 To Inside Leather History of Fireside Chat, I'm the producer and the host of the chats. I'm Doug O'Keefe, and the Fireside Chats are a program of the Leather Archives and Museum, which is hosting us tonight in the ATM Auditorium. So a big thank you and shout out to the Leather Archives. Also a big thank you to Slate Travis, who's our tech person and who's filming tonight. The Leather Archives strives through this program to capture the stories of the people who shape our community. Once in a while, an amazing opportunity comes along and that's what's happening tonight. I have the privilege of interviewing someone that I call family in this community. Please welcome Leslie Anderson to the stage. We are filming and it is on Facebook Live. We'll have a few minutes at the end for some questions. We don't normally film that, but just so you know. Okay? Yes. And welcome Leslie. Thank you. I don't know. Are we feeding back still? It doesn't sound right to me. Okay. So let's start right at the very beginning, Leslie. Where are you from? Tell us a little bit about where you grew up, about your family, Well, I'm originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan. My father's side of the family is all from Brooklyn, New York. And my mom's side of the family is from North Ontario, Canada. And when I was about six years old, my father packed the salt up and we moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Like night and day from Ann Arbor, Michigan. But I pretty much grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Tell us a little bit about the Albuquerque you knew. Albuquerque is like a moment frozen in time. It's, yeah, evolution is kind of left them out sometimes on things. But interestingly enough, when it comes to the gay community, they are very progressive. Why do you say that? Well, they're very out and outspoken. And maybe it has something to do with the culture in Albuquerque. It's got kind of a hometown, small-town feel. Without too much of the good old boys mentality, but that's still there sometimes too. Well, I should think with Albuquerque that it would have a very sort of a Southwest influence. How do you see that? Yeah, but it's also at the very end of Route 66. So it's connected to all the America on the way. There's a lot of nostalgic cars, a lot of very down-to-earth people, and an excellent climate for leather. But you told me when we prepared for this interview that your father had a major influence in your life. What did your father teach you? I think my dad had undiagnosed ADV. He had a genius IQ. Sometimes though he was a sporadic in it. Sometimes he didn't have a common sense of a sweet. Let's share this talk a little bit. Anyway, he didn't have a common sense sometimes. He would do things like, I walked home and forgot the car to work. He would think something like 160 IQ would do stuff like that. But he did it all the time. All the time. And he was held back a couple of years from school. You were saying sort of a perpetual student, but where did he excel? In what areas did he excel in teaching today? He taught me patience and persilence in a way. The attention to detail. My father could sculpt pretty much anything out of wood. He could construct anything. He was handy with all kinds of tools and artistry. He had a very creative kind of eye for many things. He encouraged all of that in me. And as it turns out, me having ADV also, I learned to center myself and be able to hold on long enough to retain more things than he did. For example, I've never forgotten the car to work. You also mentioned that your father taught you a lot of life skills. For example, what life skills did you teach? I think basically my dad taught me not to be so impacted by other people. For lack of better analogy, I'd say my dad really gave me the fundamentals of self-esteem. As it turns out, that's a really good skill to have. Especially when you're an unusual teenager and you're awkward in any way, like most teenagers are. He really looked beyond that in me. And he also would encourage some pretty bad behavior on my part. At times, for example, he said I was getting bullied in a gym class and he said after my mom had said, you know, just turn the other way and so on and so forth, my dad said I'll give you a dollar for every one of them. You just punch right in my face. So I went to school that day and made $5 in gym class, but I got suspended as well. You've spoken a lot about your father, but what have you saved up your mother to tell us? We don't have a long enough program for my mom. My mom was really... She was magnificent. She's kind of my hero a long ways. She just recently passed away. I say recently. It's three years ago now, but... My mom was a survivor. She was a supreme survivor. She was... When she was growing up, she was very severely, physically abused. And on my mother's side of the family, I come from a long line of addicts and alcoholics. I made some five-star railwaters. In fact, my mom took me to a family graveyard in Northern Ontario on a little suburb. I think it was suburb or steeped. That's the name of the little village, yeah. But all of her family is buried in this thing. One of her cousins was with us and kept pointing out, oh, there's so-and-so such a tragic thing about that accident on the stairwell. Oh, there's uncle and so-and-so, you know, that thing with the liver, yeah, yeah. So don't find out that they all, one way or another, died from alcohol, so basically addiction. So I kind of had a precursor to that, but despite all of that, you kind of have to take the good and the