As if the leather community didn’t have enough problems already… Our leather bars are disappearing (our one “leather bar” here in NY is best described as “leather friendly” – there is no time when you’re turned away for wearing white pants or sandals), our organizations are shutting their doors (e.g. “the World’s largest gay S/M organization” – GMSMA here in NY – is now gone), there’s rampant racism in the community, etc. So what does the International Mr. Leather (IML) organization do? It decides to go on the warpath against a big portion of the people in its own community to reduce the numbers even further. Their target is barebackers. Anyone associated with barebacking is now barred from being a vendor in IML’s leather mart. Here’s the text of their letter to vendors…

Dear Vendors:

On behalf of International Mr. Leather, Inc., I would like to thank you for your past support and in particular for your participation as a vendor inour annual Leather Market. We are writing you today to inform you of a policy change affecting next year (2010) and all future markets.

Though we are now three decades into the HIV/AIDS epidemic, no cure has been found. The CDC and local health officials inform us that new infections are on the rise. And, while we have had some success developing medications that might make infection more manageable, that accomplishment comes at a price. Not having experienced the deaths – the loss of loved ones — which preceded these medications, we have an entire generation who may not fully appreciate or comprehend the severity of the situation.

Too many in our community believe HIV/AIDS is curable or manageable. Too few understand that HIV/AIDS infections dominate life. We believe that it is our duty to inform and educate. Several years ago when “Meth” was the scourge of our community, IML drew a line in the sand and raised awareness and used all our influence to try and stop this addictive madness. As is the case with HIV/AIDS, we believe it is our further obligation to do everything in our power to prevent future infections.

To that end, after considerable discussion, the Executive Committee of International Mr. Leather has decided that it will no longer allow participation in the IML Leather Market by any entity which promotes barebacking or distributes/sells any merchandise tending to promote or advocate barebacking. This restriction will also apply to distribution of gifts, post cards or any other information via our facilities.

This policy takes effect immediately.

Sincerely,

Chuck Renslow, President
International Mr. Leather

(Emphasis is mine.) Click here to see an image of the actual letter.

For years they’ve been profiting from barebacking, yet somehow it’s suddently a problem. I haven’t heard any public apologies for the racist comments at their contest this year – apparently that doesn’t bother them. They can’t even bother with private apologies – the e-mail I sent them complaining about the racist comments was never answered. They don’t seem to mind racists in their midst, but apparently they just can’t stand that someone would CHOOSE to not use a rubber when fucking. It’s sorta insulting actually – they seem to think the people who go to IML don’t understand the risks – that they’re stupid and need to be protected from themselves.

And let me make something crystal clear – if they say it’s a health issue their either delusional or lying. These days smoking kills WAY more gay men than barebacking yet they’re completely supportive of the smoking fetish. I mean cigar smoking leather daddies are iconic in the leather community. How many of them will die horribly painful deaths because of their choice to smoke? If IML were serious about health issues they’d start there and ban all vendors that have anything to do with supporting smoking – that’s the activity that’s going to kill the most people in the leather community, not barebacking…

From what I can tell, this is a case of the “old guard” vs. the “new guard”. People my age and older, who dominate the leadership of IML, often don’t get that HIV/AIDS is a very different disease today than it was before ARVs came on the scene in 1996. Just because we had a horrible experience with HIV/AIDS they think no one has the right to fuck raw – ever…

The appeal of the leather community used to be that it was edgy. Minorities used to put up with the racism just to feed off the overall edginess of it all. For those of you who were around NY back in the ’90s Pork @ The LURE on Wednesday nights was an incredible experience – the East Village boys invaded and ran a leather bar and it was a wonderful mix. Today what edginess there is in the gay community is found in the bareback community. So the question is what’s the appeal of the leather community if it’s openly hostile to the leading edgy elements in the gay community? Why will people bother with leather? Why will they want to learn how to do BDSM properly? Leather will just become a fashion statement and BDSM will become marginalized as something only old queens do.

The reason why I care is because the leather community used to be the embodiment of a group that unapologetically demanded respect for who they were. They demanded tolerance for their sexually deviant consensual acts, but yet they’re unwilling to be tolerant of others’ sexually deviant  consensual acts. They’ve lost something, and it’s sad… In an era of everyone conforming to heterosexual norms (with gay marriage) we need a group that stands up for tolerance and respect of being different, being kinky, and being a deviant…

Let me just run down the vendors who are affected. Since most places that sell videos sell at least some bareback titles, that eliminates almost everyone who’s related to porn with the exception of production companies that only shoot condom porn. The other question is whether they consider pre-condom to be bareback. It is, and if they’re really being consistent they should not allow companies who continue to sell bareback videos under the title “pre-condom”. If they don’t treat pre-condom as what it is – bareback – then that just points out the craziness of their decision.

• Bijou Video (pre-condom)
• Dark Alley Media (recently started producing bareback titles)
• Dick Wadd Media
• Erotic Writers (will IML allow writing about bareback sex?)
• Factory Video / Gay Reality Porn
• Helix Studios
• Spunk Video
• Treasure Island Media

Those are just the ones I can pick out from their list… I think there might be others.

