Dear Gentle Kinkster
So I was priviledged to be the keynote speaker at Rio Grande Leather Conference this past weekend. Below find my sppech:
Good Morning Gentle Kinksters:
Thank you, and yes I’ve come with my notes, reading glasses and after last night more grey pubic hairs. What too soon? Ya’ll wear a girl out, all those hotties ya’ll got running around here.
Greetings from Southern California. It’s been quite an honor to be in the land of Enchantment again this year and thank you for inviting my husband and I back.
What a weekend! Jason and Tyler, thank you. It always feels like a party with you two here. But you two MOFO’s have fucked me over. It’s your fault that I am sporting this new collar.
Ya’ll I never talked to them, never knew there stories or struggles. I just saw act all nice and normal and shit and I thought to myself they were nice people. And I wanted to be with them, to know them, to be a cool kids, like them.
So after some soul searching I decided to run. And after exposing my darkest fantasies, beliefs and goals; (pause) all the other chicks quit and left me on stage, ALONE.
But I’ve already learned from my sash sisters and brothers that this process is just another part of our evolution. For us, a public experience, one for which I can’t explain why, but know there is something we must go through, it’s something, we are compelled to do. I have come to see titleholders as often our internal compasses, our politicians, preachers, reformers and beauty queens, each in a unique way, carrying OUR banners.
So this morning, after four hours of sleep from totally rewriting this presentation for the fifth time I decided to talk about our evolution as leather people and gentle kinksters. With 300 million folks in this country, we here represent the hedonistic leaders of our country.
So what made us so fucking cool? I believe it’s the evolution we have already experienced. Let me explain.
First the evolution of self:
How many had kinky thoughts or experiences before the age of 16? What about 10, 5?
I believe we are here because you nurtured, or hid and protected those thoughts, feelings, desires and experiences, until you found a safe place to express who you are. Our sexual chakra were awakened early, and we could not, or will not turn it off.
Second our play evolved:
From our cultural encyclopedia, the authors of
Screw the Roses, Give me the Thorns write about the first time the author lost a tooth and the pain was so good that when the second tooth starting coming loose he knew just how to wiggle it and make it hurt just right.
For me it was first grade with the toe-headed little boy, who would wait till I got on the swing sets and then start throwing dirt clouds at my ass. Humph, talk about a motivator. I swang higher and longer than the big kids.
My Dad’s Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler feed my masturbatory needs and Masters and Johnson taught me about my orgasms and then I worked to perfect them.
Thirdly - That led me to evolve my relationships.
My first sexual lover was thanks to the Girl Scouts. Circle jerks were more of a lateral, share the twin bed in the dark, routine. But it sure was effective.
Next came the messiness of boys. I wanted to fuck boys purely on the basis of science. Didn’t you?
I remember laying there not impressed with the particular motion of the ocean, if you know what I mean? But I was quite interested in scooping some of the white glue stuff and putting it under a microscope to see if I could see the little critters trying to crawl into me. And you know that’s so gross!
They were alive and coming after me, like some kind of Amazonian killer ants. I was scurrred ya’ll. But I was still horny.
So when the pill came in the 70’s that began our era of sexual play. I know I took lovers and shed them like used Kleenex. But I got mine ya’ll.
But after about a 50 or 75, okay 100, I got bored and wanted more than the swimming masses of putrid sperm dying inside of me. I didn’t want my pussy to be a dead zone. I wanted a brain, and a heart to go with all the fun. Instead I got distracted with a trip down fundamental land with a charismatic Christian conversion, 12 years of celibacy, four years as a missionary and two engagements I had to try out my fiances, and once I did, I knew I couldn’t make that commitment. They had not evolved sexually well at all.
Next, I sought an evolution of Identity
With the labels of race, and religion, I learned about sexual preference. But as I was struggling with being a black woman in this country and making the lowest wages per capita in this country; and being told I had to work twice as hard to be given half the chance. But the GLBT community began to proclaim identity and not just accept the labels given to us or inherited.
And the media helped. Some of you may remember in 1973 when Mark Segal, a Gay Liberation Front activist interrupted the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite. And because of that one brilliant act, the majority of Americans learned that there were gays in America.
Finally, that leads me to thinking about the Evolution of our community
Unfortunately the Het Kinksters haven’t had our Mark Segal moment. And the Internet for most of us has been our source for kink information.
But we need our Stonewall. Because if a dungeon gets closed, many of us can hide our toys and go back underground. And unless the spotlight is on us, many of us cannot risk, for so many reasons, I wouldn’t dare judge, moving into that spotlight.
But there are evolutionary steps we all can take. Organizations like the
NCSF and the
Woodhull Freedom Foundation lobby for and work to protect, educate our leaders so we don’t loose our children, our jobs, or our security.
So tomorrow after we come off our kink high for the weekend, we can take steps to move us further down our evolutionary path. And as Americans practice our rights to “the pursuit of happiness”.
Gentle Kinkster, I ask you to write one more check. Or better yet go online and support the
NCSF or
Woodhull. Invest in ourselves, our community, our past, present and future.
Papers
