 All right, Mike, let's start right at the very beginning. Tell us a little bit about your family and your early life. Well, I was born in Nebraska, grew up in Wyoming and Idaho, so the Northwest, a part of the country that most Americans don't know how to articulate. They think I'm from the Midwest, which is a very different place. Oil can harries, it's great to be on this stage. It's the one place I've always felt comfortable in. It just reminds me of home. Except for here, we get to dance with the boys. And rodeos were a big part of my growing up. My first job was at a rodeo. It was the first time, I think, it's where some fetish was instilled. I was assigning horse stalls to cowboys. And they wore very tight pants and they were all very fit and it was, I didn't know what was going on and there's rope and animals, it was amazing. And yeah, like I said, I felt the weirdest thing about going to a gay rodeo is it looks exactly like a straight rodeo, except instead of women with giant hair and whatever, they're drag queens. So that was it, I grew up Mormon. My parents converted to being Mormon when I was like 10 years old. And that was very significant. I really loved the church. I loved the, I loved protocol. I liked a sense of community, all of those things. And I probably would be a big Mormon asshole right now if I weren't gay. So let's all be glad that I'm gay and not trying to force people to live a certain way. I don't know if that's, is that where you were getting at? Like where I was born at or, you know. Well, tell us a little bit about some of the things you used to do when you were out in like the gullies or the, out on the, I don't know, in the tundra or whatever it is, I'm from Chicago. What do I know of this, you know? Yeah, you can just take public transportation and avoid the tundra in Chicago. It was, it was a great place to grow up. I say that a lot. It was a great place to be a kid. I could just go out into the woods and it was safe and I could build forts and I could alter streams and do all kinds of fun stuff that didn't get me landed in jail or anything like that. And it made me feel connected to the earth and to, and it made me feel secure as a person. Like I had my own, like I built a fort and it was my place and it was, you know, I felt like it was mine, you know, looking back as an adult, how ridiculous is that? But, you know, you know, so that was great to carry that into then life, knowing that I had some capabilities and stuff. And that's reason two. I was also in Boy Scouts and loved that. The knots came in very handy. Everybody's now asks like, how did you learn all these knots? And I was like, Boy Scouts, most of them. Yeah, that double half hitch always, that's the best post one. But you said that growing up though in sort of relative isolation really affected your ideas about self-reliance. How do you mean? What does that mean to you? Well, self-reliance, I mean, in a practical manner is that we learned for fun. We would go camping in the winter. We would go to a place and we would build a structure and sleep in it. And so I always knew if a plane went down in a mountain, I'd be fine, you know, it'd be easy. We would actually have a fuselage and stuff and we'd like to make a thing with, we had to make it out of scratch. And we have to learn how to what to eat and what not to eat and that kind of thing. And we had to bring everything with us, although I think I still have this nagging. I'm still like when it's packing, when I'm packing for a trip, I have all this like stress that still comes up because my scout masters are like, you will die if you don't pack the right things. You know, like you won't be there, you know, but I did learn to pack the right things and to be prepared and to think ahead and all that was all helps me get very organized, especially when it came to like having a lot of gear and all of that stuff. Then packing wasn't as, it felt even more important than life or death when you're packing for a leather event, right? You know, you have to make decisions, toys or clothes, you know, that all started in Boy Scouts as a kid in Wyoming, I guess. Let's take one step back. Depict for us, if you would, some of the tenants of Mormonism because I think that's a very misunderstood religious group. So what did it mean to you? Well, without going into like the dogma, the practicality of it is that you had something to do on every day, on Monday night, it's family home evening, on Tuesday night, it's scouts, on Wednesday night, mom's gone because it's the women's thing, it's Relief Society. And then there was always something to do and everything fit together and it was interchangeable. It was like Denny's, you know, just if you go to any Mormon church anywhere, it's exactly the same and you can fit in. And so, but it also, there's a lot about family and, you know, but for us, for my family, it was we were kind of, you know, I don't think living a lie, but we were pretending. I mean, my parents were divorced, but we never mentioned that I was born with a different mother and so we were all white, so we could like fake it, but it was, but my mom that I grew up with