BURGHERMUNCH

Volume 2, Issue 6

November 2000
 
 
 

The Burghermunch is a pansexual (all-inclusive), 18 years and older group in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, interested in pursuing s/m, dominance and submission, bondage and discipline, fetishes, and other interests in leathersex, and sharing knowledge of these areas as an outreach organization for those who are curious about these areas and/or wish to find a social outlet with like-minded individuals. About the Burghermunch The Burghermunch is currently held at the Elbow Room, 5477 Ellsworth Avenue in Shadyside at 7:00pm on the 1st Tuesday of every month. There is usually enough privacy to have frank discussions but not demos or play. Some people wear subtle fetish attire but others come in casual or work clothing. There are no dues or fees associated with the munch, although dinner is on your own and tax and tip is automatically added to the bill. Billing is on a per table basis. Workshops are held at the GLCC (Gay and Lesbian Community Center), 5808 Forward Avenue in Squirrel Hill; phone 422-0114. There is a $1 to $5 donation per person; suggested $3, of which $1 goes directly to the GLCC for giving us space. Volunteers are needed for future demos so if you have an area of interest please speak up. Note: Starting in March 2000 refreshments will be served at workshops.

Schedule November Nov. 7th - Munch @ The Elbow Room Nov. 18th - Demo: TBA December Dec. 5th - Munch @ The Elbow Room *No Demo Due to the Holidays* January 2001  Jan. 9th - Munch @ The Elbow Room Jan. 20th - Demo: Nipple Abrasion/Play with Tim and Wildfleurs February 2001 February 6th - Munch @Elbow Room February 18th - Demo: TBA

What is a Munch? A munch is an informal gathering of people interested in BDSM and similar topics. The first munch was organized in San Francisco several years ago. Munches now occur independently all over the world. They are generally organized via BDSM mailing lists and news groups on the Internet, but often expand by word of mouth. Most munches take place where food is available. Some are held in public places and discourage kinky dress or behavior; others are held in private space and allow fetish wear, play and demos. Munches are opportunities for people with interests in BDSM to socialize with one another in a low key, friendly atmosphere.

Webpages http://www.dfp.com/home.html Dressing for Pleasure is under new ownership and management and is offering a 10% discount to all Burghermunch attendees. Just mention this ad. http://www.erosenterpirses.com A diverse group of copywriters, graphic artists, printers and photographers geared to the needs of Gay, Lesbian, Bi & Trangenerdered businesses/organizations and those supportive of the communities.

http://www.ladyice.com/DLL/ Hand-made high quality and fairly priced leather goods!

Burghmunch Monthly Munches

Second Monday of every month from 7-9 p.m. in Monroeville. Next munch is on October 9th. For more information visit http://my.treeway.com/BurghMunch/ or email posession@freeze.com

South Hills Munch

At Ambroggi's Resturant at Donaldson's Crossroads on Rt. 19 near Canonsburg at 7 p.m. For more information, email Tantor at mtantor@usa.net Dress is casual and RSVP?s are appreciated but not necessary. There is a $2 fee for attending the munch.

Wheeling Munch

Wheeling, WV

 It was asked that information for this group be removed from this page.
 

The Future of Leather - By: Joseph Bean

------------------------------------------------------------

(LeatherMedia) - Delivered as the keynote address at the Great Lakes Leather Conference in Louisville, Kentucky. Joseph Bean is the director of the Leather Archives and Museum.

If you think of leather/SM/fetish as a way of being, as a way your life can be ordered and made sensible, you may find my message valuable. If, on the other hand, you see SM as just a way to get off, leather as mostly a way to be fashionable, and fetishes as the inexplicable kinks found among "crazies" you may save yourself the bother of listening to my ranting. Go, be safe, do something else, you miss anything by missing this speech.

I'm glad to see you didn't all dash from the room.

I want to start by talking about my favorite subject: Me. Relax. It's personal history, but I'll try to keep it interesting, or at least painless for you. People ask about my personal history all the time. Maybe while serving another purpose this speech will be a first installment towards telling my story so you will at least know who is speaking to you.

I was born in Humansville, Missouri, a very small crossroads in the Ozarks. So small, in fact, it didn't even have a significant crossroads. Besides, we lived on a farm, miles from Humansville. Anyway, even though I was born in 1947, because of where I was born, I got to experience the amazing world-transformation generally called The Turn of the Century or Fin de Siècle. In most of the world, that moment in history, the beginning of the 20th Century, generally took place at least 40 years before I was born, but the changes hadn't trickled down much to the hill folk of the Ozarks yet in 1947.

