Het Scene to Old Guard: Suburban Descendants of Urban Aboriginals, and along the Way a Review of Mains’ Urban Aboriginals: A Celebration of Leathersexuality

"Some men may dress in leather; these and others may play with it. But leather is no affectation; it is an expression of the soul."
~ Geoff Mains


The challenge of being a straight woman in the Vermont BDSM scene is that I have a hell of a time figuring out what the whole gay Leatherman thing has to do with me. Mostly I hear news from the San Francisco community which seems to be much ado about who you fisted or flogged last night. I read the commentary about this handkerchief, that color, this pocket. If I needed any more convincing, there's that photo from the now defunct Catacombs Club showing a roomful of sex slings, each with it's own can of Crisco. You betcha. To this Vermont chick, it all seems a bit over the top.

Considering that I've interviewed a fair number of west coast Leathermen, I should know better. Considering that my vanilla friends think I myself am living some kind of freak show, I really should know better.

It was in this frame of mind that I discovered that the classic book Urban Aboriginals had been reissued. Urban Aboriginals is a combination of Mains' personal experiences, observations of the San Francisco scene in general, and his attempts to explicate it all in terms of psychology and spirituality. It's an unusual cross between journalism and essay and so I jumped on the chance not only to read it, but to interview Mark Thompson who is the keeper of the flame. Mark was a close friend of author Geoff Mains, and wanted to keep Mains' words alive even after he passed way from AIDS. You'll recognize Mark's name of course because he's the editor of another BDSM classic, Leatherfolk which I have also read for its excellent series of articles on spirituality.

Twenty years ago when Mains wrote this seminal piece, there was next to nothing identifying who we were and what we believed. Our straight "classics," The Loving Dominant and Learning the Ropes were still twinkles in their author's eyes; and wouldn't come out for another decade. It turns out that Urban Aboriginals is not only one of the earliest documents of our community, but one that explored what were then radical ideas of endorphins and the transcendent experience that can arise from BDSM connections.

I read Mains' words; words written twenty years ago by a gay Leatherman who could not even have imagined today's kinky community. I wonder what Mains has to say to me, to all of us who live in a fetish culture radically re-engineered in these two decades.

My goal became to find the connection between the Leatherman that Mains was, and the contemporary leather chick that I am. Neither of us are poster children for BDSM, but because we are writers, our words become something more than just an opinion. I wanted to find a way to bring the history of BDSM, or in Mains' parlance, S/M, to the contemporary community.

Mains and I may both have been into S/M but he lived a lifestyle not remotely like my own. He dwelled in the world of the gay Leatherman, what we in post millennium days call the Old Guard of S/M with its formal rules and initiation by fire. In those days mostly prior to AIDS, sexual promiscuity, particularly in the gay community was common. From what I hear, a real Leatherman would more likely refer to S/M as "work," not "play," as we so often do today. The history of S/M seems to lie primarily with the gay leatherscene, a history that often doesn't include the vision of lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered folk, or even heterosexuals. Mains writes that "Gay male leatherspace overlaps at times with two related cultural spaces, one Lesbian-feminist, the other heterosexual. While both share many similar customs and motivations with leatherspace, differences in sexual and emotional attraction as well as in gender perspective make these spaces distinct." Perhaps it is more than just the twenty years divide that separates us.

In contrast, I live in a time when S/M has exploded so much that Vermont, which has only recently housed more people than cows, has multiple lifestyle groups. We have no formal rules, except maybe David Stein's "Safe, Sane, and Consensual," and anyone can be active in the community by a quick Google click, suiting up, and showing up. In a time when AIDS is making what some call a "comeback," we are fully cognizant of the ins and outs of fluid exchange and non-latex condoms.

Today's S/M community prides itself on including all sexual orientations, although I admit that it seems that gay and pansexual groups don't overlap all that much. Nearing the end of his life, he wrote Urban Aboriginals as a testament, one that would turn out to be published during a time that might be considered the birth of the larger BDSM community. Because he writes of a time so foreign to my own experience, both personally and politically, I often feel left out of Mains' vision, something which probably taints my ability to fully comprehend what he wrote. Even with this, I recognize that his world is important because it is the foundation of the community I live in today.

