A couple of firsts at Lupercalia

Last year I had an opportunity to attend Lupercalia.  It’s a pansexual D/s event, so Leathermen are tolerated because without us they wouldn’t have anybody to run workshops.  We attended mostly to support the man who my Sir was mentoring for the previous decade, running a caning workshop, but also to give me an idea of what happens at a play-party and to do a public high-impact scene.

The first evening was fairly uneventful…  We had a few drinks and took a look at what was for sale in the vendor’s market (all shit, pretty much). Some fatass was twirling a flogger around trying to look cool and hip or something.  Some other fatass was walking around in clothes that were far too tight for her 300 pound body.  Several other fatasses were discussing the merits of eating and wearing tight plastic clothes or something to that effect.  What I’m getting at is that the straight D/s community is, without fail, morbidly obese and without shame.  So after we bid on a few things in a silent auction, we return to the hotel room along with the guy who my Sir mentored, his girlfriend, a leatherboy from Edmonton, and 2 members of the pansexual SM club that he runs.  The night was fairly uneventful, like I said.

The next morning was the caning workshop, which was a good introduction for me on how to run a successful workshop.  Humor, information, and audience participation all worked in favor of the workshop being a success.  When I start running workshops, I’ll at least have a decent starting point.

Later in the evening, we returned to the convention center for that night’s play party.  We arrived early and took a seat, watching the riffraff pour in.  Several of the morbidly obese women from the previous night were in attendance.  I got to see the straight D/s world in their natural habitat.  A guy moseyed into the room and locked a collar around his neck before engaging in puppy-play with anybody who could be bothered with him.  Eventually he convinced a woman to walk him around the room while he sniffed at the crotches of several fat women.  Great for them, I guess, but no fucking thanks.  Eventually, some other Leathermen met with us.  The guy who ran the caning workshop said he would watch the scene between myself and my Sir, but refused to play alongside a “bunch of losers”.  Another respected gay Leatherman from Edmonton joined us with his boy, but declined to play in a slightly more political manner, saying that he would rather take the boy to a bathhouse and fist him.

So we decide to walk up to the barrier set up between the meeting/staging/eating area and the playspace and watch what was going on.  A guy had his girlfriend tied up on a spanking bench and was delivering a really shitty flogging while completely ignoring his sub’s reactions.  A morbidly obese woman had an equally obese woman and a man who must have weighed 100 pounds and was running a scene with them which entailed a really shitty spanking/flogging.  A guy was pretending to suck his girlfriend’s blood.  Somebody was pretending to cut somebody else with a fake knife.  Yeesh.

We moved into the playspace and waited for a spot to open up.  And waited.  And waited some more.  Straight people not only are really shitty at SM, but they’re also really slow at it, it seemed.  Eventually, we decide to just ask a DM if we could use an open space on the wall, which ended up working out.  So I take off my shirt and stand up against the wall.  Meanwhile, shitty trance music filled the room, so my Sir requested that they turn it down so that he can hear me.  They obliged, but just barely.

Before we are about to start with the scene, I see that the fatass and her twig and other fatass had finished their scene and were having a good cry about it on a couch setup for aftercare.

So the scene starts.  I begin to feel slaps, open-handed punches, my t-shirt tied up into a ball, and a leather vest used on my upper back, producing a wide variety of sensations.  After 5 minutes, I’m buzzing, and after 15 I’m done.  My shoulders had already dropped and I had a “I’m going to go as long as I can” sort of state of mind.  My Sir began to focus on a single area, providing the most amount of pain to that small area that he could to convince me to drop to my knees, the signal we chose to use to end the scene.  But because of my lack of experience, I didn’t recognize the signals that my body was telling me, and I forced myself to keep going.  Maybe 5 or 10 more minutes pass, and I decide that it’s time.  I dropped to my knees, turned around, licked my Sir’s boots before looking up at Him, thanking Him, licking His boots some more, standing up, and giving Him a great big hug.  I even teared up a little bit.  Endorphins do fucked up things.

That is probably the most aftercare that I’ve ever really needed.  I’ve cried after a scene before, but it’s usually a happiness thing where I tear up a little bit while thanking my Sir for the experience.  As we leave the play area, I see out of the corner of my eye that the three people sitting on the couch were still there, all three still bawling about a tame spanking.  I don’t understand straight D/s people.

