Leather Life: A Valedictory, of sorts

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #378, November 20, 2009)

Back on June 9, 1995, one of the features of the first issue of Lavender Magazine (then called Lavender Lifestyles) was the first edition of this Leather Life column. Since then, for almost fifteen years, the Leather Life column has appeared in all but a few issues of Lavender.

The magazine recently decided to change the editorial direction of the column appearing in their Bar Scene section. So the column you now are reading will be the last every-issue installment of the Leather Life column. Henceforth, the Leather Life column will appear quarterly.

With so many items still on my “future columns” list, I am surprised, and somewhat saddened, to see the column’s frequency being reduced. But there’s much for which I am thankful. Because of this column I have met many fine people and had many great experiences, the memories of which I will always cherish.

I am very grateful to Lavender for giving me the freedom to write what I wanted to write, and for not editing me too much. I have enjoyed having the support of everyone who has been a part of Lavender over the years, including editors, art directors, office staff, ad sales reps and fellow contributors.

Special thanks to George Holdgrafer, who has been with the magazine from its beginning. My deep gratitude to Lavender’s publisher, Stephen Rocheford, who always has had the good sense to know that a publication, if it is to survive, must be run as a self-sustaining business, not a social cause. That, I think, is one reason why Lavender is the longest-running GLBT publication in the Upper Midwest. I always have been proud to have my column appear in its pages.

Thanks to everyone at Leatherpage.com for linking to Lavender’s website, thereby including me in their fine slate of leather writers. Thanks to my partner, Bill, for reading each column moments after it’s been written and offering helpful critiques.

Thank you to everyone in the leather/BDSM/fetish community—individually for being who you are, and collectively for creating such a vibrant community and culture that has given me so much to write about for all these years. Leather Life has always been your column—I’ve just been the one who happened to be writing it.

And finally, thanks to you, the person reading this column. Whether you’re leather, BDSM, fetish or none of the above; whether you’re G, L, B, T, heterosexual, pansexual or refuse to be labeled; and whether you picked up the magazine and flipped to this column, or pointed your browser to Lavender’s website and found the column there—thanks for reading. I’ll be back with another edition of Leather Life sometime next spring.

You are under my power . . . Erotic Hypnosis and BDSM

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #377, November 6, 2009)

Focus your attention on the swinging pocket watch. You are getting very sleepy . . . you are under my power . . . you will now quack like a duck . . .

That’s what most people think when they hear the word “hypnosis.” But some folks in the leather/BDSM/fetish community are discovering different, and more interesting, uses for hypnosis and trance.

The eleventh annual Hypnocon gathering was held in Minneapolis Oct. 9-11. Focusing on recreational hypnosis by men and for men, it attracted recreational hypnosis enthusiasts from across the U.S. (It was held the same weekend, and in the same host hotel, as Gaylaxicon 2009, a GLBT science-fiction/fantasy/horror convention.) There’s also a Hypocon event in the UK.

One of the organizers of this year’s Hypnocon was a gentleman named Mark Warner (not the senator from Virginia), who told me how recreational hypnosis differs from stage hypnosis or therapeutic hypnosis: “It’s personal and private. It often has a sexual edge. It places emphasis on trust and connection, and it creates an exchange that challenges and reveals.”

The focus of this year’s Hypnocon was education about hypnosis and opportunities to experience trance in a safe and sane environment. According to Warner, “The event wasn’t a hypnosis performance. It was a learning event for guys who were curious and it was a social event for guys who let trance enhance their lives.” (Warner emphasized that clinical hypnosis, also called hypnotherapy—which people might use to quit smoking or lose weight—“is a serious field of practice. That ain’t us.”)

Hypnosis is a natural addition to a BDSM tool box because it adds a whole new dimension to the concept of power exchange. Under hypnosis a person can vicariously yet convincingly experience scenes and fulfill fantasies that either would not be possible or would not be safe if attempted in reality. In Warner’s opinion, “Recreational hypnosis transcends BDSM. It’s limited only by imagination and the resources of memory and emotion.”

Warner also points out that recreational hypnosis can add spice and depth to fantasy and fetish roleplaying for people interested in vampires and werewolves, for men who want to explore being feminized, for masters wanting to reinforce a submissive mindset in their slaves, for those interested in transforming into a robotic (“bot”) state, for devotees of puppy or pony play, or for those exploring many other leather/BDSM/fetish interests: “For all these areas, recreational hypnosis is an outlet. And that’s important because we all have strange desires from time to time.”

Next year’s Hypnocon #12 will be held in Seattle.

Legendary San Francisco Leather Columnist Marcus Hernandez, 1938-2009

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #376, October 23, 2009)

PHOTO

Sad news from San Francisco: a leather legend has left us.

Longtime San Francisco leather columnist Marcus Hernandez, also known as Mr. Marcus and Marcus the Merciless, died Thursday, October 8 in Pacifica, California. His weekly column of “leather and dish” in the Bay Area Reporter started in 1971 and ran for 38 years.

The column was filled with news of the leather community in the Bay area, across the United States and around the world, both what had happened that week and what events were coming up. If San Francisco has some well-known leather institutions and personalities, Marcus’ column is one of the reasons.

