What some of you may not know about me is I’m a fan of soap opera’s. Susan Lucci as Erica Kane has the formula down. Never admit that you’re wrong. If you must apologize do it but don’t mean it. Don’t tell the truth if it could leave you vulnerable but don’t forget to try to hold everyone else accountable who does what you do. And never ever allow anyone to explain or be empathetic unless it’s self-sympathetic. Those folks sure know how to do drama.

One of my favorite soaps is One Life to Live. Recently one of the characters Vicki, was telling Dorian why she was a bitch. Dorian deadpanned back, “Vicki, it always gives me a headache when you’re self-righteous before noon.” Just to let all of you know, my boy nic has aspirin.

These days even handing out an aspirin is considered a risk. Risk-taking decisions is something kinky people have done for generations.

Most of us are aware that exposure as a kinky person could jeopardize your job, your reputation, and family. When we compare that to what the stakes were in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s those repercussions pale seriously. In those decades if you were exposed—you could be killed, put in an asylum, or jailed. Let me tell you—electro-shock therapy wasn’t as helpful then as it is now. Those are risks that few of us can even begin to imagine how we might handle if we were in that position.

In the 1970’s in New York if you went to the Anvil, Crisco Disco, Jay’s Hangout or Mine Shaft, the risk wasn’t getting thrown in the tub and pissed on by strangers or having public sex—the odds were pretty good that you’d see some form of sex in those establishments. By 1970’s free love standards—that was a bonus. One of the dangers was that the cops and the mafia needed to be paid off. In the late 70’s two bartenders at Jay’s were killed because the payout wasn’t on time. It wasn’t legally proven but it was common knowledge on the street. If you frequented those places there were risks. The pay outs were standard and understood—we could be bribed and held hostage to our desires because shame and discrimination existed. We could be free in a neighborhood that housed approximately 130 butchers who worked from 3am to noon. This meant there wasn’t anyone around to comment on sex in the streets or the S&M in the bars.

In the early 80’s, I used to go to Tea Dances at the Marlin in Ft. Lauderdale and Fire n Ice in Maimi. There were beefy men and fabulous queens who taught me how to be unapologetic and whole. I could dance all night in truly fabulously heeled shoes. Those days are over. We were daring, dangerous, and I never heard the word limit until late 80’s early 90’s. Frequenting Miami and New York as I did I saw the beginning of the end in 1981. By 1984, the dancing really was over and the men who could lift me with one hand, toss me into the air and catch me where the same men who suddenly mere months later could be lifted by me. I know what it is to show up day after day. I know what it is to do that many times over and attend 3 or 4 funerals a week for more than a year. By 1985, 80% of the men in my phone book had died. I have no idea how I was fortunate enough to stand here still—but I’ll be forever grateful that I was able to stand for them then. With that atmosphere, all the sex that used to be at the S&M parties and in the bars disappeared. The Mine Shaft closed in 1985 and by that time, risk felt like life and death again. There had been that one brief time where the risk has subsided and it felt like we were free. The sexual revolution had taken place, we had money, and we had places to gather and be exactly as we wished to be. The big risk for a while was running out of poppers while having rough sex behind the giant speakers in Fire n Ice—not death, jail, or asylum.

According to various studies, scientists believe risk-taking behaviors deliver large life payoffs. Successful risk-taking builds happiness, creates resiliency and self-confidence. Happiness is now presented as a skill set that people develop. According to this ideology, one of the fundamental skills of happiness is a willingness to take risks.

When we examine our communities today, we still have risks. Parents don’t want to lose their children. No one wants to lose their jobs and we don’t want to be shunned by neighbors or our family. I believe as a whole, we navigate these issues easily and with the amount of discretion required to create the lives we wish to live. I believe we have soundly answered those questions well.

It’s rare to have our personal kinky lives exposed by someone outside our community—the late Mr. Jack McGeorge comes to mind as one of the rare examples in the last decade. We’re more at risk by those in our own community. When I think of the last ten people I know of who were exposed as perverts at their jobs, the whistle- blower was one of us. I can count ten people this has happened too all in the last four years. That tells me the real danger isn’t outside of our community but inside of it.

I understand this isn’t what you’d like to hear me say. I understand this isn’t comfortable. I also understand that I’m not really letting the cat out of the bag either. You’ve seen it, heard about it, and I bet every last one of you knows someone who believes that telling certain truths would be risky and ill-advised.

