One Sash to Rule Them All

i didn't "grow up" in the Leather scene-- i went from 0-60 in under 7 seconds so to speak. My first IML was 2002, and by 2004 i was an International Titleholder. i'm seven months in to my title year and my head is still spinning from everything that i get to see and do because if it... The TRAVEL! The GLAMOUR! The RED CARPET! (just kidding on that one...i'm watching the Oscars) Friday night in Cleveland we ate from a sandwich buffet table that had a human centerpiece... him all wrapped up in a leather body bag.

At my first IML, i saw everywhere... Titleholders-- men and women striding proudly around the leathermarket in their Title Vests decorated with chrome studs and black, red, and blue leather. i'd seen Drummer magazine once back in 1994-- i had two friends who were leathermen--and on the cover was Mr. Drummer 1994 (i don't remember who it was). i didn't get it. was it a beauty contest? was it a fashion show? did the contest actually just involve criteria that couldn't be shown on the cover if the magazine? and then that was it for eight years...

Granted, i didn't live in a vacuum for those eight years--my first bondage party was also in 1994 where i was blindfolded, chained to a beam above my head, and spanked by an ex- to the point where i couldn't sit down for three days... all on stage in front of over 100 people.... but the Goth/fetish scene of Milwaukee, Wisconsin just doesn't have a lot of contact with the leather title scene...

Every event i go to, i learn more and more about this elaborate title system that i am strangely a part of. but for another five months, i get to fly around the country with a chrome studded leather sash in my carry on-bag, i get to speak on stage in front of people i would have never otherwise met, and with my Title Vest on i get to stride through the leathermarket at IML where i'm sure some goth chick is going to look at me and think "what IS all of this Titleholder business?"

Pretty Young Thing

i'm not here to make comment on Michael Jackson's innocence or guilt; that's for the court to determine... but if nothing else, he has made bad choices with whom to spend his time for someone in such a high profile...

But i will say that this society has nearly sanctioned his bad choices. Just pick up a copy of a magazine from my youth such as "Teen Beat" or "Tiger" or anything else similar that encourages our youngsters to lust after their elders... i remember in my day lusting after the ever-so-dreamy Adam Ant and John Taylor of Duran Duran... these men were both WELL over a decade my senior while i was in high school (and therefore VERY illegal) but no one thinks twice about a highschool teeny-bopper wanting to throw themselves at such hotties... until, of course, it actually HAPPENS... and then of course was my first crush, Lynda Carter, when i was only five years old. Of course, at five years old i didn't understand why thinking of her naked made me fell "funny", but i KNEW that i wanted to be near her the next time that she WAS naked...

is it normal for youth to lust after "elders"? Of course. they have power, authority, money...later curfues....

maybe before we pass too harsh a judgement on Michael, we should take a look at the mixed messages that we are sending our underage kids, which seems to be "lust but don't touch, unless their promises to be a large settlement."

Jedem das Seine

i was just watching a program on PBS about the Auschwitz and the Holocaust, and they touched on Holocaust Revisionists... You know, the people who feel that they have scientific/historical proof that the Holocaust never happened.

To these people, the Holocaust was a hoax-- a Jerry Bruckheimer-sized Hollywood publicity stunt to create sympathy for the Jews...

But the irony is the attitude that Revisionists have about Jews and the Holocaust... These people are essentially saying "Of COURSE the Holocaust didn't happen; but HOT DAMN we wish it HAD!" The "Final Solution" was a jewel in the crown of the Nazis--revisionists hate Jews as much as the Nazis who ran the death camps-- you'd think that these "revisionists" would be giving an historical high-five to the Nazis by describing in livid and lurid detail the "glorious" horrors orchestrated by the SS.

But in the meantime, maybe the Revisionists should take a nice, soothing Zyklon-B "de-lousing solution" shower and then warm their feet in the crematoria... or maybe they should just have their skin made into lampshades-- kind of like the lamps made of human bone and skin that i saw at Buchenwald.