Over the years Marcus attended, and often judged, more local, regional and national leather contests and events than anyone else. He was about as omnipresent as anyone in leather could be, pretty much right up to the end, even at the age of 77.

For many years he was a judge (later judge emeritus) at the International Mr. Leather (IML) contest in Chicago, and every year he had the honor of announcing IML’s “Top 20” semifinalists. It was only fitting, because he knew so many of them—in many instances he had been there when they won the local or regional contest that sent them to IML.

In addition to his leather activities, in 1972 Marcus also was the first Emperor of the Imperial Court of San Francisco. He used both his leather column and his Imperial Court involvement to help many charitable organizations of all kinds.

Marcus’ brand of journalism was personal. If he liked you, or something you did, he would sing your praises. But if someone got out of line, Marcus was “merciless” at calling them out in print. He could be bitchy and biting, but it was always clear how much he cared about leather and the leather community.

Marcus was my mentor, my colleague in leather journalism and my friend. I will greatly miss seeing him at leather events and sharing information and photos for our columns. He leaves behind a grieving biological family, a close-knit leather family that took care of him during his last days, and a leather community that starts in San Francisco and extends throughout the rest of the world—the community that he did so much to help build for so long, and that will now have to get along without him.

(To read an 1996 interview of Mr. Marcus conducted by Chicago leather columnist Jack Rinella, visit <www.leatherarchives.org/collections/oral/marcus.htm>.)

Kink in the Mainstream Media

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #375, October 9, 2009)

Some places, it’s just another part of the conversation

Not too long ago, on those rare occasions when mainstream media outlets mentioned kink, it was talked about with a mixture of shock and disgust. Now, at least for some media outlets, it has become just another part of the conversation. Two examples of this phenomenon are radio’s The Stephanie Miller Show and a blog named The Rude Pundit.

How does one describe the “crunchy audio goodness” (her term) that is The Stephanie Miller Show? It’s a morning drive-time talk-radio show originating in Los Angeles and heard in the Twin Cities 8-11 A.M. weekdays on KTNF (AM 950). The show is an irreverently manic mix of progressive politics and low but sophisticated humor.

Worked into that humor are occasional references to items and situations with which readers of this column might be familiar: ball gags, Astroglide, golden showers (albeit inadvertent), and insinuations about someone tied to a bed, to name just a few. For awhile there was even a running gag about conservative media personalities Bill O’Reilly’s and Geraldo Rivera’s (fictional) sex dungeon (complete with whip-crack sound effect), where the safeword is “Mizrahi.”

This is remarkable for two reasons:

1) This is not niche-media satellite, cable or Internet-radio programming. This is mainstream media—a syndicated broadcast radio show appearing on over 60 stations across the U.S.

2) These kink references are simply part of the on-air banter. No special attention is called to them and no explanations or definitions are given. Miller, her producer Chris Lavoie, and “voice deity” (impressionist) Jim Ward simply assume that the show’s audience already knows about such things and will therefore get the joke.

One of The Stephanie Miller Show’s occasional guests is Lee Papa, who has been blogging for six years as The Rude Pundit <www.rudepundit.blogspot.com>. Because the blogosphere is not yet subject to anything like traditional broadcasting’s “standards and practices” rules, leather and kink imagery has become common in many bloggers’ postings.

The Rude Pundit attracted quite a bit of notice and comment for posting a series of blog entries telling the (fictional) story of a gay leather dungeon in the basement of the Bush White House populated by figures from that former administration. It was gay leather/SM porn imagery used as metaphor and commentary on then-current politics. And, again, the assumption was made that the reader knew enough about gay leathersex to get the point of the article. More recently, The Rude Pundit compared the Bush and Obama administrations using the concept of scrotal infusions.

I will leave it to the reader to decide if the image of Karl Rove topping his leather slave represents progress for our community. Or not.

Christianity and Sexuality: It’s Not 1970 Anymore

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #374, September 25, 2009)

This summer several branches of Christianity have been trying to determine policy concerning gay and lesbian people, either as church members wishing to have their unions blessed or as church members in partnered same-gender relationships wishing to serve as clergy. But I think there’s a flaw in how the issue is being addressed.

Episcopalians, Lutherans, Moravians, and other denominations seem to be approaching this issue from a binary perspective. There are the gays and lesbians over there, and there’s everyone else over here. What do we, the everyone else, do with them, the gays and lesbians?

I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but that’s so quaint. It’s so 1970. That was the “gay liberation” political mindset in the immediate aftermath of Stonewall.

That mindset, that 1970-style conception of the issue, no longer works.

An example: this column recently featured an interview with Buck Angel, a transsexual porn star. Buck was born female but always felt he was a man. After years of substance abuse and three suicide attempts, Buck got sober and got a counselor who recognized that Buck was a female-to-male transsexual. With the help of testosterone and years at the gym, Buck is very much the man he knows he was born to be.

If church governing bodies can’t agree on how to treat garden-variety gays and lesbians, what would they do when faced with someone like Buck Angel? What would they have said to him when he was a self-destructive teenager in a body of the wrong gender? What would they say to him now?