That night, I mostly sat quiet, contemplating what the fuck just happened to me, buzzed off my ass on endorphins.  I didn’t really say a whole lot, mostly just sat there.  I kind of wanted to talk about the scene, but didn’t know what to talk about…  So I just dealt with it all on my own.  It was fun, and a great experience.  A bisexual guy who organizes the event every year told my Sir at one point during the event that it was the hottest scene that he had ever watched.  Neato, I guess… Thanks, morbidly obese bisexual guy!

The final day of the event, we met for breakfast and then watched a couple of other workshops, one by a straight guy called “consenting non-consent” in which about 40 inexperienced players probably decided that the best way to have a satisfying SM experience is to ignore safe-words, and another by a woman from Vancouver about high-impact play.

All in all, it was a good experience to have.  I enjoyed myself, had a first-time experience, and got to observe the north-american land-manitee in its natural habitat.  Hopefully in coming years, the organizers will realize that loud music during a play party is stupid and dangerous and that supplying several bowls of chips to a group of fatties is not a great idea.

If you want something done, do it yourself.

I’m creating a boy of Leather club.

Actually, my main goal is to create a legitimate gay Leather community in this city, but 1 step at a time, I suppose.  In a city of 1 million, you would think that somebody would have stood up and said “this pansexual bullshit isn’t working, straight people don’t know or want to know what Leather means, they just want to give a name to what they do so that they can make some sense of it”…  Or at least, it wouldn’t have ended up being a 24 year old university student who finally had enough and said this.  But that’s where we’ve come, and I’m going to do the best fucking job that I can.

“Be the change that you want to see in the world”.  I don’t recall who said this, probably Gandhi or maybe the Dali Lama, but it was first stated to me by an OG LeatherSir who I respect more than any single person in the world.  It is very much an OG frame of mind…  To stop bitching and to actually enact positive change through example and leadership.  I don’t see a whole lot of that in this city’s Leather world; mostly, I see bitchy queens, guys who have convinced themselves that they are straight, and a few people who would like to be serious about this lifestyle, but they’re so misguided from the general lack of information here.

Why did I decide this and why does it need to be done?  I sat down with my Sir on Wednesday, and asked Him to outline how Leather came to this city.  Essentially, he and his partner/boyfriend would go to Vancouver and see men from Calgary wearing their leathers, but they would never wear them in Calgary.  So, once a week they would call up their friends and say that they would be meeting at Traxx (or was it Boystown?) in their leathers.  Most guys showing up were more interested in the masculine look and feel of being in leather among other masculine gay men wearing leather (or uniforms… or cowboys), but still, it was a leather crowd.  Eventually, ARGRA was formed and a large majority of the members of this group, CLUB Calgary, left, resulting in the creation of 3SM, a pansexual organization.  In order to appeal to the straight/bi D/s crowd, many things were adopted from that community into our city’s (and province’s) “Leather” world.  As people became interested in Leather, they saw 3SM as a model for what Old Guard Leather was about.  While some relationships within that organization were OG, the organization/family was certainly not.

So traditions like starting from the bottom, mentorship within a Sir/boy association, and protocol never really picked up in this city.  It was a very wild-west sort of atmosphere, where you could do anything that you wanted and call it Leather, as long as you throw around buzz-words like “honor”, without ever understanding what it means.  And that is how the community has operated since.  I suppose that I was lucky enough to have face-to-face interaction with men who have been active in leather communities outside of this area before I was ever introduced to the scene in this area, because otherwise I would be blissfully unaware at how convoluted the idea of what makes somebody Leather (and OG Leather) in this city has become.

But with the internet, we aren’t allowed to plead ignorance any more.  So much information is out there, somebody just had to sift through the shit and get to the essential elements of this lifestyle.  I don’t want to toot my own horn and say “I’ve done that”, but I have had deep, intense, emotional conversation with enough Leathermen, OG and New Leather, to say that I’m qualified enough (in this city at least, although I’d doubt that’s true in many other major metropolitan centers) to be a leader.  I never really wanted to be a leader, but it’s kind of strange what Leather does to somebody.  Before I got involved in this city and felt a significant disconnect between what I see here and what I have talked about and seen in other cities, nothing would have made my happier than to just spend 5 hours at a time licking the boots of a man wearing full leather.  But then again, I discovered that men do not wear full leather in this city.  That’s another thing that I need to change, but I think I’ll start with baby steps and work on convincing kinky gay men to invest thousands of dollars in clothes and boots made out of dead cow at a later date.

