*Leathermen have lost another of our bars—when do we start fighting back?*
I.
I have come to believe that some (many?) (most?) (all?) gay men wrestle with feelings of shame about being gay, and by “being gay” I mean our sexual desires directed at other men.
I do not say this disparagingly. To be human is to be burdened in childhood with notions that must be expiated if we are to find something in adult life that has the shape of happiness. If your mother was cruel, constantly telling you that you were a failure, a loser, stupid, weak, good-for-nothing, you have your work set out for you: You must come to see yourself as good, capable, decent, and worthy of love. If you do not, your life will be a misery and you will make the lives of anyone who gets close to you a misery as you take up the very weapons your mother used against you.
When puberty hit, it was in the context of a society, and possibly a family, where being gay was something to be ashamed of. Until Lawrence v. Texas was decided by the United States Supreme Court, consenting adult men having sex was against the law in half the states in the country. Indeed, in Bowers v. Hardwick, the case that preceded Lawrence that Lawrence repudiated, Warren Burger, the Chief Justice, filed a concurring opinion wherein he argued that of course there were laws against sodomy and there have always been laws against sodomy because the natural response of any person and any society to homosexual sex was disgust.
During puberty, you discover a fact about yourself: You like guys.
There is a misconception that the counter to this is representation of gay men in movies and on television. I say this is a misperception because that pubescent discovery isn’t that you are especially witty and have a keen fashion sense, are fun at parties, and possess a certain jolly joie de vivre. That discovery was that what made your dick hard was other men and their dicks.
Right there in the word “homosexual” is the word “sex.” It’s about sex. And society and your parents and your religious community and the state and the law and your teachers and your scoutmaster and your peers are right there to tell you that those desires are shameful.
Countering that shame was what drove Gay Liberation. Gay Liberation proclaimed that there is nothing wrong with being gay—nothing wrong with men touching and caressing and pinching and biting and licking and fucking each other.
But Gay Liberation did not solve the problem of shame once and for all. Shame abides. Shame is with us still. Shame makes us desperate for validation from the very people who instilled that shame in us. Very likely, this desperation for validation is why we see so many gay men dragging their straight girlfriends into gay bars. “See? It’s okay! Really! See how fun we are? See that guy over there? He’s really hot, right? And he’s gay, like me! So I must be okay…please tell me I’m okay…”
Shame is also—and this cuts to the bone—what drives many gay men into BDSM. When I was first on Recon (when Recon was World Leathermen) my profile emphasized bondage. Then and now I like to tie men up. I was beset by invitations to do just that from a lot of men who wanted me to tie them up and then “have my way” with them. It dawned on me after only a few encounters what was driving that. What these men wanted was for me to take away their agency, to make the sex something that was happening to them rather than something they were engaging in themselves and only then could they enjoy it. Shame can inspire masochism also. Why the punishment? Why the humiliation and degradation? Shame, of course.
Shame is also why we acquiesce. Shame is why we go so far as to take the side of the people telling us that we are shameful. This acquiescence takes the form of state liquor boards tell us that “sexual activity is prohibited where alcoholic beverages are served” and we agree to that, not even noticing that this is almost never enforced against straight people having sex in bathroom stalls in nightclubs. And the arbitrariness of this edict is lost on us. If your state liquor board were to decree that “music, whether performed or recorded, is prohibited where alcoholic beverages are served,” eyebrows would be raised. What’s wrong with music? People enjoy music. If you are in a bar and you don’t like the music you can leave and go to another bar. Listening to music is an activity common to all of humanity.
But no. We don’t question the prohibition on sex between consenting adults behind doors closed to anyone under the age of twenty-one. We go along with it. And when our bars are shut down we blame the bar: What did they think would happen if they allowed that to go on?
But here is the great irony…how do we escape our prisons of shame?
The way out lies not by educating the straights or psychoanalysis or forcing a confession of acceptance from our parents. All of these are superficial and shame festers underneath.
II.
“This was the only place where I could go and feel sexy.”
These were the words spoken to me by a man leaving the Barracks, a great leather bar in Cathedral City, California, on the last night before the bar was shut down for good.
The man who said these words was probably in his sixties. He was what used to be called “portly,” medium height, bald, wearing glasses, a little creaky in the knees when he walked.
