Black Guard Gets “Dirty for 30”

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #306, February 16, 2007)

PHOTOS:

The Black Guard of Minneapolis, formed in 1977 and still going strong, recently celebrated its 30th anniversary at its annual Black Frost run. The theme of the run was “Getting’ Dirty for 30.” And so they did.

One of the highlights of any Black Guard run is the show. This year’s edition was presented at The Saloon the afternoon of Saturday, Feb. 3. Directed by Ralph Schmidt, the show was by turns raunchy, naughty, patriotic and inspirational—but always entertaining.

The Saturday-evening banquet, also held at The Saloon, featured a parade of club colors at which nine clubs were represented. The meal ended with an appropriate dessert: a “Black Frost” cake with black frosting.

PHOTO: BlackFrostCake.jpg

PHOTO: Miss Allison Brooks (Carl Gscheidemeier) performed “(Your Love Is Lifting Me) Higher and Higher,” a number I remember her performing in the late 1970s at the old Sun Saloon—about the time the Black Guard was formed.

PHOTOS: Miss Caroline Knipple (Steve Burroughs) performed several numbers including “Broadway Baby.”

PHOTO: Flo, Shani von Tischler and Miss Allison Brooks perform “One Moment in Time.”

Flo performs “One Moment in Time.”

PHOTO: Shani von Tischler: “I’ll Never Love This Way Again.” (Earlier she had performed “Let’s Talk Dirty to the Animals.”)

PHOTO: Ralph Schmid performed “Ring Them Bells,” the tale of Shirley Devore, who had to travel the world to find the guy next door. The audience asked for—and got—an encore.

PHOTO: Ralph Schmidt and Tom Weiland: “Islands in the Stream.”

PHOTO: Ralph Schmidt and Carl Gscheidemeier make a lovely couple as they sing “You’re Timeless to Me.”

PHOTOS: An old joke but a good one: Ice cream lady Miss Allison Brooks has run out of chocolate ice cream. Little girl customer (Mike Delorme) keeps asking for chocolate ice cream anyway. Miss Brooks finally gets her customer to understand there’s no chocolate ice cream—with the help of a slightly obscene spelling lesson.

PHOTOS: The Black Guard’s country/western stars: Tom Weiland keeps his “heart and soul in the boondocks,” while Bruce Gohr invites us to “make a little time for the good times.”

OR

PHOTOS: The Black Guard’s country/western stars: Tom Weiland keeps his “heart and soul in the boondocks,” while Bruce Gohr invites us to “live like you were dyin’.”

PHOTO: Flo, Allison Brooks and Shani von Tischler perform the Andrews Sisters’ “Hold Tight” (“When I come home late at night, I get my favorite dish—fish!”)

PHOTO: Pat Duffy performs a ballad in homage to colorectal surgeons everywhere.

How History Disappears

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #305, February 2, 2007)

This issue’s column is about a leather pioneer. But it’s not the column I thought I would write. And it’s not the column I wish I could write.

This issue’s column was supposed to be an interview. Instead it’s an obituary.

This issue’s column was supposed to celebrate one man’s life and share his stories. Now he can’t share his stories with me, and I can’t share them with you.

Several years ago I received an e-mail from Bob Guenther, a long-time leatherman, asking a favor. He told me of a friend, Gus Trenkler, who was one of the last surviving members of the legendary but now defunct Cycle MC, a motorcycle club based in New York City. Trenkler had been the club’s last president.

Gus had retired from his job as a court administrator in New Jersey and was now living in a Twin Cities suburb. Would I be interested in interviewing him for the Leather Archives & Museum’s Oral History Project?

I expressed interest and in return received an e-mail from Guenther with a list of things to ask during the interview. But then I received another e-mail: “He doesn’t want to talk about years gone by.” Trenkler evidently did not want the people he called his “appointed parents,” who controlled his finances, to find out about some of his past activities.

I was sorry to hear this and felt bad that Gus was not in a position to savor his life, but instead had to effectively disown it. I filed the e-mail exchange for future reference, hoping Gus would change his mind and allow me to interview him.

Recently I received another e-mail from Guenther. His Christmas card to Trenkler had been returned as undeliverable. Would I please check my local resources and see if I could find an obituary? Sadly, I found one—it had appeared in the Star Tribune on April 30, 2006.

This is how our history disappears.

Over the years I have interviewed many people for this column. I have collected their stories on cassette tapes and published portions of the interviews in print. It’s been a fascinating undertaking.

Other folks are preserving our stories and our history, too. The members of the Knights of Leather have devoted great attention and many hours to putting together scrapbooks containing the history of their club. Now I understand they are taking the next step: they’re not just making scrapbooks—they’re Scrapbooking, in the best soccer-mom tradition.

