PS035 - Community Memory and a Thin Veil

Sep 28

Written By

Episode: https://shows.acast.com/660e243b2f834f0017de9181/episodes/660e2440acbcaf00174d993d

Though Halloween is a month and a half away, Lee just decorated for the season. It’s time to pause this time of year to reflect on the history of the kink community through the lens of those who have passed away, and our community history. From AIDS to accidents to time that has elapsed, we remember those who have gone before, clearing the way for folks to dress up in sexy dominatrix costumes during this holiday season. With sweet and sad stories alike, he dares you to take up the challenge of not forgetting where the current kink communities came from.

[music intro]
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Lee:
Hello, fellow adventurers of sexuality and spirit, and welcome to Erotic Awakening with Lee Harrington.

I realized today as I was prepping for this podcast that I'm actually on the 35th episode of my podcast since I started regularly appearing on Erotic Awakening with my own series.

It's wild to think that I have been doing this project for that long, but I don't know.

It's actually really exciting and really neat.

I've actually been moving into this new adventure and excitement, and I just wanted to share a little bit of it before I move on to today's podcast.

I'm getting ready and gearing up right now for going into the full, real publishing world.

You're going to be seeing in the next month or so a Kickstarter go live for the publication of my new book, More Shibari You Can Use.

So keep an ear peeled for that, because as people who know who bought Shibari You Can Use, it came out in 2006, and it's time for a revamp.

We've shot all of the images.

I've laid out all of the new version of book one.

We're finishing the layout on book two.

They're both going to be coming out in full color.

And unlike the first book, which was Black And White and Print On Demand, it's time to move on.

And I say all that because I've realized that, and I mentioned this a little bit in a recent blog entry, that I really want to focus more on my writing, my media interaction stuff, when it includes my audiobooks, my podcasts like this, blogging, and focusing into the next chapter of where my work is going to go, because, as you know, I've been—for people who've been following me for a while, I've been moving more and more into this concept of erotic authenticity for all kinds of people, not just those exploring kinky sex, BDSM, bondage, polyamory, swinging, sex magic, sex working, spirit involvement in our adventures and our interactions and our connectivity with one another, but into the connectivity of everyone, because I really honestly believe that if we become more authentic people in the bedroom, we're gonna become more And I think that we will become more authentic people in the entirety of our lives, which really excites me to be able to branch more into that direction and open up this message into more homes and hearts and bedrooms, laundry rooms, that little bit of nookie in a car, a deep and heartfelt conversation, curled up in front of a fireplace.

And part of that fireplace adventure for me is finding new hearth and new home.

And so I'm actually in the middle of relocating to Alaska of all places for love, for delight, for hearth and home, for having my own den haven away from the world, which is actually me going into my own world, into my own next chapter of love and delight and adventure and hearth and authenticity of where my next steps are.

And part of that involved last night, I was with my sweetie and we were decorating because holiday season is fast approaching.

And I don't know about you, but I love this season.

And by season, I don't mean Kwanzaa and Yule and Hanukkah and Christmas, a Santa Claus that has been reappropriated and re-envisioned by the Coca-Cola Company from St.

Nicholas, who, if we look at up in the Netherlands, was the embodiment of St.

Nicholas.

But more than that had Zwart Petey as their assistant in the world at large.

Now, if you don't know about Zwart Petey, Zwart Petey was a black man because this was pre-appropriateness, as it were.

Zwart Petey was a black man, and by black, I mean pitch black, like ebony black man, who would follow around St.

Nicholas.

St.

Nicholas would put oranges in the clogs of good children and good people who had been good the whole year around, while Zwart Petey would go around pinching the bums of lascivious young ladies and taking away children who had been bad and naughty, and taking those children and selling them off to the Spanish and the Catholics at large to be used as slaves.

Good times, huh?

St.

Nick, if you ever want to read up on it, I'll post in my entry notes for this episode, a fascinating book I read a while back called When Santa Was A Shaman, I believe is the name of the book.

So I'm not talking about all of that holiday season that people obsess over and has turned into this capitalist experience where we are expected to consume dollars in the name of a corporate vision, where we are demanded by culture to, at least in America, that we have to go out and buy a present for every single person, which is not happening in my household this year.

