The Fox Den

Jump

Well, another IML has come and gone. Today is Thursday and I finally feel ready to write about it. Yes, I returned to Minnesota on Tuesday. It's been 36 hours and I'm finally ready to write about it.

The event was everything it has ever been to me the previous two times I've been there. It was fun, thrilling, intoxicating, satisfying, depressing, painful, and chaotic. But most of all, it was an eye-opening experience just as it usually is.

Despite the weekend being one big leather/sex fest with a random beauty pagent/contest thrown into the works, I have learned something major about myself every year I've gone and subjected myself to the torment that is IML. I'm pretty sure the weekend was not set out to be an educational session at a university. It never was. But the amount of growth that has occurred in my personal journey year after year has been astounding.

But to keep myself from getting too deep, I'll stop to interject that I also had lots and lots of kinky sex. ;)

It's an exhausting experience. I don't even know how it managed to happen, but I woke up by 10am each day we were there. I spent a decent amount of time working for Leatherati, which is something I never mind doing. I know that people are reading the posts on Leatherati Live so that gives me great motivation to keep going. I know that not everyone can be there with us.

Exhausting. By the time Tuesday morning arrives, the last thing I want to do is pack up, clean, or load the car. This year, there were twelve guys staying in our suite so we had quite a bit of packing and cleaning to do. We all go through each and every piece of gear laying around in the suite and make sure it all ends up in the right bag. We listen to music and recap the weekend while we do this, together, slowly packing away another new chapter in each of our lives. Once the entire room is clean and packed, we take one final moment to pour one last drink (usually mimosas) and toast to our brotherhood and another successful weekend at IML together.

We ate lunch, and then comes the long 6 hour drive back to Minnesota. That drive can be kind of relaxing in a lot of ways. We discuss what we liked, what we didn't like, ways we could change things for next year, and of course, what we learned.

Pup Trigger, my best friend and eternal partner in crime, has driven with me every year so far. This is good for two reasons: one, we cram so much gear into my Tahoe that we almost need a crowbar to fit it all in, and two, the conversation leads us to realize what we learned.

We dropped off the two guys who rode down along with us at around 9:30 or 10 at night. It's quiet in the car. It's just me and my brother and the silence and the moonlight and our exhausted bodies. The car was stopped. It's time to get out and unpack or something...but neither one of us could. We sat there. Frozen. Opening the car door and getting out would mean it's all over for another year, and neither one of us wanted to let that go.

We both agreed that this IML was one in which we each made incredible discoveries about leather, about kink, about contests, and about ourselves. But where are we now?

I told him that I felt like we were at a point in life where we were standing at the edge of a cliff. Turning back isn't an option now. We can only move forward; we have to find a way to get across the chasm and continue the journey on the other side. The distance between the cliffs is just barely barely close enough so that a huge jump across has a probability of success, but includes the possibility of failure. But the rock face is also scalable.

So what are the options at this point? Well, one option is to climb down the side of the cliff, walk across the bottom of the chasm, and find a way to scale up the other side. The other option, of course, is to get a running start, jump hard, and pray that you get close enough to the other side to grab on for dear life and pull yourself up.

We're on the edge of something big here in Minnesota. There's an opportunity before us at this time which may never present itself again. Therein lies the most important lesson of IML this year; this is our decision. No one is ever going to make it for us. If we take the time to scale the rock face, by the time we get to the other side, it will be too late.

No more excuses. We'll figure it all out. The decision is already made. We both know it. And to get the boost that we need, we're going to look to the same place we always have when we need it.

I look across to my brother, and yes, I do it with a tear in my eye. "Let's jump," I said. "Together."

 

We're on to something big here. More details soon. Thank you to everyone for an amazing IML.

IML!

It's IML! FInally finally here!

I'm live blogging this weekend for Leatherati! Check it out at Leatherati.com!

Also, follow my Facebook and Twitter feeds to keep up as the drama unfolds!

Say hi if you see me around! I don't bite! :)

Image

When I was in the 7th grade, my family got a dial-up internet connection to our home PC. I was pretty tech savvy as a kid and until college, I always envisioned myself in some sort of computer career. I built my own PC when I was 13 years old. Just for fun. Dammit, I was a nerd. It wasn't long after we got that dial up connection that I figured out how to manipulate/delete browsing histories from Internet Explorer. 

