What Worse Place Can I Beg in Your Love? by Syd McGinley – Review
Title: What Worse Place Can I Beg in Your Love?
Author: Syd McGinley
URL: Lyrical Press
Price: US$1.50
Warnings: explicit m/m, graphic language, violence, alien-man sex, human pets.
Publisher’s description:
Rejected by his lover for being too submissive, a gay xeno-cartographer signs up on a survey mission and is captured by aliens. He finds his submissive nature tested by a new master, yet is distraught when his owner thinks he would run away. He finds a true happiness on this alien world, until rescuers arrive.
“Annoyingly obedient” is what David called me. He’d dumped me because he wanted a less submissive bottom. And now my attempt to recover from him has led me to where those same traits may mean my survival. An alien holding cell turned out to be a pound, and my new owner is a seven-foot tower of jet-black muscle with raptor legs and shark teeth. At last I’m getting the training and discipline I longed for from my Earth lovers at the claws of my alien owner. If only I can make him want me…
Review:
There are probably a few different ways one could approach “What Worse Place Can I Beg in Your Love?” I prefer to read Syd McGinley’s brief, startling tale as a story of the triumph of the true self. But McGinley writes with a spare elegance that permits enough ambiguity to challenge thoughtful readers to draw their own conclusions about the unnamed protagonist’s adventures, without preaching to them or dictating any set interpretation.
The story, tightly narrated in the protagonist’s voice, follows a submissive cartographer from his imprisonment after he lands with a team of military personnel on a little-known planet, through his adoption and training as a pet by one of its formidable denizens. Images of the planet itself, and even of the aliens themselves, are delivered with admirable restraint. The protagonist’s thoughts are more fully fleshed, and proceed smoothly as a series of comparisons. He compares (favorably) his own fitness to survive captivity with that of his fellow prisoner, the military liaison who was supposed to protect him. He compares (again favorably) his training as a pet in the home of his alien master to his unsatisfying experiences getting topped back home. He compares the cultures of his home planet and the new planet, and he compares his old self to his new, by which point all comparisons have become irrelevant. Though he loses one of the most important traits of humanness—the ability to communicate using symbols—his inner life never suffers, and it’s fascinating to watch a fully sentient, critically thinking person adapt to deeply alien circumstances.
The alien master, also unnamed, is drawn completely differently. We know nothing of his character or motivations, though we get a more visual sense of him than we do of the protagonist. Painting the two principals with completely different sets of brushes is a bold move for such a short story, but McGinley pulls it off, and it becomes an important element of the story itself: the protagonist knows nothing much of his master, but reveals much about himself, thus engaging our sympathy. The pet may be curious, and so are we, but he doesn’t need to know who his master is deep down, and, ultimately, neither do we readers. The protagonist is one of the most affecting I’ve read in a long time. His desire to submit is something he counts as a strength from the very beginning of the story, and he consoles himself in the confusing, early days of his life as a pet with the knowledge that he already knows how to submit. Whereas in his previous life, he was frustrated in his desire to submit to a master, now he takes pride in his ability to understand the needs and expectations of a master who never seeks his opinions or consent. To many of us, this circumstance would be horrifying; among practitioners of BDSM the issue of consent is critical (even, perhaps especially, between masters and slaves, which relationship the protagonist’s most closely approximates).
But this isn’t a BDSM story, and the protagonist and his master are not involved in a D/s relationship. There is no negotiated power exchange between equals. And therein lie the most disturbing and most sublime qualities of McGinley’s story. There is very little dialogue in the story, which reinforces the loss of communication, and of selfhood, by the main character. His keen observations more than make up for the lack, and his imagination, fueled by his history of frustrated submission, fills in any gaps. When dialogue comes, it’s jarring, almost unwelcome, and the protagonist’s reaction leads to a very satisfying ending, one that was unimaginable when the story began. Lest you infer from all I’ve said that this is a dark and dour tale, let me assure you that it is indeed dark, but also fast-paced in its dreamlike way, and leavened with unexpected touches of humor (the protagonist trying to puzzle out his new sexual status is especially clever). However, the real triumph of this story is in McGinley’s treatment of the central paradox of the protagonist becoming a fully realized self through the abnegation of his humanness. He, and his nature, find full acceptance among aliens one would expect wouldn’t understand him at all. The will of the pet is the real force in this story.