For now, the focus is on the Calgary boys of Leather Club.  I’m sure that I’ll get shit over calling it a ‘boys’ club and that it’s going to be gay-exclusive, but I really don’t give a shit.  I value my reputation over my orgasm: I will not allow myself to become diluted and seen as just another kinkster who happens to be gay.. And I value my integrity over my reputation: I am working on establishing and growing the gay Leather community in this city, and no amount of bitching, whining, and moaning from the people who are happy with the status-quo is going to change that.  For all I care, the pan-sexual faux-Leather community can go fuck itself, all they’ve done is leech off of Leather traditions, warped them to fit their life, and haven’t given anything back.

I would post an email address and say that anybody can write to me if they are interested in this club, but for one, nobody reads this blog, and two, I think I’m the only publicly visible Leatherboy in this city of over 1 million people (so you might not be so curious about why I think it’s important to establish a boy’s club here).

Protocol

In the world of ‘New Leather’, where anything goes and the exclusivity, accountability, and integrity that was once associated with Leather has been thrown to the wayside because of a lack of quality mentors resulting from AIDS, along with the internet.  More power to the guys and girls who want to pick and choose what appeals to them from leather and applying that to their life, I’m in no position to judge, but something that I see as important to me personally, along with the men who have been doing this for much longer than anybody reading this, seems to have been lost almost completely.

Most of us think that protocol is hot and hip, sure, but when that statement is concluded with “but it’s not important”, I start to have a problem.  Protocol maintains the dynamic between Top and bottom.  It is part of what makes Leather a lifestyle, rather than something that we do in the bedroom.  When a Leatherman calls his boy anything else when they are in an environment where doing so would be acceptable, it strains on the relationship; likewise, when a boy calls his Sir anything else, the same result happens.

Of course, this depends on the idea that a Sir has a boy specifically to nurture that boy and help the boy grow (and as a result, the boy fills his Sir with spirit, helping the Sir grow).  With all sorts of ads on the internet (another problem facing our community, but that’s another post) which specify that they want to use or be used, this is obviously not always the case.  Whatever works for those people, I suppose, but this isn’t really what Leather is about.  But I digress…

I haven’t called my Sir anything else for the year that I have known him.  I respect and admire him enough to do this, and He respects me enough to understand that I very much prefer that he call me ‘boy’.  This isn’t particularly difficult or awkward; after all, we are Leather and respect that this has been happening for many, many years between men in similar situations.  Sometimes He slips up, and calls me ‘honey’ or ’sweetie’ or ‘David’, and it is almost heart-wrenching.  Almost immediately, the nature of the relationship’s dynamic is shaken.  Being called boy, walking half a pace behind Him on his left side, flagging correctly and at all times reinforces my ‘boyhood’ to his ‘Sirness’.  When other Leathermen call me ‘boy’, it shows me that they “get” what’s going on in my head, and when I call them ‘Sir’, it’s because I acknowledge their integrity, honour, and experience.

This isn’t to say that I’m supporting a rigid level of exact protocol requirements for everybody.  Sure, the scene would be much hotter for me if everybody maintained a high-level of OG protocols at all times, but that isn’t really practical, and protocol changes depending on locality and how people see each other’s position in the community, depending on the nature of their interpersonal relationship.  It’s important for us to have some level of protocol at all times when we are in Leather spaces, though, if only as a means to ensure that we are propagating our culture, rather than a bastardizes ‘anything goes’ version of it… “Anything goes” has its place, but that place is in the straight D/s community.

A few weeks ago, I was working at the Eagle alongside a senior Leatherboy, who hasn’t really been active in a number of years… Nonetheless, I was pulling glassware out of the dishwasher while he was pouring a drink beside me, and a Leather Top calls out from the other side of the bar: “Hey, boy!”  Both of our heads shot up, right in His direction.  The three of us “get” it; the two boys know who they are and that a call from a Leather Top deserves immediate attention, and the Top knows how to explicitly address a Leather bottom.  There was no “Hummm, hawww, oh excuse me, Sir Bottom, this humble leatherman would like to request your attention”.  He wanted to get our attention, (well, the guy standing beside me, specifically… I just happened to be caught in the cross-fire and acted appropriately), knew how to get it, and followed through.