Very likely, the Barracks for him had been a place where he could come on a Sunday afternoon. He could remove his T-shirt and tuck it in the back of his shorts. Or maybe avail himself of the free clothes check and walk around drinking his Bud Lite out of a plastic cup wearing only a jockstrap. Maybe he would add a leather bar vest or a harness to accentuate his meaty, hairy chest and his prodigious beer gut. And he would stand among gay men of all ages and body types—skinny and hairless young men, men well into their seventies or eighties whose bodies are losing the decades-long fight against gravity, men who devote themselves to making their bodies as muscular as they possibly can and men who couldn’t care less. All of these men, their bodies, golden and glistening in the eternal Palm Springs sunlight, a great gay Valhalla.
It is a powerful thing to stand nearly naked in public in broad daylight. In the great and now largely forgotten film about the work and life of the artist Tom of Finland, Daddy and the Muscle Academy, one man interviewed points out that what made Tom’s work so affecting was that only rarely were his cops and military officers and bikers and leathermen having fun with their enormous dicks out in the darkness. Most of Tom’s drawings depicted the action in broad daylight. The men depicted were free of shame completely. At the Barracks on a Sunday afternoon, when you take off your T-shirt, you are also casting off your shame. Without shame, you are showing your nakedness, your imperfect, nearly naked body.
As the afternoon wore on, some men at the Barracks’ Sunday beer bust would group up and head out the door to find a restaurant, putting their clothes back on as they waited for the Uber to arrive. But some men would stay. Some men were feeling the heady effects not just of the beer they had been drinking all afternoon but something else: they had spent the afternoon feeling sexy. Some men had noticed another man, maybe a hot muscle cub, giving a smile and a nod whenever their eyes met.
The sun sinks behind the mountain. Darkness gathers. Men drift towards the back of the patio. The distance between their bodies diminishes. Bodies brush up against one another and when they do, however slightly, there is an electricity, synapses fire, blood flows to the groin.
There you are, among those men at the back of the patio. It is not just evening now, it’s night. You feel a finger running up your hairy ass crack. Could it be that hot muscle cub you noticed noticing you earlier has sought you out and found you in the tight brace of male bodies at the back of the patio??
It does not matter. It is a man’s finger. It feels good to feel a man probing you in that intimate part. The man has found your butthole. You take a deep breath and let it out slowly. You pull the fabric of the jockstrap you are wearing to one side and out flops your dick. Maybe it’s a big dick and you hear appreciative noises from men who saw the unveiling. Maybe it’s a little dick. Maybe it’s not so long but fat as a beer can. Doesn’t matter. It’s your dick. Years ago, when you were still a boy, you discovered that unlike your fingers and toes, your dick seemed to have a mind of its own. The yellow school bus would whine to a stop, the doors would open, That Older Boy would climb the steps and board the bus, a sullen expression on his face, and for reasons you did not understand your dick would come alive. Years later, a man puts your dick in his mouth and Holy Shit Oh My God What The Fuck that felt amazing. After that no matter what path you took there was only one destination and your dick was leading the way.
The man withdraws his finger. Your ears pick up a slight slurping sound. The finger is back, slick now with spit. A little pressure and he’s in. One finger becomes two and together they push a little deeper. You moan. The unseen man behind you growls in your ear, “You like that, buddy?”
“Yes, Sir,” you answer.
The fingers are withdrawn. Now maybe more spit, or maybe the man behind you had the forethought to bring along some lube. Now it’s the head of his dick probing between your ass cheeks. The head finds your butthole. You relax, arch your back slightly, you lean back a little and there is that glorious little pop of penetration. The man thrusts his dick in slowly, millimeter by millimeter you feel him entering you. One of the men around you plants a bottle of poppers under your nose. You nod and his thumb uncovers the opening. You inhale sharply and your head spins and for a second your eyes see only lavender starbursts. The man behind you drives the point home. All the way home. And then he pulls back, then in he comes again. Out, in, out, in. It hurts as your muscles accommodate themselves to this invasion, but it’s a good hurt, like a brutal massage.
The man is full-on fucking you now. You! Old, hairy, bald, out of shape you! Your hard dick is bobbing away. Some guy is down on his knees in front of you. His mouth finds your dick and damn! There it is! You’re getting your dick sucked! Some other men are pinching your nipples. Hard. If you weren’t getting fucked and getting your dick sucked you would be yelping in pain, but them working your nips feels great and you are grateful.