How many times have you heard people wish that others in the community behaved differently? How many times have you heard people wishing for the way it supposedly was way back when? They want to bring back those alleged Old Guard ways of vetting everyone so they can rid themselves of all those who don’t play by the rules and standards. I’ve heard those sentiments a lot over the last 25 years. I’ve shared them a few times myself. Sometimes even out loud.

Twenty years ago I was in a small town in Tennessee visiting a group of twenty some odd people who were of all orientations. We were gathered in a private home for a party that night. I was skills sharing that evening otherwise known as teaching. Hours later, spent from good play, we gathered in the living room and I was asked what the Old Guard was. I looked at them and said, “It’s you. You meet people for drinks and meals for a year before you allow them at parties. You don’t give each other your real names unless you’ve known each other for years. You don’t share with the other group members the families some of you have and you look to those who have been in the group longest as advisors and resources. You respect each others privacy and eccentricities because you can’t be picky about perversion type because you need other perverts. The old guard is you.”

When you hear about how a community this small was functioning—does that really sound like the community you know? Does it resemble your community only in the smallest possible portions? I’m betting the answer is yes—your community is radically different from that one twenty years ago. When you talk to people who came out kinky in the last ten-fifteen years, do their stories sound like mine? I don’t think so. Do you relate to the experience of these same people who also thought the coolest thing ever was a 70lb. fax machine and a Xerox the size of a MAC truck?

So what does all this mean? It means your experience and our communities today are seriously different. I don’t believe a tight and closed community where we get to vet everyone and make sure they share our standards is going to happen in our larger communities. Those days are gone except for those who live in very small rural areas. Decades ago kinky people had to hold other players accountable because their lives depended on it. The stakes aren’t the same now. Even if someone loses their job by being outed—in this day and age, they will generally find another job. Their working career isn’t usually over. Let us not forget we are no longer a culture were people took one job, got a few promotions and retired with the same company. Not even Microsoft and Windows 8 can make that happen today.

When the folks of the past talked about dangerous players it was about the people who would out them—not about someone who couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a flogger. Times have seriously changed.

Guy Baldwin called us to action in his 2002 Leather Restoration speech at LLC. He asked us to pony up, throw these miscreants out of our society and man up by holding them accountable. He asked you to stand up —this is not that speech and I am not asking you to do that. Those times have come and gone. I don’t think we have that power. Those days are over.

I think many of us loved what Mr. Baldwin said because the thought of a sweeping system where we get to hold others accountable for their sins and misdeeds, simply ostracizing them from our society sounds perfect. So many people wistfully dreaming of how good it was then, and “if only” it was different now, seems to be the solution offered most for our problems.

We need to let go of standing in judgment and endlessly wishing for our circumstance to be different. Why are we bothering to mourn what isn’t going to happen, what never was going to be, and what we have no possibility of creating today? I’d like to hope that we can use our energy, thought, and resources better than that.

So let’s deal with the reality. The people who will out you, call the police on our events, lie, cheat, and behave badly when they don’t get what they want will continue to move among us and are here to stay. Aspirin anyone?

We need to recognize the realities of our communities.

For those of you who have been in local communities longer than three years, does your mind ever shut off when you hear the concepts of honor, integrity, and honesty brought up? When you hear those words do you think– yes, yes, I wish it was that way but it isn’t. Do you wonder why that conversation is being had again?

Maybe we need to cut out these conversations about honor, integrity-- that’s my radical idea. It isn’t doing us any good, it’s not making us any more ethical, and it’s not solving the issues at hand. Most of all, it’s not making us a better people who are safer from one another. So, this isn’t the speech that’s going to tell you that we have to pass on leather honor, integrity and fight the good leather fight.

We gossip. We misunderstand each other. We don’t bother to get the whole story because we’re too busy in our own heads defending ourselves to hear the end of the sentence anyone else is saying. We take sides and we point fingers. It’s not other people doing this. It’s each and every last one of us. And it’s uncomfortable.

We judge each other harshly. Some folks who are kinky look at those practicing Master/slave relationships and see our slaves as objectified beings because they stand ready to serve. Some view a slave’s beautiful silent availability to obey and see it has abuse. Some M/s people look at everyone else and judge them less serious, less worthy, and less well-educated in their kink.

So quit telling me about honor, integrity and courage. I’d rather you show me how you make your decisions every day. I’d rather you show me how you treat others whose kink isn’t your own. I’d like it if you changed what stories about others you’re willing to hear and pass along. Over the last several decades I’ve lived through some serious fecal flinging and some definite soap operas. I know how to take a shower after the flinging. I know how to sit and listen never explaining, defending, or challenging and merely watch others accept what they knew to be lies. And because my Grandma liked her stories, I know how to change the channel from soap opera to positive testimonial.