Not happening.

Are we still going to be doing Christmas?

Absolutely.

Because for me, that's a, again, cultural experience.

That was part of my family growing up.

That Christmas morning, you wake up and there is this Christmas stocking for every person.

But I'm not going to buy into the piece of every single person has to have this dollar amount spent because it's just too much stress.

And I'd rather be that person who gives presents throughout the entirety of the year.

I remember being in China and going to Xi'an, where it's Xi'an, depending on my accent is crap when it comes to Chinese, which is where the terracotta warriors are.

And I was there and there was this woman selling these little stuffed cats that she had homemade.

And I bought every single one.

I bought one for every single one of my sweeties, people that I was seeing at the time.

And I got back and I gave one to every person.

They were like, but I hadn't gotten a gift for you.

And to me, it's not about that.

It's to say, with gift giving, that I thought of you.

You were in my heart.

You were in my mind.

I thought of you.

It's sending a postcard when you're gone.

It's a text message for no apparent reason to a friend saying, Hey, I saw this thing.

I saw this bundle of flowers and I took a photo of it and I sent it to you.

Because you matter.

And the holiday that I am cherishing right now because we decorated is Samhain, is Halloween, is Dia de los Muertos, is All Souls Night, is All Saints Day.

Because we remember.

We remember not just those who are living, those who are still saved in our phone books, but also those who are still saved in the phone books because they're not around.

Samhain is a holiday for remembering those who have passed already.

When we cut jack-o-lanterns, it is the faces that were once skulls, that were once the faces of those who are departed, that we remember when we sit at their graves and share a meal with them, that this is Dia del Muertos, that this is sugar skulls, skulls of those who have passed, that we can sit and have a meal with those who have gone before.

So when is considered, if we look at Halloween night itself, hallowed night, all souls night, if we look at that night itself, it is considered the thinnest veil point, that the dead can come over and whisper to us, and we can sit down and pray and remember and delight and share a raucous party with the living remembering with our masks that we are disguising ourselves so that those who have gone before that we don't want to have remembering us don't recognize us, that we are shadow, that we are dancing into the veil where a thousand different spirits can dance alongside us, that we are dancing, that we are dancing.

And we deserve to dance, and it's really hilarious to me because nowadays the number of people who dress up as dominatrixes, the number of men who have this one night as an excuse to put on a set of women's panties and dress up like a woman, the number of women who get to empower these archetypes, the number of men or women who go off and become naughty police officers, the high number of sales for skimpy little outfits that play on a little bit of naughtiness with furry handcuffs.

It's this night that the day-to-day, quote, vanilla population, the world population at large gets to put on their fetish delight and say, oh, tonight I'm going to be a little risqué.

And that outfit gets folded up and put in a suitcase underneath the bed, and that when nobody else is talking about it, two months from now, six months from now in the bedroom with their lover, that costume's coming out again, that, quote, Halloween costume as an excuse to get a little bit raucous in the bedroom as well.

Because you don't have to be part of some sort of sexuality community to get your authentic kinky self on.

That little bit of ripple in caramel through your vanilla ice cream, or that little bit of rocky road because you don't have to go all chocolate chocolate chunks to be able to be a little bit adventurous.

And Halloween is a chance to do all of those things for a lot of us in modern culture.

But it's also about crossing the veil.

It is about remembering our dead because in BDSM and leather culture, we have lost so many of our tribe.

In 1981, the gay plague started.

Now, in 1982, the name that was going around was Grid.

Now, people might know AIDS, but they don't necessarily know the term grid, which was gay-related immune deficiency disorder.

In Southern California and up into San Francisco, people started getting sick.

It started out as the flu.

And then there were lesions, lesions on the body.

And then there was the wasting away.

And then it was the friends getting sick.

And then it was people dying.

A friend of mine who lives in Florida, and when she was living in Chicago, told me about the fact that she used to hold the hands of her kinky brothers and sisters, but mostly brothers in the men's community, that she knew, who were just falling.

Just falling.

And she sat there at their sides in hospital beds and home hospice, and she stopped counting the number of hands she held at 300.