bad with people. My mom really had some little qualities, and towards the very end of her life, she did stop drinking a rat that was slain up, but she liked to save her from, you know, real severe diabetes and heart problems and all kinds of things, but she did live into her 80s. Taking things on a slightly lighter note and maybe get a laugh in here. What do control-top pantyhose and ruble have in common? This comes from my father, some family. Control-top pantyhose and ruble have flat-bush. And having your dad tell you that, maybe you can keep the joke, your mom just doesn't. Yeah, she knew where that came from. My father said, if I can impersonate my aunt, my father's older sister, she's really a piece of work too, she'd say, John, come to the windows, the gaze, and have a little of the parade. When we hear you speak, I hear other people, there's a bit of a Texas twang in your accent. What can you tell us about that? I'll tell you a bit. In addition to having an ADD, I had a speech encounter. I still have it, it's a stutter, a scam. And so I went to a speech pathologist and she was from the Panhandle, Texas. So I did get my stutter under control to some degree and it's still a work in progress, but I also picked up, was it just a faint amount of accent? You are actually the youngest certified diver ever, from age 11. Tell us about that. When I was a little kid, I used to watch the Undersea Worlds of Jacques Cousteau and it was on Sunday nights before the, you know, wonderful world of Disney and whatever other shows. And I'd run with my little blue rocking chair and I would sit plastered up against the television and watch this. I was just in raptured. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I proclaimed it from when I was four or five years old and I never stopped. And so my father became acquainted with a master instructor with the professional association of diving instructors down in New Mexico, all the places you think landlocked New Mexico. But there's some good diving there. And so this man said if she can pass all the, you know, physical tests and do this, then she can be certified. You know, it's not unheard of, but no one's ever done it before. And I was the only hold, I was able to pass all the physical tests, but I was too small for any of the equipment. So everything had to be adapted just a little bit. So my dad was very addicted to that. And quickly I grew out of my wetsuits and stuff because, you know, Pee-ree came on. But, you know, I got certified when I was 11 years old and then went to Mexico to the seat of Cortez and did my first big ocean under water dive with probably 200 hammerheads circling right over me. It was incredible. I was hooked. I was hooked. I was still hooked. But what physical testing was requiring you? Just swimming, holding the ground, not panicking. I would say it has a lot more to do with feeling comfortable not only in the water, but in your own skin and being assured. Because I could go through all of the exercises whereas some of the adults would get really panicking. I just followed my dad's guides when it comes to that stop, they get control though. So that was kind of my mantra for that. I know you've gone diving in various countries around the world. Tell us a little bit about that. One of them was South Africa, wasn't it? Yes. I, as I said, I was hooked on sharks and I had a dream of going to South Africa. So I dive free of the cage, dive in the cage but also free of the cage with great white sharks. And so it took a lot of work. And I looked and looked and finally found the right tract expedition for me and a couple of friends. We're doing work for Shark Week. And they loved my company. And so I basically was a shadow diver or a safety diver as they're called. That just, my basic duty was to purchase on top of the shoulders of some of the hammer people and turn them in the proper direction of the shark who's coming at us. And sometimes push the shark off. Which I thought was just great. It was a party. I really enjoyed it. And they got fancy ideas because we had one guy who's doing prototypes for GoPro cameras. He said, I got an idea. I was like, you know, you should always go the other direction when someone says Dr. Mudo. He basically hooked up a GoPro on my head and they dropped me into a fruit-and-bake ball of sharks and sardines and all kinds of predators. I was getting body bulked by animals that they fascinated me. They nothing hurt me. I just kind of looked. Everything just kind of grazed into me out for me. It was like a transcendent state. It was almost in a meditated state. Really incredible life experience, but yes. And those with great whites out of page and a number of other sharks. It was really well worth everything that they did. You were active very early on and your parents' closet was fascinating for you. Tell us about that early sexual exploration. What all went on there? Well, how much to say about this on Facebook Live? My parents had a lot of shoes and belts and whatnot and when I was a kid they had in our house they had a very large organized cedar closet and it was something about the smell of the leather and the cedar wood. It just really turned me on. So that's probably about as much as I should say. When I was 10, 10 years old, I firmly recall indulging in what is basically a moronic speciation. Yeah, I knew I was really different. I got off really and I hadn't gotten off, let's be honest, at all until that experience. And then I realized, oh, this is quite a conundrum because this is the only way I can get off period is by this really