High Holy Days—A Multicultural Odyssey

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #158, June 15, 2001)

As I write this I have just returned from the International Mr. Leather (IML) contest in Chicago. Last year, contest founder Chuck Renslow called IML “the high holy days of the leather community.” I am now looking forward to two more High Holy Day-type events, the Twin Cities GLBT Festival of Pride and Minnesota Leather Pride.

I recently saw a poster called the “2001 Chronology of World Cultural Events” which is currently on employee bulletin boards at many of Minnesota’s best-known corporate offices. Produced by the Minnesota Cultural Diversity Center, this worldwide listing of celebrations and festivals is culturally diverse enough to include the fact that June is Gay Pride Month in the U.S.A.

Every culture has High Holy Days. Although the word “holy” connotes religion, even cultures that don’t revolve around an organized religion have some form of High Holy Days. For instance, Jews observe Passover to remember and celebrate their escape from the oppression of slavery in ancient Egypt. For Christians, Easter takes the Passover metaphor and extends it to humankind’s emancipation from the oppression of sin and death, as symbolized by Jesus’ resurrection. American blacks remember and celebrate their emancipation from slavery during Juneteenth. Americans celebrate the anniversary of their independence from England on July 4. Mexican Independence Day is Cinco de Mayo (May 5). And gay pride festivals everywhere commemorate 1969’s Stonewall Rebellion and the birth of the modern GLBT-rights movement. One might say Stonewall was the start of the GLBT community’s own exodus out of the oppression of the closet.

Other holidays (a word derived from “holy days”) commemorate leaders and heroes. Christians celebrate Christmas as the anniversary of Christ’s birth. U.S. government holidays celebrate great civic leaders: Washington, Lincoln, Martin Luther King. St. Patrick’s Day began as a Catholic feast day for the patron saint of Ireland (although nowadays it might as well be called Irish Pride Day). And the International Mr. Leather contest is about selecting the leather community’s leader and spokesman for the next year.

It’s interesting to note that the International Mr. Leather contest always takes place on Memorial Day weekend. Memorial Day (originally Decoration Day) is the U.S. holiday set aside for remembering and honoring soldiers who have died in war. But the day takes on added significance for the leather community as we remember all the community members we’ve lost to AIDS—especially this year, as the community mourned the passing of one of its giants, Tony DeBlase. A signboard on a restaurant across the street from this year’s IML host hotel proclaimed “Remember our fallen heroes!” Wow, I thought to myself, it’s great that they put that sign up for all of us attending IML. Then I realized that they were talking about America’s fallen war heroes, not about the leather community. Well, I thought, they can interpret it their way and we’ll interpret it our way.

Although we sometimes don’t want to admit it, we humans are more alike than different. Humans of all cultures have the same needs and impulses, which are expressed in ways that are often remarkably similar (see chart, “Handy Multicultural Guide to High Holy Days”).

What do we do on High Holy Days? We remember our struggles and sacrifices, and we celebrate our victories. We celebrate in every way possible, because every culture appreciates a good excuse for a party. We don our most festive clothes. We prepare special foods. We make pilgrimages. We have parades. We make speeches. We have special entertainment. We greet each other with special greetings of the day. We reaffirm and reinforce our values. We expend time and effort beforehand planning and preparing; afterwards we feel gratified, ready to let our regular, “normal” life continue.

And always, as the Thanksgiving hymn goes, we gather together. Sometimes we travel great distances to be with our family or our tribe. We see people who we may not see any other time of year, whether that means running into someone in Loring Park at Pride, getting reacquainted with someone from another city at IML, or shaking hands with someone who only attends church services on Christmas and Easter.

All cultures and communities have High Holy Days because all cultures and communities need them. This year, as you enjoy GLBT Pride and Leather Pride, remember that these are our High Holy Days—they belong to us. Happy Pride, everybody!

WEB EXTRA: International Mr. Leather Contest 2001

Stefan Mueller, Bavarian Mr. Leather 2001, was recently chosen International Mr. Leather 2001, winning over a field of 63 contestants from 7 countries. Darrell Moyers, Mr. DC Eagle 2001 was selected first runner-up; Mr. San Francisco Leather 2001 Houston Davenport took second runner-up honors. For complete coverage of IML 2001 visit the Lavender Magazine website at www.lavendermagazine.com.

Upcoming Leather Events (for Calendar section)

Sunday, June 17, 6-10 PM: Daddy’s Day Picnic with special appearance by porn star Bobby Blake. Free food, cheap tap beer and soda. $5 at the door ($4 with 2001 Twin Cities GLBT Pride button). As the kick-off to this year’s Leather Pride celebration this will be your first opportunity to get your 2001 Minnesota Leather Pride Dogtag.

Friday, June 22: Come get a Great Big Bear Hug at the Bear Beer Bust at Trikkx (St. Paul). 2001 Minnesota Leather Pride Dogtags will be available.