The miracle of gas lighting inside homes, for example, was surprising in my childhood. We had kerosene lamps and candles - electricity, indoor plumbing and gas cooking came to my family when we moved into town, meaning Bolivar, still in Polk County Missouri. But telephones took longer, and I didn't see a television until we moved to Kansas City in preparation for our Grapes-of-Wrath style westward trek in 1956: with 25 people and 6 cars, none of them less than 15 years old.

Then, bang! There were radios with dials instead of crystals and needles. There were televisions. There were streams of cars, not to mention trucks so big they could haul houses down the highway and you can imagine my reaction to highways. There were also people who looked and acted and sounded different. They didn't say "full of piss and vinegar" when they meant peppy, they never said "that boy ain't right" even when they knew it was true.. and they threw away the greens from their turnips and couldn't tell

a tasty poke weed from bitter ditch grass.

The point of this early-childhood confessional and I do have one is that I adjusted. Dragged from a Victorian infancy in which all babies and toddlers were in dresses and curls, through the terror of discovering I was a boy and I had to figure all that out, I was then suddenly thrust into a world that was half-a-century ahead of my family and I adjusted.

OK. More about me, but we're getting closer to the Future of Leather and to what I suspect is your favorite subject: You.

Before I was 20 - 17 years and 3 months to be exact - the world crumbled and, phoenix-like raised itself in a whole new form before my eyes. You've guessed it. It was sex, and for me, sex shot off like big guns with all three barrels fully loaded. This was genuine sex, not the child's play with penises I knew so well. It was also gay sex, male to male, my frightening and irresistible dreams come true. And, it was SM, the take me while I'm hot, do with me as you will, no-holds-barred, I'll do my best to explain the bruises later full-on SM.

And, not that this is on the same scale, but it was also dangerously public and extremely illegal. Wham! I was there: New world, new Joseph, thank you, SIR!

Soon, everything in my new world of gay SM sex seemed in order. Each of us knew our place: out of the way until called, silent until ordered to speak, available to be used or ignored by the men towering over our cowering forms.

Was this safe? I survived it. Was it sane? I'm still permitted to walk the streets. Was it consensual? Well, yes.

The only thing we feared more than being singled out by one of the men was NOT being noticed by them. Week after week, whenever I was invited, I was at the apartment where the whips and chains and the MEN would be. If you sit by the telephone for hours waiting for the invitation phone call, whatever you're waiting for, if you get it, is consensual.

Besides, when there were no get-togethers to go to in Los Angeles, I could always go to the docks at San Pedro or in San Francisco, as I often did, to have strangers (goaded as much as necessary) do the same things to me on the piers or in the backs of trucks. At least among the men in Los Angeles there was one safety valve. Nothing could destroy a man's reputation so completely or guarantee his exile from the group more certainly than having it said of him that "he won't take no for an answer." Never mind that no one ever gave me permission to say no. Never mind that I wouldn't have considered saying it. The fact remains that, in those years, the mid-60s to mid-70s, I felt safe because I heard of men disappearing simply because they wouldn't "take no for an answer."

Things change.

By 1975, bars and back-rooms and sex clubs and bathhouses were more common than the gatherings I had so eagerly waited to be invited to at the homes of older men with names like "The Captain" and "Ranger Leader."

I adjusted again.

In fact, I took to these new commercial venues like a duck to water, especially the ones with "bad" reputations, the ones about which it was whispered that "the wrong kind" go there. Before, we used no names, although most of us KNEW the names of the others around us. In the commercial setting, using no names was raised to the level of genuine anonymity. Safety and some version of sane behavior were pretty much guaranteed, in a sense, by the fact that there was a business owner worried about keeping his business license. And consensuality was easy. You open the cubicle door or close it. If you reject someone, he can go do the thing you didn't want with someone else around the next turn in the maze. No problem.

This is the beginning of the end, you know. Maybe you didn't notice then if you were there, but this was the first completely false step for SM in America.

This equation that included business owners and business

licenses, bottoms saying no and Tops moving like bees from

spot to spot till they got what they wanted instead of just

beating some sense into the nay-saying boy at hand well,

it was the turn that led into the unfortunate by-way we're

exploring now.

Over the next ten years, we got leather title contests

which were both good and bad, but all very much a part of

the path to today. Soon, the first rule of the SM world

I'd come out in was even being broken everywhere. "Don't

frighten the villagers," we were told, god knows how many

times. Suddenly, the SM men I knew were being confronted

by the leather-wearing SM men from the bars and bike

clubs, and these guys were wearing their leathers on the

streets, in the grocery stores, everywhere! I didn't know

how to take this. It was shocking enough to discover there

was supposed to be a connection between leather and SM, but

now this connection was somehow sweeping away the Big Rule.

