|
|
|
|
|
| |
The scene may have moved to the Internet, but much stays the same
By Gil Kaan
“It’s dead!” is the state of the leather community according to Durk Dehner, the current director of The Tom of Finland Foundation.
But dead, he goes on to say, might not be quite the right word.
He explains: “The leather community is alive in America, but not in the same form. Leather bars as we know are dead. I grew up in the generation where the bar, in context, was the social stomping ground. The bars were definitely part of the whole wheel. In the last 10 years, they have died. Many leather bars can’t make it.”
Leather bars were where eager leather boys would go to find a daddy to get the proper training. With each bar, there was a sense of history passed down from master to slave or daddy to boy. The unifying factor of the leather community was, as Dehner says, “we were the ones who were shunned.”
Today, look on the Internet and you’ll find leather sites in abundance. In our high-tech, computerized world, many guys make their booty connections via bondage chat rooms or SM websites. Losing out, indeed, are the neighborhood leather bars that have to offer non-leather nights to get the bills paid.
According to Dehner, even San Francisco, which he calls the leather capital in America, can’t support a seven-day leather theme. “The Loading Dock is busy only on Saturday nights and the Eagle Tavern is absolutely taboo except for Sunday afternoons.” (As of March 13, The Loading Dock closed its doors.)
Dehner goes on: “Kids who are in their 20s and 30s, they have a different information source. They are not tapped into the same way, with no loyalty or family ties to the gay community or its history. We used to be able to depend on that. The |
|
leather daddies are dying off and the boys have nobody to put them into training.”
Forty years ago, Tom Mathie, former treasurer of Avatar of Los Angeles, would go to the bars, both leather and vanilla, to make his conquests. “Today, so many people make their connection via the Internet.”
Is it better?
“You think people lie in bars?” Mathie answers with a laugh. “They lie even more on the Internet!”
Alive & Kicking
Now, ask Martin Wass, co-owner of the Ambiente Inn/Black Palm resorts in the Palm Springs, Calif. area, and he will give you the opposite take, saying there’s a thriving un-cyber life for leather and fetish. A former homo, er, home association manager, Wass saw the opportunity to change the Charlene, a straight motel, into a fantasyland. He turned half the property into The Ambiente (Spanish slang for gay). It’s billed as a leatherman’s haven away from home. The property is divvied up into exotic destinations, based on the continents (i.e. Africa, South America, Asia, etc.), while the Black Palm suites have individual themes of fetish and kink, rubber, medical exam, dungeon, and uniform, amongst others.
The resort guests arrive in an assortment of vehicles, Mercedes to Hyundais, mostly clad in non-conspicuous everyday clothing. But within minutes of settling in their respective suites, the everyday drag comes off, and the uniform of their inner self goes on: leather boots, chaps, military garb and shades, rubber jocks and tanks, and more. Or less.
Wass says it’s a diverse crowd. Men from all walks of life check in with varying levels of interest in the leather scene.
“A lot of guys have fantasies that they may have been afraid to explore,” observes Wass. “Some guys are into BDSM, but not all. Some like the gear with no pain involved. Some are excited by fetish scenes, like electricity or armpit aromatherapy, which can be incredibly erotic and sensual.”
People in the leather community echo Wass’ comments on diversity. It includes the young and the old, the smooth, sculpted bodies and the hairy chubs.
Mathie says he’s seen the movement toward acceptance and inclusion.
“In the mid-‘60s, leather was much more structured,” he says. He recalls how some men, himself included, were ostracized by their leather peers for not declaring and sticking to a sexual position preference.
“Forty or 50 years ago, that was totally unacceptable,” he says of being versatile. “The leather community has evolved, being much more tolerant and less underground now.”
Part of not being underground is the leather community’s fundraising activities for such causes as AIDS charities and political activism. For example, The Barracks, a leather/Levi/fetish bar in Palm Springs, reports it oversees more than 60 charity fundraisers annually.