Friday, June 22, 9-12 PM: Scorch Friday Night at the Minneapolis Eagle. $1 off entry with your 2001 Minnesota Leather Pride Dogtag, or buy one here.

Saturday, June 23, 9-12 PM: Scorch Saturday Night at the Minneapolis Eagle. $1 off entry with your 2001 Minnesota Leather Pride Dogtag, or buy one here.

Sunday, June 24, 11 AM, 3rd & Hennepin: Twin Cities Pride Parade steps off. Come help carry the Giant Leather Flag (be there by 10:30 AM).

Sunday afternoon, June 24: Scorch Sunday at the Minneapolis Eagle. $1 off entry with your 2001 Minnesota Leather Pride Dogtag, or buy one here—LAST CHANCE!.

Shiny Sharp Shaving Things: The erotic uses of razors and shaving

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #157, June 1, 2001)

Sex and shaving in the 1960s: In a classic television ad for Noxema Medicated Shaving Cream, pouty Swedish model Gunilla Knutson gave the command: “Men—take it off! Take it all off!” Then viewers were treated to a good-looking man shaving his face while David Rose’s “The Stripper” played in the background. Back then, that commercial was considered risqué.

Sex and shaving in 2001: On a recent Saturday afternoon in St. Paul, nationally-known knife maker Cristo Webb presented a seminar called “Shaving: From Pleasure to Terror” which dealt with the erotic uses of razors and shaving. How times have changed.

For many people shaving is anything but erotic. Men traditionally shave their faces every morning either without thinking about it or cursing the drudgery of it all. Women in our society are faced with the more delicate tasks of shaving their legs and underarms; while they may feel it makes them more attractive, it’s usually not something they look forward to.

But certain elements of society are increasingly playing with non-traditional areas of hair in non-traditional ways. Many more men are shaving their heads. Bodybuilders shave their body hair to better display their physique. Many men prefer the look and feel of a shaved scrotum or shaved pubic hair. Some men, instead of shaving, prefer to trim body and pubic hair neatly (“topiary,” as my friend in New York City calls it). Certain BDSM practices, such as fire play and wax play, are made safer and more comfortable by removing body hair.

Shaved skin can provide many wonderful and ever-changing sensual experiences. Whether you’re touching your own newly-shaved skin or letting someone else touch it (or even if you’re touching newly-shaved skin on someone else), the sensations are incredibly intense. As the hair grows out you are treated to a series of new sensations: first stubble, then bristle, then velour, and finally silk.

The experience of being shaved by someone else can be very sensual. First comes a hot towel on the area to be shaved, maybe an exfoliating scrub with a warm loofah sponge (to prevent ingrown hairs), hot lather to soften the hair and lubricate the skin, and a soothing or bracing lotion applied after shaving. It’s nice to receive this kind of pampering, and it’s also a nice experience to be able to give. According to Cristo, “Shaving and using a straight-edge can be a wonderful service and an important skill for a bottom or submissive to learn.” Whether shaving Mistress’s legs or doing a daily shave on Master’s face or head, “learning to shave in a sensual manner can leave the person being shaved feeling relaxed and refreshed.”

On the other hand, being shaved with a straight razor can be terrifying, or at least intimidating. The thought of such a sharp piece of metal (sharper than almost any knife) so close to the neck, face or pubic areas—and with no safety guard—can take shaving to new heights of excitement and stimulation. As with knife play, a shaving scene with a straight razor is a multi-sensory experience: the sight of light glinting off the blade, the smell of shaving cream, the rhythmic sound of the razor on the sharpening strop, the feel of the cold, sharp blade and the scrape and vibration as the razor is dragged across the tightly-pulled skin.

Straight razors are hard to come by these days, but they’re still available if you know where to look (start by talking to Cristo). A close substitute is a hair shaper with a removable blade; these are used by beauticians for razor hair cuts and are available at beauty-supply outlets. With both a straight razor and a hair shaper, the blade folds into the handle when not in use. (A tip from Cristo: Always allow your razor to dry in the open position to prevent rusting, pitting and weakening the blade.)

A dull razor will pull, not give a clean shave and can nick or cut the skin. It can also cause rashes and aggravate ingrown hairs. A straight razor’s edge is maintained by the use of a strop, preferably a two-sided strop consisting of a strip of canvas on one side and a strip of leather on the other. The canvas puts the edge on the blade and the leather hones the edge. (Hint: You can also hone the edge on your leather jacket or the leg of your chaps.)

We’ve all seen a strop being used on TV or in the movies—usually incorrectly. Here’s the right way: Hold the razor flat against the strop and drag the edge away from you. When it’s time to change direction, turn the razor over by rotating it on its back, not by flipping it over on its edge as you’ve probably seen on TV. Never raise the back of the razor off the strop while it’s moving; doing so will rake off the edge.