Things change. Again, I adjusted.

I got myself some leathers which the men I respected most

said I had every right to wear. "If those fucking bike

freaks do, boy, you can too, but remember" and I promised,

I wouldn't frighten the villagers.

Just as the marvels of the Twentieth Century has been

evolving outside the Ozarks when I was born, the

LEATHER-SM world had been evolving as a universe next

door to my own yes-sir/anything-you-say-sir world since the

mid-50s, but I knew nothing of it. Where the men in my world

worked with only those they knew well, the new-to-me

leathermen PLAYED with anyone who'd agree to it. We had been

devoted to the brotherhood, "making in the scene," and had

done sessions; they were loners, doing scenes and giving

names to everything in sight. Bottom and Top, boy and slave,

Master and player were all new words to me, naming things I

barely recognized. "Toys" was the hard one or maybe "play"

was. Whatever, it was a new world that opened to me when I

slipped into chaps and tiptoed into a leather bar.

For as long as I could, I was with my Old Buddies whenever I

could be, but I found a place for myself in the leather-SM

world too. Here, I became a contributor to the changes

which, later and now, I would consider Big Mistakes.

In the 1980s there were at least two, maybe three genuinely

tectonic shifts. The first was a great expansion of

something I've already mentioned. People began to have

"parties" instead of sessions, musters or gatherings. More

and more people picked up the idea of calling whips and

restraints and paddles TOYS. And the names that had cropped

up here and their - especially boy as the name for male

bottoms - became pretty widely used.

I began to sense a discomfort here. To feel it might be

wrong to adjust. I really distrusted this evolving world

where the bottoms admitted out loud they wanted to hurt

and everyone thought of SM as FUN.

The next world-transmuting shift was the infamous advent of

gay cancer, GRID, AIDS, which was very much the property

and even the "fault" of SM men in the beginning, so said

the gay press and so the official safer-sex guidelines

seemed to imply as well. I absolutely didn't want to adjust

to this, but friends began dying, and I learned to live

with that in a way while fighting the whole thing in

whatever ways I could.

Then came the third revolutionary change in SM. It took a

while for us to give it a name. It even took a while to

notice what we were doing, and we WERE doing it. In time,

we called it pansexuality and inclusiveness, and watched

as it became the greatest of the 1980s earthquakes.

Language is only language. AIDS somehow became a human

problem instead of an SM problem, but the expanded

population was not just language and it really had its

epicenter at the heart of SM.

Things change. I adjusted. Hell, I didn't adjust. I dived

in. Maybe I was finally grieving for the lost SM world I

had loved, or maybe I was crazy, or maybe I was doing the

right thing. I honestly don't know any more.

Since I had already broken ranks, in a sense, by actually

teaching SM technique classes as early as 1978, I was

already able to see myself as something of an outsider,

although I had another SM connection I would not lose

until the end of the 80s in which I found a very

comforting touchstone.

Pansexuality and the coincident population explosion

didn't just mean doing SM with women and heterosexuals in

the room, it also meant classes and conferences on a major

scale and it involved ideas I had tried not to think

about. Things like legal rights had meant nothing when we

all accepted that being arrested from time to time was "just

the price of being different."

With pansexuality and AIDS and the language shifts came also

the questions about our SM predecessors and the history of

such institutions as chaps, the bike clubs and the leather

bar. They brought us the idea of the Old Guard, maybe

because the community's founders were dying (AIDS), maybe

because their language was disappearing (working, sessions,

making the scene), maybe because the new people of all

genders and sexualities who were coming in ever-

increasing numbers needed a way to trivialize their

forebears who would otherwise seem too great and be too

important and would have too much authority. But, the

naming of the Old Guard, was a giant step toward where we

are today.

This, my patient listeners, is where most of you come in.

You may have had experiences like mine in the 60s, 70s,

80s, or not. Most of you will recognize the next decade -

the 90s from experience.

And however alike or different your experience and mine

were before, we became entwined in the 90s, you and I. I

invented and edited magazines and wrote articles that some

of you read, always pushing you and pulling myself toward

today one way and another. I did art and illustration and

classes and demonstrations; editorials and speeches - all

of them committed to making the new, more free, more

open world of SM as accessible as possible. I apologize if

you see that as a mistake, but I remind you that you as

readers, event package buyers, art buyers and the rest made

choices and gave feedback that encouraged and directed me

and the others on my side of things. We were involved, you

and I, throughout the 90s, feeding and guiding each other.

And I have now come to believe we were very much on the

wrong.

