Contest Speech

Here is the rough text of my contest speech.  I don’t have a recording or notes, so I’ve rewritten it from memory:

(enter stage with an iPhone in hand)

You know, these things have really allowed us to re-invent cruising.

It used to be that we would go to the bar, hang out in a dark corner, and peer at guys across the room, hoping one of them would want to talk to us.  Then came the Internet, and we could stay at home in our pajamas and peer at pictures of guys online, hoping one of them would want to talk to us.  Now, though, we can go back to the bar, hang out in a dark corner, and peer peer at pictures of guys online…

Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Still, for all the advances these things have given us, sometimes we run into problems.  A few months ago, Grindr deleted my profile text for being too naughty or something.  So I’ve done an end-run on them and now I list my hanky colors in my profile instead.

Flagging a hanky has always been an invitation to conversation, and I get more responses than I expected:

• “Does anyone still use the hanky code” — well, obviously I do!
• “What do all those colors mean?” — I send them to Google to learn more
• “I know red and gray, but what is peach?  Or mustard?” — these are the guys I can educate a little
• And then I get “I flag red, too!  Mine’s on the left.” — and well, you know how things go from there

In other words, sometimes the oldest, tried-and-true cruising methods are still ones which can work just fine today.

Photo © 2011 Malixe Photo, used by permission.

Dream Journal: November 25, 2011

I actually had a dream this weekend regarding the International LeatherSIR contest:

I dreamt that the contestants, their producers, and the contest staff were gathered together to draw numbers for contestant placement — who would go first, second, etc.  Weird thing #1: we were on the patio at the Cuff (in Seattle), not in San Francisco.

The regional producers drew the numbers rather than the contestants.  Weird thing #2: drawing for the Northwest Region were Mike Daggs and Jeff Henness (neither of who have been involved with LeatherSIR, other than when Mike’s other half Kelley was Community Bootblack). 

Mike drew #1, and Jeff drew #25, which in the dream was the last placement, despite there being 16 regions and thus there would be 32 numbers drawn.  (And that leaves out the Community Bootblacks completely.) 

I chose to take #25, leaving #1 for Northwest Leatherboy Danny, saying “No way in Hell do I want to go first!”

There is statistical truth to my dream preference.  When there is a large field of contestants, there is a judging bias that favors those who compete later in the order — this can be seen in competitions ranging from International Mr. Leather to Olympic figure skating.  (Taking IML as an example, they winnow 50+ contestants down to the Top 20 for the final portion of the contest.  The first half of the contestants are typically about a quarter of the final 20.)  Part of this is that no matter how good an early contestant is, the judges feel restrained from giving too high of marks, because they have to leave open the possibility that later contestants will be even better.  Another factor is just weariness: there is a tendency to relax the tightness of scoring as each contestant blurs into the next.

I don’t have any data about whether the scoring bias continues in an upward trend (does being last or near last in a long field give even more of a boost?) or if there’s a bell curve trend (do those in the middle half of the group get the benefit, with those near the end losing out like those near the beginning do?).

Photos from the Contest

I’m finally able to post some pics from the contest.  These photos are © 2011 Malixe Photo, used by permission.  (Thanks, Charlie, and thanks for taking great pics!)  Separate posts will have pics from the Speech and Fantasy portions of the contest.

Friday Meet & Greet The vest is a custom one from X-Rated Leather in Copenhagen, which I won as 1st Runner-Up for Mr. Outgames Leather in 2009.	Introduction of Contestants I opted for a very informal look for this, since it was both a non-judged segment and I had to change immediately for the Fantasy portion.
Jockstrap Asked on stage about my ass tats, I said they are based on the superhero Lightning Lad.  All my tats come from the Legion of Super-Heroes.	Jockstrap (rearview) You may notice a design similarity between the ass tats and the Outgames vest.  The vest has the lightning motif repeated large on the back.
Final Winners Ruin, Danny, and myself.  The color combination — red, white, and blue — was completely coincidental.

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Updated on February 24, 2015:

Pussied-out the naughty bits on a pic to try and keep Google from blocking the blog.

Spanksgiving

This Thursday, Thanksgiving evening, is the latest rendition of the “Spanksgiving” fundraiser.