And, of course, the ongoing Oral History Project of the Leather Archives & Museum has been collecting stories and reminiscences from leather community members. This is the project for which I would have interviewed Trenkler.

This is how our history is preserved.

You, dear reader, also can help preserve history. Spend an afternoon, or even longer, getting your own stories down, whether on paper, audio tape or video. Then send them to the Leather Archives & Museum in Chicago. Do it now, while you still can.

Or ask someone else to share their stories with you, and have a tape recorder or video camera running while they’re sharing. You’ll both enjoy the reminiscing and you’ll get their stories down for posterity.

There are stories in memorabilia and mementos, too. Perhaps you have photos, programs, tickets, t-shirts, title sashes or other artifacts that tell a leather story of years gone by. Those pieces of our history are too important to disappear into a dumpster when you’re no longer able to enjoy them. Make your plans now—and I stress now—to get those treasures into trusted hands when the time comes.

We need these stories of the early years of our community. There are people coming after us who will need those stories, too. We have a community institution, The Leather Archives & Museum, set up to preserve them, conserve them and make them available to future generations.

I have no doubt I would have enjoyed interviewing Trenkler. And I’m sure, had circumstances been different, he would have enjoyed being interviewed. Instead, tragically, he found himself in a position where he couldn’t be open about, and proud of, his life and his stories. In the words of Bob Guenther, “Who knows how much New York City leather history was lost as a result.”

Replacing Safe Sex with . . . Smart Sex!

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #304, January 19, 2007)

Here’s a New Year’s Resolution for you: Resolve to stop worrying about Safe Sex. Resolve instead to start having Smart Sex.

Smart Sex made its debut last spring in Issue #11 of Instigator Magazine and in palm cards handed out at the International Mr. Leather contest in Chicago. The advertising campaign promoting Smart Sex is a joint effort of Instigator and asspig.com.

The concept of Smart Sex is the long-overdue re-tooling of what has been known as Safe Sex or Safer Sex, a concept that was a prominent, if not always welcome, feature of the sexual landscape during the latter part of the 20th century.

When AIDS first showed up no one knew what caused it or how to prevent its spread. But once the virus that caused AIDS was discovered and its transmission paths were identified, ways to prevent the spread of the virus started to be publicized.

At first these techniques were called “Safe Sex.” The term was later changed to “Safer Sex” in recognition of the fact that, although these transmission-prevention techniques can reduce the risks associated with unprotected sex, they are not foolproof. Condoms, for example, sometimes break.

(So, just to be clear, it’s not called “Safer Sex” because it’s safer than “Safe Sex”— it’s called “Safer Sex” because it’s safer than unsafe sex. Got it?)

For a generation of gay men, Safe Sex was something to practice religiously, or to feel guilty about when one didn’t. For awhile, thanks to a massive educational effort, many gay men changed the way they had sex much of the time.

As the years wore on, however, the sexual landscape changed. Battle fatigue set in, and it became harder for men to be vigilant for safe sex every time. Protease inhibitors and other antiviral drugs meant that AIDS was no longer necessarily an immediate death sentence, which led to “being safe each and every time” seeming less important.

A new generation of young gay men, who had never known sex without the baggage of HIV but who had also not lived through the nightmare of watching their friends die agonizing deaths, were blasé about AIDS. They didn’t appreciate being told what to do, and especially what not to do, by older men and by public health authorities.

And for men in the leather community, where danger and edginess are part of the thrill of leathersex, and where a rebel/outlaw mentality is often part of the mindset, Safe Sex equalled Boring Sex. (This continues to be a problem with the leather/BDSM/fetish community’s politically correct but hotly debated “Safe, Sane, Consenual” mantra.)

The old concept of Safe Sex appealed to fear, and it needed fear to be taken seriously. In a culture of young males, gay or straight, who pride themselves on fearing nothing (even to the point where “No Fear” has become a brand name), Safe Sex came to be viewed as lame and wimpy.

The genius of Smart Sex is that, instead of being built around fear, it is built around and reinforces a positive quality: intelligence. Most of us like to think of ourselves as smart people doing smart things and making smart choices. We normally don’t take pride in being dumb and doing dumb things (the people in the “Jackass” movies being the exception).

Therefore, who would want to have Dumb Sex?

Safe Sex tends to assume the worst about people, possibly insulting their intelligence in the process (i.e., “your good sense goes out the window when you get horny, so you’d better listen to us”). Smart Sex assumes people are intelligent and encourages them to think about themselves that way.