Because the leather men and gay men in general were going.

They didn't know it was because of unprotected sex.

They didn't know in communities beyond sexual interactions that it was because of sharing needles.

That at the time, the number of STDs that could kill you were so few, because we'd had penicillin and sulfa, right?

We'd had antibiotics introduced to the market that stopped syphilis from rotting off our noses before we died.

People forget that syphilis and gonorrhea were things that could have your body rot.

The people didn't remember anymore that this was a tally.

And right now, there are 35 million people living worldwide with AIDS.

And that tally was of 2009, folks.

The number is much higher.

And at that time, in 2009, we'd had 30 million deaths tallied worldwide, but it began with grid, and it began with gay men specifically as well.

I shouldn't say specifically, but amongst BDSM population, we need to remember that we lost, I'd say, depending on who you talk to, 80, 90 percent of the population of the Leathermen of that generation.

They're gone.

And so when people talk about, oh, it's Old Guard, we are sometimes forgetting that it is mystified because the numbers are so small.

Clio Dubois, in an essay, she's one of the women who lived through that population and was playing with those gay men because people go, oh, the gay men at the time never played with women.

Well, let's talk about Cynthia, right?

Let's talk about those women we did lose.

But, you know, she wrote an essay of some of the men that were being lost at that time period and that there were morning rituals that were needed.

And so they did ball dances with hooks and needles sewn into their skin attached to lemons and bells.

The weight upon the body swaying back and forth, back and forth, ecstatic dances that tripped out into the afternoon relating the names, relating the names, the names of those we lost, the names of those that danced out beyond the veil.

And as we enter here into Samhain, into Halloween, I invite you all on the day of the dead to remember those we've lost in our community.

And I'm not just talking about in the 80s and 90s, and the men from the 60s and 70s.

And if we go back to the late 1890s, to the cults of fetishists, to the cults of the glove, to the ladies who led their salons that were the cults of the heel, men on their knees worshipping at their mistress's feet.

If we look back to Venus in Furs, let us remember Seder von Massach and his political diatribes before they were considered Masochism, which ruined his political career.

Let us look back to those times, to the sexual adventurers that came before.

Let us think of the dominatrixes who were before they considered themselves dominatrixes, ladies of the dominant persuasion, ladies who were there to take you through your desires for debasement.

Let us remember these ladies of the night.

Let us remember those sexual adventurers on the other side kneeling, kneeling, kneeling before these altars of delight.

Let us remember those who have come before.

Let us put out their pictures.

Let us remember as we come out nowadays as perverts, because September 28th has been declared a National Kink Coming Out Day.

Or perhaps just a Kink Coming Out Day, which is interesting because there have been other Kink Coming Out Days, which I will include in the notes.

I want us to actually maybe consider putting out an altar to those who made it easier for us.

Because for those of us who are saying, Oh, it's 50 Shades, you know, it's a little bit of spicy.

I like it in the bedroom.

If we had not had sexual explorers and adventurers who came before us, if we had not had leather men in slings, if we had not had cruising with Al Pacino, this conversation would not have happened.

We wouldn't have been able to have a 50 Shades of Gray in the same way, because we had men in back alleyways.

And you know what?

We are forgetting nowadays with our cleaned up and polished up international Mr.

Leathers, we are forgetting with these political movements, we are forgetting that this is about fucking.

We are forgetting about the fact that kinky sex is about kinky sex, folks.

Let's remember, let's remember.

And so I invite you on Dia de los Muertos, I am inviting you on Halloween.

I am inviting you on the night when the veil is thin, when you are having the courage to wear your collar out in public.

Because it's Halloween, right?

You can dress up a little bit naughty.

I invite you to put out a photo perhaps on your blog that says, I remember those who came before.

Find one person who passed in your own life.

Find one person who passed back in the 60s and 70s and in the 80s, perhaps from AIDS or from some other source.

Remember someone who came before.

Find some lady of the night from the 1700s.

All right?

Find Alola Montez who might inspire you to put out one entry or to spur one conversation.

Spur a conversation about the past before coming out yourself a month later.

Let's go ahead and remember in our communities.

That's what I encourage us to do.