Besides straight razors and hair shapers, other types of razors include the traditional double-edge safety razor, newer multi-bladed types (Cristo’s favorite—and mine—is the Gillette Mach 3), disposable razors (use them for only one shave), and electric razors, either plug-in or battery-operated. Electric razors pull hair and won’t give a good clean pubic shave—but according to Cristo, they’re wonderful for genitorture!

All the safety rules about not sharing knives apply equally to razors: Unless you can autoclave a razor without ruining it, don’t share it. Here are some other safety tips relating to razors and shaving:

• Razors are very sharp and dangerous objects. Never become complacent with a razor, especially a straight razor. While shaving, pay attention to the entire length of the blade.

• Treat razors gently. The blades are so finely tooled or machined that the metal is brittle. Don’t drop them. If a razor’s blade becomes nicked or damaged, don’t use it—it will mutilate whatever (or whomever) you’re shaving.

• Always be in control of the razor, the person you’re shaving, and your surroundings. Make your shaving area as sanitary and controlled as possible. In a bar or at a party, rope off an area so the person being shaved doesn’t get jostled by passersby.

• Have a first-aid kit handy with a tube styptic or styptic pencil for minor cuts and nicks.

• Limit your play partner’s movement during shaving—especially during pubic shaving.

• Feedback and communication with your partner is very important to get full enjoyment out of a shaving scene.

• Cristo likes Lubriderm lotion as a shaving cream for sensitive skin. There’s less lather, which makes it easier to see what you’re doing. Cristo also likes a men’s shaving cream by Aveda.

If you’ve never used a straight razor, practice on an inanimate object and perfect your technique before trying to shave someone. The television cliché is to lather up a balloon and practice removing the shaving cream with a razor. Cristo doesn’t like that approach for two reasons: 1) if you make a mistake, the balloon startles you when it pops; and 2) because the balloon just popped, you can’t even see your mistake, let alone correct it. No, Cristo ended the workshop by having us use straight razors to shave the fuzz off—no, not a peach—a kiwifruit. I did better than I thought I would, although I won’t be trading in my Mach III for a straight razor any time soon.

(Cristo’s website is www.cristosblades.com. He also invites you to e-mail knife- or shaving-related questions to Cristo4e@aol.com.)

Shiny Sharp Things: The erotic uses of knives

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #156, May 18, 2001)

Cristo Webb is a nationally-known knifemaker whose business, Cristo’s Blades of Indianapolis, IN (www.cristosblades.com), sells his own custom-crafted knives as well as other knives, antique and modern straight razors, and all kinds of knife accessories. He is an expert in all aspects of knives and razors and has been featured in the pages of Blade Magazine and Knife Illustrated.

Cristo describes himself both as “a big lovable farmboy who refuses to leave the Midwest” and a “dyke tranny Sirboy switch who prefers male pronouns.” He is the Sir to his long-term bottom boy, Corky. His BDSM talents and interests include anything to do with knives, razors, blood, boots, mind-fucks, fisting, uniforms, interrogation, canes, single-tails and breath play.

Oh, and did I mention that he really, really likes knives?

Cristo has spent many weekends traveling to leather-community events around the country as an activist, presenter and vendor; he was brought to the Twin Cities recently by local kink group MSDB (www.msdb-mn.org) to present a knifeplay workshop that attracted a crowd of about 25. (This weekend he’s back in Minnesota, presenting seminars and workshops at the Knights of Leather’s Tournament 13 run.)

Knifeplay is generally regarded as an extreme form of BDSM play, even by many in the BDSM community. And it certainly can be intense (one breathtaking demonstration at this workshop involved using a knife to remove some temporary piercings by cutting them out—yes, really).

But knifeplay can also be stimulating without breaking the skin or drawing blood. Lightly dragging a sharp knifepoint across the skin can create intense sensations (and artistic welts). Different sensations come from dragging the edge of the blade across the skin at various angles, or thumping or scratching with the knife handle. For some people, something as simple as the feel of a cold, hard steel blade being rubbed flat against the skin can be a turn-on.

Just the sight of a knife can be intimidating. And then there are the sounds that go with knifeplay: the click-and-lock of a folding knife being snapped open, the whoosh of a fixed-blade knife being drawn from its sheath, the metallic scraping of blade against sharpening stone, or the splash of a knife going into (or coming out of) a jar of disinfectant solution.

A lot of the excitement of knifeplay comes from the head-trip generated by these sights, sounds and sensations. According to Cristo, “For scene purposes, a dull knife can be just as effective as a sharp one.” All sorts of tricks can be played once the appropriate mood has been created and a scene is underway, especially if the bottom is blindfolded; a letter opener, butter knife or even the edge of a credit card (Cristo asks, “Why do you think they call it MasterCard?”) can feel like the sharpest blade ever.