intense kinky stuff. But then I met other people that engaged in this sort of thing. That's a whole different story. Well maybe it went real. Two shakers of the lady who talked a little more about that. One thing that came up when we were preparing for this interview that I found very, very funny was you used a pirate spear to force Lil Bo Peep to strike. What was that? Well this was one of those Halloween's when I was little. This was still in Michigan. I dressed up as a pirate and had a plastic saber. Feeling really mighty with that. My neighbor's daughter, she was dressed up as I recall was Lil Bo Peep, something like that. But I held Lil Bo Peep up the throat with my saber and made her take her panties off. She did. She knew Lil Bo Peep was bad. She did a good thing when my father called us. He started and stammered and said, You can't do this. Listen, we don't know more of that than don't tell your mother. What happened to Lil Bo Peep though? I don't know how to do it. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe she's a circuit gentleman on the field. I would like to thank Lil Bo Peep made it out of childhood. I'm building on that a little bit. Let's talk a bit about your coming out because it was very interesting. Did you even have a concept about homosexuality? I guess this is the part where she mentioned that I felt much more akin to men back then. It wasn't that I wasn't attracted to women. I was very attracted. I mean, Lil Bo Peep could exist. But my perceptions of lesbians, women who were like this, it was very different in New Mexico. This was in 1988. And back then, when I was in elementary school, we knew the other gay kids. But nobody outed anybody. And we never were out about it because there was a real threat of having a shit pounded out of you. At least the shit pounded out of you. It was truly scary. But we had a little network of each other and when senior problems or homecomings or whatever came, we stepped up and went with our counterparts. And we always double dated and whatnot to these events. And by the time we got into college, there was a lot of women's studies classes. And I have to notice that there was there was actions of women. And there were what I would call lesbians. And there were dykes. And the way I, the point that I had in my own mind was a dyke was more like me. We were more sexual. And a lesbian was political. Almost strictly political. And also lesbians tended not to like men at all. So obviously I couldn't align myself with that. Plus there was a kink factor. So it was really kind of a struggle to find exactly where we belong. I imagine it's still like that for people. But that's where my perceptions of actions start. Where do you feel you would fit in that? Well I'd say I'm a lesbian dyke. I would say that I'm probably masculine on the non-binary level. And again, that wasn't even something that we could hold on to. There weren't those options. I know they're not options, but you know what I mean? When you were aligning yourself with other people or making other friends, you couldn't really define things like that. If you were too much, you would make it trouble. Everyone knew. And plus there is always the stereotypical badgering that I had to endure. I had very large female penthouse centerhold breasts. And people would say things, even family, well-intentioned family would say to me all the time, God, that just, that isn't fair, you know? That dyke got those breasts. Why didn't I get those breasts? What do you think that other women don't like this too? Wow, if you were truly a beautiful woman, if you would just accentuate your features, your feminine features and stuff, there's always that nauseating feminine. I just put it off, but it does damage over years and years and years. We're all just kind of fighting back a lot of that. You mentioned things that other family members said that you also told me your parents really rose to this occasion. Tell us about that. The first thing to know that, I think the hardest thing for my mom ever to accept was the concept of non-monogamy. She just couldn't do that. You know, she was raised from a cat like them all, but she tried. Both of my parents, after they got over the initial shock, both of my parents really got involved and participated in everything around gay, lesbian experience. And they were very supportive. In her 70s, my mom was, I'm sure, the only woman who knew the hanky code. She had particular colors that she would say, no, brown, and this hasn't come out. No, no, no. And she would actually make people believe the house. He put the hanky in the car and then it came back. And they wrote this book, you know, both of the lettermen are like, oh, Patty said I better take this back. She knew what was okay and what wasn't, but they both got very engaged. My mom, especially when she was a registered nurse, she signed up for all kinds of organizations and would go and do home health care for AIDS patients. And that was extraordinary because we didn't know what did we want about AIDS. I mean, we do now. And this is amazing what has happened over the years in terms of AIDS and our scientific medications and almost incredible. But it didn't start out that way. It was the plague and it was the death sentence. And there was panic and fear, unbelievable fear. Even fellow gays, I mean people, shut each other down, it broke up relationships. The family is, it just, before it decimated the population, it decimated our soul. And my mom said, look, I've been around with tuberculosis and smallpox. I don't have any little AIDS. You