So said Uncle Ben to Peter Parker.
As I have grown older as a leatherman, I have found that my erotic power has increased rather than diminished. I am now a Daddy. I get attention from men half my age – and sometimes younger. As best my feeble old brain can recall, in my twenties, part of my attraction towards older leathermen was their maturity and worldliness: they had been tested by life and had come through with the knowledge that only experience can give. In my twenties and even in my thirties, I felt myself to be adrift in uncharted seas. Many older men I encountered seemed to have solved some great riddle of existence, giving them equanimity with reversals of fortune I could not muster. It was like they had a superpower…
Now that I am fifty-eight—during the AIDS Crisis I did not think I would live to see thirty—I can feel this same power growing within me, and I sense in my younger admirers that this is part of what attracts them to me.
And with great power comes great responsibility.
I have come to believe that we, as older leathermen, bear a burden of responsibility towards younger leathermen. The challenges they face—the economic insecurity, the soullessness and anomie of the internet, the existential emptiness when simulacra has replaced authenticity—are different from those we faced. And we do not want to fall into the trap of playing Polonius or yammering at them to “make their beds” as Jordan Peterson does. When asked, when invited, only then should we hold them in our arms and lend them our strength.
What strength do we have to offer?
First and foremost, we owe to our younger brothers the great gift that our elders gave to us. These young men are seeking a way of understanding themselves, a way to explore deeply all the erotic possibilities open to men who open themselves to each other,
In 1988, when I was twenty-three years old, I answered a personal ad with the headline “MASTER SEEKS slaves”—answered by writing out a response, putting it in an envelope, putting a stamp on it, and dropping it in a mailbox—and ended up spending a night that changed my life in a basement dungeon. In our brief phone conversation making the arrangements, the Master in question tentatively told me that he was in his seventies and asked if this would be cause for me backing out. It was not.
With the intervening experience, I see in retrospect that he went easy on me. For a while, I was securely bound and gagged and watched grainy videos of BDSM (I think one of the Straight To Hell offerings). He tied me arms akimbo, feet spread wide and suspended a half gallon steel bucket from my ball sack, then tossed nuts, bolts, and short lengths of pipe into the swinging bucket. All this blew my mind; it was everything I wanted and everything I feared. And it was wonderful.
Doing the math, this man was born before the First World War. The cages, the bondage frames, the floggers, and leather restraints in his dungeon were all handmade, and very likely by his own hands.
That magical and transcendent night showed me the infinite possibilities open to two men with hard dicks. And, that night shaped my understanding of how I see myself as a leatherman: I am the heir to a tradition that has endured for generations. Whether I know it or not, the path I tread has been followed by thousands of men before me. They are my brothers; I am their brother. Were we to meet in a leather bar outside of time on some astral plane, I would recognize myself in them and they would recognize themselves in me.
Furthermore, simply by virtue of the fact that we have lived several decades longer than have they, there is wisdom we can impart to our younger brothers. They need to know, really know, that they are worthy of love. They do not need to earn love, they do not need to conform themselves to anyone’s expectations to receive love, as they are, they are worthy of love. And it must be impressed on them what a serious business life is. The work a man does to put a roof over his head and food on his table is something that calls for the best effort you are capable of and whether it is recognized by anyone but the man himself, few things bring more satisfaction than a job well done. And finally, again and again in world mythology we learn that on your journey to become a hero, at some point you end up in Hell. Although you will descend to Hades alone, your brothers will be waiting to bind your wounds and help get you on your feet again when you return to the daylight world.