Started in 2004 by Northwest LeatherSIR 2005 Michael Congdon (who later won the International title), the event was later brought back by Northwest LeatherSIR 2010 Hugh (who also later won International) and continued by Northwest LeatherSIR 2011 Darian.  Although the Northwest LeatherSIR, Leatherboy, and Community Bootblack titles are no longer sponsored by Generic Leather Productions of Washington, Northwest Leatherboy Danny and I volunteered to continue the tradition this year.

Spanksgiving will run from 9 pm to midnight at the Cuff Complex (1533 13th Ave. in Seattle).  Ryan and Danelle will be there to mete out spankings and flogging — pay for eating too much turkey, boy!

In addition to buying swats for yourself, you can buy them for your friends as well.  What’s that?  Your so-called friends bought you a spanking and you don’t want to submit?  Tell you what: donate an equal amount and we’ll let you off the hook.  (evil grin)

We will also be offering tickets for a prize raffle, with a number of great items available, including a women’s leather jacket, a paddle, cards featuring kinky gingerbread men, and even a fabulous pie (donated by Northwest LeatherMOM, my own mother).  Yes, it’s true: on Thanksgiving, you can’t get away from food!

Proceeds from Spanksgiving will go to support the 2013 Leather Leadership Conference, which will be held in Seattle.

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Updated on December 1, 2011:

Spanksgiving 2011 raised roughly $450 for the 2013 Leather Leadership Conference.

HARD 3 (Vancouver, BC) • November 4–5, 2011

Vancouver Men in Leather had their third “HARD” party in early November.  According to guys from Vancouver, the event is half dance party and half dungeon, held at Five Sixty (560 Seymour).  I have not been able to attend the previous two because they were on Sundays, which would mean taking Monday off from work.  (For the Canadians, they were on the Sundays of three-day weekends, so not an issue for them.)

Cliff and I were in Vancouver for New Year’s Eve and had been at Five Sixty then.  That night, it was packed to the gills, including a 45 minute wait at coast check.  (And the line just got longer as midnight approached.)  Yeah: got there at 10:30, had time for one drink before midnight (with a 20+ minute wait in that line).  And then there would be the same wait to pick a coat up later.  But since this wasn’t a mixed event and wasn’t on a Saturday or a holiday, we knew that wouldn’t be the case.

Five Sixty has three levels.  The main level is a large dance floor and a stage.  Upstairs from that is a lounge area overlooking the dance floor.  Downstairs is a long, narrow space with a partition down the middle — bathrooms on one side, bar and lounge alcoves on the other, plus coat check at the far end.  For HARD, the lounge alcoves became the dungeon space, with a fuck bench and dark corner in one, a sling in the second, and a couple crosses in the third.

We got a room at the Ramada less than two blocks away (good deal at $70, too), which was convenient.  One of the members of Seattle Men in Leather had won free passes but couldn’t attend, so we got to take a couple of the tickets.  (Thanks, Paka!)  The event was scheduled to start at 8:00, but I had been told no one shows up until 10:00, so we planned to leave the hotel after 9:30.

Until Cliff decided to go on Wednesday, I had been planning to ride all the way.  The weather promised to be dry, buy pretty cold.  It would be my last long distance ride chance of the year, to be sure.  Since he was going, though, I just rode to his place in Stanwood (about an hour’s ride north of Seattle; an hour and a half when you’re talking 4 pm Friday traffic, of course).  As expected, cold ride, but standable.  (If I had ridden all the way myself, I would have stopped in Mt. Vernon anyway to warm up.)  We took his truck the rest of the way, an uneventful ride.

It turned out that our preconceptions of the event were a bit off.  As described above, there were only 3 or 4 play spaces — which would be enough, of course, if anyone actually played.  Neither of us have gone to enough “leather dance parties”, or we could have predicted that the attendance — which had a leather/fetish dress code, allegedly no street clothes allowed, although I didn’t see any enforcement of that, but neither did I see flagrant violations — would be primarily hunky muscleboys in the one harness they own (yes, I know I’m looking down my nose at the type), plus a decent dose of the regular PumpJack/VML leather crowd.  (Several of our Vancouver friends attended — Mitch and Brian, Darryl and Josh, Jacques, Ian — although several did not.)

