Daddy Boy

After a decade-long relationship with a dominatrix he called Daddy, Emerson Whitney had begun to crave something besides submission. It came as a full surprise—submission had been so central to his early adulthood, to his trans identity. Dizzied by new questions of control and aging, and living in a tent while his relationship ends, Emerson stumbles upon an advertisement for a storm-chasing tour. “For thrill seekers,” it says. Unsure what else to do, he signs up.

Daddy Boy follows Emerson as he packs into a van full of strangers and drives up and down the country—staying in Days Inns and eating bags of carrots from Walmart and wanting nothing more than to surrender to the force of a colossal storm. “We had no idea where we were going,” Emerson writes, “just waiting for one cloud to pop.” Roaming the prairie landscape of his childhood, Emerson recalls his adoptive dad, Hank‚ unflinching and extremely Texan, and his biological dad, who was rarely around. From the van’s trash-strewn back seat, and in the face of these looming figures, Emerson begins to wonder: Did he want to be Daddy now?