This isn’t to say that this Top isn’t humble.  He is, but he understands that a Leather Top who is soft-spoken and meek will never same command the attention from those around him compared to a Top who acts accordingly.  For whatever reason, tops have become neutered with this notion that it’s somehow improper to impose their will on a bottom…  That is -exactly- what bottoms want, anyway!

Recently, a couple of guys came into the bar for the first time.  They were internet types and dressed, acted, and looked the part.  Both of them wore collars, including the top.  Just incredibly sloppy individuals, and they’re supposed to be Leather.  A mutual friend of ours introduced us, along with my Sir, and their cluelessness was increasingly apparent.  The top could barely string a sentence together in our presence, and the bottom bragged about his experience with scat.  At the end of the night, one of them walked up to my Sir and said “Thanks for a great time!” before leaving.  A nice gesture, sure, but shouldn’t have he called Him “Sir”?

I talked to my Sir about that, to which he responded that they were just clueless kids who don’t know anything about the culture.  “But if experienced Leathermen don’t teach them about it, who will?”  He gave it some thought, and agreed that he should have corrected the kid before he left.  He may be my mentor, and he may be a humble Leatherman, but that doesn’t mean that he should be prevented from sharing our traditions with people who are new to the lifestyle.  You can only learn so much from the internet.

Maybe I’m just an idealist, but I know a good number of OG Men in their 70s who are idealists as well, and they know a fuckload more than the rest of us about this stuff.

How I came to where I am

When I was very young, I had a fascination with motorcycles, and specifically, the men who rode them. Where this came from could be anybody’s guess, but I distinctly remember being four years old and proclaiming that I am going to ride a motorcycle when I get older. My obsession with bikes subsided eventually, and was replaced with more practical obsessions, like hockey cards and action figures, at least for the time being. It would eventually return, but until recently I never gave a second through to how significant my motorcycle obsession was as a child.

I ‘awoke’ suddenly one chilly afternoon while I was at home alone. I had masturbated before, and had experienced wet dreams ever since I was very young; this was different though! I must have been around 14 at the time, and I was searching through a closet in the basement, trying to find a pair of gloves so that I could leave the house without fear of frostbite. Everything started with a leather jacket. My father rode a bike long before I was born, so naturally he still had the gear to go with it. As I stood inside this closet, my cock bulged inside my jeans, and for no reason that I can explain, I needed to wear it.

I hid in my room and appreciated the jacket. The black leather was hypnotic. My mind raced, and all of my senses honed in on the jacket. It smelled immaculate, and it tasted like nothing I had ever experienced. I stripped so that I could feel the supple leather on my skin, and slid my arms in until it came to a rest on my back. My cock was begging to feel release, and it only took a couple of strokes until I shot a load which I have reproduced countless of times with a number of men who “get” it.

Soon afterwards, I found myself repeating this ritual in my bedroom, in the bathroom, and in the shower whenever I had a chance. I didn’t make any attempt to analyze this part of myself at the time. In fact, I was pretty certain that this was just a phase and as soon as I found a girl that I was attracted to, this would be a distant memory… One of those “fucked up things” that teenagers do to get off. Regardless, I ended up completely destroying that jacket after enjoying the feeling of completely soaking it with water while in the shower one afternoon. I couldn’t wear it anymore, but luckily my dick was willing to make a compromise by still getting incredibly hard whenever I wore fishing waders, rubber boots, and whatever else I could find which might imitate leather even though nothing could ever truly emulate its weight, smell, taste, or feeling completely.

After some analysis of my behavior, I concluded that it was completely unhealthy and that I needed to go out there and score some pussy! Throughout this time, I had myself completely convinced that I wasn’t gay, despite having jerked off to the scene in Apt Pupil where Ian Mckellan marches through the kitchen dressed in full nazi uniform at least 3 dozen times in the course of a month. My self-admission came later when I actually discovered the gay leather scene, but for the time being I was happy to consider myself to be straight, but confused. After all, I didn’t have any interest in dressing up like a woman and was not effeminate in the slightest, which to my teenage self was a hallmark quality of a homosexual man.