Needless to say, I’m not going to IML next year. I had already decided a while back to go to MAL instead…

If you would like to tell IML what you think of their decision, the e-mail address is info@imrl.com… But don’t expect a response…

Once again – playing with the new camera… This is Cyon Flare singing at the IML 2009 Pecs & Personality Contest. I’m not really sure what gender to call her – she’s sorta a drag queen, but hasn’t gone completely female… Either way, great voice and a good entertainer – it’s always good to see a drag queen who doesn’t lip sync (though I still love the ones who do…)

As with the last video, you can see the video above in HD on YouTube…

And like Jeffrey Payne, she ended her song with a call for inclusion – “All inclusive, not exclusive”… Hopefully that is what will happen at IML and things will change.

As far as camera work… You’ll see I mostly messed up on audio – the music was too loud and I didn’t turn down the inputs so there are times when the sound is pretty fucked up. Lesson learned.

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)…

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.

Load 2009-9

Yesterday I had to checkout by 11am, but didn’t have to leave the hotel until 2 or 2:30, so I relaxed in HotBttmTO’s room and we chatted about things. I had fucked 18 new holes I’d never fucked before (thanks in large part to the 9 guys at the blackout party the night before), I’d only given 3 loads. I’m usually just a one load a day sorta guy, so wasn’t at all disturbed by those numbers, but I did want to give one more load…

I was laying there on the bed doing some blogging, he was at the desk, on his computer hunting for more dick. We figured out that he will be going away from IML with nearly 60 loads (counting conservatively, so the one guy who blew up his ass 5 times in one night just gets counted as one load), and he probably had over 100 guys fuck him. Needless to say, that breaks records for him. At IML last year he was still neg and his big step was taking anonymous loads without asking the guys’ status. A year later to get fucked by 100 guys and get 60 loads says a lot about him. And for the record, his goal for the weekend was 40 loads…

I was laying there with my hard dick out and was surprised he didn’t come over and start giving me a blowjob or sit on it or something. At one point I was changing my location back to NYC on the hookup sites and editing my profiles when I read an e-mail from a hot little 18 y.o. Asian on Adam4Adam that wants me to fuck him. The kid is adorable. I showed the pics to HotBttmTO and then put the laptop down and moved his head down on my dick.

Maybe a minute later I guide him over to the bed as he’s unbuttoning his pants and letting them fall down. He lays face down on the bed and I get a little lube on my dick and shove in. He still has the 5 loads from the guy who fucked him the night before in him, though he wasn’t all that cummy…

The fuck was a lot like a pump-and-dump. Short and sweet and animalistic. He was a hole (a good one), and I was just using it to get off. It only took a few minutes to cum and then he got my last load of IML.

We went back to laying around and chatting, then he was off to the leather mart to meet up with other tops and presumably get fucked some more. I blogged a bit more and then left for the airport.

I had come up with an idea of a blackout party about a month before IML and posted it on BarebackRT. Requests for invites grew and grew and it was the IML party that had the most people wanting to come. Thing was, the more I thought about it, the more ambivalent I was about hosting it. Given that the room would be mostly dark I was worried people would steal things, or the room would get trashed. Then when I got to the hotel and saw I had a pretty small room, I knew it was impossible for me to host the party – there just wasn’t enough space.

In all fairness, the worry about people stealing things was completely misplaced. And I don’t think anyone would intentionally damage a room either. I was actually amazed how respectful and polite people were at sex parties.

So, I was relieved when someone volunteered to host the party. But then they canceled on me, but then two other guys volunteered. They had a pretty big room, so we were good…

As I was going up to the room for the party I ran into PigMaster (the owner of BarebackRT) wandering the halls wondering where the party was. He gets so many e-mails every day he didn’t see the one with the correct room number. So we went up together and got there maybe 15 minutes after it was schedule to start. There were already at least a dozen guys there and people were already fucking. The crowd was a good mix with the exception of an older creepy guy – not sure how I managed to approve him, but I must have.

I just pulled out my dick and left my clothes on. Other guys were stripping down. It was like a buffet of raw dick and ass – whatever you liked there was some of it there for you. There was a twink, some jocks, some bears, some muscle bears, some hot muscley older guys, some cubs… You get the picture.

PigMaster started off by just watching and getting a sense of the place. As he was starting to join in I happened to be fucking one of the hosts and Pig Master was in front of him. I whispered to the host that that was PigMaster and he blurted out “PigMaster?!?” and had a big smile on his face. It was sorta cute.

At first I had the curved barbell in my PA. With some of the guys I fucked the PA sorta hurt, but I couldn’t get the ball to unscrew, so I left it on and kept fucking. Finally I really wanted it off, so I went into the bathroom and used a washcloth to unscrew the ball and get it out.

I tried to keep count of how many guys I fucked. I didn’t stay there all that long – maybe 30 minutes, but in that time I think I fucked 8 or 9 different guys. You literally went from guy to guy and they’d just bend over and take your dick. It was a lot of fun.

Since I don’t do well sexually when the room is hot, I finally had to leave. I relieved one of the hosts of door duty and stood outside and let people in while chatting with this incredibly hot, muscular older guy (if only all older guys were hot like him)… Then the host came out to take a break from the heat in the room. As I was leaving the place was at capacity and the temperature in the room was stifling hot, but it was definitely a great party… 😉