I'm sorry. That's the most I can say. I'm sorry for the

part I played in confirming and creating an SM world where

newcomers are abused and under-socialized; where the spirit

of camaraderie is subordinated to the glee of party-time;

where the life of the human spirit is often no less crushed

in the dungeon than it is in the cubicle-farm office.

We're on a dead-end here. The problem is NOT the language,

although I'm old-fashioned enough to think it matters. The

problem is certainly not AIDS, although there is nothing I

want more than I want my dear friends and slaveboys back.

The problem is not pansexuality or the population

explosion, because there certainly and genuinely is strength

in unity so long as it is a unity with a broad embrace and

heart enough to countenance real diversity.

The problem is simpler. Maybe it is too simple really to be

noticed, but it is vitally important. What we have lost,

what we have to regain if we are to be anything more than a

flash in the Senate or a lightening bolt in the occasional

TV sit-coms is easily named, but not easily understood.

Before I go that last step, however, let me read to you

very briefly from William Carney:

In The Rose Exterminator, Carney has the character Symonds

walking down a street in San Francisco where he runs into

an old SM acquaintance. These are guys from the leather-SM

world. Symonds asks Faulkner if he still "makes the scene,"

meaning does he still do SM.

(Symonds narrates.) "... he almost smiled, shaking his

head in reply.

"It's not the same you know." There was neither sadness

nor scorn in his voice "Leather is IN, and everybody's

into it. It's not what it used to be."

I replied, "It probably never was."

"No," he said, "you know better than that."

His eyes, which through glasses lent the severity of his

face a scholarly cast, still held that old, secret flame of

rage burning like points of light deep dancing, beckoning

with equivocal glints past the pale portals of the iris.

"There's no concentration or quietness in it anymore," he

said. "It's all parody."

And, looking around, I saw that it was so. The passion was

gone, and the darkness with it. The guilt, the fear, and

the uncertainty are done away with and there is nothing to

shiver at any more. But people continue to get their skin

peeled, everything is common now to all, boredom has

succeeded passion, and there remains now only order,"

The story goes on: Symonds sees he was "never one to

suffer gladly the common man when the choice was forced

upon him to become a parody or remain forever an enigma in

the minds of those who knew him whom he cared about, he

chose what his special wisdom told him he must choose,

knowing that he could not have both, and that he was not

made for a common end, and that anyway parodied enigma is

enigma no more."

The Rose Exterminator is set largely in the 1960s. These

guys were already saying it was not like the old days, not

worth the whip-cleaning, not what it once was and they did

not adjust.

Carney's other SM book, The Real Thing, ends even more

loudly on the very same note. And that is where, with

perhaps a little bit of a twist, I want to end tonight.

The Future of Leather, now your future very much more than

it is mine, is in grave danger if we pursue the paths that

are becoming well-worn today.

I say that leather is a gypsy thing. If it has grown

roots, they should be harvested. If it has settled on a

foundation, that should be broken and abandoned. What we

should be longing for is, in Carney's words, the passion,

the darkness, the guilt, the fear, and the uncertainty

which are done away with as leather and SM become a

respectable, monitored subculture. If we are no longer

rebels, so be it, but don't let us stop tasting what is

forbidden and daring what is impossible and repeating what

is unsavory. If we are no longer criminals, so be it, but

let us place before all other values the pursuit of

self-transformation which can include sex and sexuality

only if they are bliss-inclined which means they have to be

aimed at the darkness.

If there is a Future of Leather that has a place for the

likes of me as I was 30 years ago, it will not be

discovered or made by the likes of me as I am today.

More true and more important than anything else I can say

about the future of leather, there is this one thing that

I can say which is directed only to the new and the young:

Don't adjust. Bend not the slightest bit. Find what

answers the yearning of your own passion and accept

nothing else - nothing less.

The Future of Leather is either something new, invented

and ruled by the young, or it is nothing of leather/SM at

all. To go on along the path of least passion as we are

going today is to become what we imagine our grandparents

to have been dull to say the least. But, to stand aside

and allow the newcomers and the young to create around you

a new SM world may well rekindle in you the very instincts

and urges that drew you into leather to begin with.

I say "you" not us, because I believe that I have another

leather destiny. I won't be one of the people populating

parties or playing for fun. I won't continue to adjust. But

I will do the things I believe will give the greatest

liberty to the creators of the next and forward looking

world of leather/SM, so long as no one asks me for the kind

of instructions or advice that usually misleads the

young hotheads into the paths of the old farts.

I come from a time and world in which leathersex was a life

apart not a thing apart from life. It's all very well to

have a museum and lobbyists and committees and conferences,

but the time has come to ask what we are lobbying for the

right to do, and is it worth that? To ask seriously what is

the future of the historic reality recorded in the Leather

Archives & Museum and is there something important that is

different now - not better, not even intentionally changed -

just lost?