Cristo’s knifeplay workshop covered a wide range of knife-related topics, including different types of knives; how to buy a knife; knife care, storage and sharpening techniques; and knife safety, cleanliness and sterilization. Here are a few interesting things I learned:

• Where should you not do knifeplay? Avoid the area around the eyes (heed the voice of your mother: “It’s always fun until somebody loses an eye”) and ears, as well as areas of skin that have rashes. Be extra careful around key artery areas. And don’t start right off by working on erogenous areas; Cristo suggests you “explore your partner’s body—knives are wonderful objects for foreplay and teasing.”

• Buy knives that feel comfortable in your hand—that comfortable feeling translates into better control when you’re using them, whether you’re doing knifeplay or deboning a chicken breast.

• Don’t store a carbon-steel-blade knife in a leather sheath; the leather holds moisture, which will cause the blade to rust.

• Cleanliness and sterile procedure are absolutely essential for safe, sane, consensual knifeplay. Barbicide and other disinfectants are good stuff, but nothing kills hepatitis on a knife blade short of autoclaving—and many knives can’t be autoclaved without being ruined. So for safety’s sake, unless a knife can be properly sterilized it shouldn’t be shared. Cristo’s rule: “You get blood on it, you own it.”

• Serrated knifes are great for cutting off clothing during a scene, or as an emergency dungeon tool for cutting rope. But they are not recommended for knifeplay scenes. According to Cristo, a serrated blade is “a saw, basically, and it will maim a body.”

• Knife laws are confusing, chaotic and quirky. They vary from state to state, and state law is often overridden locally by cities or counties. Here are some highlights of the four-page knife law summary that was handed out at the workshop: In California, pens may be illegal because they are potential stabbing weapons; in Mississippi, threatening actions with a knife in the presence of fewer than three people may be acceptable; the one state people associate with Bowie knives (Texas) expressly forbids them; and Virginia state law 3.1-370 states that your knife must be cleaned daily.

• Before you ever touch a knife to someone else’s skin (or your own, for that matter), be absolutely sure you know what you’re doing—and polish your technique by practicing on inanimate objects. At the seminar, Cristo has us experiment on plum tomatoes, but you can also use skin-on chicken breasts. Or practice cutting the surface of a pan of clear gelatin, where you’ll easily be able to see how far the blade has penetrated.

The workshop ended with a hands-on exercise—a birthday surprise for bottom-boy Corky, who was not told about this beforehand and didn’t know what to expect. In a creative combination of hot wax play and knifeplay, Cristo and members of the audience first dripped hot wax on Corky’s back until the wax was about 1/8” thick. Then, guided by a stencil, they used their knives to carve “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” into the wax. A little aerosol whipped cream, a few birthday candles, and presto—a human birthday cake.

(Cristo also presented a similar workshop dealing with razors and the erotic aspects of shaving. I’ll write about that workshop next issue.)

Upcoming Leather Events (for Calendar section)

The Atons will be having their traditional IML Widows gathering on Sunday, May 27, for those who don’t go to Chicago for the International Mr. Leather contest.

Manifest Love Weekend

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #155, May 4, 2001)

“Not just to reclaim our sexuality, but to reclaim our hearts”

Recently in Lavender I wrote about an organization called Manifest Love. Its founder, David Nimmons, was in the Twin Cities in December and presented an evening seminar about the accomplishments and disappointments of queer culture and its prospects for the future.

One of the legacies of that speaking engagement was the formation of a Minnesota chapter of Manifest Love (www.manifestlove.org). Several weeks ago this group held their first Manifest Love Minnesota weekend seminar at Whitewater State Park (near Rochester, Minnesota). Nimmons was again on hand as the weekend’s facilitator, along with co-facilitator Tom Dennison.

The seminar attracted a diverse group of 22 men who spent the weekend exploring their community’s past and present, and considering what they wanted the future of that community to be. The ages of the participants ranged from young to mature; some men were newly “out” while some came out before Stonewall. And none of them knew quite what to expect.

I was one of those 22 men. For me the weekend was intellectually and emotionally demanding — but also tremendously rewarding. Try as I might, the printed page will not do the weekend justice; anything I write here can only be a dim reflection of what I experienced. (If you really want to know what the weekend was like, you’ll just have to do the next one.)

The seminar started with a look at the amazing history and accomplishments of gay male culture in the last thirty years or so. As Nimmons explained, gay men have evolved a way of life marked by:

• Unprecedented male caretaking — men taking care of other men with whom they share no blood relation. (Historically women have been the caretakers both of men and of other women.)

• A high level of service and volunteerism. Gay men give 60% more volunteer time than heterosexual men, and the gay male community has innovated entirely new models of volunteer service such as Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York City. Nimmons noted that many recent high-profile court cases involving the gay male community — Big Brothers, the Boy Scouts, military service, etc. — are about gay men actively demanding their right to volunteer and to serve.

• Extremely low rates of public violence. Today’s gay male community is arguably the least-violent group of men in the history of the planet.

• New styles of relationships with other men and with women. Nimmons refers to this as “diffuse intimacy,” as opposed to the traditional model of intimacy centered around a heterosexual couple or a nuclear family.

