During the Pecs & Personality contest at IML there was one answer I liked a lot better than all the others. It’s probably no coincidence that it was given by the guy who won IML this year – Jeffrey Payne, Mr. Texas Leather. I love the combination of thinking on his feet and humor that he shows in his answer, and the comment about diversity is extremely welcome given some of IML’s issues with diversity in general…

If you want to see it in HD, go to the video page on YouTube – the version I uploaded is true HD – 1080i.

This is actually the first clip I’ve created and published with our new camera – I’m not happy with what YouTube has done with the low-res version, but the quality of the HD version is about as good as it gets (except for my camera work)…

I haven’t been political for a while now, but saw these and thought they were funny…

As much as I want gay marriage I wasn’t all that upset by the Prop 8 ruling. I think if people in the middle of the road see that the discrimination is real they’ll care a bit more next time it’s in their power to vote or sign a petition.

And if you haven’t heard, the two lawyers who fought each other on Gore v. Bush (a Democrat and a Republican) are teaming up to take the Prop 8 fight into federal court. Their argument is that it’s fundamentally unconstitutional to create separate institutions for separate classes of people – in this case domestic partnerships for gay men and lesbians, and marriage for heterosexuals. And that marriage is a “fundamental right”. I’m somewhat surprised that they didn’t also mention how dangerous it is for a majority to be able to take away a right of a minority, deemed constitutional by the courts, via a popular vote. One of the purposes of the courts is to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. But that may factor into their arguments down the road – who knows…

Not surpringly most of the big gay rights groups are going ape shit over the lawsuit saying a negative precident could set us back years. I said pretty forcefully last year that I don’t agree with the hyper calculating approach to gay rights. I mean I get where they’re coming from and I know they have good intentions, but it just seems totally wrong to me to be polite and patient about discrimination. Call a bigot a bigot, be angry, challenge them…

I know there’s a certain percentage of you who are skeptical when I say I’m neg. But once again that is indeed the case. Verified again tonight when I went in for STD tests… While I haven’t been fucking much this year, there have been a few encounters that have been riskier than average that I haven’t fully discussed here on the blog. [I’m not talking about IML.] Not that I thought I was poz or anything, but this time I wasn’t quite as confident as usual.

Afterwards I washed down my STD meds with a pint of beer at Rawhide. There aren’t as many guys playing pool there as there were in the past and it’s not quite as easy to talk to people as it used to be. Weird how it’s changed. I was glad to see the bartender wasn’t mad at me after pissing on the guy in the bathroom last time. In fact he greeted me with a “glad to see your back”. And the best part of Rawhide this time was the “Raw Pride” sign haning near the door. 😉

It happened last year, it happened this year – brought something home from IML. But it’s not surprising… I mean I fucked about 19 different guys and got blowjobs from a few more, and some of those guys had been fucked over 100 times. They say when you have sex with someone you have sex with all the people they’ve had sex with. Just taking that conservatively – have sex with 20 guys who’ve been fucked by 50 guys and you’ve just had sex with 1,000 guys (all in a single weekend)… That’s pretty much IML… Put a few people with STDs into that mix and things can spread very quickly.

While being in a hotel with thousands of guys ready to fuck has it’s advantages, this would be the one disadvantage and the reason why it’s good we don’t live our lives this way 24/7/365.

So I’ve got an appointment to see a doctor at Callen-Lorde tomorrow evening. If I take the meds that night I should be all cleared up by Friday night when my boyfriend and I will probably be up in Montréal. But it means no fucking between now and then, unfortunately.

I’m home (finally), but a frustrating and funny thing happened at the airport. I’ll update this with pictures tomorrow, but they saw a big black spot on the xray and wanted to see inside my carry-on bag. It was chock full of sex toys and leather gear. The big black spot were big padlocks I took with me (pic below). But there were leather collars, restraints, floggers (wrapped in a towel that said BarebackRT CUM RAG), etc.

As soon as the guy pulled me over I said “I’m coming from and S/M conference. I apologize for what’s in the bag”. He was good about it though, he found the padlocks but then inspected the rest of the contents and came across a small billy club – maybe 8 or 9 inches in length (see pic below). He said he had to check to see if it would be considered a weapon. Turns out his boss had zero sense of humor and declared it a weapon. That meant the Chicago Police had to be called. When they got there the officer asking me questions didn’t know what S/M was – I had to explain it to him.

I’m sure they all thought I was a freak, but I just squared my shoulders, looked them in the face and answered their questions in a friendly manner. That got me some credit. Instead of escalating it, they realized I was pretty harmless. They still had to run a check on me and write up a report.

The funniest part was they were all handling the little billy club having no clue I stick it up guys butts. If they had known that, I think they would have dropped it like a hot potato. One of the officers asked another one, “what does he use that for?” and the other officer said “I don’t even want to know…” Indeed, he didn’t want to know. So there was a humorous aspect to it, though I couldn’t enjoy it too much given that they were watching my every move.