The man fucking you…his thrusts double in ferocity, his vocalizations get louder. You hear one of the men around you say, “Fuck yeah! Breed him!” Yeah, breed me. Put your DNA deep up in me. Let me carry it home with me. Let me sleep soundly and with a smile on my face all night long with your seed in me. The man sucking your dick is getting very excited. Ah! Because you’re shooting your load! The pig on his knees in front of you is draining you dry. This puts the man fucking you over the edge. He thrusts in all the way and unloads, you feel each spurt, each throb of his dick.
Time stops. All of you step into eternity. You all have always been and you will forever be there together, on the patio of the Barracks. In psychology it is called “the oceanic feeling”: You are the universe, the universe is you, all things flow, continually coming into existence and passing out of existence, all life is connected, difference and individuality are but an illusion, all beings are part of a great, indissoluble, beautiful One.
And then you giggle.
“Fuck man, that was great.”
The man who sucked your dick struggles to his feet. You wrap your arms around him. Now that you see his face, he’s older than you took him for. The man who fucked you embraces both of you. You turn your head and see he is easily half your age. “Thanks for that, Daddy,” he says.
“Thank you,” you respond.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank-yous all around. Can I buy you a beer? No, I’m good, thanks. The three of you work your way through the bodies of the other men, respecting especially those who are doing what you just did. You do want another beer though.
Sweaty, grinning, glowing, you find the bartender. He smiles as he places the beer you ordered in front of you. Your post-fuck joy is contagious.
Back out on the patio, you find a seat on the bench up against the fence. Nothing tastes as good as the first sip of a nice cold beer. A few feet away two men, apparently good friends, are smoking cigars. One man is unburdening himself to the other, he’s going through a hard time right now. Bad news from his doctor, his job is not going well. You say a silent prayer for your struggling brother whose name you do not know and whom you have never met. You hope things get better for him.
You see a few faint stars in the sky. A slight breeze tickles the fur on your chest. Another sip of beer.
Have you ever in your life felt so happy as you do now? Have you ever felt more at home in the world? Have you ever before felt this deep sense of peace and completion?
Whatever vestigial shame you carried with you when you walked into the Barracks a few hours earlier, that’s gone now.
That is how we defeat the shame that otherwise would eat away at us like cancer. That is the way it has always been among gay men. I heal you and you heal me, we all heal each other.
When we, as Andrew Marvell put it in his poem To His Coy Mistress, “roll all our strength and all our sweetness up into one ball, and tear our pleasures with rough strife through the iron gates of life,” we make again the life saving discovery: This is Good. Gay is Good. One man loving another is Good. You are Good.
III.
The last owner of the Barracks, Scott Murchison, hit upon a needed service that he could offer large corporations and they paid him whatever he asked. When he felt he had made enough money, he put that aside and thought about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. It boiled down to two alternatives: either he would found a church for gay men and lesbians, a faith community where we could come together in community, support each other in facing life’s challenges, and gather to celebrate the significant events in our lives, or he would buy a leather bar. A personal crisis of faith took the first alternative off the table (Scott is now an avowed atheist) and so he pursued the second alternative.
So much to unpack in that, right?
Leather bars are and always have been our sacred spaces. They are distinct from other gay bars where we could gather to dance and drink and socialize. Indeed, in large cities with a significant gay population, if there were several gay bars they would all be located near each other. But miles away, perhaps in an industrial area of town deserted after dark, you would find the leather bar.
Going to the leather bar was a pilgrimage of sorts. You would carefully select what you would take with you on the journey: boots, chaps, cock ring, jockstrap, bar vest, bottle of poppers, some lube, handcuffs to hang from your belt, cigars, cutter, torch, the appropriate colored handkerchief in the appropriate back pocket to match your inclinations for the night.
You would solemnly don these vestments and when complete, take a look at yourself in the mirror. Looking back was the real you, not the mask you wore in the workaday world.
The bar itself was indeed sacred space. Conversations were kept to low tones. The uninitiated scornfully joke that S&M refers to “standing and modeling” because they do not understand the rituals.
First there is the brief eye contact, a glance conveying longing and desire. Then the feigned indifference on the part of the dominant man who takes a few thoughtful draws on his cigar. The submissive man subtly, shyly indicates his interest: he stands with his hands crossed behind his back, head bowed, eyes focused on the boots of the man who has caught his attention.