I can not tell you what will be the future of leather, but

I would ask you to ask yourselves as you make and live in

it: Don't you want lives in leather to be something more?

Bring back the darkness. Bring back the passion, and give

leathermen and leatherwomen hereafter something to live

for, something to anticipate and fearfully shiver about.

Only then will the museums, art shows, legal battles and

conferences be justified.
 
 
 
 

You know you?re into something kinky when..

You keep fake hanging plants around the house, just so your mother will never know what all those hooks in the ceiling are really for

Someone refers to a serial killer as sadistic and you roll your eyes, because the man has nothing on you.

You realized you've charged more in lingerie than you get paid in a year

You start rating your CDs by how interesting it'll be to beat someone to

Your favorite dessert is hot crossed buns...and you don't eat sweets

You watch a movie where someone gets tied up and scream at the screen, "Gimme a break, 3 minutes max to get out of that!"

You have a list by the phone for the babysitter, hospital, family, and 3 24-hour locksmiths.

You speak of crop rotation with someone, and they aren't a farmer.

You try to get arrested, just for the handcuffs , body cavity search, humiliation scene and time in the cage.

Avon tells you to stop writing, they are not going to make eau d'leather aftershave

Leather companies start giving you the wholesale to distributor discount.

You can't pass a candle factory without drooling (or wetting your seat)

Your kids ask you about conditioning leather....and it takes you a minute to realize they are talking about their baseball gloves.

You haunt the dollar stores for "pervertibles"

You?ve got a toy chest bigger than the one in your 6 year old son's room.

The local Leather hobby shop offers you a business account.

Your children ask if they can borrow your "costumes" for Halloween.

...you choose your new house based on it's location: convenient to the

leather store, easily directed to by your friends and the local ambulance

drivers, and just a mile from the emergency room.

...the local Home Depot has set you up with a business account...and you are

not a contractor or an electrician.

...you move to another city, and the hardware store in your old hometown

goes out of business because you don't buy there anymore.

...escape artists come to you for advice.

...you say Vanilla like it's a bad word.

...you can't pass by an iron fence without drooling.

...you know the location of every tack shop in the tri-state area.

...your idea of getting a jump in the morning is to hook up the other end of

your nipple clamp to the car battery.

...you nearly cause an accident pulling into the lot where the sign

advertises FREE TODAY HOT WAX before you realize it's a car wash.

...more people have seen your body on-line than have visited www.cnn.com

...you spend more time on your knees than a Catholic priest.

...you chose your last car based on the location of the garment hooks.

...the hospital lists you as a triage center, since you're better equipped

than the ER.

...you buy clothespins in the supersize family economy bags, and you don't

have a family or a clothesline.

...there's enough rope in your bedroom to scale Mt. Everest.

...you find yourself wandering through the wax museum's medieval torture

chamber making comments like "gimme a break, my Dom's grandmother could get

out of that!"

...you bought a souvenir replica of the Washington Memorial because you were

too cheap to go to the adult store and get a real butt plug.

...you think Hannibal Lecter is a snazzy dresser.

...someone tries to talk you out of your blind date by saying he's sick and

sadistic and you perk, god i hope so!

...you think VA stands for Vanilla Anonymous.

...turning the switch on has precious little to do with making the lights

come on when you enter the room.

...the first thing you check when looking for a new car is whether the trunk

can hold a bound submissive or two.

...you take advantage of the needle exchange program in your city and you

have never used intravenous drugs in your entire life.

...you fake injuries just so you can replenish the medical play kit from the

ER.

...when you're told your brother-in-law is pussy-whipped, it takes you a

moment to realize that doesn't necessarily mean he's transgendered.

...someone calls your wife a slut and you thank them.

...your favorite letter of the alphabet is O.

...nose to the grindstone is an orgasmic abrasion fantasy.

...you refer to your fully equipped van as "Squeals on Wheels".

...your travel agent recommends a 4 star bed and breakfast as part of your

vacation plans; you yawn and ask where the nearest Dungeon and Gruel is to

your destination.

...investing in stocks and bonds means refurbishing the play area.

...your children think your primary language is acronyms.

...you have a habit of calling conversion vans perversion vans.

...you overhear your neighbor training his dog to sit, beg, play dead, roll

over; and find yourself obeying quicker than the dog does.

...you need to rent a U-Haul to get your toys to the play party.

...your toilet seat is leather.

...your children are named Dom, SAM, Sissy, and Autoerotic Asphyxiation.