Tuesday, July 29, 2003

Talkin' 'bout my G-g-generation

So PunchPig read my manuscript. I think I've gotten my first favorable review. One criticism he had was a sort of preamble in the beginning, in which I answer the question, "Who the hell am I to be writing this book?" He thought it was unnecessary. Just say what I have to say.

I might be a wee bit passive aggressive in that. In the gay S/M community, there's definitely a generational thing going on. When Joe Bean and Guy Baldwin were cranking out stuff for Drummer, they were my age, or slightly older. But there doesn't seem to be much in the way of apostolic succession. Now, both of those men I admire enormously. No flies on them at all.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to this guy. He asked how old I was, and I told him my age, 38. He was the same age. "Huh," he commented, "we're the S/M generation that wasn't supposed to happen."

Now there's a provocative aside, huh?

I asked him what he meant. He asked me when I first started going to leather bars, and what it was like. It was 1989. The Bike Stop in Philadelphia. I saw very little action. He replied that if it had been 1979, it would have been a different deal altogether. For one thing, there would have been a lot of action. According to him, there actually used to happen that older men would be on the lookout for younger men who seemed to have promise. Tell them how it worked, show them the ropes (so to speak--can we agree that that's the most overused pun in leatherdom?), and mentor them into the scene. That wasn't happening in 1989. The Mineshaft was closed. Most of the significant leather bars were likewise shuttered. So many of the Great Ones had died, and those that were left standing were too busy burying their brothers to worry about taking some pup into their care. Fear and intimacy went hand in hand. Many of the backpatch clubs were wiped out entirely by HIV/AIDS.

I have to admit, when I read Guy Baldwin talking about 'the way it used to be' and the decline of Old Guard Values, I don't entirely buy it. He describes a world so alien to my experience. There's an autobiographical account in Leatherfolk--I forget the author--describing how this guy met a man in a leatherbar in L.A. when he was just coming out in the 1960s, and how the man essentially got him trained to be his Master. The author was essentially apprenticed to various Tops who would school him in their special skill. Although I have no reason to doubt the veracity of that, I just can't bring myself to believe it. Only because it's so entirely foreign, it sounds like a fairy tale.

No, I had nothing like that. In fact, before I became a member of GMSMA, no one taught me anything, little less took me under his wing.

It wasn't entirely a solitary journey. There was that mixed blessing of the AOL chatroom. "Yeah boy, I'll collar you and make you my slave. I'll break you and make you over as perfect slave meat. I'll teach you what it means to wear My collar and bear My marks. you'll be branded, caged, and say goodbye to wearing clothes." says the married man and father of three with a wife sleeping in the next room.

On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

it was all fantasy. Well, not all, I did encounter men who were very real, who owned slaves, some of them I've come to know since then. But compared to the lines that the married father of three was putting out, the real thing paled in comparison. Consensual? You're kidding? Aren't you supposed to buy me at an auction after I've been abducted on my way home from work?

But, a Very Important Message was delivered. I wasn't alone. I was far from alone. And in this maelstrom of inauthenticity, I decided to try and find something authentic, or at any rate forge it in myself.

And that's where GMSMA comes in. At the meeting I attended when I marched in and wrote a check and became a member, there was Diabolique, there was Past President, and they really really did take me under their wings. And, considering that both of them are involved in the Novices SIG that I took part in last winter, they did school me.

Those circumstances I described--the way the AIDS crisis took the bonds of community and shredded them--were, as I understand it, a big part of the reason that GMSMA was formed. How to preserve the best parts of this world that was passing away? Just like those monasteries in Ireland during the Middle Ages.

GMSMA takes a lot of hits ("How To Make A Meatloaf: Duct Tape Mummification Explained" and "...take clothespin A and attach it to nipple B like so"). But the alternative would be what exactly? Oh, right. You find a mentor and earn your leathers. And that happens where? The Never-Neverland Eagle?

I'm too old for TNG. The kids are alright. They're the DIY generation, and that seems to be what they're doing.

So I guess I and my coevals are sort of stuck in the middle. An anomalous trough right in the middle of what should be a bell curve. Unable to sit around reminiscing about those nights at the Mineshaft, but viewed as One of Those Old Guys by the TNGers.

I guess this means that I will never be asked to be the keynot speaker at a Leather Leadership Conference .

Huh. That begs an interesting question. it looks like when the mantle of leadership is passed, it will go right over our heads, Guy Baldwin will bestow it upon some worthy twenty-eight year old with five Infernos under his belt, the ceremony to take place in either Palm Springs or Fort Lauderdale.

And my generation are the middle children. We don't get the attention that the youngest get, and we stand forever in the shadows of our elder brothers. We'll never be the patriarchs, because by the time the current patriarchs have moved on, the Young Turks will be in their prime.

And that's fine. We listen. We learn. We look for continuity. We keep the family scrapbooks. We work behind the scenes to make sure everything goes alright. We quietly discard the things that have become obsolete but which might still have sentimental value. We nurture innovators, but caution them to go slowly. We indulge our elders when they go on tirades about what the world is coming to. When the glare of the spotlight finds us, we smile and step quickly out of the way.

That's cool. As long as I get to whip some men along the way.


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