Condom use, keeping toys and playspaces clean, and getting tested periodically are examples of smart things to do and smart choices to make—choices that are more likely to lead to a long, healthy, sexually fulfilling future. What’s not to like about that?

If the concept of Smart Sex in itself represents a major paradigm shift, the advertising materials put together by Instigator and asspig.com are no less revolutionary. The language used in the campaign is refreshingly straightforward. Facts are presented simply, with no shaming, judging or moralizing. The overall attitude is one of care and concern—but in a brotherly voice, rather than from a parental or authority-figure viewpoint.

Art, photos and other graphics featured in the campaign are hard-hitting and explicit, which is perfectly appropriate to Instigator’s and asspig.com’s audiences. Richard Smith, president of the company that owns asspig.com, was quoted in Instigator as saying, “Why can’t we show hot men, having balls-to-the-wall sex without missing out on anything except maybe HIV and Hepatitis C.” (Or, I might add, syphilis, gonorrhea, hepatitis B and a host of other problems.)

It’s interesting to note that this Smart Sex paradigm shift is not happening solely in the gay men’s or leather/BDSM/fetish community. An internet search for “Smart Sex” turned up approximately 30,000 hits and showed the words “Smart Sex” being used in the service of a wide variety of causes as varied as avoiding teen pregnancy, avoiding herpes and other venereal diseases, and “finding life-long love in a hookup world.”

No one, it seems, wants to have Dumb Sex.

This Is Your Brain on Leather: Lots of Food for Thought at LLC XI

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #303, January 5, 2007)

Register before Jan. 15 for early-bird rate

It has been said that the body’s largest sex organ is the brain. Members of the leather/BDSM/fetish community tend to understand this, and put that understanding to good (sometimes diabolical) use in the bedroom, playroom or dungeon. Even outside of play situations, our community has a sparkling and active intellectual life

The Minnesota Leather Pride Committee has, over the years, sponsored evening roundtable discussions on various leather-related topics. Attendance has always been good and the discussions have been spirited.

Now the eleventh annual Leather Leadership Conference (LLC) promises to take things to another level. The conference, scheduled for April 20-22, 2007, will bring leather/BDSM/fetish community members from around the world to Minneapolis. (If you haven’t registered yet, do it now—you only have until January 15 to take advantage of the $90 early-bird rate.)

Participants in this year’s LLC will be able to choose from a menu of thirty different presentations, workshops, and panel discussions (painstakingly distilled from over 70 proposals), and from among six different “caucuses,” or group discussions. (Only a few of the workshops are listed below—visit <www.leatherleadership.org/llc11> to see the complete list.)

In keeping with the artistic bent of this year’s conference theme (“The Art of Sharing Power . . . A Work in Progress”) presentations at this year’s LLC have been arranged into six different groupings named for various types of mosaics, all of which Minnesotans and other midwesterners will readily recognize.

The first mosaic, “Crop Art,” includes presentations dealing with organizational themes. Crop art is composed of seeds—and seeds, properly nurtured, grow into a healthy plant. Likewise, proper organizational nurturing yields a strong and stable organization.

“Crop Art” presentations include “Leadership for leather community leaders,” “When consent doesn’t count—decriminalizing consensual BDSM behavior,” and “Leadership vs. Management.”

The “Sand” mosaic includes presentations about event planning. Sand mandalas (introduced to Minnesota by Tibetan immigrants) and leather events both require enormous amounts of coordinated effort and planning resulting in a beautiful and vibrant, yet transitory, creation. When a mandala is completed, the four winds eventually scatter the sand, which will never be reassembled in quite the same fashion. Likewise, at the end of a leather event the participants return home with inspiration and memories of a beautiful gathering that can never be exactly repeated.

“Sand” presentations at LLC XI include “Creating equitable educational events for any size community” and “Putting sex back into leather.”

Presentations dealing with community outreach, publicity and promotion are included in the “Quilting and fabric art” mosaic. Quilting bees have historically been used to bind members of a community together and to welcome newcomers into the community. Quilts and other types of fabric art have long been used to communicate within a community and to document its history.

“Quilting and fabric art” presentations at LLC XI include “Outreach from the BDSM community: effective communcation with police, hospitals and social service agencies” and “Citizen Kinkster—developing community using tools of the new media.”

One of the questions often asked by newcomers to the leather/BDSM/fetish community is “Where do I fit in?” Presentations for newcomers, or for those working with newcomers, are included in the “Tile and ceramic” mosaic. These large mosaics often cover a breathtaking expanse, yet each one of the millions of pieces is perfectly integrated and plays its part in creating the dazzling whole.