know, stop me from doing this. And she was our old model for so many of us. Just, you know, you can learn a lot from people who are fearless. You just pay attention. But you also said that your colleges were a very formative time for you. Tell us about that. My father passed away in 1985 when I was in my undergraduate studies and I felt hurt. I mean, I just, I really developed my drugs. I am recovering now for, this October, it will be 29 years. Wow. Back then, I just, I felt a whole loss of purpose and I just didn't care. I literally didn't care what I put into my body or what I did. I did everything I feel, which is a good and bad performance to it when it comes to somebody who's, you know, they're early 20s, you know. But I started to attend certain classes and got involved in some groups. And, yeah, I went to the bar scene and I started to see drag queens and rodeo guys and Leatherman. So that opened the doors. You spoke very beautifully about the Leatherman you met in your journey. Tell us more about that. Well, as I said earlier, I was very aligned with the men and I immediately sought out the men not coincidentally, who were father-like figures. So daddies, a gentleman by the name of Philip Laka, who passed away from AIDS in 95, but he basically was a daddy to many people in the community and he treated me just like all of his family members, all of his cis men family members. But he didn't make exceptions for my being female body. He made exceptions for the fact that he saw me as a dominant, which was extraordinary. I mean, to be seen by somebody that you admire and you respect and then everyone else in the family looked at me that way too. To be seen, I don't know of you, everyone experiences that differently, but it is so self-affirming. I think it's so critical for people to have that self-affirmation wherever it comes from. It builds you up. It builds up the foundation of who you will become. That's what it did for me. One person that was very critical to me was a professional female impersonator by the name of CJ Diamond. His real name was Chris Herrera. He died of AIDS in 1996. In fact, most of the people that I have known and loved and who I call family are dead from AIDS. And all within a certain period of time, within I would say five years, I probably lost 100 men that I was very close to and a couple of women too. CJ was incredible. I would say CJ was the first man that I've ever been in love with. I really fell in love with CJ. And the best of my worlds was he was something else. He's a professional female impersonator. He taught me some strange things that interestingly enough, I use an IML. He taught me stage craft, a lot about lighting and dynamics and how you move on stage and what's visible and presenting your body in certain ways that are very subliminal messages to an audience. And I find that that was really invaluable. But, you know, he passed away in 1996 and I would say he had the most horrific death from AIDS that I've ever witnessed. And it is still missing. You taught a lot of stage presence. Or give us an example of something in that arena that you taught me. You taught me some things about makeup, you know, your facial expressions. You know, what you could do with an audience by looking into the light versus looking into someone's eyes. They cannot see you looking into their eyes from a stage dynamic, but they can see you looking into a light. So, he would tell me to make a pyramid as they walked out to a stage and to find target lights that would stop and align my look at those lights. And if you look at people who are very, very good and have a stage presence, they work the stage in that same kind of a manner. And they find target points, whether it be people or a light or whatever it is. And then you incorporate your words to go with that message as well. Tell us about your first foray. Is it to who like you? When I started in my childhood, my mom was a nurse, as I've said, and she worked the graveyard shift once in zero. They were delivering all the fun stuff. And back then, nurses wore white shoes. They were one of those silly white hats on my bed. Well, she did. And I was a little kid, but my dad let me stay up late every night. And I would shine up my mom's white shoes. And I would leave them out for her. You know, the best part of my day, every day, was having my mom put on those white shoes and looking approvingly at me and that I could go to sleep. Because I really miss my mom when I was growing up. I never saw her. I didn't miss her mom or my dad, but I really yearned to be around my mother and that was just the best feeling. You also said when we prepared for this that true good life comes from the heart. Explain that. Well, I believe that even you can teach anybody some basic skill type things. It's like giving somebody the ingredients and a recipe to making something. And most people can follow those instructions and do an okay job. But that's just maybe shining your shoes. Boot Blacking is something that you either have a boot black heart or you don't. That's my feeling on that. And what that's based on is more than anything else it's a willingness or a desire to serve to serve something from your heart to another person's heart. It's a gift that only you can give and this is how you make it work. See, it even makes me smile just thinking about that. It gives me a boot bump. It's the willingness to serve. What is the greatest lesson you've learned in this journey? Well, I had a great mentor for Boot Blacking. His name was Hank Mearsbone. Again, he died of AIDS in 1996. He