For myself, I am also struck that this is the time of year that I didn't, it didn't occur to me until about two weeks ago when folks were asking me, oh, are you going to FetFest?

Are you going to FetFest?

That I realized a year, over a year, has passed since I am willing passed away.

For folks who don't know, I am, was, is, I don't know how to label him when people pass away sometimes, was a friend of mine.

You can read about him in the notes if you're interested.

He was an amazing man.

And like all amazing people, they have complexities and whatnot.

But yeah, I encourage you to read about him.

But over a year has passed because I remember that, that he, we had his wake at FetFest last year.

There were two wakes, three, if you count the one at Shabari Khan.

But at the second one that we did, his family came out to the Crucible.

At least two of his brothers did.

And the Crucible is a dungeon space in Washington, DC., which he'd been a regular participant at.

And Frazier, who runs that space, was kind enough to let us use it for the memorial, for the wake.

And Lokai and I officiated it and told stories and then invited other people to do so.

And his two brothers came out along with their female partners.

And it was really interesting because he had been in the closet.

He was convinced that his family would never accept him and never understand if he was out about all the things that he was into.

But his brothers told me that they knew.

They knew and said, You know what?

He'll eventually tell us.

We know that he's into all of this stuff.

We don't know the details.

We don't need to, but we know.

But we figured he'd just tell us in time when he was ready.

And he never did because he was convinced that they wouldn't appreciate, wouldn't accept, might even disown him.

That was his fear.

And I'm not saying that your family, if you're not out, is going to accept you because they might not, and they might disown you, and they might say horrible things, and you never know, really, right?

But it really struck me.

It really struck me.

And that was August 24, 2012, that he passed away.

It's been over a year.

A full turning of the seasons has come around, and the rain is falling.

And here in Alaska, it's getting colder.

The nights are getting longer, as they are everywhere.

But in Alaska, it's more dramatic, shall we say.

But the last of the flowers are clinging on.

The last of the strawberries are still coming in.

Fresh raspberries can still be picked at the side of the road.

There's still hope.

Just like our own lives have so much hope, right?

But I'm also going to remember this Samhain.

I'm going to remember Philip the Fool, who if we're talking about people who have complex experiences around different people who think of that individual, Philip's one of them.

But Philip was also a friend of mine, a bisexual polypervert who had a smile a mile wide, and who also was known for ancient Kung Fool Proverbs, some of which he made up, some of which were things quoted from Whoopi Goldberg, right?

Things he would sign his entries on, on places like Usenet or later on FetLife, who was one of the more prolific writers, especially back on Usenet, wrote extensively on a lot of different stuff, had a lot of opinions.

People had a lot of opinions on him.

And a couple of my favorite Kung Fool Proverbs include, don't get married for six weeks after taking ecstasy.

You know what?

I can really appreciate that.

I can really appreciate that.

Just don't do it.

I would say that also includes after having a really profound scene, because altered states of consciousness can blow our minds open, can take us places, and we might think, oh my god, only this person can do this.

We might be stunned.

We might go within six weeks, oh my god, I have to move cross country.

I have to be with this person.

They are the one.

And they might be.

But breathe.

Think about it.

The next one that I have on my notes here is the presence of counterfeits indicates the existence of real gold, except in the case of free email porno pics.

I agree with that one there.

If he calls himself a master, he ain't.

Now that's one worthy of argument.

Or if you meet the Buddha on the road, hit him in the face with a pie.

You know what?

That's actually really applicable for me this week.

Because I just had sent to me a YouTube video by Mick Lovebite, who's an absolute hoot.

He and his partner run lovebite.com, which is full of bondage images from their sexual adventures over the years.

They are a stunning couple.

And I'm not just saying that because they're beautiful and they're funny, and I have known them for many years, and I was part of a shoot with them for Playboy TV and all of that kind of stuff.

I'm saying that because he's obsessed with her.

He's a photophiliac, or maybe they both are, where he documents her and documents her and their love of rope and their love of body modification and her submission to him.

And he documents her.

And as somebody who's doing that right now obsessively with someone I'm obsessed with, I can empathize with it, like I really do.

