The Problem with Being Locked in a Cage

Lots of submissive guys (and I’m guessing women as well, although I’ve never discussed it with one) fantasize about what I call the Locked In a Cage fantasy and ask about making that fantasy come real. But there are a couple problems with that fantasy that they generally don’t seem to realize.

The essence of LIaC is that the sub has become a prisoner. The details can vary. Sometimes the sub is put in a prison cell, either legally or as a kidnap victim. Sometimes there is a literal cage, while other times they’re locked in the basement or attic. Maybe they’re taken to a sex-farm where they labor in the nude as farm-hands. Regardless of the exact details, the sub is stuck somewhere and cannot leave that place unless the captor actively lets them out. And naturally, the captor demands sex from them. A lot of sex. Maybe the captor just sticks his dick through the bars and the prisoner must either suck or get fucked. Maybe the captor comes in, fucks the prisoner, and leaves. Maybe the prisoner is let out to do domestic chores and then is send back to the cage. Maybe the prisoner gets gang-banged by the captor’s friends or the other captors. But regardless, being a prisoner means that the sub has lost his social identity entirely. He’s been removed from society and his old social identity has been replaced with that of a sex slave and domestic servant. The bondage element is strong here–the slave’s movements are geographically restricted.

The fantasy is totally hot. I get it. I certainly like the idea from the dom side of the equation. I’ve even got both an attic and a basement that I could store somebody in quite comfortably. But I’ve had quite a number of guys ask me if I could engineer that for them in real life. Would I be willing to keep them permanently in my basement as a sex slave? And my answer is always no. Not only am I not interested in trying to make that fantasy into a reality, it usually indicates to me that the sub isn’t ready for a serious relationship yet.

There are three major reasons that trying to live out this this fantasy is a serious problem. First, while it can be a fun scene for a few hours, or perhaps for a weekend, it’s just not sustainable as a lifestyle. I’ve spoken with a couple guys who did that fantasy for a weekend and they reported exactly what I thought they would say. It felt sexy for a couple hours and then got dreadfully boring, because all they could do was lie in their cage and wait for their captor to come and use them again. The total lack of mental stimulation meant that once the initial sexual charge wore off, they felt bored and had nothing to do, because like almost everyone who’s not a character in a porn film, their sex life is only one component of their personality and they have needs far beyond their libido. A few subs, particularly gimps and drones, seem to find ways to manage the intense boredom, but I doubt even the most hardened gimp could deal with a full week of it non-stop.

So if you’re a sub who’s genuinely seeking this scenario as your lifestyle, it means you’re not quite ready for a relationship because you haven’t yet understood that your sex life isn’t going to just magically displace the rest of your personality. You aren’t yet at the point where you’re trying to integrate your sexual needs into your life; you’re thinking about your sexual identity as something distinct from the rest of you, and that’s unrealistic.

Second, the logistics of this scenario are very problematic. As a full-time sex slave who has dropped out of society, how are you going to support yourself? Obviously, you’re not; your captor will have to support you. He’ll have to pay for your food and clothing (if you’re allowed any of the latter). Perhaps you’re going to work for him in some capacity–doing the cleaning so he doesn’t have to, or doing manual labor on his farm for free. But essentially, this scenario only works at all if the captor already has the means to support the slave, meaning that the captor will have to carry all the expenses of keeping the slave. So when you start digging into it, this fantasy requires that old porn novel cliché, the Independently Wealthy Dom or at least his younger brother, the Moderately Successful Dom. (Years ago, I chatted for a while with a sub who had a slightly more realistic version of LIaC; he wanted to find a businessman who would hire him for a low-wage job to do manual labor for his company and treat him as a sex slave on the side. That’s literally the most realistic version of LIaC I’ve run across and notice that it requires the dom to be an independent businessman; it also reduces the element of geographic restriction.)

Even if we grant that this scene could be engineered by a dom who has the income to support a member of his household who’s not paying their way, there are other logistical problems. What happens when the slave has medical problems? In the US, health insurance is unfortunately tied to employment, so when the slave drops out of the workforce, he will lose all health insurance unless he marries his captor. Eventually, he’ll need medical care–he’ll injure himself or become sick because stuff like that happens, and the medical care will be extremely expensive. He’ll also lose retirement benefits and the ability to save money. That means that if the relationship collapses, the slave will probably be thrust back into the normal world with few resources to support themselves on, and be forced to rebuild a career. To make this fantasy a practical reality, the dom is going to have to foot the bill for the slave’s health insurance and will also have to put money aside in a bank account for the slave in the eventuality that the relationship ends or the dom dies. So once again, the slave is an economic drain on the master, and the master is putting the slave in a rather vulnerable state in terms of what happens if the relationship ends.

There’s also the ‘soft logistics’ of the slave’s social life. Will the slave just vanish from society entirely? What will the slave’s family and friends think? They’ll probably report it to the police, who will probably find out where the slave has gone, thus creating an embarrassing situation for everyone involved. Even if the slave remains in contact online, won’t family and friends wonder why they never meet up any more? Won’t they want to know what’s going on with the slave’s career? Basically, the moment you try to put this fantasy into life for more than a weekend or so, you start having to figure out a lot of logistical issues. Some of these issues are probably solvable, but they are a lot more complex than most slaves have considered when they approach me about it.

Third, most versions of LIaC invert the dom/sub dynamic in a curious way. I am keeping a slave in my basement, coming down to fuck him and not letting him leave, so I am getting one concrete benefit out of this arrangement: on-demand sex. Which I admit is a major benefit. But I’m also getting a ton of responsibilities. If he’s in a cage or cell or basement room, I have to cook his food and bring it down to him. I have to empty his latrine bucket. I have to cover the cost of feeding and keeping him. In other words, I am going to be tending his needs instead of him tending mine. He becomes a substantial burden for me to solve, so instead of the slave making my life easier, he’s making it a lot harder. So really, I’m serving him more than he’s serving me.

That dynamic is the exact opposite of what most doms want. While I care for my boys and will do a lot for them, the things I want to do for them having nothing to do with menial labor like emptying a latrine bucket or carrying plates of food. A slave ought to be performing those kinds of low-skill chores for me so I can focus on the things I actually want to do.

And to me, this is the biggest problem with LIaC. The subs who like it enough that they are actually looking for it tend to be so wrapped up in the erotic vision of it that they don’t stop to think about it from the dom’s perspective. Why would a dom want this fantasy? What does he get out of it? They are usually viewing the dom not as an actual person but just as a character in a sexual fantasy, someone whose only dominant needs are to be the sexual captor of the sub. Basically, the dom in here is just a sort of sex robot who comes in, fucks the slave and then walks off-stage and powers down until its program reactivates it for the next scheduled fucking. It’s basically the Subland zone of Westworld.

Every dom I’ve discussed this with has the same reaction I have. “That’s not being dominant, that’s being submissive.” The fantasy requires the dom to be a ‘service top’, not a truly dominant person. The sub who’s approached me about this fantasy is always startled when I point this out to them. Some of them start to understand once I explain it to them, but others don’t get it even when I lay it out for them. They think that being dominant just means demanding sex, and they expect me to be excited about getting the chance to play the role they’ve scheduled for me.

Obviously, these problems can be fixed. Instead of being locked in a cage all the time, the slave can maintain some sort of economic and social life and pay its share of the bills. The slave can have regular access to the bathroom and cook its own meals. The slave can do chores and find ways to serve that make the dom’s life easier and make sure that the slave isn’t a burden on him. But once you make those sorts of changes, it stops being LIaC and becomes something very different, a genuine, living power-exchange relationship. That’s what I want with my boys.