was a professional rodeo, a bull rider. He walked to a, you know, town boy's sweater and he had been hammered by a mustache and you couldn't understand him damn that he said. He had such an Oklahoma accent and he chewed the back bone so everybody liked the person Hank Hank just a little bit. He was like, if I knew then I would think that he got to get his goat. He was like, hell, that's mean to him. If I had known that you wanted to go then I just seemed to have that you got to go and I thought, you know, that was good. But yeah, almost everything he said, if he said something at all it was either really important and if it was really important it was guaranteed unintelligible. But he taught me, probably the best thing that he taught me was to know my worth. He didn't allow me for a year and a half to charge anything for my group life in services which made me angry and frustrated when Hank had a lot of the time. But he wanted me to really feel valuable. I had so much to give. Look at all this work that I put into it. Yes. Now you get it. And that as it turns out is an incredible lesson not just for group lives but for everyone. You know now your worth you will be subjected to the assignment of what everyone else is your home. You may not like that. So you need to know this. You need to feel that. The other thing that he taught me about group life and about life was to become a conduit and never a vessel. But what the hell does that mean mostly? Well, I'm an energy player with my hands. In fact everything that I do really comes from my hands. My heart, my hands. And I would feel drained and being somewhat empathic in a lot of ways. I want to feel I'm really drained from group life and I didn't like it. So he would impart on me to become a conduit. In other words, allow the energy whatever it is to move through you but don't keep it. Don't ever keep it. It's bad will turn. It's good will turn. But there's no difference. Move through. By the end of it all you've done is you've sucked a few of the nutrients out and you've moved it on to somebody else or you've put it somewhere else. But as it turns out that's something that I've used very successfully in IMLs. I know that a lot of people here and a lot of viewers worldwide will want to know where did you acquire a lot of your skills that you bring to bootlocking? I honestly am kind of self-taught. Because there was no bootlocking school even though I apprenticed for a long time to hang. I also apprenticed to a saboteur for often from Mexico for a while which was interesting. I learned a lot of nature of leather but I think it's mostly self-taught. Again since bootlocking comes from inside and you either have that and you already don't I channeled myself in the right places at the right time and I studied shoe shine boots at airports and bus stations. I would sit for long periods of time sometimes getting my boots shined sometimes not and I would write notes I don't know if anyone's seen my notebooks but my notebooks look like Unabomber's notebooks. I look at pictures when drawing frantic writing that's just what I do but I couldn't get enough of this information and I make lots and lots and lots of notes not just about their shoes and their products and their stories. They would start to tell their story. I think a lot of successful bootlacks are story telling. Well, take our buses or boat. What is your fundamental philosophy about bootlocking? Just that it's a premium gift it's serving a greater good something that's bigger than you are or you're a part of for me it's just an extraordinary gift that I feel I've gotten and I could never get enough of it if you know me, you know I pretty much bootlock every day not just here at work at home. I'm always piddling around with some and even if people want during the pandemic I don't know how I managed it but my god the way it was connected with somebody we got like 200 pairs of boots and this is just a scene I'm a lousy you feel compelled if you're drawn to do it you know I can do that I can shine that more it's almost competitive it's just like heroin but it's good it's not on me For 17 years I've worked with you at I&L we started at the same time and we are both contestant panthers you started a tradition during this work that you've been doing you take care of all the boots, all the letters that I know but what you do is breathtaking because you touch every metal and you've touched every pair of boots tell us about that well, I'm not going to reveal some of the secrets so relax in the audience put away your notebooks you're not getting it it's I practice at I&L the conduit and non-vessel I noticed very early on at I&L that if you had a couple of people in the class of contestants who were viewed by everyone else as leaders or maybe somebody that had a good chance of winning or whatever it was that if that person happened to have any negative energy that it's contagious around the entire group and it would be toxic you know, you've got 60 guys crying and whining about it and it was seriously I quickly figured that the best way to channel that was to channel that and like move it not just through me use myself as the conduit but move it through them so I would start with somebody who was positive no matter who that was and I could always find somebody that's got that real bright energy and I picked up some of them and I moved on and the best place to touch that contestant to make them feel like I was communicating with them was to touch their medals most of their medals were hanging over their hearts so now I even do it two handed