• New styles of pleasure, play and bliss-seeking, ranging from circuit dance parties and leatherfests to new and different ways of thinking and talking about (and having) sex.

These represent tremendous moral and ethical accomplishments; if any other group of people accomplished all this they would be hailed as heroes. But for some reason these accomplishments don’t seem to be noticed by the wider heterosexual society, or even for the most part by gay men themselves. What seems to be noticed instead are the areas where, for many gay men, their community falls short.

What does the stereotypical gay man do on a Saturday night? He goes to a gay bar. What does he experience there? Nimmons describes what too often happens: “He seeks connection and instead finds competition. He seeks affection and instead finds attitude. He seeks inclusion and belonging and instead finds exclusion, ‘A lists’ and body fascism. He wants tenderness but settles for sex. He is left hungry for intimacy, confused by sex and bereft of tenderness. He learns to distrust other gay men. He feels betrayed by his ‘community’ — the whole idea seems like a fraud.”

Nimmons continued, “If that’s what we believe, little by little that’s what we create. If we don’t celebrate the good things about our culture, they atrophy and disappear — and we become cynical.

“If we’re such a tribe of loving men, why have we given ourselves a shared culture that extinguishes the revolutionary love that called us to each other in the first place?”

But, as a sign on the wall of the cabin proclaims, we built queer culture — and we can rebuild it. In Nimmons’ words: “We created this all. No one gave it to us. We clawed it out of the rock of a homophobic society.

“Gay men’s truly radical act is not just to reclaim our sexuality, but to reclaim our hearts, with and for each other.

“Could we create a new kind of gay world where it’s cool to be loving? What would that look like?”

It was clear that if we as gay men want to see our culture change, we must be the ones to change it — no one else is going to do it for us. The rest of Saturday and all of Sunday were spent thinking about and responding to that challenge. What do we want? What would it look like? How could we get there? But the focus of our activities shifted from thinking and intellectualizing to experiencing.

We explored the ways we connect with each other by using the language of our eyes. In an exercise called “Requiem for a Bitchy Queen” we considered both the positive and negative attributes of that most infamous of gay archetypes (“She’s mean! She’s brutal! She’s nasty! She’s entertaining! She’s honest!”) as well as other archetypes such as the Knight, the Warrior, the Wizard, the Healer, the Fairy, and many more. In what was perhaps the most surprising event of the weekend, we even experienced a ten-minute-long circuit party (which profoundly altered the ideas and attitudes many of the participants held about these events).

As the weekend drew to a close on Sunday afternoon, we held a brainstorming session in which we considered actions we could take to create the kinds of changes we wanted to see. Nimmons refers to these actions as “loving disturbances,” and in the weeks and months ahead you just might hear about, witness or even participate in one. (Actually, what you’re reading right now qualifies as a loving disturbance.)

For a closing ceremony the entire group sat in a circle, and each man shared their thoughts and feelings about the weekend. Reaction was unanimously positive. I felt pleasantly, profoundly overwhelmed. And the overwhelming quality of the weekend even continued on the drive back to Minneapolis. I stopped at a gas station to refuel, and as I opened the car door I was met by the voice of singer Belinda Carlisle coming over the loudspeakers by the gas pumps. And here’s what she was singing:

In this world we’re just beginning/To understand the miracle of living

Baby I was afraid before/I’m not afraid/Anymore . . .

Oooh, baby do you know what that’s worth?
Oooh, heaven is a place on earth
They say in heaven/Love comes first
We’ll make heaven a place on earth
Oooh, heaven is a place on earth

Yep — it was that kind of a weekend.

Kinksters and Pervs: The Words We Use and the Messages We Send

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #154, April 20, 2001)

Words are powerful things. The words we use to refer to ourselves and our community send strong and sometimes unintentional messages about how we see ourselves. And in addition to sending those messages to everyone else, we’re reinforcing them in ourselves.

With that in mind, here’s a quick word-association test. You don’t need to grab a pencil and you needn’t write anything down. Just look at the list below and mentally note the first word, image or feeling that comes to mind:

1. Leather

2. Rubber

3. Uniforms

4. SM

5. Bondage

6. Kink

7. Fetish

8. Pervert

9. Queer

This test is my own creation and is based on no scientific underpinning whatsoever. Your results may be different, but to me the first five words, which describe areas of community interest, are fundamentally different from the last four words, which entail value judgments.

Who is my audience for this column? Do we call ourselves the “leather community,” or “leather/SM” or “leather/BDSM”? These are simple statements of what we’re attracted to or what we like to do. Or do we refer to our community as the “kink” or “fetish” community and to ourselves, with a wink and a nod, as “kinksters” and “perverts”? These are “loaded” terms implying that there’s something wrong with what we’re attracted to, and therefore there’s something wrong with us.

