I am a LeatherMan!

I played for the first time more than twenty-five years ago. I had just come out and was desperate to find a hot man. Opening the pages of the Seattle Gay News, I came across an ad, Daddy looking for younger. Without a second thought, I dialed the number printed at the bottom. Answering the phone, a quiet but masculine voice gave me an address in the Capitol Hill neighborhood and encouraged me to come over immediately. I obeyed.

Hours later I emerged from my first adult encounter with another man. It was a hot summer, and I was wearing a white, wife-beater and a pair of jeans shorts. Glancing down in response to the new sensation that follows virgin nipple-play, I noticed two faint spots of blood begin to appear. As I entered the bus moments later, I felt nonchalant in spite of the odd looks by fellow passengers, the two red marks on my chest now quite pronounced. My head swam from the onslaught of endorphins. And I reflected on the session I had just experienced. I had no idea until that afternoon that my nipples were as sensitive as my cock and I could hardly wait to get home and try them out for myself while I beat off another time. I could not help but wonder what other surprises man-to-man sex would uncover.

For the next few years, I explored my body with abandon. I dated vanilla men while playing on the side with older, more experienced Daddies. Slowly, my adventures began bleeding over into my more mainstream relationships. “Having sex with you is like wrestling an animal,” one date chided. “You need therapy,” opined another.

I was not ashamed of my perverse behavior. I became aware of others who celebrated their sex with similar, deviant abandon. I spent afternoons and evenings pouring over Drummer Magazines and Dungeon Master, and I recognized the lure of SM in my own life. Still, I felt I was not worthy to be called “Leatherman.” almost as if I was not ready to accept my full masculinity. A LeatherDyke acquaintance observed, “When you see who you really are, you will be dangerous.”

I recall one evening sitting in a car outside the J and L (subsequently called, The Seattle Eagle). “Why don't you come in with me?” asked my Leather-clad companion.

“No,” I quickly responded. “I am not like you. I simply like 'hard' sex.” The term I used to describe my play. “I don't belong in a Leather bar because I am not a Leatherman!” The very term was fetish to me, a moniker that I would not presume to use to label myself.

“But you ARE like me,” my companion insisted. “And you belong in there just as much as I do.” He then began to summarize our encounters over the preceding months in narrative form. And, though I grew hard listening to my exploits in the third person, we parted ways that night and did not play together again.

A couple of years later my friend Wes Randall decided to address my reluctance to self-identify as a member of the Tribe. In his typical fashion, he used a public venue to do this. During an awards ceremony Wes singled me out. “To the best Leatherman I know,” he began. And then he called my name. Embarrassed, I was forced to acknowledge openly my proclivity for perverted sex.

I knew exactly what Wes meant when Ihe used that word, “Leatherman.” Wes was not recognizing me because of my Gear. At that time, I had little. Instead, he was showing me respect as a masochist, a player. He knew that I played on an emotional edge, something that he himself did in the dungeon. And he was not honoring a Community title. Wes wanted me to publicly acknowledge the true nature of my sexuality, to feel free to explore my body outside of social definitions alongside a group of men who did likewise.

(Wes did not like to be defined when it came to sex. He reveled in the label “Outsider,” even within the Leather Community.)

I have never understood the more contemporary practice of separating apparel from extreme sexuality. Historically, Leather was inclusive of fetish, SM, and the masculine eroticism that stemmed from hypermasculinity. By its very nature, it was taboo, outlaw. Criminalized in virtually every state in the United States and most countries.

In spite of the loosening of legal restrictions in many locales and the inclusion of SM in the mainstream, men continue to explore the edges of sexuality, blurring the boundaries of what is safe, sane, and consensual. Even the coined terms used to guide man to man play have been expanded to acknowledge those practices that have no textual definition. This is where my Leather resides.

I am proud to be a Leatherman.