and I do it a couple at a time well it takes that amount of time to get through all those contestants and move their energy so again I would just open up as myself taking on whatever it was that they had if it was bad energy, no problem I'm going to channel that through me I'm going to dump it off in the meantime I'm going to give them a little punch I noticed that when I would take my hand away they would pick their heads up and open their eyes and they would smile and they were growing and I'm like look it works so that's basically what I do I found that it's just instrumental in how the contestants operate not just one of themselves but as a group how close they become I always call you the community's common denominator and in that what I mean is no matter what's going on in the community or whom I'll speak to everyone speaks to Leslie everyone includes Leslie and I've never met anybody who hasn't thought very well of me so tell us about that how do you say that? I don't you believe me that there are people that don't like me but you don't want they're jealous or something it's their business if somebody doesn't like me it's really none of my business I think the vast majority of people who really know me at least would love me they may not love having me in their company but they like me enough and I think I saw some interview program with Penelope Cruz she's hot though Penelope Cruz was saying about people who are detractors or you know talking shit about her she says if someone runs up to you and they're just just berating you but it's in a different language and you don't understand it feel anything by that you don't feel anything you know why you don't feel anything by that because we assign meaning to the words that somebody else exposes us we assign the meaning both good and bad so when it's when someone's saying something really bad consider it the source they're not your they don't know you or you've barely seen them or God forbid they're online and they're saying shit on Facebook too well who in the hell cares really I mean their opinion shouldn't mean anything especially if that's to attack you so I guess it's really good self-esteem but that's how I am so when people tell me things even insofar as nasty things about somebody else I'm still considering the source they've got motivation that's none of my business and I think human beings are kind of a package feel there's always going to be good and there's always going to be bad so you can take what you want and leave the rest aside building on that a little bit I've seen you take some extraordinary steps when someone's been in trouble or someone is in a bad spot I've seen you rise to occasions you never say anything you don't tell people you've done it you just very quietly take care of them what's your motivation there my ability to empathize with people a lot of times I'll go and help somebody who seems to really need it and the reason I don't talk about it is because that person deserves privacy and pride and they're embarrassed I'm embarrassed when I'm broke and I need energy I try to get over it everybody finds themselves in these circumstances anybody I don't care who you are you can find yourself in a bad set of circumstances and need somebody and nobody deserves to be humiliated without her everyone deserves a chance at redemption for the grace of God go ahead the things that I did when I was in my addiction were ugly, were horrible and when I look at somebody else who's really in trouble I see that person what if everyone had given up on me and turned me out I wouldn't be here so try to keep my eyes open my heart open but let me tell you something if you really push my buttons and it takes a long time I'm very patient and very kind but if you fuck me up you ain't never gonna get my look again I will shut down so hard and that's very human of me that you can say that but that's the truth I mean everyone has their limits I'm always trying to exercise the best caution in getting there too oh then a little bit of a lighter note tell us about your work here at the Leather Rock House well this has been an extraordinary thing here I've actually been involved with L.A. and M. since of the year 2000 but over the past three years it's been employed here on a hard time basis and it took me about three or four years of literally campaigning for the board to get them to hire me so it's been like this medical mystery tour until then you know you've kind of invented the wheel as I've gone along here rolled along inventing the wheel but I believe that my mission here has been really positive and my work I think longevity wise that it's gonna be one of the best things that's ever happened all I know you know I hope that people in the future see that too I hope people feel inspired by what I've found what I've done and what I present to them I hope that people learn something from people who've gone before you know I hope that generation people are far more welcoming and open-hearted to the next generation because they're the future yeah they have every right and they've got ballot things to say just like us you know I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about your amazing artwork well yeah I started I was working on some leather artifacts and vests and boots and stuff for our friend Chuck Windemode passed away a couple of years ago and my phone rang my black shoe polish all over my hands so before picking up my phone I smeared it on the paper hey it just came off it just came off I had a paper on my wall she polish all over my hands and I started