Transpire

I am so juiced about my dungeon demo at Transpire at Club XO in Philadelphia on November 3rd.

Tonight I talked with Rick, the guy who is charged with managing the talent roster. He and everybody else involved are thrilled to have me, and I think the Great Lesson of 2007 will turn out to be that you can't go too wrong if you go where they want you.

[Gasp! Wait! Kevin Youkilis is batting... Holy shit! Almost hit him in the head. Full count. C'mon, Kevin... And he walks. Sweet.]

It is gonna be sweet. Got my chains already. And my padlocks. Thinking about what to do with positioning. The options include on the floor with my piece of uncut leather as a mat, in my big black plastic cement mixing tub (which comes in handy when you want to piss all over the guy once he's chained up, although I won't be doing that in a public venue I don't think), or maybe I'll just throw my weight bench in the car. The issue there is lumbar support.

But anyway, I was talking to Rick, and he gave me free tickets to a screening of Trans porn that's going down before the event. Of course, my instant response was, "Buck Angel?"

No. In fact, it's not Buck Angel. With whom I am totally obsessed.

But Rick, of course, totally knows who Buck Angel is. And get this... said that they were trying to get in touch with him to see if he'd make an appearance. As in, "If you happen to be on the East Coast..."

Okay. This is big. Huge, in fact. This means that I might get to meet Buck Angel.

Setting aside for a moment just how humiliating that will be for me, as I stare at my boots and all that comes out my mouth is hummina-hummina-hummina. But regardless. That would be enough for me. Just being in The Presence would suffice.

Who knows? Maybe Buck Angel would correctly interpret my non-verbal seemingly insane ramblings correctly as an invitation to forgo whatever else he has going on--which I guess he would call "his life" or something--and fulfil his destiny and become my personal love money sex slave.

It could happen!

*sigh*

And I'm also excited because this is a big Trans thing. The battle currently being waged for Trans inclusion has been called the civil rights struggle of our age. And as a leatherman, it is my issue.

Pour quoi?

When Rick described to me the Trans journey as a spiritual one, and how it all goes down in the arena of your body, that resonated for me. Same deal with SM. The body is the arena wherein we discover our souls. Submitting your back to the whip or your breasts to the surgical knife because powers you don't understand compel you to do so, compel you to trust in the Universe and trust in the strength and courage that you don't know you have... Those are the makings of a magical life.

Way back when during my ACT UP days, the affinity group with whom I had done several actions gave rise to the Lesbian Caucus of ACT UP. Which I became a part of, mostly because it didn't occur to me not to. I knew and loved those women and few people I have met are higher in my estimation. Of course, there was the whole issue of the fact that I was not a lesbian. And so, I decided that I was the charter member of the Boys' Auxilliary of the Lesbian Caucus of ACT UP. And in the tradition of Womens' Auxilliaries of yore, offered to have coffee and danishes waiting when the members of the Lesbian Caucus finished up their meetings. They responded by making me an Honorary Lesbian.

Which, of course, I loved.

So I'm wondering. Could I become honorary trans?

Although that kinda brings me around to my CHC membership.

And I've been thinking about that quite a bit lately, too.

There was a splash in the gay press this summer about the Chicago Hellfire Club and their exclusion of trans-men from their signature event, Inferno.

I've sort of been operating under the idea that I could work to change that from inside, rather than by leaving. But I think that there I may be deluding myself. I'm an associate member, and decision making in CHC is vested entirely with the full members. Besides having to be voted in as a full member, it also means having to make monthly meetings of the full membership, and those meetings are held in Chicago. So no. I'm not going to become a full member any time soon.

And, alas, there is no principled position that I've heard articulated to back up CHC's policies of excluding men who are not born with penises. Rather, it's just a matter of "Eeeew! That will get me all skeeved out if I know that there's a man without a penis anywhere around me!". And the more I think about it, there's not a lot of difference between that and "But if we let the negroes in they might date our daughters!"

And the more I think about it, that just doesn't cut the mustard.

There's another aspect of this, too. In a conversation with the Baron several weeks ago, I had an insight about myself, something that has been the lynchpin--or a quirk or whatever--in my character for as long as I can remember: I am a radical egalitarian. I don't like the whole "On the bus, off the bus" dynamic. It's one thing to associate yourself with like-minded people. All of us like that. But the danger there is that we human beings are inherently tribal, and very quickly, we'll all get to thinking that those folks who are of different minds than us, well they just don't rate. They're off the bus. And we're all on the bus. So we must be better than them. And now how can we go about keeping them off the bus?

I'm dismissive of the gnostic elements in so much pop cultural new age-y psychology for the same reason. If'n I start hearing that "living authentically" or whatever means that you're at a higher level than the great mass of men and women who aren't, they're playing the on-the-bus-off-the-bus game. And in my head, I'm already thinking up arguments--however specious and contorted they might be--about why People Who Just Don't Get It actually have the right idea.

And with CHC and Inferno, you get that in spades. Lots of talk about how Inferno is the Best Event and how we're all privileged to be there. And necessarily,that would mean that there are men out there in the world who just don't cut the mustard.

For example, they weren't born with penises.

Yeah.

I have no idea where this is all going.

For now, I'll just say this: it skeeves me out to do SM in the presence of men who would come up with contrived legalistic exclusionary policies because they get skeeved out doing SM in the presence of men who might not have been born with penises.

Not only am I excited to be doing chain bondage at this club in Philadelphia next weekend because I'm a total ham and I love to show off, but I'm deeply honored to have been asked to be there.