In my very early twenties, I spent a winter and spring living with my mother. Surrounded by fundamentalist Christians, I decided it would be a good time to make myself normal at sex. I downloaded hundreds of megabytes of straight vanilla pornography, determined to jerk myself off until I started to enjoy the stuff. I think during that 2 week long period, I achieved orgasm once, and even then I’m pretty sure that I was thinking about cock. At the end of a particularly long, and frustrating session where I stayed completely flaccid, I broke down in tears. I justified that I couldn’t possibly be gay, that I needed therapy, that… that… that I was anything but gay! I refused to think that I was gay, actively blocking out that thought as soon as it started to enter my head, but I had come to the conclusion that I couldn’t achieve normal straight vanilla sex.

More time passed, I denied myself more, continued my frustration, and even felt depressed. Then one day out of nowhere, I found the gay leather scene, completely by accident. While searching for pictures of leather jackets on the internet, I came across a site filled with man after man, each one more masculine and hot than the last. They were all dressed head to toe in black leather, tall boots, muir caps, and were all put together so well. I knew that I belonged to this group of men immediately, but how I could go about the process of actually becoming a leatherman was unknown to me.

Early experiences in Leather

The style of dress of Leathermen was my primary attraction to the lifestyle when I first got involved.  It would be months before I learned about my masochistic side (and longer to learn about my sadistic side).  So I searched for men who were into the same thing that I was.  I discovered a man, locally, who had a decent collection of full leather uniforms, and we arranged to meet.  Having never had sex before, I was scared shitless…  “What if he doesn’t like me?  What if he wants to beat me?  What if he rapes me?”  My dick throbbed in my pants.  When I figured out that he was a genuinely nice guy with a fetish for leather uniforms and no further interest or knowledge of the lifestyle, I was actually let down.

What happened that day in the bathhouse will stay there.  It’s irrelvent to what I want to share, and I’ll be describing in much more graphic levels of detail sexual acts which overshadow what happened that day in terms of intensity, pleasure, and batshit-insanity.  He comes to the bar every so often, and we chat while he sits in the back room, watching porn while wearing his full leathers.  He’d be so much hotter if he was kinky beyond that, though.

So, I continued to search.  Eventually, I started chatting online with a man in Florida.  On his part, he was just exchanging fun roleplay messages to an anonymous internet boy in Canada, but when he told me that “distance is of no concern to a Leather Master” I decided to save my pennies and visit him.  By this time, I had started to develop an interest in Leather beyond just the clothes.  I was certainly misguided, but at least had the sensibility to do some homework, and after I found out that this guy was reasonably safe, I booked my trip.  I was under the impression that I’d be put into a legitimate D/s dynamic for my entire visit, but by the time that I was shown the guest bedroom and was told to help myself to anything in the fridge since I was his guest, my fantasy had come crashing down around me.  The man who referred to himself as “MASTER” online was nothing like what he portrayed himself on the internet, as a person and as a player.

The third time was a charm.  It wasn’t local, but it was legitimate, real, and intense.  Recent discussions with this man, Bob, revealed that he gets a dozen messages from boys a day, begging to play with him, be used, serve, or whatever they want to call it.  For whatever reason, my profile intrigued him; I had professed a willingness and desire to learn about Leather, something which was rare for somebody my age, 23 at the time.  Again, I saved my pennies, did my homework (found out that this guy isn’t just safe, but is an amazing player, a legitimate Old Guard Leatherman, and a leader in His community), and booked a flight after being given the “Ok, boy.” from Him.

When he arrived at the airport to pick me up, I was in awe.  This Man, standing no taller than 5 feet exuded confidence, masculinity, and dominance.  For Him, it was not a roleplay.  Himself during play was an extension of who He was, which allowed me to extend myself during play…  We shared a connection.  He was a LeatherSir and I was a boy.  We played lightly that weekend, always in full leather and tall boots; he would rather leave a boy longing for more than to break the boy and leave him regretful of ever pursuing this lifestyle.  Besides that, he took me to visit DC and the Eagle.  A Leatherman and a boy in full leathers, standing in a corner, operating at a high level of protocol, disregarding the judgements that are obviously being made by the fluff and their girlfriends… A beautiful thing.  I fell in love with Leather that weekend, and grew a love for this Man and everything he stood for.  Honesty, integrity, candidity, bluntness, honour, humility… These things are what Leather is all about, and this Man was all these things.  There is a place in my heart permanently reserved for Him.  When somebody asks me how to define somebody as a Leatherman, I do my best to describe Him.