drawing of it in fact on my artwork you can always see my finger prints what advice can you offer someone new if you feel it don't let anybody tell you your bad fit for it or you don't know what you're doing don't let anyone persuade you to depart from something that you feel and that goes not just for bootlikes that goes for take your gender identity your sexuality your taste in music in art what you do with your free time fuck other people who try to take you away from that any day now we're gonna hear we're gonna hear about Rowe vs. Wade being overturned I never thought of my lifetime and I hear younger generation people say all the time they don't want to be these rebels these you know they don't want to be anarchists they don't want to be leading the pack of protests and doing socially right thing to do and they don't want to be powerhouses for equal rights and so on well this is for you Rowe get up and do it you might get arrested hey then they're done that you know and I'll do it again I don't have to dance and to lose I don't care but it's up to you you want to be that person do it don't let anybody tell you no don't let anybody decide your value to you you do it what is the biggest misconception about you well sweet nice well I am very sweet I am very nice and I am spring of time until I'm not and when it comes to important things I can be downright vicious remember that $5 that my dad gave me we'll come to that girls remember too Leslie Anderson I would like to thank you for an amazing interview for Inside Leather History at Fireside Chats thank you when we finish here we'll head over to Touche for a beverage and everyone is welcome does anybody have a quick question if I don't know I can share yes I'll just come over hi Leslie long time listening I would love to hear more about the regenerative you talked earlier about how you feel more non binary how did you come to terms with that and is there anything else you'd like to say there obviously it's a little preferential that someone who is also non binary good one well remember what I said about people combination of good things and bad things and I don't know I I believe partly by my genetics I was born into um or you know went through a puberty into a let's face it a lot of body pretty much part um and it's hard to love yourself if you don't love all the parts of yourself so for me it was kind of a derby of loving and feeling sexual about all kinds of facets of my personality no breasts obviously I'm not just genitalia but my hands, my eyes my everything my heart and so not having to be pig in hell you know into this one mold or that mold it just it's liberating to feel like I can be non-binary and I'm still sexual you know and I like me like this it just finding a self love is really a profound journey I think we are all taking it and we're all a work in progress things always change for us I find out things about me that I didn't know all the time you know and you fork break down and I embrace them like welcome in you know everybody got to get along here it's kind of a lifelong journey and I'm really glad that we don't have to be held into certain categories and chimes and mold I like that yes okay I can go well one thing I don't remember you mentioning is about the my naturally you have well it's no great mystery I'm an animal lover I like animals more than I like people and here's why animals they don't like you they don't and they show that they don't trust you they do not trust you and they show you that too humans might show you something else and you think that but they don't and so I feel a certain level of just harmony and comfort with any animal lots of animals they also animals say things with their body language that people can learn a lot from about how they how they process things and I have been living with all kinds of crazy animals all of my life my mom oh my mom that's another story she animal lover big time my mother had a way with animals even dangerous kind of animals my father did property assessment for the government crazy things like that and he would take me out and bear in mind this is in New Mexico and there's rabbits and I say that's their home right and my dad would just say you say to yourself I will do no harm I will just keep meditating on that and then you take a stick and remember you cover the stick and then you take a step not the other way around so you go around that takes a step and go around and cheer out and say okay stop and we would gently move Mr. Snakey into a trash can and then just place him in a nice place afterwards and we would collect himself I never felt threatened because my approach was just I will do no harm and I just it's not that I don't like rat snakes they are not dangerous of course I am you know but there's a different level of understanding you know what I mean not a lot of all of that is supposed to be but step 10 one more question we've got time for one more no more last one what happened to Little Bo Peep's panties you f*****g what I don't know why did you you know when were you going to donate on here I don't know I remember they were going to have like floofy trunks and stuff what the hell is that they really don't know I don't even know to this day if my father went next door to the library and told them what happened because later on I did engage in some perverse kind of things with the older brother and little boy these things gross all of that and it involved pee pee and I would I know yeah my dad did not catch us doing that so we're going to begin and then we will that was fun that was fun