Here’s how the Merriam-Webster Collegiate® Dictionary defines “kinky” (definition #2): “relating to, having, or appealing to unconventional tastes, especially in sex; also: sexually deviant.” Here’s the sole dictionary entry for “perversion”: “an aberrant sexual practice, especially when habitual and preferred to normal coitus.” Nowadays the only place you’re likely to see the word “coitus” is in a dictionary (unless it’s immediately followed by the word “interruptus”), so here’s the definition of “coitus”: “physical union of male and female genitalia accompanied by rhythmic movements usually leading to the ejaculation of semen from the penis into the female reproductive tract; also: INTERCOURSE” (definition #3) “— compare ORGASM.”

Dictionaries are such stimulating reading, don’t you think? Those definitions seem so matter-of-fact on the page. But in real life things can grow ugly; being labeled a “sexual deviant” often brings intense disapproval from society, and some people believe “perverts” deserve to be hated, demonized, harassed, bashed and killed.

I realize that bringing up this line of discussion risks wading into the same territory that the final word in my little quiz, “queer,” brings up. (Ethnic minorities can also have these kinds of discussions around various racial slurs that have been used against them over the years.) For years words like “queer” and “faggot” were slams and insults; they were yelled in anger and their intention was to hurt us. But when we consciously use these words to describe ourselves (seen on a t-shirt: “That’s MISTER Faggot to you”), the words supposedly lose their power to hurt—“Yeah, you’re right, I’m queer, so what?” The fact that I personally still don’t feel comfortable describing myself as “queer” (I prefer to call myself a gay man) tells you that I don’t entirely buy that argument. (Since this seems to some extent to be a generational thing, it also tells you I’m over 40.)

In much the same way, even if I use the terms “kinky” or “pervert” ironically or sarcastically—or even if I only use them when I’m with other like-minded community members—I’m still using someone else’s value judgments, instead of my own, to define myself. If I don’t agree with the value judgments, why should I first call attention to them before saying I don’t agree with them? Why should I even let them occupy valuable real estate in my mind?

Words like “queer” or “kinky” or “perverted” simply don’t resonate with me. Being sexually attracted to another man comes as naturally to me as breathing—there’s nothing “queer” to me about it. I like the look of black leather or a nice, masculine uniform on a man; to me that’s natural and normal, not a “fetish.” To me it’s not kinky, it’s just the way it is. For me to engage in what Merriam-Webster defines as “normal coitus”—now that would be strange.

I’ve heard things like this from other people, too: “Oh, you write that leather column? Well, I’m not into leather” (or “I’m not kinky”), “BUT . . . .” And then they reveal they like getting their nipples played with, or their ass paddled, or that handcuffs excite them. But to them it’s not kinky, it’s just the way it is.

One important feature of the leather/BDSM community’s code of ethics is being non-judgmental of other people’s interests and attractions. Stop and think about the hanky code, and what a wonderful social institution it is: different colored hankies stand for different sexual appetites, and no judgment of the rightness or wrongness of those activities is necessary. You can flag whatever color you want, and even if that’s not the color I’m looking for, I will still defend your right to flag it. The community takes non-judgmentalism so seriously that it has evolved an acronym for the act of being judgmental: YKINOK, which stands for “Your Kink Is Not OK.” This is not something one wants to be found guilty of in leather/BDSM circles; instead of making the value judgment of “Your Kink Is Not OK,” it is more proper to express “Your Kink Is Not My Kink”—we don’t all have to agree, and to each his (or her) own.

Gee, I wish the rest of the world were more like that.

By the way, in the above example you may have noticed I’m still using the word “kink.” Henceforth, when I talk about “kink” I will not focus on Merriam-Webster’s definition #2 (quoted above), but will instead focus on definition #3: “a clever, unusual way of doing something.”

Register Now for Knights of Leather Tournament

Local pansexual leather/BDSM club The Knights of Leather will be hosting their annual Tournament run (this year’s is the thirteenth edition) the weekend of May 18-20. Held at a wooded campground north of the Twin Cities, this run promises two fully-equipped dungeons, a lake/beach for swimming, great food, and several workshops including a repeat presentation of last year’s popular “Leathercrafts (Make Your Own Leathertoys).”

For more information visit www.knightsofleather.org or e-mail knightsofleather@hotmail.com. You may also pick up an application at local leather-related businesses, at the TIES Munch on Wednesday, April 25, or from any Knights of Leather member. Save $15 by registering before May 5.

Welcome to the Black Guard’s “Black Frost 24”

(Slated for Lavender Magazine, Issue #153, April 6, 2001 but not published)

This year’s theme: Who Murdered Broadway?

Welcome to everyone visiting the Twin Cities for this weekend’s (April 6-8) Black Frost 24. This year’s theme is “Who Murdered Broadway?” and the entire run revolves around a murder mystery which run participants must solve. It seems there has been a killing at the Lavender Flamingo; the main character of the mystery was planning to compete in a female impersonator contest until someone stuffed Baby Snooks’ wig down her throat. Whodunit? And what was their motive?