I spent a little bit (okay, a lot of time) looking around at different kink and bondage websites on-line over the years. Most of them didn't appeal to me; my fetish is surprisingly specific. I remember the early days of CapturedGuys and Bound&Gagged. Those were probably two of my favorites. What I also remember, however, is tinkering around on some sites that sold porn videos. Back in those days, the thought of downloading a whole movie via a dial up connection was unfathomable; I spent my time just reading the descriptions and looking over the covers of the boxes.

Very few of these professional films actually appealed to me. I was looking for bondage and kidnappings, being done by guys with whom I could associate myself. What I found was slings, whips, older guys with lots of body hair and beards and mustaches wearing harnesses, and lots and lots of fucking. I found myself reviewing lots of vintage porn which lead me to believe that this is what "leather" meant. I thought that that meant I didn't belong then, and probably would never belong (I really didn't have much taste for that much body hair or all that crazy leather equipment).

This experience led me to believe that in order to have the kinky experiences I wanted, one of two things had to happen; Either I would need to modify my body to look like all those other people, or else once I jumped in and started, I would eventually grow up to become/look just like one of them. Flaming red hair and all. It isn't something I wanted to become. So you see, I never felt alone because I was kinky. My loneliness came from just being different and not wanting to conform to the stereotype which I had learned.

Was this an unrealistic belief for a 13-18 year old who didn't know any better? Particularly, one in St. Louis, where face-to-face education is slim? Particularly for youth?

These days, I kinda feel ashamed of the stereotype I labeled the leathermen with at that point in my life. It's a stereotype that prevented me from exploring the community at large for many years, until I was out of college for some time, in fact. It was a rather judgemental period of my life, and now I regret it. You see, it wasn't just that I didn't want to become one of them. I forgot they were people. And for a long time, I didn't even want to have anything to do with them.

Then, a few years ago, it donned upon me; I'm giving them the precise treatment they were providing to me. I didn't like that treatment at all. I felt like I was just being labeled as "not one of us" by them and rather dehumanized. I don't even remember what the moment was that caused it, but it was like someone just set a mirror in front of me to stare into for a while. I realized that I can't ever be accepted into this community if I myself remember that those leathermen are actually people too.

I'm really glad I realized that. 

I'm still realizing how much I have to learn, though. Saturday night was "Studio 54" night at The Saloon. They went above and beyond to retrofit the bar to a classic 70s style, even going to far as to paint walls, put the arcade games into storage, and bring in a water-bed and beanbags for the lounge area. Dressing up in all 70s fashion/style got you in for no cover charge. And one final nail in the coffin: they openly asked for the city's kinksters to dress in their best 70s leather look. *sigh* Twist my arm a little harder, why don't you?

So I reached back through my brain on Saturday trying to think of the style and fashion from all those porn video covers and I did my very best to recreate it. When I saw the end result, I realized how little I really know about vintage leather. I looked at myself in the mirror, and the image I saw prompted me to coin a new term:

Decade confusion (noun) - mistaking a pop-culture reference from one distinct decade for another. Example: In a sad case of decade confusion, my attempt at a 70s leather look ended up more like either 80s punk-rock, or The Terminator.

It's Coming!

IML is just a week and a few days away! God I'm getting so excited!

It's all that's been on my mind for the last month. I'm so excited to get to see some old friends, make some new ones, create some EPIC scenes, root on my friends at the contest....

It's like Christmas to me! 

I have to stop and take a second to give one HUGE shout-out to my friend and leather bro, Jared Collinsworth, Mr. Twin Cities Leather. He received his title in February, and in just a few short months, he's worked hard and been incredibly driven to break down walls in our own community in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He's also had to fight hard in the face of adversity. He's faced more set-backs by this point than I can even count! I'm going to be covering the contest for Leatherati again, most likely, but you know that I'll be in the audience rooting hard for Jared. You rock bro! That's for being so inspiring and so determined! You could have thrown in the towel at so many points by now but you've stuck with it. KEEP IT UP!  Please, if you can, go "like" his Facebook Page and show him some love on his wall!

