For What It's Worth

"Stop! Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down." (Stephen Stills)

As a child of the sixties, I still hear the sound of revolution in the acts of deviance that define my Leather. Leather is about breaking rules, pushing boundaries, venturing outside of the group. Like the activists of my adolescence, I do not measure myself by the meter of the status quo but by the clarion call of my own heart.

Leather requires that I must never settle comfortably as a member of the group. Popularity is a cancer, eating away at the foundation of the training I received as a Leatherboy. For this reason, I have avoided titles for almost twenty years. Until this year, that is.

Halfway through my title year, I find I have little patience for bullshit. Today I stage a new revolution and encourage you to do the same.

Don't give a FUCK about those who enter our Tribe carrying with them the same bad manners and rumor mongering ways as those in the mainstream. Shun them as our Elders did. Do not join in the small talk of politics and gossip. To quote one of the Temple rules that have been handed down in Zen for centuries, "Keep the stopper in the bottle!"

When I play, I see trust in the eyes of the boy. I work his body, allowing My energy to remove any societal barriers that might stand between himself and My own demons. I allow him to see deep within Me and do not flinch when he looks back in terror and confusion. Whether with rope or with fear, I have bound him. And when he finally opens himself to Me without compromise, this is Leather. Without requesting it, I receive the boy's gift. I receive it with honor.

First and foremost, W/we are M/men of honor. Without it, we flounder in the values of the mainstream.

The Sexual Wild

Shakespeare posits in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" that society's sexual mores do not exist in the wild. As the four lovers fumble through the darkness, Robin Goodfellow, a satyr in British guise, opens up the lovers to a realm of relative possibilities that only exists outside the boundaries of their civilized world.

My sexuality is always heightened on the wilderness coast of Western Washington. After the first twenty-four hours, I feel more animal than human. I eat when I am hungry. I piss where I find a spot. I shit under a tree and cover my scat. And I always want to fuck. I feel comfortable in the wild.

This weekend I spent two glorious days on Second Beach near La Push, Washington. A special place to me not only because of its beauty but also because of its relation to my Leather lifestyle. I discovered it twenty years ago with a close friend in the Tribe, long before the trail was well marked and groomed. With its sea stacks, needles, and dramatic sea arch, there is no other beach that can compare in scenic drama. It is also a special place where my partner and I reconnect emotionally and physically.

Prior to leaving on Friday, I threw five pounds of clay into my pack. The next morning I sat looking out into the void of the Pacific Ocean and I felt the urge to work it. I connect with the malleable earth in a very direct way. The clay exposes my internal state. My karma.

The forms that emerged hours later were unabashedly sexual. A male torso that draws the eye down to his semi-erect cock. And two headless bodies merging in a power fuck with the Dominant straining as his rod penetrates the asshole of the recumbent form.

What a challenge to hike out with two clay forms in the "hard leather" stage! Over rocks, across a log strewn beach, and up the trail through the rain forest. And what fun to watch the faces of the day hikers as they came to pay tribute to "Twilight" (the book and the movie), passing me with full pack on my back and two forms held carefully in my hands.

This morning as the clay figures sit in my office drying in the sun, I am reminded that Leather ignites this same animal when I am in the city. An honest sexuality felt when I cover my body in hides. As Leatherfolk we pay tribute to the animal within when we invoke eagles, panthers, wolves, or dragons as totems. And we recognize our instinctual selves when we speak of Tribe. To invoke Geoff Mains, we recognize ourselves as "Urban Aboriginals."