“Tile and ceramic” presentations include “Supporting young adults in alternative sexual lifestyles,” “Creating the gender-safe kink organization,” “Leather youth leadership—organizing our community,” and “Mentoring—sowing seeds to grow the next crop of leaders.”

Presentations about presenters? But of course (or, to be Minnesotan, “you betcha”)—they’re included in the “Glass” mosaic. Presenters are educators, and for hundreds of years stained-glass windows have been used as educational tools. Presenters also need to promote themselves in order to get speaking engagements, and mosaics of glass tubes filled with glowing neon represent attention-getting promotional devices.

“Glass” presentations include “You get what you pay for: the value of good education,” “Developing skills-based presenters,” “Understanding sexual freedom as a leather leader,” and “Getting it out there” (presented by Mistress Amanda Wildefyre, author and performer of “Confessions of a Lesbian Dominatrix”).

Finally, “Stone” mosaics represent the very foundation of our community: personal growth, the history and philosophy of leather, and relationship issues. These basics give us the capacity to create the other types of mosaics listed above.

“Stone” presentations include “Sleeping with the competition—sharing power with rival groups,” “Submissives in Leadership,” and “Planning for relationship changes.”

In addition to these workshops and caucuses, the conference will include an opening keynote by noted photographer and activist Barbara Nitke, a closing keynote by International Mr. Leather 2003 John Pendal, an opening cabaret emceed by Patrick Scully, optional pre-conference workshops, and an optional Saturday breakfast with speaker Laura Antoniou, internationally acclaimed author of the “Marketplace” series of erotic novels.

You can find full details on Leather Leadership Conference XI, including a complete listing and more details on the various mosaics and workshops, at <www.leatherleadership.org/llc11>. Check it out, and register before January 15 to take advantage of the early-bird rate of $90.

A Spirit of Giving: Atons Holiday Fundraiser 2006

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #302, December 23, 2006)

BYLINE: by Steve Lenius (Photos by Paul Nixdorf and Steve Lenius)

’Tis the season. The Atons of Minneapolis held their annual Holiday Fundraiser Sunday, December 3 at the Bolt Underground in Minneapolis. A food drive collected about 1,600 pounds of food for the Aliveness Project’s Holiday Basket Program, and silent and live auctions benefited Open Arms of Minnesota.

Auction merchandise included leather vests, pants, chaps, harnesses, several pairs of boots, a handmade bootshine cabinet, books, videos, posters and framed art—and a 2006 Santa Bear. Also auctioned off were several baskets of (really yummy) holiday cookies from the annual Kinky Cookie Bake.

My thanks to photographer extraordinaire Paul Nixdorf for allowing me to share some of his photos of the event with you. Whatever you celebrate, however you celebrate it—Happy Holidays from Leather Life!

PHOTOS:

PHOTO: Tim and John, chefs for the evening’s meal.

PHOTOS:

PC039333.JPG Tim and John with food (credit to Steve Lenius)

DSC-9764 Tim and John with food (credit to Paul Nixdorf)

DSC-9765 Tim and John, no food shown (credit to Paul Nixdorf)

PHOTO: PC039329 Some of the auction merchandise at the Atons Holiday Fundraiser.

PHOTO: DSC-9768 Auction merchandise: a leather harness awaits its new owner.

PHOTO: DSC-9813 A 2006 Santa Bear and an iron candleholder were among the auction items.

PHOTO: DSC-9856 Auction bidders inspecting the merchandise.

PHOTO: DSC-9898 Bruce, the auctioneer for the evening.

PHOTO: DSC-9906 Bruce, the auctioneer for the evening, assisted by Atons pledge Bobbie.

PHOTOS: DSC-9871, DSC-9872, DSC-9873, DSC-9874 Some of the food collected for The Aliveness Project’s Holiday Basket Program.

PHOTOS: PC039354, PC039356 Atons associate Roger with some of the food collected for The Aliveness Project’s Holiday Basket Program.

PHOTO SUBJECT: The evening’s visiting bootblack (Pup from Madison) gave John’s boots a nice shine.

PHOTOS: DSC-9885, DSC-9886 Mark Beckler, Mr. Minneapolis Eagle 2006, as Leather Santa.

PHOTOS: DSC-9891, DSC-9892, DSC-9893 Craig telling Leather Santa (Mark Beckler, Mr. Minneapolis Eagle 2006) what he wants for Christmas.

PHOTOS: DSC-9894, DSC-9895, DSC-9896 Craig giving Leather Santa (Mark Beckler, Mr. Minneapolis Eagle 2006) a Christmas card. (The sentiment inside the card: “just shut up and be merry, dammit.”)

