Recently I met two incredible men who asked me to flog and single tail them. Each of them had been through their own process to prepare them for he synchronous moment that brought us together. I was privileged and honored to be a part of the transformative erotic experience we shared. We have stayed connected and had long conversations about our experiences. I became aware of what it is like for some new guy to finally find his way to the fulfillment of a long held fantasy. I began to reflect on the role of community in creating transformative erotic experiences. I believe that male energy is very powerful but is also very fragile. When a group of men comes together in the right way, it creates sacred male space and magic happens. With some notable exceptions, many of the gatherings I had found most powerful were not produced by the organizations in our community but by individuals or small groups. They were limited to select invitees and not open to the public. They did not advertise or do “out-reach”. In many ways of leather organizations stop promoting sexy fun activities where we could play and became the equivalent of the Rotary or the Elks. This point was driven home one night when a “community fund raising event” was scheduled the same night as a group gathering in the outdoors to actually DO the things that create community. In thinking about this, I realized that our community has abdicated leadership to the “educators”. These are the folks who run workshops, teach seminars, and lead conferences. We have traded those “transformative erotic experiences” for didactic presentations and “demos”. I believe that some of the “educators” are working from an unconscious dynamic of fear and envy. These are folks who were never any fun in the first place and are working to suck the fun out of anything somebody else might do. They “educate” because it gives them a platform to hear their own voices. For many of them, there are no other venues in which their opinions or even their voices are wanted. The idea of actual sexual energy intimidates them. Ask yourself, when was the last lecture or demo that gave you a hardon?....AND….If it did, what were you “allowed” to do with it? How does this happen? I think we as a community are SO hyper-sensitive to rejection that we have abdicated our role as gate keepers. Can we admit that NOT everyone should be welcomed to our community? Let’s face it…what we do is NOT safe, NOT sane, and NOT consensual if it is being done by people with limited insight, personality problems, deficient intellect, or mental illness. Many of these folks are drawn to our community because we are welcoming and friendly. They hand around for a while and we think there is no harm in letting them do things to “help out”. Gradually, they take on more and more responsibility. We accept the drama they bring with them because they are “good guys”. We elect them to be the presidents of our community organizations because it is “their turn”. For a while, their impact in minimal, but it is cumulative. Eventually they will drive the people we REALLY want to be there away. The good guys will get frustrated and leave while the rest of the organization is trying to deal with the crazy drama created by what my friends have termed the “broken wing club”. Recently I overheard a conversation between a friend and another guy asking to borrow the pictures the guy had taken at a large event. The request was telling. “Can we borrow some of the pictures because so-and-so is the photographer for (one of the leather publications) and doesn’t have a camera”? Huh??? Meet the poster child for the broken wing club. When we stop requiring that people meet even minimum standards for the tasks they are assigned, it reveals how low we are willing to go to “be nice”. It seems that the same thing is true for many of our “educators”. These folks are often not very skilled in their presentations or events that they organize. For new people it is important to note that if you attend these educational events, in most cases, you will NOT have the experience you want, you will just hear about it, or maybe see a demonstration of someone else having it. If you actually get to participate, it will watered down and devoid of any erotic energy. It will be in a venue conducive to lectures or meeting but not very erotic. You may get to see a Power Point presentation but you wont be able to play. You will be disappointed. It reminds me of the “sex education” portion of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. We have allowed these castrated educators to completely de-eroticize what is meant to be hot, sexy, and edgy. How many times have we seen powerful, playful, erotic energy destroyed by the rule bound eunuchs who claim that there is a “right” way to do things? I believe we are at a crossroads. We will continue to see the demos, the workshops, and the conferences because there will always be people willing to participate at that level. But gradually, I hope that the true process of mentoring will start to emerge. I hope that we will see more activities that allow for spontaneous exchanges between men with skills and men who want to experience those skills in a way that will be intimate and connected. We will play in public and those who are interested will approach those who can satisfy that interest. It means that we have to take personal responsibility and cannot abdicate it to the “educators”. I hope the demos done in front of large spectator groups will be recognized for what they are…they are entertainment. It is to BDSM what a strip show is to sex. It is pandering. It is freak-show. The good old days went being a member of a club or organization meant you had skills and credibility are gone. Just look around. But the good news is that there is a fresh wind blowing. Those clubs and organizations that are based in “education’ will be hard pressed to exist in a world where new people can connect and experience the real thing. I learned from my two new friends that they have no interest in being “educated” about BDSM they want to EXPERIENCE IT.