I own SouthEast LeatherFest in Atlanta, GA. In twenty years, I am going to recall the judge came to my office on Sunday and said that he had more fun at SELF than he had in ten years after hundreds of events. He had tears in his eyes. What I’m going to recall ten years from now, isn’t the busy body, but the couple from Michigan who said, “We showed up strangers and left with family.”

Those have been my solutions. I change the framework. I decide what is important and what is significant enough to take up my valuable grey matter and the limited space I have left for past memories. Maybe we need new systems for 2006 and not the vetting systems of 1959.

Maybe we need to get clear that history really does belong in museums. Maybe we just need to be grateful that Chuck Renslow and Tony DeBlase cooked up wonderful ideas from bars to magazines to contests to CBT toys to dinner. Maybe we need to get past the fun stories of the people who walked through the piss-driven snow to go to the only leather bar for five hundred miles around.

I want to invite you to look at your world with new eyes. I want to invite you to really look at people. If you want an example to follow, don’t look to the person who is so tired that there is no energy around them and they seem in need of at least six good nights of sleep. Look for the person who is light, who is happy, who isn’t pushing some idea forward that they need you to get on board with.

Look for real happiness. Look for someone who is going to glorify today and not the past you are no longer able to participate in.

Look beyond what people say and see how they really are. Do they look bored? Do you have a sense that they aren’t quite all there and seem distracted? Do they look sort of bored and just “happy enough” to fake the rest? When you look deeply at them, can you see that piece of them that is somewhat unsatisfied and just missing?

It seems we look to our elders to continually build a map of where we should go and how we should navigate our kinky, d/s, and m/s lives. In consulting these seasoned people, we ask them to give us instructions about where we should go and who we should be. When others build maps, all they usually tell us is what was successful for them and therefore what they believe may be successful for us. If you consider the map closely, it is describing the past not the future. This is what has already been done, it is not what we have yet to do. Those of us with a past might not be the best choice to create someone else’s future map. After all, some of us thought Pacers and Gremlins were good ideas too. For those of you born after 1980- those were really bad choices for cars in the 70’s. Look it up next time you feel depressed, it’s worth a laugh.

The sad truth for those of us who like to tell stories and like getting our way, is those of you creating the future don’t need us to create your own best outcomes. You don’t need our histories, you don’t need our thoughts, you don’t need our path and you don’t need to follow our well-worn map.

You need your own conviction. You need to be a risk-taker and depart from the past those of us who no longer consider twenty minutes an adequate nights sleep created. You need to make mistakes and keep trying anyway.

Those people who look unfulfilled, dissatisfied, unhappy and bored perhaps they forgot the sheer excitement of taking a chance. Perhaps they thought their personal satisfaction and deep, abiding, lasting happiness could be found by following someone else’s map or “if only” they found the right mentor.

I’ve had the skin scrapped right off my back and never felt it because I was engaged in filthy, raw, hot sex in an alley against a brick wall holding onto a fire escape above my head. I’ve had unsafe sex in an era before the plague otherwise known as AIDS. I’ve danced in the streets of New Orleans in piss-drenched spandex. I’ve sat in a corner and watched six men being fisted in slings all in a row. I’ve caned others as a form of body modification. I’ve been beaten to bliss while tied between trees on the edge of a Texas precipice while a feral blue-eyed wolf watched from the other side. I’ve been punished by a revered owner and I earned my Master’s cover in 1996. I’ve have risked flesh, blood, and heart and I’m going to do that a few more times before they throw me out of the dungeons because I’m an insurance risk due to extreme age.

I’m asking you to expose yourself by chasing your leather dreams and to face the reality that your safety cannot be guaranteed. I’m asking you to face the danger that might be walking among us and live fully anyway. I’m asking you to trust yourself and be the risk-taker who makes some mistakes, is persistent, and creates some great stories about the time it didn’t work out. I’m asking you to give the bullies and the liars all the attention they so richly deserve—none. I’m asking you to create a framework all your own and boldly go forward without a map.

I’m asking you to be daring. Dare to have faith in your own internal compass. Dare to not be intimidated by the stories of a past where circumstances were so different that it doesn’t have anything to do with the choices you are faced with today. Dare to be different like a conference called Leather Reign who was willing to create the intimacy of a smaller group and have the real conversations.

Dare to be so unique by following your own path that you are as singular and fascinating as the leather generations before you.

Oh, and one last thing, the aspirin is on the house.

Originally given at the first Leather Reign Nov. 2006