Ten (part 1)

Something big is happening this month. Well, actually, it happened a few weeks ago, but what's the difference of a few weeks?

10 years ago, around this time, I started exploring kink with someone else. 10 years ago. TEN. The funny thing is, I didn't even think about it until someone asked me, via Recon, how long I've been doing all this and what kind of experience I had. I said I've been doing bondage, both dom and sub, since I was seventeen years old. That automatic math that happened in my head stood out to me. Wow. Not only is it a nice, round number, but it's a long damn time. 10 years. I'm only 27 now, but it's kinda making me feel like an old man. Like someone needs to order me a walker so I can get around at IML in a few weeks.

Sure, my first experiences when I was seventeen probably weren't all that thrilling...but in my mind they were an amazing beginning to a part of my life that had been screaming to be let free. I'm sure the scenes are probably hotter in my memories now than they really were at the time. Reminiscing over the days of being a skinny, dorky, angsty teenager in high school and thinking of those first times is...humbling. I know I'm lucky, because it hadn't been long since I even came out to anyone in the first place. I was new gay, but I was also new kink.

I remember being seventeen, and finally getting over myself and the fact that I was gay. I didn't know how to tell anyone. I kept the secret to myself. Then one day, after school during drama rehearsal, there was this really cute boy, a couple classes behind me, who was hanging out with some friends of mine in the greenroom. There was a conversation leading up to what he said to me, but I don't remember what those words were. All I remembered was him leaning in and whispering kind of quietly into my right ear, "...becasue I'm gay."

I promptly forgot everything that was said before or after that, and I probably looked like a crazy person sitting there, letting that sink in. My exposure to other gay men or gay culture at that point had been completely limited to gay porn, and mostly of the kink/bondage variety. The only thing I knew about gay men was that they were all older than me and I was going to grow up to be pretty fugly. Imagine my surprise to find another boy, my age, (and attractive!) was also gay. What? I thought I was alone!

I was dumbfounded.

I had a car at this point. I drove home that night and just thought. I thought I was alone. I wasn't. Maybe I could tell this kid that he's not alone too.

Long story short and cutting out a lot of drama, I wrote him some notes during a production in the theatre (I was running lights for the Fine Arts Festival). I was so nervous to hand them to him after writing them; my heart was pounding. We never got a chance to talk that night. Or for the rest of the weekend since I had to work my part time job at the pizza place. But after rehearsal on Monday for another show we were in, I drove him and a few of my other friends home in my old Pontiac 6000. I made sure to make him the last stop.

As I dropped my last friend off at her house, it was just me and him in the car. My heart was pounding. He was in the back seat directly behind me. I stared directly at the steering wheel, frozen with fear, anger, and lust all at the same time. Staring directly at the steering wheel, I finally managed to say, ".......can we go somewhere and talk?" 

"....sure," he said. I drove us out of the subdivision and stopped the car in a parking lot of a Catholic church. 

He moved to the front seat. I just let it all out. We talked for about two and a half hours. I told him exactly how I felt and what I was thinking and that I was gay and what it all meant. I asked him about himself and what he'd been through, and what about his family and what about school and what about the future and what about what about what about.......

.....and what do we do now?

I gulped, and without even knowing what I was doing, I said, ".......I'd really, really like to kiss you right now." I looked up, and made eye contact with him for the first time in our whole conversation. He brushed his hair out of his face and smiled at me. He reached across the seat, took my hand, and we both leaned in....

The kiss that we shared was pretty fucking magical.

It had gotten dark by that point. We kissed for a little while, and explored each other and this secret we shared together. We were so attracted to each other....fine, I'll just admit it. My first blowjob ever was there, in the front seat of my sage-green Pontiac 6000 parked in the lot of a Catholic church.

I remember gripping the seat of the car, digging my fingers into the fabric while he was sucking my dick, and ever-so brefily the thought crossed my mind.......I wonder if he'd like to be tied up?

To be continued........

(And by the way, that boy is just as cute now as he was 10 years ago....)