Peg Boy — R.G. Berube

Many unorthodox ways of life were allowed during the early days of the California Gold Rush. The demands of the times and a great influx of races forced tolerance. San Francisco became notorious for its lawlessness, its gambling casinos, and its bordellos and madams. The Barbary Coast became a part of California's history and San Francisco's heritage. The Barbary Coast was an area near the waterfront that law enforcers found almost impossible to control. Those who operated establishments there, refused to abide by the gradually encroaching law and order being established by the other parts of town. For along the Barbary Coast any vice could be bought. There also, a little-known vice guarded with great secrecy were the male houses of prostitution. Some of the more clandestine operations offered young boys. Most of these boys had few means of survival other than their wits and bodies. Known as peg-houses, the places provided boys as young as seven and as old as seventeen to those who were able to meet the extraordinary prices. These houses were often operated by unscrupulous and ruthless men who provided the boys with drugs, thereby chaining them by their addictions. These could become hopeless addicts unable to function as anything but subservient slaves to their masters. An international slave trade supplied these houses with boys who were enticed or kidnapped from all over the world. Peg-houses were common in the Orient. The custom was brought to the West by seamen who had grown fond of such pleasures. Boys were trained to service customers by having their anuses enlarged by wooden peg of gradually increasingly size. They would be offered for selection while sitting on stools that displayed the properly sized peg protruding from the bottom to indicate the size penis that each boy had been trained to accommodate. This is the story of Santiago Cali, one such boy.