On the way back to the airport on Monday morning, I was asked what one thing stood out during the weekend. A tough question considering the number of events produced throughout the weekend. I thought about the intense, single tail scene that I enjoyed on Friday night at the Black Eagle with a boy in my Clan, I revisited the interviews, smiling as I recalled the boy contestant channeling his inner puppy, his pants hanging down past his knees. And, looking at my partner in the van, I thought how great it was to have him beside me for the entire weekend. A rare treat. But the thing that stood out most was the absence of the producers at the events.
I did, of course, see Brandon and Dan during the weekend. Without fanfare they did their job as producers with a smile and an apparent sense of enjoyment. No unfolding dramas. No overt politics. Always greeting us with confidence and a smile.
I especially applaud them for celebrating their new Titleholders with a play party. LeatherSIR, Leatherboy, and Community Bootblack are players titles, after all. For me, play means hot, man to man sex. I do not make distinction between my SM and my sexuality. I get hard when I play. And to this end, Steamworks did a great job as sponsor, creating spaces to satisfy this SIR's twisted proclivities. Nothing better than a gaping mouth to piss in between scenes or an eager hole to fuck while beating on a man's distended balls.
Sexual play with few limits is the Old Leather that I encountered decades ago. In my opinion, it is the cornerstone of that Older Tradition that the Community tries to define today through workshops and textbooks. More important than protocols. More integral than ritual. Leather is about rough, hard sex!
On Saturday during the contest, Tom Stice posed a question to me. “What is the hottest sex you have had while traveling during your title year?” I stood sullenly and mumbled an answer. Seems I have always been too tired to bring a man back to my host's house or my hotel. After Sunday's play party, I now have answer for him.
“The cbt scene at Steamworks beside my Canadian brothers. Nothing hotter than grabbing the balls of a man in a sling and pulling him hard on my cock! A great fuck!”
Bravo to the producers of Eastern Canada LeatherSIR/Leatherboy for facilitating a weekend of hot, steamy play. And my hearty congratulations to their new titleholders, Master Chuck and boy Iain.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Silence = Death
In the early nineties, ACT-UP's rallying cry warned society that Gays and Queers were no longer willing to remain passive about the lack of AIDS/HIV funding. Dissent “unleash(ed) power,” forcing changes that enabled greater accessibility to new medications. Associated with this visibility, Queer Studies programs began appearing in colleges and universities to examine the politics of this dissent. As a result, a new generation found voice never to be silenced again.
The Leather Archives and Museum was born in tandem with the emergence of this new scholarship. More than a collection of artifacts and curios, the Museum serves its community by encouraging research in alternative sexuality and Leather history. Because these subjects fall outside of the mainstream discourse, scholars find it challenging to obtain funding from public sources. And for this reason, the Museum has created its Visiting Scholar program.
During last few decades, the privatization of the arts and education has challenged the role of the independent scholar. Seldom does a corporation fund a work out of altruism. Scholars are required to work within the dictates of the funding source. Scholarship must reinforce the discourse of which the funder is part. This poses a challenge for those researchers who want to examine subjects outside of the biased of this discourse. In particular, the subject of alternative sexuality.
I encourage you to give to the Leather Archives and Museum's Visiting Scholar Program. By encouraging independent research we create our own discourse outside of the traditional bias. And as a result, we create a voice that can speak to the next generation of Leather and kink folk.
See LAM's webpage for giving to the Visiting Scholar Program at http://www.leatherarchives.org/amlibweb/scholar.htm.
The Leather Archives and Museum was born in tandem with the emergence of this new scholarship. More than a collection of artifacts and curios, the Museum serves its community by encouraging research in alternative sexuality and Leather history. Because these subjects fall outside of the mainstream discourse, scholars find it challenging to obtain funding from public sources. And for this reason, the Museum has created its Visiting Scholar program.
During last few decades, the privatization of the arts and education has challenged the role of the independent scholar. Seldom does a corporation fund a work out of altruism. Scholars are required to work within the dictates of the funding source. Scholarship must reinforce the discourse of which the funder is part. This poses a challenge for those researchers who want to examine subjects outside of the biased of this discourse. In particular, the subject of alternative sexuality.
I encourage you to give to the Leather Archives and Museum's Visiting Scholar Program. By encouraging independent research we create our own discourse outside of the traditional bias. And as a result, we create a voice that can speak to the next generation of Leather and kink folk.
See LAM's webpage for giving to the Visiting Scholar Program at http://www.leatherarchives.org/amlibweb/scholar.htm.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Play, Surrender, and Discourse
More than six months ago I enjoyed a very intense whip scene with one of my boys during a Seattle Men in Leather social at The Cuff. After half an hour, I stood with signal whip in hand, pushing my bulging crotch against the back of the boy's thigh and examined my work.
