I recently turned down a client that wanted to cane me. It was the day after Christmas. He was the first I've have had to flatly refuse in a while, but in cases like that it's seldom anything personal; it's generally more a matter of taste, whichever side of the fence you're on. For me, most activities in the sadomasochistic family are too problematic to determine safety criterion for me to trust a first-time encounter -- maybe with someone I shared a history with, but not a cold-call enquiry. (It'll also be a cold day in Tophet before I sub in an S&M scenario for money.) But like I said, it wasn't personal; and definitely not ethical...
But ethical dilemmas do arise: they twist their way in like a screw. Generally estranged from specific activities, they're more to do with personal integrity, and how much harm you are willing to contribute to a bad situation. I turned down the opportunity for another client, just a couple of days ago, because when I heard that he was renting again, my heart sank.
He's an affluent man, who drinks a lot; at least, he used to. He'd apparently went off it on doctor's orders -- something about his liver liquefying. He's highly educated, a good conversationalist (when sober enough), generous to a fault, and we've always got fairly well, even if he is a bit of a handful; but he only rents boys when he's intoxicated. I haven't heard hide nor hair of him in months, but apparently he's back.
This is where I depart from brazen opportunism. I could have really used the pay-out that a booking with him brings, especially after the past few weeks, with my outlay of disposable funds leaving very little to show, but I know that if he's hiring companionship again, then he's back into that tail-spin that's hard to watch, harder still to be a part of. Commodity though I may be, product as well as person, you have to draw the line somewhere, and I feel that agreeing to the transaction is somehow also giving the behaviour licence. I don't know how much I want to be involved with someone's work at destroying themselves. It's a miserable thing to see, and every time I poured him a drink I would have felt conflicted.
(Don't get me wrong, I'm as in favour of a good old fashioned bender as the next red-light affictionado --to my mind there's a time and a place for all manner of human activities -- but it's the difference between the occasional bouts of bon vivant-ness and the head-hanging defeatedness of the Lost.)
I'm just not that mercenary.