Your hosts, the members of the Black Guard of Minneapolis, are characters in the mystery; ask them probing questions and they may respond with clues. Sleuths may also find clues during escorted tours to Minneapolis and St. Paul bars and at other run events throughout the weekend.

The Black Guard of Minneapolis was named by Drummer Magazine as “the best show club in the U.S.,” and at Saturday night’s (April 7) run banquet and show the Black Guard will prove once again that leathermen can be tough guys and still love Broadway showtunes. This year’s show is being produced by Black Guard vice president Steve Katz and directed by Black Guard treasurer (and webmaster) Carl Gscheidemeier. Every Guard member will make an appearance onstage for this show, as will several alumni members.

The “Who Murdered Broadway?” show features songs by Los Angeles-based songwriter Billy Barnes, who has penned material for such show-biz divas as Carol Burnett, Barbra Streisand and Joanne Worley. In the show, several aging Broadway divas reminisce about the ups and downs of their careers on the stage, comparing Old Broadway (I presume they’re talking about Rodgers & Hammerstein, David Merrick, Harold Prince, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim) with New Broadway (helicopters, smashing chandeliers, Disney and Andrew Lloyd Webber). Also included in the show are numbers from Forbidden Broadway and from two shows that recently opened on Broadway, The Class Act and Success.

Locals take note: With so many new faces in town for the run, this is not the weekend to stay home. This would be a good weekend to, as Sally Bowles sang in Cabaret, “put down the knitting, the book and the broom” and go out. Even if you’re not attending the whole run, you can still get Saturday-evening show-only tickets at the door for $10; for more information call Colin.

By the way, after this year’s run the members of the Black Guard will turn their attention toward preparing for next year’s Black Frost 25—their club’s silver anniversary. Big plans are being made, and the club’s website (www.blackguardmpls.com) suggests you might want to have a tux ready.

Upcoming Leather Events (for Calendar section)

Saturday, Apr. 14: Atons Leather/Levi Night at Rudolph’s Barbeque (corner of Franklin and Lyndale in south Minneapolis. Drinks at 7:00 PM, dinner at 7:30 PM. Presented by the Atons, open to all; call for reservations.

“Part Social Movement, Part Applied Spirituality”

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #152, March 23, 2001)

David Nimmons, the founder of a project called “Manifest Love,” is a man with a message, and he’s proclaiming it everywhere he can. Since 1982 Nimmons has held a wide variety of elected, appointed, and professional leadership positions in gay community organizations. He is addressing his message to gay men (most emphatically including gay leathermen), but maybe the rest of the leather/SM community—leather lesbians, transsexuals, bisexuals and heterosexuals—also needs to hear it. In short, his three-part message is 1) Look at the amazing and revolutionary community we’ve created; 2) But there are still problems to be addressed; so 3) Let’s address these problems and create something even more amazing and revolutionary.

I heard Nimmons speak as the fourth part of a five-part series of evening seminars presented by Pride Alive, the queer men’s initiative of the Minnesota AIDS Project. The first part of his talk described (and documented with footnotes and references) many of the amazing qualities and accomplishments of today’s gay male community. The following bullet-point quotes are from the brochure that was handed out at the seminar:

• “Something big is happening among gay men, but it isn’t always visible. Over two decades, gay men have quietly evolved a set of radical cultural transformations, ones we rarely even recognize. Gay communities have become social laboratories, pioneering a range of profound social innovations.” For instance:

• “We have built the least publicly violent male culture known.” To substantiate this claim, Nimmons referred to studies finding fewer police calls to gay bars vs. non-gay bars and to gay events such as Gay Pride festivals vs. similar non-gay events.

• “We have devised new models of altruism, caregiving, volunteering, and service.” Typically, gay men don’t have the support of a nuclear family to care for them when they’re sick or as they get older—they only have each other. And when society’s shunning of them escalated as AIDS, or even the threat of AIDS, made them untouchable pariahs, they found they had to depend on themselves. But they also found that they could depend on themselves.

• “We have redefined relationships with women and with each other, inventing new forms of intimacy, friendship, and community.” Nimmons noted that “gay men do relationships with women differently,” as seen on TV in “Will and Grace” and in the movies “The Next Best Thing” and “The Object of My Affection,” among others. Nimmons also talked about a new style of men relating to other men called “diffuse intimacy”: “If we’re intimate with those outside our small family group, suddenly we all have a stake in each other’s well-being.” This makes gay men value and practice such things as tutelage, mentoring, and initiation into the community. They protect, take care of, and look out for each other in many different ways.

• “We have innovated radically new rituals of pleasure, affection, and ecstatic communion.” Nimmons asked for audience participation in drawing up a list of examples for this point; suggestions included Radical Faerie gatherings, the International Mr. Leather weekend, Body Electric workshops, sex parties—the list went on and on.

