[Regional News]


Heartland Leather
David, Oklahoma Mr. Leather 2000


Ms. Olympus Leather is Alesha Raven De Fury
(Lady Raven) of Steubenville, Ohio,
and
Mr. Olympus Leather is Terrell Brown
of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.


Point Of View by spirit...   The Inward Parts,,,To Thine Own Self be True...


Decade of Decadence: The Anti Manifesto by David

I honestly thought that after ten years of doing this, I’d have it right by now. But, I still see myself as that new person, emulating the behavior of the people I looked up to. Interestingly enough, I see other people emulating my behavior - therefore propagating a pattern of behavior that could be considered an attribute of culture.

I honestly thought that after ten years, I’d be a Master with such skill and such a demeanor of manners and respect, that I would automatically elicit respect. However, I am just as silly and playful as I was 30 years ago. It makes me wonder why the old guard has been painted as so stoic and what has this perception accomplished. A decade of decadence is a milestone for me. If I were to quantify my achievements and my exploits, I am quite sure that I would come up with a laundry list of pedigrees, but it doesn’t say anything about the quality of the time spent in this so-called lifestyle. However, if I were to strip away all of these “things”, could my achievements show how well I’ve loved and if I were truly a good friend.

In an age where we classify and name things to understand the nature of it, and often times missing the point of the true nature of something, I find that the truth is lost when we give it a name. Terms like BDSM, Leather, Old Guard and any other lifestyle vocabulary are ways to express an idea and ideal about what we were searching for because it couldn’t be found in the land of vanilla. Can you remember that wanting deep down in the pit of your belly that actually came from a deeper place (your soul, your ka, ba)? It let you know that something was better in the bedroom and you could find a higher place if you had the courage to keep looking and acknowledge your visceral desires. Hedonistic, selfish pleasure and pain. We have also achieved something quite amazing; turning something base and primal into something spiritual and labeling it metaphysical descriptive such as sex magick, top space and sub space. However, after we fuck and cum is it an issue of primal and visceral needs and spiritual edification - if we strip the act and climax down to its essence what slot would you place it? I often wonder if we have it wrong and if animals that are driven by instinct have it right. Is humanity a constant journey to remove ourselves from our primal past? Does abstract thought actually give us the ability to transcend the sense of animality that is sometimes demonized by society as what is evil in all men? So we search for answers and validation. We fuck and we flog to obtain a higher consciousness in a symbiotic dance between what we term as top and bottom, guiding and flying and then coming down. Do we strive to be the gods and dogs, both transcending and falling short of our weaknesses in order to fearlessly explore every facet of humanity? Or do we even care about spiritual or physical movement just in order to enjoy the moment? Which is it?

This search lead you to many places: the internet, books, knowledgeable people - as well as faulty information, hyper realistic fiction and predators. This was your first lesson of the reality and also the death of your innocence that gave birth to a gilded shell that could have been based on misinformation protecting a delicate core that revealed hope.

I remember the first time that I read castlerealm.com and taking it for gospel. I also remember condemning that same information base for the idealistic claims and the false histories it provided. It perpetuated lies. I remember re-reading it as a researcher with 10 years of experience and coming to the conclusion, that overall, it provided rudimentary tools for the curious and the new and everyone else would do the research and make their own conclusions.

I think I would be frightened of myself if I went in time back to the spring of 96. The time when I was first exposed to this so-called lifestyle. I would take myself and sit down at the (now closed) Onyx Café in Los Feliz, CA and say “yes, all of those things that you fantasized about are possible and are mild in comparison to what you will become”. If I told myself that, I wonder if I would walk away from it. I would pull myself back to let me know that you cannot be in control if you don’t have control over yourself - it is okay to get lost and to become confused in order to find your balance and ma’at..

I don’t have much advice to give in reality, I have no profound truth, I honestly don’t have much to give - but sometimes I do have an inkling on a good day.

In a community that can be extremely technical about the rules of engagement, sex, sm play, D/s, M/s and any other abbreviation we sometimes have the tendency to complicate loving and being loved to the point of saying that love has nothing to do with this type of loving it makes me wonder if it should be prescribed. We follow the trends and paradigms because we don’t know the truth or the correct way - we just know that we want to do this. However, empty vessels of information begets nothing but a need without purpose. This need feeds on whatever seems to be exciting because it can occupy an interest, but it doesn’t fulfill that visceral need. We become experts of doing things and behaving, yet these “things” are executed flawlessly without meaning or weight. So we look for the next flavor of the month to fill us temporarily once more, again and again and again.

For a cup of coffee and the enjoyment of a conversation, I would tell the willing listener that these honorifics are just terms that describe something abstract and subjective. We are all visceral creatures who bend to our selfish whims: lust, love, hate, greed. We want the spotlight by being the best submissive and being the best at being obscure. We avoid the spotlight, by presenting a bravado of uber Dominance obscuring the person deep down inside-craving. We want community selfishly and out of necessity because we are ironically rugged individualists with a different perspective on sexuality. Yet as Mr. Rinella says this rugged individualism must be governed by protocol in order to not piss off our fellow rugged individualists - because we cannot play with others without acceptance from a community that is exclusive and can be exclusionary.

Our jaded perspectives that serves as a gilded shell for our hope are often reflected in our service, play, skill or Dominance. Our jaded perspectives that does us a disservice because it hardens us and makes our safe sane and consensual better than everyone else is in our nature or sometimes nurtured.

I have acquired over the decade: skills, rules of engagement and experience. However, after a decade of decadence, I find that what I value most is my capacity to care for my fellow man through service and through play.

The beauty of a scene doesn’t necessarily mean the most technically sound or the most safe, sane or consensual because if there is no connection then the party involved are just executing empty gestures. However, when it takes on meaning, does it take on spirituality? Or do two people create? When we abstract play and make it something more than play the meaning placed by the individuals involved can decide what it is. They therefore have the right to call it spiritual, cathartic, ritualistic or magickal if they so choose. Creating passion and making it manifest, is based on the same principles that are used when negotiating the very scene itself and therefore people may take ownership of that. The outside party onlooker and the leather gods cannot take that away from anyone.

David M.


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