“Want more?” I taunted, watching the welts blossom into bleeding wounds. To my surprise I saw a smile appear on the boy's lips. I turned his head slightly and kissed him. “the boy likes the game, eh?” I asked.
“YES, SIR!” he adamantly replied.
Ten months before this boy had presented me with a lengthy list of SM activities that he liked and didn't like. Single tails was one of those activities that did not rate high on his list. I whispered “I guess the boy is playing off his list. My how this boy has changed!”
We both laughed.
I reflect back on a scene more than fifteen years ago when I lay under the knife in a public dungeon while a trusted mentor cut an extensive cutting into my back. And I thought of another moment years before that, sitting next to my friend, Wes Randall, as he drove me back from a Leather event.
Wes would later do a spread Drummer Magazine in 1991 with knife in hand. He was also the only Gay man I knew at that time that openly played with the women in our Community, play that included bloodsports. The knife was his ritual object of choice, always at his side. Wes even wore the studded outline of his knife on his belt, harness, and arm bands thanks to Lee Willis of Studwerks.
“you'd love to be cut,” Wes said to me. “It's incredible!”
“That's on my list of definite NO's,” I responded quickly. “That is something that I never want to do.”
Months later I would receive my first cutting, surprising both myself and those who knew me. The list that I had written the year before had metaphorically been lost. No longer about specific activities, my Leather focused on developing trust with specific people. No longer about a scheduled release of endorphins circumscribed by my personal fears.
The surrender of the individual is an essential characteristic of all fraternal rituals, a movement by degrees from fear to a higher understanding of self. Perusing contemporary Gay Leather history in North America exposes this same theme, especially if we focus on the apocrypha immediately following World War II. This segment of our history revolves around the rise of motorcycle clubs and fraternal groups.
Of course the anxious and the curious are often not comfortable with the idea of surrender, with the disposal of the list of fears that almost always exists at the onset of one's journey into Leather. Surrender and the development of trust takes time, especially if we focus on its public demonstration. A notion that seems to fly in the face of the argument of inclusivity and the immediacy of contemporary life.
(Patience is a virtue that we seldom discuss in our present Community.)
Returning to my role as a SIR, I have literally received hundreds of offers from men who want to be my boy throughout the years. What attracts me to a boy is his desire to question his own prescription through play as he builds trust in his SIR. After months, often years, the boy says, “I'm yours. Do with me what you will.”
At this juncture, I then test the boy to determine the veracity of his statement using my preferred implements of play: whips, boots, fists, piss. The trial of the ritual begins in earnest, the boy offering his body to be marked, changed, by the SIR. No simple act of submission, the boy often fights back, struggling not against me but against the notion of himself. As he wanders outside of his prescribed list of dos and don't s, his body no longer belongs solely to himself.
The logical next phase of this ritual is its public display. Play in a public dungeon space becomes essential in the acknowledgment of the SIR/boy dynamic. I am reminded of Michel Foucault's observation in his seminal work, “Discipline and Punish.” The public performance of torture doled out by the hands of justice in an earlier age is directly related to the discourse of the power of the sovereign. The body of the accused, a canvas of this discourse, the lexus of power.
To fully appreciate this paradigm one must understand Foucault's philosophy of how power works. It does not flow from the top down. Rather, the discourse is formed by the exchange between the parties. Applying this to the idea of Sir and boy, this means that one is defined as Sir relative to the boy and relative to the Community. A public discourse. More specifically, the power of the Sir does not come flow from some inner conviction, from an intangible soul, but rather from the phenomenal exchange of energy realized in play and protocols. Ritual, the signifier of this discourse.
I ask every Sir contestant that I judge, “What makes you a 'Sir?'” After six months I still wait for the obvious answer.
I usually hear the Sir candidate respond that he just “feels” the power inside; a self-identified role. Historically and philosophically speaking, such a response has little significance.
The large, International LeatherSIR sash does not make me a Sir. Nor does the fervor that I feel when I pick up the implements of my play. I am a Sir because my boys recognize me as such. I am a Sir in the Community because my peers acknowledge this role relative to my boys. Very simple.
Conversely, if I were to abuse my boys physically or emotionally, they would soon stop calling me “Sir.” The Community would regard me as a man who did not understand the responsibility of being a Sir. In short, the title “Sir” would no longer be applied to me. To repeat, “Sir” is directly tied to the phenomenon of play and protocols. It is not a personal expression of belief uttered as a proclamation of faith.
The power of play comes from the exchange between a Sir and His boy, and the subsequent exchange with the Community. The recognition of this exchange is basic to the formation of the discourse of Gay Men's Leather culture over the last sixty years. It is the foundation of my Leather.