Much of his book goes into a historical and practical approach to handballing (fisting), boot licking, and piss play. I won't be looking at these because frankly, I can't relate. It's not that I've never fisted, licked, or gotten pissed on, but a specific act like pissing on someone does not define the heterosexual experience in the same way it appears to for the gay Leatherman. Another way to say this is that while I might have licked Griffin's boots once upon a time, it was just something we did one Saturday evening. It didn't carry the weight of "meaning" something outside our scene. You can observe the significance of the boot on the Leather Archives website which has a little cartoon boot stomping it's way across the homepage. The boot is deeply symbolic in Mains' world, but it carries no such weight in mine. That being said, by writing about these activities in such a validating way, he helped create a safe place for people to explore what was often considered unacceptable.

Mains would probably agree with me, saying that, "The heterosexuals into radical sexuality have never felt the need to build specialized communities in the same way as their homosexual counterparts… For those into straight S/M, the accoutrements remain in the play area. Like sexual practices and affiliation with them, they have strong meaning as fetish but little as communal culture. For most straights, radical sexual practice begins and ends in the bedroom or the playroom." While contemporary S/M culture certainly has players who live dominance and submission in a way that is fully integrated into their lives, I think that Mains is speaking here of the communal culture that the leather scene was then, and still may be. His does seem to be a cohesive group living much differently than today's pansexual community.

Some things clearly haven't changed any however. Mains writes that, "The leather scene has to some extent been invaded by amateurs – people who wallow in its opportunities for pleasure but know little of its feeling for limits, its attitudes, and its perspectives." He's probably turning over in his grave because today, far more than even twenty years ago, the S/M community today is aswarm with amateurs, wannabees and poseurs. Is this a totally bad thing though? This change has also offered an unprecedented opportunity for people who would never have found their way to the San Francisco leather scene or even to one of Vermont's fetish groups to explore S/M. I cannot disrespect them all by saying their way is amateur or invalid. Perhaps both Mains and I need to lighten up a bit.

Most of all, I found his exploration of the spiritual side of leather engaging. He writes, "Some men may dress in leather; these and others may play with it. But leather is no affectation; it is an expression of the soul." It is this radical philosophy that speaks to me even now. Mains describes a scene that tells of this expression, "Sam no longer screams to relieve the pain: he has crossed that barrier that separates fantasy and reality. Each stroke of the whip no longer sears but bursts into waves of ecstasy to which he can only abandon himself. And as his body rolls outward into those wonderful vaulted heavens, his body moves to receive and caress each stroke as it comes down. 'Oh please Sir,' he whimpers. 'Oh thank you Sir.' Once again, God is speaking with Sam." God speaks with me too in scenes like this; I could be Sam reaching out to my own Dominant, moving out to receive and caress each stroke. For the S/M of 1984 and that of 2003, spiritual exploration is timeless.

Mains' voice, while maybe often leaning toward the academic, speaks the truth about a time before today's frenetic energy, but also of spiritual explorations that will always be accessible through S/M. We may not have the same answers, but we clearly have the same questions, and that's enough for this Vermont chick to see that maybe the whole thing isn't so freaky after all.

Book photograph by Robert Pruzan, reprinted with permission

Footnotes
The photo of the Catacombs I referred to can be found in Mark Thompson’s Leatherfolk which is available on www.amazon.com 

The Leather Archives:

http://www.leatherarchives.org/

"The compilation, preservation and maintenance of leather lifestyle and related lifestyles [including but not limited to the Gay and Lesbian communities], history, archives and memorabilia for historical, educational and research purposes."

Interviews I’ve done with a number of Leathermen 

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Sensuous Sadie is the author of It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene (http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html). She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Rose & Thorn, Vermont 's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com  or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com. Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing in most venues.

Copyright 2003 Sadie Sez Publications