In the end, the playspaces were pretty underutilized.  in the 10:00-11:00 hour, there was some bondage and violet wand use, and one assplay session later (the bottom was inexperienced, so not full-on fisting), but most of the play beyond that was nipples and dick sucking.  In retrospect, that’s perhaps not surprising.  Combine Friday night (when guys often aren’t horned up yet), plus a crowd leaning toward S&M (stand-and-model), and the eternal case of “What will it do to my reputation to have sex play where my buddies might see?” — hon, it will create your reputation, if you do it right! — and it’s no surprise that most play is furtive cocksucking.

We didn&rasuo;t realize that there was an after-party scheduled for Steamworks, or we might have gone.  Heck, almost certainly would have bugged out of HARD around midnight and gone to get some harder play in.

As Northwest LeatherSIR, British Columbia is no longer in my “region” (it is part of the Western Canada region), so although I wore my title vest, I wasn’t there in any official capacity.  I likely would have gone up even without the title, but that certainly gave the added incentive.  I’m not sure how many guys saw the vest or identified the title, though, since no one commented on it.  Vancouver has struggled to have any leather title consistency for the past decade and more, so I’m not sure how much cognizance most of the locals (stand-and-model or otherwise) have of leather titles, whether it was just a fancy patch to them.

Still, I’ll keep my eye out for HARD 4.  The difference between Friday and Sunday might change the makeup of things, and might change the desire to play (last chance for the weekend, you know).  Warmer weather in the spring and summer might make it better, too.  (As would me knowing what to expect, of course.)

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Added poster on November 22, 2011

Foodplay Workshop

One of the requirements for my title year is to teach a BDSM workshop.  (Actually, I think the contract just said “a workshop”, but I guess teaching dance lessons [in a non-leather context] wouldn’t really qualify.)

On Friday, November 11 (tonight!), I will be presenting the Seattle Men in Leather Tribal Instinct session, entitled:

“A Loaf of Bread, A Bug of Wine, A Klondike Bar… and Thou”
A Foodplay Workshop

This will take place at the Center for Sex Positive Culture (in the Annex), and it is a men-only event.  (Sorry, ladies, that’s how Tribal Instinct is designed.  The workshop content isn’t necessarily men only, and most of it would be appropriate to all genders.  If it goes well, I would be happy to present it again for a mixed crowd.)

For those of you who cannot be there, you can access a slideshow of my notes here:

LURE (Portland, OR) • October 22–23, 2011

On Tuesday, I realized that I didn’t have anything scheduled for this weekend other than the Northwest Bears Brunch on Sunday, but this was the 4th Saturday and thus the LURE leather event in Portland.  As Northwest LeatherSIR, I need to cover the entire region as much as I can — not just Seattle, but all of Washington, plus Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and even Alaska.

Portland is the easy and obvious one of those.  There’s relatively little in terms of leather going on in the rest of the region, unfortunately.  Lucky Dog Tavern in Boise had a couple events in the past, and there are a couple fisting parties in Moses Lake and Richland, and Dylan got up to Alaska last year.  So needless to say, when I’ve got an available weekend and there’s an out-of-town leather event, I’m going to try to be there.

(British Columbia isn’t in my ILSb region — it’s part of Western Canada — but it’s as close as Portland, so I’ll get to events up there, as well.  Give them some leather love.  Or glove.  Whichever.)

So a quick Hotwire deal on Wednesday and I had a cheap enough (yet nice) hotel at the Courtyard at Lloyd Center.  I then wrangled up Northwest Leatherboy Danny to go down with me.  Ms. Oregon Leather Ms. Tracey was also having a Fetish Makeovers workshop that afternoon at the new location for Fantasy For Adults Only, so we tried to leave early enough to get to that.

Well, tried.  I slept a little later than planned, and so did Danny.  When we got to Olympia, I realized “Crap!  I forgot my boots!”  (Oh, the shame!)  Fortunately, the Centerville Western Store is at the outlets in Centralia, so we stopped for the fastest boot shopping in the West: 15 minutes in and out and I had a new pair of harness boots, plus some boot socks, bandanas for myself and Danny, and boot laces for Danny.  But that was still a delay, as was the unfortunate pull-over by a cop right after we got back on the road.

