterious "special training" sessions on Saturdays, but...he'd also been sleeping with my dad sometimes.

He acted genuinely surprised that I didn't know.

Joe went over to Mark's room after dinner the next night, and by the time he came back, I was in bed, but not asleep. I heard the door open, and I heard him catch his breath, like he'd been hurt. I started to turn the light on, he asked me not to. He also asked me a lot more tentatively than I'd heard him in years, if I minded him taking a shower. I said yes, not least because he smelled awful. He stayed in there for almost an hour.

When we got up the next morning, I could see that his face, especially around his mouth, was bruised and swollen, and there was still a nasty red mark around his neck where someone had twisted and tugged on his collar. I was ready to go beat the crap out of Mark, but Joe begged me not to, saying that it would only make things worse.

Mark did apologize--to me, for "being a little too hard on that pretty face."

The last time I saw Joe was right before I got on a plane to Boston to start my first year of college. Like many universities, Harvard requires freshmen to live in the dorms--and if you live in the dorms, you're not allowed to have your own slaves. It was the first time Joe and I had been apart, and to be honest, I was a little nervous. We did exchange letters once, but before long I was struggling with the workload, especially without Joe there to help.

When I came home for Christmas break I was anxious to see Joe, but I couldn't find him anywhere. All of his clothes and everything else was gone. It was like he'd never been there.

I marched into my dad's office, and before I could say anything, he said, "Joe's gone. Your mother and I decided to sell him." He told me that with me at school, they felt that there was no point keeping him around with nothing to do, and that if I lived off-campus next year, they'd get me another body slave.

I was furious, so I asked my father, if he'd sold Joe because he'd gotten tired of fucking him.

That got his attention. I found out that he'd ordered Joe not to tell me about that; I can only guess that Joe was engaging in a small bit of defiance in the only way he could by telling me despite my father's order. Dad pointed out that he'd waited until after I had started having sex with Joe before he ever touched him sexually, even though by law he could have had him earlier. He blamed himself and my mother for me allowing me to become too attached to Joe.

It was at that moment that everything came together for me, and I knew it wasn't enough to just think that the system was wrong; I needed to do something to change it. That's why I'm a lawyer, with a specialization in what's euphemistically called "labor law".

The system is structured so that everyone, without exception, is either a victim of it or complicit in its crimes. There are the slaves and slaveowners, of course, but there are also the people who live in between, who have to fight and scramble so that they'll never have to sell themselves or their children. And unless you somehow manage to live completely off the grid, the food you eat, the dishes you eat off of, the clothes you wear, the house you live in--everything is the product of slave labor.

So, how do we stop it? Let me say up front I don't believe we will see an end to slavery in my lifetime, or in the lifetime of any one of us here tonight. The Laborist majority is too entrenched, and because of the way that every aspect of our economy relies on slavery, the Laborists are correct when they argue that abolition would have serious ramifications. The only possibility is going to involve moving one tiny step at a time, and changing the public's attitudes; it will have to be a gradual process that starts from the ground up.

There are some concrete things that can be done. Money's always welcome of course, but it's not our greatest need. What we do need are three things: support for the legislation we're sponsoring, which I'll talk more about in a second; people with experience in marketing and public relations to make sure that the real truth about the system gets out there; and most of all, we need people who are willing to sacrifice principle to ensure that at least a few slaves can be in situations where they're treated as human beings.

Right now, the most pressing concern is a bill that's being called the Child Labor Act. There are two parts to it: first, it raises the age of majority to 14, for both slaves and free citizens. Obviously, this is intended to address the rampant sexual abuse of enslaved children. The second part mandates basic educational standards that must be met by all slaves by the time they reach 14. Currently there are no legal requirements that slaves receive any education, and that absolutely has to change.

Neither aspect of the bill creates an onerous burden for slaveowners, but you wouldn't know it from some of the hand-wringing and wailing from the Laborist side of the aisle. That's why the publicity campaign is so important. We need to challenge the idea that house slaves, and body slaves in particular, are pretty, pampered pets who always fall in love with their masters, and instead talk about a 9-year-old boy getting beaten bloody for something he didn't do, or the sickness of a world where a man who doesn't have sex with children is considered unusually decent.

As I said at the start of this talk, I mentioned that I own slaves myself. Many of you have probably been wondering how I can reconcile owning other people with my belief that owning other people is inherently wrong. Self-interest is a factor: I don't particularly want to go to jail, and my position is such that I'm expected to have a body slave in attendance when I'm in public. But until we can get a manumission law passed that allows slaves to be freed by their owners or to purchase their freedom--a model that worked for centuries in Ancient Rome--slaves have to be owned by someone. Whenever possible, I believe that someone should be an owner who views his or her slaves as people first, rather than property. That still doesn't make the system right. It makes it bearable for the people who have to live under it. It's not enough by any means, but it's something.

In case you're wondering what happened to Joe.... After I graduated from law school, I tried to find him. The main Commerce site is great if you're looking for a certain type of slave, but not so good if you're looking for a specific dark-haired caucasian body slave with a fairly common name. My father also made sure I wouldn't be able to find Joe easily by paying to have his entire record from the twelve years he spent with us sealed. I haven't stopped trying, and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about him. He's the person I've probably been closest to than anyone else in my life--my best friend, brother, and lover--and the fact that he was stripped of his humanity and relegated to life as an object because his parents were poor is nothing short of a crime. It has to end.

-tbc-

Notes: I totally and completely blame poisontaster and her CWRPS series A Kept Boy, which made me want to write about the SGA actors in her universe. This is all her fault. Thanks also to telesilla for giving it a once-over.

This is the text of the standard talk that Dylan Neal, Joe's former owner, gives to pro-abolition groups. I originally wrote it for myself, as a way to get down the backstory between Dylan and Joe, but it also shows a little about the world, and about one of the possible ways that a slave can be trained.

The title is from the Indigo Girls song, "Prince of Darkness"

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