PHOTO: DSC-9844 The back of Sam’s vest showing club patches (credit to Paul Nixdorf)

Sexual Freedom . . . and other human rights

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #301, December 8, 2006)

It was a busy weekend (Nov. 8-12—a long weekend) in Kansas City. I was there for the 19th annual Creating Change Conference, a GLBT leadership gathering presented annually by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF).

It was a weekend to talk about sexual freedom, and the fact that sexual freedom is a basic human right. The concept of sexual freedom as a basic human right is the message of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation (named for Victoria Woodhull, a pioneering nineteenth-century activist who was an advocate for sexual freedom and women’s equality during America’s repressive Victorian era). The Woodhull Freedom Foundation, as part of the Creating Change Conference, put together a weekend-long, mind-expanding and thought-provoking series of workshops on sexuality and sexual freedom.

It was a weekend to be visible in leather. For many years leatherfolk have been seen by many mainstream GLBT activist groups as something of an embarrassment. Recently NGLTF has taken steps to acknowledge that members of the leather community have played, and still play, a major part in the struggle for GLBT rights and equality. This year, for the first time, there was an organized leather presence at Creating Change.

In addition to talking about sexual freedom as a basic human right, Creating Change also was a weekend to talk about other human rights—and not only in a gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender context.

Sunday’s closing keynote speaker was Loretta J. Ross, national coordinator and co-founder of SisterSong Reproductive Health Collective (<www.sistersong.net>). Ross described eight kinds of basic human rights:

• civil rights, the rights guaranteed and protected by the Constitution, such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and freedom of religion.

• political rights, such as the right to vote or to run for elective office.

• economic rights, including the right to a job with a living wage and freedom from unfair competition and monopolies.

• social rights having to do with human needs such as the right to work, to an education, or to healthcare. Ross stressed that social rights are not about charity or welfare. They are about services that are government obligations—services that are one of the reasons governments are created.

• cultural rights, the rights to be proud of, enjoy, express and live out one’s heritage and culture, be it GLBT, African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Native American—or Italian, Irish or Norwegian. Or leather.

• environmental rights, such as the rights to clean air and water, sustainable agriculture and wise use of natural resources.

• developmental rights, such as the rights of developing countries to control their own resources and destinies.

And finally—

• sexual rights, such as the rights to sexual pleasure and fulfillment. Yes, these sexual rights are as basic, integral and necessary as the other rights listed here.

Ross noted that it doesn’t work to fight for one set of rights by squashing other rights. It also doesn’t work to fight for only one set of rights while ignoring the others—and she then presented a cautionary tale. Ross mentioned a book, Eyes Off the Prize by Carol Anderson (published by Cambridge University Press) that puts a rarely-told spin on what most people think is a well-known story.

At the end of World War II, with the world horrified at the atrocities of Nazi Germany, the NAACP saw an opportunity to push for full human rights for African-Americans. Unfortunately, the rising tide of anti-communism in the early 1950s allowed white southern politicians to successfully paint those human rights as a communist threat to the traditional American way of life. (Sound familiar? If the Soviet Union were still in existence, marriage equality for gays and lesbians undoubtedly would be the latest communist plot.)

The NAACP was forced to narrow the focus of its efforts from full human rights to a narrow civil rights agenda that was more politically acceptable. The result: a generation later, many African-American citizens in America still do not have their full complement of human rights.

Likewise, today we as a community can agitate for marriage (or civil unions, or whatever) for gay and lesbian couples. But if we do so in a vacuum, we won’t produce our desired outcome. NGLTF director Matt Foreman spoke about this in his “State of the Movement” speech, calling for “a vision and an agenda where equality is the floor and a transformed America is the ceiling.” (Read the entire speech at <www.thetaskforce.org>.)

Transforming America, Foreman said, will require working with and for “other” (i.e. not exclusively GLBT) causes—including the allied areas of reproductive justice, social justice, racial equity, environmental concerns and sexual freedom issues—as never before. If we do this, the ultimate payoff will be a society in which basic human rights apply to members of the GLBT community, the leather/BDSM/fetish community, and everyone else.

NGLTF, SisterSong and Ipas (<ipas.org>) have collaborated on “Mapping Our Rights,” a website that documents the vast state-to-state differences in sexual and reproductive rights. Go to the website, click on any state and you’ll find a numerical rank (Minnesota’s rank is a middle-of-the-pack 22) and the positive or negative factors that determined that rank. Check it out at <www.mappingourrights.org>.

Leather Life’s Holiday Gift Guide: Steve’s Stocking Stuffers

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