By the 1990s the gay and lesbian community had expanded its self-concept to GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender). And then to the mix can be added the leather/BDSM/fetish community with all its leather-family relationships, including Daddy/boy, Master/slave, Dominant/submissive, and so on.

What emerges is not an issue that can be addressed in binary terms of straight/gay or even in terms of a linear scale like Dr. Kinsey’s. I doubt it could even be expressed with x, y and z coordinates where the z coordinate leaps off the page.

Human sexuality truly is a rainbow with millions of possible hues and shadings. It’s not an issue that can be reduced to x versus y, and all attempts to reduce it to x versus y will lead nowhere.

If people’s horizons can be widened, however, perhaps our human sexual diversity will cease to be viewed as a problem, and instead will be seen as a rich and wonderful asset. Then people, and churches, can begin to deal effectively with things as they are today, rather than as they were in 1970.

The Leather Life Interview/Andy Mangels: Leather & Sci-Fi

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #373, September 11, 2009)

Andy Mangels, a long-time leather activist, gay activist, and science-fiction writer and producer, will be one of the featured guests at Gaylaxicon 2009, a GLBT science-fiction convention, Oct. 9-11 at the Doubletree Hotel Minneapolis-Park Place.

You are a very busy, multitalented guy.

At the moment I’m working on a book, two magazine articles, and I’ve been working as a bartender at the local leather bar. It’s a way to keep my mind fresh and not get burnt out on any one thing.

Do you try to tie all your different projects together, or do you keep them separate?

There’s an incredible amount of crossover between the world of the fantastic, i.e. science fiction, fantasy and horror, and the world of fetish. People in the fetish world use their imagination in a way that enhances their sex life and their social life, whereas people who are fans of science fiction, fantasy or horror use their imagination to enhance their intellectual life. So when you get somebody who crosses over from one area to the other, they tend to be very interesting people.

What’s the attraction of leather for you?

It’s often said that our largest sex organ is our brain. In the science fiction field, I’m exercising my brain all the time in a way that makes me enjoy people with fantastic names, and interesting costumes, often who are battling each other or have feuds or are working for greater peace in the galaxy. There’s good and evil, there are all the same tropes that any kind of fiction, or even history, has. It’s just that they’re dressed up and put into a more exciting realm, whether that realm is a superhero setting or an outer-space galaxy or a world of fantasy—

Or a bunch of Tom of Finland guys.

Yeah. The leather realm is not far off from that. I can certainly say that in the leather community there are lots of fantastic costumes, and sometimes people battling each other. There’s a lot of political activism, so there are people who fight for the greater good.

What will you be doing at Gaylaxicon?

I expect I will be doing some panel presentations, perhaps a reading, autograph sessions. I’ll be available to meet and talk with people, and in the evenings hopefully I’ll get to go out and see some of the area’s night life, and leathermen and leatherwomen, and get to mix and mingle as much as I can.

(For Gaylaxicon 2009 information and online registration, visit <www.gaylaxicon2009.org>. And check out Mangels’ site at <www.andymangels.com>.)

PHOTO: Andy Mangels

The Leather Life Interview/Buck Angel, “The Man with a Pussy”

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #372, August 28, 2009)

Pioneering transsexual man and award-winning porn star Buck Angel, who bills himself as “The Man with a Pussy,” was recently brought to Minneapolis by adult toy boutique The Smitten Kitten as part of the store’s sixth birthday celebration.

You’re controversial. A lot of people have problems with what you do. Some people say porn is violence against women. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, obviously. By the way, I’ve also won a feminist porn award for my work. I think what I do empowers women as well as men, as well as everyone who’s never fit into a box.

You have a wife. Yes, I have a wife. You’re legally married? I’m legally a man. I had my birth certificate changed. If it’s just a matter of changing a birth certificate, why can’t two men or two women . . . Thank you! I get so pissed off! I have a vagina. My wife has a vagina. When I went to get married they didn’t ask me to drop my pants. I would like to do a huge campaign showing that I’m married, to a woman, legally in the United States of America. How is it possible that I’m married to a woman, and you’re not letting any of these people [same-sex couples] get married because you’re basing it on what’s between their legs?

How long do you see yourself continuing to do porn? I see myself doing porn, honestly, forever. But I don’t see myself in front of the camera after another couple of years. I’m looking to bring other guys into my production company and produce more porn with transsexual men.

Do you have other projects in the works? A book, and I’m trying to put together a reality TV show. Maybe people are ready for me, maybe not. And I’m working on an iPhone app!

Do you pack [i.e., wear a prosthetic phallus]? No way! Why would I pack? I’m “the man with a pussy.” I’m super proud of my pussy, so there’s no reason for me to pack. Though it’s okay for other guys to pack, it’s not an issue for me. Other transmen have told me they pack because of body geometry—a woman’s center of gravity is higher, and a man’s is lower. I’ve never heard of that. That’s interesting! Because my male center of gravity is up here in my head, in my brain. That’s my whole point of what I’m trying to get across to the world—it has nothing to do with what’s between your legs, it has everything to do with what’s in your head.

PHOTO: Buck Angel