I forgot that the speed limit plunges at Centralia, and he was just waiting for someone.  Remember that old line from Driver’s Ed about it being safer to not travel in “wolf packs” of cars?  I now wonder about that, because he basically said he picked me off because I was not in a group of other cars — “I was keeping pace with traffic” apparently didn’t apply to the traffic that was a couple hundred yards ahead of me, traveling the same speed.  But what can you do?  I was legitimately over the speed limit; you takes your lumps (and you pays your tickets).  But it added another 10 minutes to us running late.  Sigh.

We rolled into Portland at 4 pm — the workshop was supposed to start at 3 pm — but we went to Fantasy anyway.  Ms. Tracey was still there, along with her partner (and former Ms. Oregon Leather) Lady Alycyn, plus store manager Chanelle and one of the local leathergirls (whose name I missed).  The gist of the workshop was having the opportunity to try on any of the outfits and gear in the store.  We quickly put Danny in an Asylum straight jacket, plus a gas mask.  Checking out other stuff they had there, I ended up buying a funky Ruff Doggie Styles flogger with braided tails with leather leaves braided into them and leather rosebuds on the ends — pretty, yet still functional, and likely to be a big hit (ahem) for Spanksgiving next month.  (The rosebuds actually give some weight and unexpected thud to it.)  I also picked up a hand-held Foreplay Ice Frost massager — it has a silicone sleeve you fill and freeze, then add a vibrating bullet to make for an ice toy which doesn’t get everything wet as it melts.  We’ll see how well it actually works.

We then went out to Aparaphilia, the recently opened leather store out on 82nd and Fremont (which the Maps app on the iPhone can’t find by name, just be address).  They carry about 75% men’s leather gear, 25% women’s, plus a selection of cock rings, sounds, cuffs, and so on.  As usual when I go to a leather wear store these days, there wasn’t anything I needed (I’ve got a full leather and rubber wardrobe) — nor after buying boots and a flogger already that day, would I have wanted to buy anything more!

We checked into the hotel and I had a short nap.  We then caught the light rail to the Pearl District and at at the Republic Cafe, a Chinese restaurant that Danny liked when he lived in Portland.  After a shower and clothes change, we headed off to the Eagle Portland for the LURE (“Leather, Uniform, Rubber, Etc.”, named for the former leather bar in New York) event.

This month was themed for Puppy Play, and there were a handful of leather pups there.  The Border Riders also had their monthly meeting in Portland, so they all showed up as well, and the bar was packed.

Shout out hellos to Mr. Oregon Leather Tarsus, Oregon Boot Black Nick, leather community jeweler John Poncé (you’ve seen him at big leather events, I’m sure), Thom Butts of Blackout Leather Productions (and a former Northwest LeatherSIR, Andy Mangels, Oregon Cub Dalin, former Oregon Bear Don James, and so on.  Hunky Lance and George were visiting from Denver, and Don was up from Los Angeles, plus furry local Nick and who knows who else that I met and am not remembering right now.  Special thanks to Don and Hal for good times (and for getting my lost leather cap back to me!).

It turned out that the Northwest Bears board meeting was supposed to be after the Sunday Brunch, so I had a bunch of texts back and forth on Saturday evening and Sunday morning with board president Pete.  I had forgotten the discussion about moving the board meeting, and apparently others did as well, since there wasn’t a quorum.  Although I’m not on the board per se, as an outgoing titleholder for the club and part of the website and Spring Thaw committees, I had needed to get some info to Pete.

The trip back was uneventful.  For several miles north of Kalama, a pickup track with a mass of compacted oak leaves in the bed was having the wind pry the leaves out as he drove, and they were bouncing on the road, dancing along with the cars.  It was a nifty, uplifting scene.

Before getting Danny to come along, I had hoped to ride the scooter down, but it rained most of our trip down, so I wasn’t too bummed about driving.  The trip back, though, was broken clouds and nice enough that I pined for the chance to ride.  In two weeks, I’ll be going up to Vancouver for the Hard 3 leather dance/dungeon party, so I’m crossing my fingers that the weather will be dry enough to do that trip, since it’s the very last distance trip I think I could hope for.