“Want more?” I taunted, watching the welts blossom into bleeding wounds. To my surprise I saw a smile appear on the boy's lips. I turned his head slightly and kissed him. “the boy likes the game, eh?” I asked.
“YES, SIR!” he adamantly replied.
Ten months before this boy had presented me with a lengthy list of SM activities that he liked and didn't like. Single tails was one of those activities that did not rate high on his list. I whispered “I guess the boy is playing off his list. My how this boy has changed!”
We both laughed.
I reflect back on a scene more than fifteen years ago when I lay under the knife in a public dungeon while a trusted mentor cut an extensive cutting into my back. And I thought of another moment years before that, sitting next to my friend, Wes Randall, as he drove me back from a Leather event.
Wes would later do a spread Drummer Magazine in 1991 with knife in hand. He was also the only Gay man I knew at that time that openly played with the women in our Community, play that included bloodsports. The knife was his ritual object of choice, always at his side. Wes even wore the studded outline of his knife on his belt, harness, and arm bands thanks to Lee Willis of Studwerks.
“you'd love to be cut,” Wes said to me. “It's incredible!”
“That's on my list of definite NO's,” I responded quickly. “That is something that I never want to do.”
Months later I would receive my first cutting, surprising both myself and those who knew me. The list that I had written the year before had metaphorically been lost. No longer about specific activities, my Leather focused on developing trust with specific people. No longer about a scheduled release of endorphins circumscribed by my personal fears.
The surrender of the individual is an essential characteristic of all fraternal rituals, a movement by degrees from fear to a higher understanding of self. Perusing contemporary Gay Leather history in North America exposes this same theme, especially if we focus on the apocrypha immediately following World War II. This segment of our history revolves around the rise of motorcycle clubs and fraternal groups.
Of course the anxious and the curious are often not comfortable with the idea of surrender, with the disposal of the list of fears that almost always exists at the onset of one's journey into Leather. Surrender and the development of trust takes time, especially if we focus on its public demonstration. A notion that seems to fly in the face of the argument of inclusivity and the immediacy of contemporary life.
(Patience is a virtue that we seldom discuss in our present Community.)
Returning to my role as a SIR, I have literally received hundreds of offers from men who want to be my boy throughout the years. What attracts me to a boy is his desire to question his own prescription through play as he builds trust in his SIR. After months, often years, the boy says, “I'm yours. Do with me what you will.”
At this juncture, I then test the boy to determine the veracity of his statement using my preferred implements of play: whips, boots, fists, piss. The trial of the ritual begins in earnest, the boy offering his body to be marked, changed, by the SIR. No simple act of submission, the boy often fights back, struggling not against me but against the notion of himself. As he wanders outside of his prescribed list of dos and don't s, his body no longer belongs solely to himself.
The logical next phase of this ritual is its public display. Play in a public dungeon space becomes essential in the acknowledgment of the SIR/boy dynamic. I am reminded of Michel Foucault's observation in his seminal work, “Discipline and Punish.” The public performance of torture doled out by the hands of justice in an earlier age is directly related to the discourse of the power of the sovereign. The body of the accused, a canvas of this discourse, the lexus of power.
To fully appreciate this paradigm one must understand Foucault's philosophy of how power works. It does not flow from the top down. Rather, the discourse is formed by the exchange between the parties. Applying this to the idea of Sir and boy, this means that one is defined as Sir relative to the boy and relative to the Community. A public discourse. More specifically, the power of the Sir does not come flow from some inner conviction, from an intangible soul, but rather from the phenomenal exchange of energy realized in play and protocols. Ritual, the signifier of this discourse.
I ask every Sir contestant that I judge, “What makes you a 'Sir?'” After six months I still wait for the obvious answer.
I usually hear the Sir candidate respond that he just “feels” the power inside; a self-identified role. Historically and philosophically speaking, such a response has little significance.
The large, International LeatherSIR sash does not make me a Sir. Nor does the fervor that I feel when I pick up the implements of my play. I am a Sir because my boys recognize me as such. I am a Sir in the Community because my peers acknowledge this role relative to my boys. Very simple.
Conversely, if I were to abuse my boys physically or emotionally, they would soon stop calling me “Sir.” The Community would regard me as a man who did not understand the responsibility of being a Sir. In short, the title “Sir” would no longer be applied to me. To repeat, “Sir” is directly tied to the phenomenon of play and protocols. It is not a personal expression of belief uttered as a proclamation of faith.
The power of play comes from the exchange between a Sir and His boy, and the subsequent exchange with the Community. The recognition of this exchange is basic to the formation of the discourse of Gay Men's Leather culture over the last sixty years. It is the foundation of my Leather.
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