As Gene Wilder said in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, “The tension is unbearable. I hope it lasts.”
And then, with some slight signal, the magic begins. Boots are licked, asses are whooped, handcuffs are applied, dicks are sucked, nipples are pinched, more dicks are sucked. The action is improvised and exciting, surprises at every development. Even though both men may have played these parts many times before—even with each other—each time it feels like a new world is being discovered.
And by these rituals, in these sacred spaces, we are healed. Not just healed, we become more fully ourselves. The complete trust placed on the shoulders of a Master invokes in him a striving to be trustworthy and deserving of that honor, not just in “the scene” but in all aspects of his life. And for the submissive man…well, he becomes godlike. He can alter his conscious mind to allow an arm up his ass. He can feel the whip on his back—like being struck by lightning—and show the world what he can endure. He can guzzle piss or swallow shit, turning degradation into superhuman capability. He can make the man he decides is worthy of his submission feel like a king, like the most fortunate man who has ever lived.
Like any important ritual, the effect extends beyond the two men involved directly. Social psychologists once studied a religious ritual that had been going on for hundreds of years in a small town in Spain. Annually, the young men of the town would show their devotion to the Blessed Virgin by walking barefoot across hot coals. The blood of these young men taking part was drawn and analyzed before and after. The young men were in ecstasy afterwards, their brains were stewed in dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and norepinephrine. But that was not the complete picture. People in the town who witnessed the ritual were found to have those same neurochemicals elevated also. Ritual done right is a communal experience.
This is the “why” of Leather.
In this the third decade of the twenty-first century, we live lives of ease and security that our ancestors even a few generations ago would not comprehend. But we are men, hunters and warriors, and this comfort and safety destroys us. First there is a restlessness and we try to numb ourselves with alcohol, narcotics, the acquisition of valueless things, the endless distractions offered by the screens on the devices in our pockets. Unchecked, we deafen our ears to the calls of destiny and adjust to lives without meaning, going to our graves having never lived.
Or not. For as gay men, we are richly blessed by the gods. Our love has long been declared off limits. And so for us, giving into that longing is transcendent. We create ourselves originally and authentically.
And Leather offers us limitless opportunities to explore. The only barricades we encounter are those of our own fear. As we trample these barricades underfoot we discover that we are becoming part of a great fraternity of other gay men who have also dared to gird up their loins and head into the unknown. This brotherhood transcends time. When we read the words of our brothers in old books—Urban Aboriginals by Geoff Mains, Flogging by Joseph Bean, The Real Thing by William Carney, The Slave Journals by Thom Magister, slavecraft by “a grateful slave” as told to Guy Baldwin—we are reading about ourselves.
This brotherhood may transcend time but it does not transcend space. We can only gather together in those sacred spaces we call leather bars.
And this is why leathermen here in Palm Springs, and in many other places across the country, are hit hard by the closure of our leather bars. We are feeling a loss, some describing it as similar to the loss of a dear friend. But it is something deeper: we are losing a part of ourselves.
We have to fight. The battle for the Barracks may have been lost, as have the battles for the DC Eagle, the Ramrod, the Fault Line, and many others, but we have not yet lost the war.
The objective is clear: our leather bars are ours. As long as no minors are served alcohol and no patron is over-served, the State’s policing of what consenting adult men do behind closed doors is without justification and can only be chalked up to homophobia.
We must always remember that in spite of their claimed “ally-ship,” coming to our Pride events and tossing dollars at drag queens, straights view us with contempt. They always will see us as beneath them. During the years of the AIDS Crisis this was laid bare. Preachers declared that “homosexuals have violated the laws of Nature and Nature will avenge” and our moms and dads and ministers and senators and representatives in Congress thought to themselves, “Sounds about right.”
If we do not fight for our bars, not only is our history lost but also our future. Young gay men whose erotic fantasies take the shape of masculine domination and submission will have nowhere to go to find men who will not only give them the support to explore these desires but will let them know that they are loved and cherished.
We older men with stories of the great experiences we have had in leather bars, should we give up the fight, sigh and plan on spending our next vacation in Berlin or Antwerp, must recognize retreat as self-serving and ultimately treacherous.
Let the closing of the Barracks be a call to arms. Fight we must.
Author: Drew Kramer)
Photo Credit: Michael McFadden