The guy who initially pulled me over was super nice about everything. I didn’t have a key to lock my carry on, so he went out of his way to find some tape to put around the bag. He even told me about a security check point that had no lines so I could get to my flight on-time. And United handled it perfectly as well. When I came back and said the TSA was making me check the bag they put me to the front of the line and didn’t charge me for the extra bag.

It was a huge hassle and rattled me a bit, but in hindsight it was pretty funny. It reminds me of when I went to Puerto Rico years ago with a sand-filled leather ball stretcher in my bag. The security guy pulled it out and studied it for several minutes and finally asked “what’s this for?” I said “you don’t want to know” and he just dropped it back into my bag and told me to have a nice day.

<rant>

I just sat through the IML (International Mr. Leather) contest and I was shocked and really pretty saddened… A few big issues popped out at me…

First, IML is fucking racist. A “judge emmeritus” was announcing the top 20 finalists and what did he say before announcing the 20th finalist? Something like “I hear there’s a movement in Asia and next year we’ll be having Mr. Eggroll Leather and Mr. Sushi Leather”. And the really sad part was most guys in the audience laughed along with it. A few of us booed him. There was no apology, no correction of his statement, everyone just went along with it. And the really scary thing was he travels around the nation judging leather contests, so he’s still VERY influential in the process of someone becoming IML.

Then during the final entertainment segment they had with the puppet Madame With An E (the one who used to be on Hollywood Squares), she made the comment about going to East India “where the people have the red dots on their head. What does that mean?… [long pause] Coffee’s Ready!!!” (laughter).

How in the hell do they manage to have two major racist comments in one program? It’s fucking shameful. And on top of everything else everyone kept talking about being “inclusive”, but it turns out “inclusive” means bringing people like the tennis shoe and sports kit fetishists in under the fetish umbrella. True, IML 30 (’08) was Latino, but there were shamefully few minorities as contestants, and of the 20 finalists the darkest person they had up there was a very well Americanized Arab.

On top of that they’re completely hypocritical on barebacking and HIV… For starters, IML makes money off bareback porn. In their leather mart they had Dick Wadd Fetish, Treasure Island Media, Spunk Video, Helix Studios, and LeatherMatch.com (an offshoot of BarebackRT) – and those are just the ones I can remember.

Then there’s all the bareback sex parties in the host hotel. I’d say more people are at IML for barebacking than are there for BDSM. IML is a bareback event… There was even a conversion party schedule in the hotel (though it fell through). I mean honestly, how many of the attendees get infected each year? I’d be surprised if it w

Oh, and best yet – the guy who won IML this year announced in his speech that he found out he was poz this year. While I can’t say for sure, I’d bet money he got HIV from being a willing bareback bottom – the numbers are on my side on that bet.

Yet IML’s founder, Chuck Renslow, gives this big long speech about how horrible barebacking is. It was noteworthy that no one applauded any of his comments, but at the end he had everyone stand up who had lost someone close to them to HIV. This is how he was trying to show support for his cause. I stood up ’cause I had lost a boyfriend to AIDS in ’95, but did he honestly think someone like rawTOP standing up in anyway supported what he was saying? His message was to support yet another “just say no” sorta campaign. It was so out of touch with reality it was sad (and irritating).

And lastly, they fail miserablably with bringing people into the leather community. They had a hotel full of guys into barebacking who know very little about what it means to be a leatherman, yet there was zero outreach to them. There were no educational seminars, no organized activities for guys who are leather curious. Most of that group think leather is a fashion statement. Guys would come to my room and I’d ask them if they wanted to get into bondage or flogging and they’d look at me like I was crazy – they just wanted vanilla fucking. Yet many of those same guys genuinely understand sexual submissiveness (and for the tops, sexual dominance). It’s easy to teach a bareback bottom about bondage or flogging or being a puppy – it’s an easy sell ’cause mentally they’re most of the way there already. And the concept that sex can be about power and control isn’t alien to barebackers either.

Let me put this bluntly. The “just say no” program Chuck Renslow told everyone to support isn’t going to do squat. What might have an impact is to reach out to barebackers and bring them into the leather community (much of the leather community are barebackers to start with), and then teach barebackers about caring for each other – which is one thing the leather community is good at (if you can get included in the first place).

</rant>

OK, that’s all the negative shit. On the positive side it was clear there’s a bit of a war going on in the leather / BDSM community. Many of the contestants speeeches were about the divide between “the old guard” and “the new guard” and quite a few others mentioned “inclusion” but almost no one defined that term. Put simply, the new guard is going to win through attrition. I hope they’ll be a bit smarter than the old guard. But honestly, with that many people laughing at racist comments and jokes I may hope, but I can’t say I’m hopeful.