As the old saying would be paraphrased for drum, “home is where the Daddy is.”
The second idea I mentioned tying together Bill’s work is “Daddy”, and starts here with the backstory to mysterious drum, his childhood and separation from his father. We have seen his daddy pop in and out of other strips, but now the real relationship is put in perspective, and all the different complexities of drum are drawn out. Kind of a different spin on the Madonna / whore axis, we’ve got a daddy / hustler turning into a hero. And enjoyed sexually, no bones about it.
This is the dawn of the daddy in gay culture, creating and pursuing the idea of sexually attractive older men. It usually comes with ideas of what we should call pseudo-incest, but Bill dispenses with the “pseudo” and makes sure we understand the sex is father and son. Daddy is in the bar, in the gym, he is drum’s date, he is his past, his future, his rock his disciplinarian, and in his bed every night no matter what goes on.
The old annoying question in gay relationships was “who is the man and who is the woman”. It now translates directly into “who is the daddy, and who is the boy”, and Bill enjoys playing with the forbidden. The grotesque family of the earlier roadtrip becomes, upon close inspection, the ideal family of drum’s own life.