We were sitting in a restaurant and he reached across the table for the salt. His long sleeve moved up and I saw the scars. I knew his journey had been a difficult one. When you are the gay son of prominent mormons, you struggle. His struggle had included shop-lifting an exacto knife and hiding behind the trash dumpsters slicing his arms. An older woman trying to throw her trash away discovered him in a pool of blood and called for help. He survived, but the scars never went away. He formed deep thick keloids that would not even fade with plastic surgery. But the real scars were the ones you couldn’t see. Drugs and alcohol would control most of his adult life. He spent years locked in a battle with meth-amphetamine. He would loose years of his life in the battle. Lately he said that he had won over alcohol but he relied on daily antabuse administered by his brother to stay sober. Nothing was ever as it seemed. He left one day saying he had to get sober. He went to his parents cabin in Park City. He wrote a letter before he left. He was sorry. He had lied. All he was doing was drinking. He had stolen money….lots of money. But don’t worry. He would be back. He did come back. Just once. His parents paid to send him back to LA and rent a U-haul. He cleaned out the house while I was at work. I came home to food all over the kitchen because he took the refrigerator. He took the furniture but in a random confusing pattern leaving and taking whatever he could throw into the U-Haul as fast as he could. He left chaos in many ways. It took years to repair the damage he did. We didn’t talk after that. He hurt too many people. I spent a long time healing. Then he contacted me on Facebook. He said he knew I might not want to talk to him but he was hoping. I called. It was obvious things were not good. He was living in a place provided by his parents in Utah. They were back in charge. He was having lots of health problems. He called a few days ago and when I called back he was slurring and confused. The next day he called to say he had taken his sleeping pills to explain it. Saturday morning his brother called to tell me he was dead. He had died of a seizure. It was Pride weekend. I am on the board of directors and had to deal with all that involves. But thoughts crossed my mind. I remember coming to Pride with him and how his drinking caused problems. I remember him volunteering and getting lost to go drink. But I also remembered the good times. The parts of him that had kept us together for almost 5 years were not forgotten, they were just covered over. His funeral is happening right now. This is my way of mourning. I found a picture of us hugging with our dogs, looking over the California coast. I realized it was my daughter who had taken the picture. He hurt her more than most. My kids paid a huge price for his being in my life. It is why I severed contact. But it did not change the memories of what had been the good parts. We loved each other. We had both traveled the mormon highway doing as we had been told. Went on missions. Got married. I was set free by people who loved me more than they loved the mormon church. He was tortured by people who loved the church more than they loved him. But we found each other and for a while we were partners, we were family, we were in love. We had wild crazy sex and we laughed… A LOT. His self hatred was fueled by alcohol and he killed off the laughter and eventually the love. But for a time we were deeply passionately in love with each other. I had thought to let this pass. Until I read his obituary. It was cleaned and sanitized and a pack of lies. His father is an author of fiction and the skill seems to have been put to good use to disguise and deny any semblance of truth. Who he was is lost. Both the good and the bad….though there is so much they find bad even they are hard pressed to find ways to tell the story. They retold stories I had heard when we were together. His life has been frozen in time. All that time wasted. An obituary for a man who stopped growing a long time ago….a life lost. His being gay is not even mentioned. His ex-wife of less than a year is mentioned. None of his gay partners are. His “triumph” over drugs and alcohol is noted, their contribution to the problem is not. The damage it did is not mentioned. His hatred of mormonism is hidden beneath lies about his being a missionary. Too bad they haven’t read his missionary journal. Well they can’t because he left it here. He had to return to that in the end. He lived and died in lies. I guess his scars will finally fade. Mine have been opened a little with his passing. I question my own lack of wisdom but remember it was a LONG time ago. I cringe to think of his dying alone. I can imagine him having his last seizure and knowing it was over and I have to admit, I wish I was there to say good bye and tell him to not to be afraid. To tell him that I had loved him...once...a long time ago, and that it was okay for him to go this time. To try to take away his fear. I guess that is the final message. It was fear that drove all the madness. Fear that his parents would never love him and that he couldn’t live without that. Fear that he was never good enough. He found release from the fear when he drank and was then afraid he would be found out. But I remember the times he made me laugh and the times he made me so hard I thought I would explode…and the times I did. I remember the times he would surprise me. He tried SO hard. He hated things about himself that no one should hate. Some of them were the very things that made me love him. I remember when we would be together naked and the scars would all be visible. I loved that he trusted me with his scars. I thought he had paid a price for both of us. In a way, I thought he had paid a price that I had been spared. I realize now the price was greater than I ever imagined and can’t ever be paid.