According to Nimmons, “This range of gay social innovations has no parallel in modern culture. It is best understood as an evolving kind of public ethics.” He noted that any other group of people evolving a society exhibiting these traits would be hailed as heroes, but that gay men still make much of society uncomfortable, so their accomplishments get little recognition.

Except—and this is my own conclusion—from certain segments of society who are using the gay male experience as a model for building their own communities, i.e. the wider pansexual SM community. Look at the similarities. SM parties, despite their outward appearance to the uninitiated, are not violent—if police appear on the scene it’s almost never because someone at the party called them. The community’s motto of “safe, sane and consensual” is evidence of an attitude of concern for everyone’s dignity and well-being. SM play certainly constitutes a “new form of intimacy” and “new rituals of pleasure, affection and ecstatic communion.” And even as kink becomes more mainstream, it is still reviled by a large portion of society. Kinky people of all sexual persuasions are finding, as gay men have found, that sometimes they have only themselves to depend on.

Back to Nimmons, and his second point: The gay male community is not perfect. “Too often, our public gay world has lagged behind our best values. It says men must compete” (like on Saturday night at a cruise bar), “that attitude makes sense” (see previous parenthetical comment), “that being loving is uncool” (it’s better to be a bitchy queen), “that we cannot publicly embrace our most loving natures. So we protect ourselves by drawing lines around looks and age, around color, class, kink. We are left hungry for intimacy, confused by sex, betrayed by community, distrusting our fellow gay man.”

Sound familiar? I’ve often heard people speak derisively of both the “gay community” and the “leather community,” saying both are illusions. They really wish they could believe in them, but they can’t.

Nimmons’ third point: There is hope. If the gay male community has created the profound cultural transformations discussed above in only twenty or thirty years’ time, think what can happen in the next ten or twenty or thirty: “We have the potential to be a spreading center of values and ethics change both for ourselves and for the larger culture.” The mission of Manifest Love is to “encourage gay men to understand and embody the best, most powerful and transformative values we bring to culture: non-violence, the brotherhood of deep friendship, sexual celebration, service and nurture, new forms of intimacy with women, and the pursuit of diverse forms of ecstatic union. We believe that different kinds of gay men, working together, can shape a more loving, affectionate, and affirming world, for ourselves and others.”

How will this mission be accomplished? Manifest Love presents community workshops, salons and talks, day-long workshops, weekend intensive retreats, and is in the process of setting up “ongoing local chapters of men working to promote critical understanding of our cultural innovations and find ways to manifest loving values in our communities.”

Nimmons say of Manifest Love, “There is no simple box for what we do. We are part social movement, part applied spirituality.” It strikes me that one could say the same of the leather/SM community. Different paths, same hoped-for destination.

For more information e-mail ManifestLove@aol.com. (By the time you read this, their website might be available at www.manifestlove.com.) David Nimmons will return to Minnesota for a weekend intensive to be held Friday evening, April 6 through Sunday, April 8; for more information contact Ankha Shamin, one of the local coordinators for the Twin Cities chapter of Manifest Love.

New Mr./Ms. Olympus Leather Chosen at Pantheon of Leather XI

Contest held February 17 in New Orleans

Over 200 Leatherfolk attended Pantheon of Leather XI at Le Petit Theatre in New Orleans, LA the weekend of February 16-18. Twenty-seven leather-community service awards were presented on Friday night, and on Saturday five SM-related workshops were presented. Then on Saturday night, the state of Georgia was smiling big after the Mr. and Ms Olympus Leather 2001 Contest concluded with Michael Allshouse and Sherree Dixon from Atlanta winning. Mr. Louisiana Olympus Leather Butch Arnold and Ms Louisiana Olympus Leather Julyahana also made a good showing for their state.

Black Guard presents Black Frost 24 April 6-8

This year’s theme: Who Murdered Broadway?

The Black Guard of Minneapolis, named by Drummer Magazine as “the best show club in the U.S.,” is getting ready to prove once again that tough guys can still love Broadway showtunes. “Who Murdered Broadway?” is the theme of the club’s upcoming Black Frost 24 run, which takes place April 6-8 at various locations around the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

In addition to complete run packages with or without accommodations, tickets for the banquet and show only are $40 and tickets for the show only are $10. For complete run registration information visit www.blackguardmpls.com, e-mail cgscheidemeier@qwest.net, call Colin, or write Run Registration, The Black Guard of Minneapolis, Minneapolis, MN. Hurry—save money by registering before the main registration deadline of Monday, March 26.

Upcoming Leather Events (for Calendar section)

Saturday, Mar. 10: Atons Leather/Levi Night at Little Jack’s Steak House (201 Lowry Ave. NE). Drinks at 7:00 PM, dinner at 7:30 PM. Presented by the Atons, open to all; call for reservations.

Sunday, Mar. 11, 3 PM: A Brother’s Touch Bookstore (24th & Hennepin) presents a reading by noted erotic writer M. Christian of San Francisco.