And I did before, but I really get it right now.

Anyway, Mick sent me a video because he's a big Burning Man person, like I used to be, and I'm considering going back next year.

We'll see what happens.

I haven't gone since 2001, I think, when I went, oh my god, it's 28,000 people.

It's too big.

We'll see how I do with 60,000.

Anyway, they went to Burning Man this year, and Mick sent me this video of people wearing clown noses, people wearing clown noses wandering around the burn at this one sculpture, and it's really interesting.

They sent it to me because I used to do clown porn.

Now, you shouldn't apparently talk about these things.

It's a dirty, dirty little secret.

I used to be Sherbert the Clown.

I'll post a link to one photo that I have of me from that time, pre-transition, if folks are interested.

But they sent it to me because it used to be a big thing of mine.

I still find it hilarious.

I don't currently have a clown persona.

I'm not really that called to it.

It's fun.

I'm a big fan of the concept of it, but it's not where I'm playing right now.

Because you know what?

Life takes twists and turns.

Life has different chapters to it.

And I appreciate Mick sending it to me.

But I keep thinking about not just this quote, if you meet the Buddha on the road and hit him in the face with a pie.

I'm thinking about those who pass away and their complex and different sides.

Because I recently got to watch the 60 Minutes episode about Michael Jackson and how he is, after his death, one of the top money makers of all times as a performance artist, having sold something like 50 million record sales, I think is what they said.

That's from memory, so don't quote me on it.

Look it up yourself.

It was really fascinating to me how, after his death, the things about him that are dark, the things about Michael Jackson that are not excusable, the pure creepy factor and the things that we need to not forget, like his interactions with children, it's being glossed over, because people want to flash back to the 1980s version of Michael Jackson.

People want to think the thriller video, Here We Are, Thriller Video, Back To Samhain.

People want to think of the thriller video.

I think that that's who Michael Jackson was.

That Michael Jackson was a cute little black kid.

That Michael Jackson was neither black nor white.

That Michael Jackson was an artistic genius.

And he was.

He and his team were artistic geniuses.

The music was great.

Eight number one songs in one album?

That's insane.

Katy Perry is not even there yet, right?

We keep pushing for it.

But he or Elvis that's had a top ten single every decade, including after his death, like this is intense, folks, right?

But we're forgetting.

We need to remember those who have passed on, but we need to remember them as complex creatures.

I need to say to my own great grandmother, I love you, Kay Smith.

I love you and everything you gave me.

I love the fact that when I was eight years old, you sat up with pride.

You sat up and said, oh, when I was young, I was such an adventurer that I modeled for Charles Gayette.

Charles Gayette was a fetish photographer.

And I don't know for sure that I've seen a photo of my grandmother in a metal bikini, but gosh, it looked like her great grandmother, that is.

I want to say thank you to Kay Smith for giving me the inspiration to paint, to write.

I want to thank Kay Smith for working on giant looms and creating paintings and pottery.

I want to thank Kay Smith for creating a line that I am from.

But I cannot remember Kay as only a one-sided person.

I cannot remember her like Michael Jackson to only have been an artistic, beautiful person.

I cannot remember her only as being in her 80s and 90s sitting in her home in Arizona, smiling, handed me a stack of Post-It notes saying, hey, kid, go ahead and put them on whatever you want, because I know I'm dying in the next 10 years, and I don't want to have this stuff go to estate sales.

I want my family to have it, anyone who wants it.

But I need to remember her also as the woman who, when she got divorced from my grandfather, took my great-grandfather, took my own grandfather and his sister and dropped them off at an orphanage, rather than having my grandfather keep them.

To be able to head off on her own direction, I need to remember her as that woman too.

Because our family members who have passed on, our friends who have passed on are complex creatures too.

We need to also remember when we think of things that have passed, we need to remember that they are also beautiful.

It is profoundly important to me, and I would like to pass on this seed, even to those who aren't ready to hear these words, that whether it is a person who passes away or the end of a chapter in our lives, that even if they are dark and horrible, or things where it's like, you know what, that just really didn't work out, that it's important on those things where we say things like, I can't believe I wasted the last 20 years of my life with that person, that somewhere, especially if we chose that person, let's set aside stories of kidnappers and those darknesses.