Leather: Many things to many people
The leather community has always been associated with SM, something Dehner finds to be the most common misconception.
“They do crossover a lot,” he says. “But some people don’t want anything to do with the other, and vice versa.”
Danny Bozarth, a customer service |
“Today, look on
the Internet and you’ll find leather sites in abundance. In our high-tech, computerized world, many guys make their booty connections via bondage chat rooms or S&M websites.”
|
manager who wears a suit and tie by day, loves to get home and change into his leather chaps, vest and boots.
“Leather to me is more of a look and an attitude,” he says. “I know guys who identify themselves as leathermen, but they are not into SM or BD. I was at a dinner at the Tom of Finland Foundation and one of the board members told me a real turn-on for him is romance. It’s not what you’d expected to hear from a guy in full leather.”
Mark Lager, Mr. C-Men Leather 2004, is attracted to leather for “the feel of leather, the touch, the masculinity, the sense of confidence.”
For Wass, “Leather represents the exterior image of some of my fetishes. Leather is not an all-encompassing lifestyle for me. I enjoy uniforms, rubber, boots, nylon, nudity, etc, and other masculine attire. Different clothing is an expression of what is going on inside, and what I am looking for at that time, from an erotic and non-erotic standpoint.”
Mathie says he loves leather but is not one to dress the part 24/7. He makes a distinction between someone who wears leather for the look and feel and someone into BDSM.
“Someone trained in the pleasures of BDSM will know the infinitesimal difference between pleasure and pain,” he says, “and know how to apply sensitivity.” That knowledge, he says, goes beyond simply what one wears.
Control issues
Wass says his biggest leather turn-on is the exchange of power and control, two words that pop up frequently with any description of leather life, with or without BDSM.
“SM is a scene where one person is in control of another,” explains Bozarth. “One is dominant and the other is submissive. BD is similar. One person is always in control.
“I like being in control with someone who is more submissive, and occasionally, I have given up control to a rough daddy type, but only one I trust.”
Bozarth continues. “It’s all about the chemistry between us. Both scenes can be a big turn-on because you are in a mutual situation where whatever you are doing is pleasing your partner and vice versa.”
Lager agrees. “You have to have trust in the person you’re with.”
As a good leatherman, Lager says he abides by and promotes the leather community credo: Safe, sane and consensual.
Being an I.T. manager during the day puts Lager in a control position. Involvement in the BD scene lets him opt for being in less control during his leisure times. He submits to such activities as being bound, flogged, having his nipples clamped and having candle wax dripped on his chest.
|
|
One of Dehner’s introductions into the world of control came at age 14 by way of his older brother caging him in a turkey pen.
“My brother and I had a SM relationship. He tied me up and left me hanging upside down while the turkeys pecked at me.”
At an earlier age, 11, is when Dehner feels he realized he liked being controlled by a classic leather icon: The biker.
“I would go down to the Harley dealer,” he recalls. “I’d get the guys cokes, polish their bikes, fucking smell them.”
For whatever the reasons people are attracted to leather, SM and BD, and for whatever those terms mean to them, there will always be outlets for them to explore and to experience whatever it is they desire.
Dehner, though, gets nostalgic at times over the current community climate.
He comments, “Let it go back to the way it was in the ‘50s - secretive, sexy, and something to make you have an erection over.”
|
 |
By Gil Kaan
What eager leather puppy hasn’t been introduced to the hot, leather-clad, big-pec, big-dick uber-man as drawn by Tom of Finland?
Tom of Finland, whose real name was Touko Laaksonen, first shared his versatile talents with his Finnish community at the ripe young age of five – drawing comic strips and playing the piano. His meticulous piano playing later led adult Laaksonen into the midst of Helsinki’s post-war bohemian set. His drawings made him a much sought-after freelance artist in the advertising and fashion design industries well into his 50s.