And I don't mean kidnappers, you know what I'm talking about.

Men who, having been arrested and given a jail, sent to hang themselves only a month later, that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about relationships that we chose.

Relationships that we chose, that somewhere in there we chose them for a reason.

Their smile and laughter, the inspiration that we got, that there was something good there.

That when I look at my former husband, I need to remember his laughter and the way he held me.

I need to remember the amazing times we had gaming.

It is so important for me to remember how he inspired me to my greatness.

I need to remember all the beauty that we shared.

I need to remember that on Yule, at the winter solstice, that at the last rays of the sun, he went out with a candle and caught them on that candle, and he stayed up all night, keeping that flame lit through the darkest of nights, so that the sun came back, and he'd be able to hold that candle outside to inspire the sun to rise once more.

I need to remember him as that.

We need to remember the greatness as well as the dark, because we are all complex creatures.

And on Samhain, as we are dressing to our nines, as we are laughing and delighting and going to play parties, as we are delighting, it's important to remember those who have passed on in all of their shadow, in all of their greatness.

And I challenge every one of us to have one conversation, to put up one photo, to do five minutes of research, and to find one person who inspires us, to go to someone who's been around in the kink community for 30 years, 40, 50, and say, Hey, what was it, would you be open to me asking a question, or five, about the people that you remember who are around anymore, something you learned from them, instead of the history books, because the kink community is not just written books about how we do things.

It's not just tomes of history, like the Leatherman's Handbook, Leather Folk.

It's not just snapshots in time of the books that get written down, because remember that history is written by those who are left, those who want to write, or in the case of our history textbooks for elementary school kids, it is written by the victors most often, and those who choose to edit, those who have the power to edit.

But go to someone who's still alive, especially someone who you respect, and say, hey, more than that, someone who maybe you don't even know yet, because it's just that lady who sits there in that wheelchair and doesn't play anymore.

And why is she showing up to play parties anyway?

I mean, really, play parties are for playing, right?

Maybe she's coming.

Because this is her home, and she deserves to have a home.

Our play parties are not only for the young, are not only for the, quote, pretty young things in their teens and 20s, they are for the stunning, aging creatures who we love and respect and honor.

When we say things like, who would want to play with him?

He has warts.

You know what?

You're not appreciating the full beauty of the creature before you.

I dare you to ask someone, would you be open to sharing a story I want to learn?

I want to know about those who came before me.

Or, I'm really into whips.

Who was someone that you knew who was really into whips?

What kind of stuff did they like to do?

Who were they?

Who's steps am I walking in?

Whose footsteps made it easier for me?

Who made the most amazing whips back in 1983?

Who made the most amazing whips in 1982?

The year that Grid was named.

I dare you.

And that is your homework, folks.

I know, I know, you shouldn't have to listen to a podcast.

And even if you're not kinky, even if you're not kinky, maybe that's all the more reason.

Find someone that you don't know about.

Ask a question.

Do one Google search.

Type in 1900 BDSM.

Type in Seder Von Massock.

Right?

I'll put in some other wet names in the notes.

Find out who's out there.

Remember our history because we are entering the time of veils that are thin.

Honor those who have gone before because they deserve it and we deserve it because this is ours.

Our memory.

And we don't have to keep on repeating it every single time.

We don't have to make it up from scratch every single time.

Come on, folks.

This is ours.

This is ours.

And I know Halloween isn't until the end of October.

I know that.

But it's September, and the coming out day is coming soon.

And we deserve this.

And as I am sitting here drinking from my witch and famous coffee cup, because I'm that nerdy, I'm thinking about it.

And I want to pass it on to you, too.

And so with that, my friends, my lovelies, I wish you all the best, because as we remember our history, we get to dance forward into our own authentic futures.

And that is so beautiful, that's so inspiring, you know?

It's pretty awesome.

So with that, fellow adventurers of sexuality and spirit, my name is Lee Harrington.

You can find my work at passionandsoul.com, or using that username, all over the internet.

I would like you to have fun.

Explore yourselves.

Journey into your bliss, and have a fantastic day.

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