The genesis of what we know as Tom’s men, his favorite named Kake, came from the blackouts of World War II. In 1939, Laaksonen enrolled in a Helsinki art school and secretly lusted after the sexy city types he was previously unfamiliar with – construction workers, sailors, policemen and, especially, the uniformed German soldiers in their highly arousing, to him, jackboots. Too inhibited to approach any of his objects of desire in broad daylight, the blackouts of WWII afforded Laaksonen the chance to have uninhibited sex with the men of his dreams.
Some of Laaksonen’s early artistic influences in the 1940s included artist George Quaintance. While Quaintance
|
Leather
Internet
Today, it is easy to find out everything you need or want to know (and probably more) about the leather scene or to connect with others of a like mind. A quick Google search produces sites such as:
leatherarchives.org
sanfranciscoleather.com
leatherpride.nl/links.htm
leatherweb.com
gayamerica.com/leather.htm
gmsma.org/(Gay Male S/M Activists)
gearfetish.com
Numerous leather hook-up sites also exist. In addition to the mega sites aol and gay.com, where you can search for your kinky desires among the general profiles, there are also more specific sites such as:
gayleathermen.com
yourcollar.com
leatherm4m.net
hotboots.com
mastersandslaves.com
So, happy clicking while you’re looking for your next good licking. |
Images this page courtesy of the Tom of Finland Foundation |
|
would depict his Latin lover in classical, more romantic, tentative homosexual settings, Laaksonen drew his men unashamed and proudly enjoying their man-to-man sex. Tempered by his Finnish background, Laaksonen viewed sex as a basic primal function, uncomplicated and fundamental, much like having a meal or a bowel movement.
Tom Nicoll, head of Scott Studios (the British equivalent to the Athletic Model Guild in physique photos) persuaded Laaksonen to buy his first leather jacket in the summer of 1957. That year, Bob Mizer, publisher of AMG’s Physique Pictorial, published two of Laaksonen’s drawings titled “Men of the Forests of Finland” and re-named Laaksonen as “Tom of Finland.” The name stuck.
It wasn’t until 1973 that interest in Tom of Finland was creating enough money for Laaksonen to quit his day job in advertising.
Through a circle of friends, including Etienne (a.k.a. Dom Orejudos, an in-house artist for Mars out of Chicago and, later on, for Jim French’s post-Colt Target Studios out of New York) and San Francisco’s Feywey Studios owner Robert Opal (infamous for his streaking the Academy Awards), Laaksonen met Durk Dehner, a Canadian-American who would be most influential in preserving the Tom of Finland brand.
Dehner first connected with Laaksonen through a fan letter. Laaksonen answered it and after a year of correspondence, they met face-to-face in 1977 at Laaksonen’s first exhibition in California.
Dehner, with inherent street smarts, was doing rather well selling advertising for The Advocate when the men met. He suggested Laaksonen set up a presence in the United States. In 1979, Dehner took 1000 1978 Tom of Finland calendars, cropped the pictures and turned them into a hot-selling print portfolio. This led to the formation of The Tom of Finland Company.
In 1984, the two men established “their baby,” The Tom of Finland Foundation. Its original purpose was that of preserving Tom of Finland’s vast catalogue of homoerotic art. The Foundation’s first self-published book, a Tom of Finland retrospective, sold 40,000. In 1988, they expanded their purpose statement to include preserving not only Laaksonen’s art, but also the art of other established or emerging erotic artists.
Since Laaksonen’s death from an emphysema-induced stroke in November 1991, Denher has held the reins of both the company and the foundation. He is looking for a permanent exhibit space in Los Angeles for the Foundation’s hundreds of erotic art pieces. More information on the foundation and examples of the art can be accessed at tomoffinlandfoundation.org
Denher says of his mentor: “If Tom were here today, his message would be to stay young at heart. Tom would also tell both men and women that when they are in the heat of sexual arousal and they look at that special guy, his cock looks as big and delicious as any Tom ever drew himself.” |
 |
| |
|
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
|
|
|
 |