was 410 and my dad was only 5'9", and all the height came from my birth mom side, who I'm still close with, but we never mentioned Deline when we were with Patsy and when we were with Patsy, she was mom and Deline was Deline and when we were with Deline, mom was Patsy and mom was mom. And I figured that's the world I lived on, so that was all very confusing for an eight-year-old to navigate, so having, it's probably one of the reasons I still just really hold on to protocol. Protocol means a lot to me and the church had a lot of protocol and so, and I think that that is something that I liked. I loved men's only events and the Mormons have plenty of them. You go to a priesthood, you go to the general priesthood meeting and then you go to the breakout priesthood meetings and then you have scouts and you have all these times to be with a bunch of guys and there was all this shaking hands and looking into each other's eyes and I really looked forward to shaking certain guys' hands, it became like a fetish for me right there. I think that's why I still like wearing leather gloves and shaking hands. Does that answer your question or, okay. But I can't help but ask, doesn't Mormonism frown upon divorce? How did your family navigate that situation? Well, simple, we were converts, we were reborn. You could just, you know, all of that's gone. Once you go, you know, you come in, you go into the water, you wear all white and you go under the water, one person, you come out, you're all brand new and fresh. So, kind of like a flogging. No, I'm just kidding. So, you told me that you came out very young and you discovered the gay scene in some places that, of course, most of us would never consider, excuse me, such as parks, gullies, the restroom of a library, a bowling alley. Tell us a little bit about all of that. And I did write this down in a memoir, it's called Drama Club, it's on Amazon if you wanna find it. And I sent it to my parents who have responded in a really odd way. They've just really opened up about their stuff. I just wanna put that in there before I start telling you at 14, I went to the library. I mean, I guess maybe that summer I was like working at the rodeo and then I was on this junior bowling league. And the bathroom was situated in just a way, it's one of those perfectly cruisey bathrooms where you go down a hall and then another hall and you go in and you open a door and it makes noise and then there's another door, there's all these warning systems that people are coming. And then there was this, my first ever glory hole that I saw and with literally all this writing on the walls meet here for this, it was all very specific. And it made me, I could go in there and read the stuff and jerk off and then go bowl a frame and come back. And that's the first time I I don't think it's, I don't know, sex. When I was a kid with another boy my age, we did some stuff but we never, it's pre-pubescent stuff. This is probably the first time. I don't really remember the very, very first time. I remember the first time I saw a hard dick through a glory hole and I was like, oh my God, oh my God, I can't believe I'm so lucky. And it's like, I mean, how could this be happening? And there's this hole here and I can see this guy. It's like, he has no idea I was on the other side. Until it came through and I freaked out and I ran out, came back, thought about it all week and then went back the next week. So it was bowling alleys and then, and this is what happens when there's shame and people marginalize people. There wasn't a gay bar. There wasn't any place for us to connect as queer people, as gay men. And so the park was another place, the tea rooms and the local community even had a tea room of the month t-shirt. They would give to the person who was seen the most often in the bathroom. And the library, another place, 14 year olds just naturally hang out. And at the end of the, in the history section, at the end of that, there was a bathroom and that's where I learned how to come standing up. And yeah, so that's where that was happening. And then I had friends on like sleepovers. We were jerking each other off. I tell other people these stories and nobody has these other stories. My boyfriend doesn't have any of these stories. But I don't know why, but we were, there was a bunch of, so that happened. When I was 15, I went to Hawaii to pick pineapples and while I was away from town, my parents moved to Pocotalo, Idaho. And I thought I came back and then they found this letter. I was writing to a gay guy and that's how I came out to them. And it was bad. And so my straight year in high school, I tried to not be gay. And it's the only time in my life I've ever been suicidal. And at the end of that summer, I met Bart Barney and we hooked up. Here's another boy my age. And I just said, I don't know what's going on with the church, but this is so right that I can't leave it behind me. And then after Bart, there was Kelly and Michael and Sean Overrocker and all these guys. We had like all this drama and that's the reason I called that book Drama Club because we had a lot of drama with each other. And so that was up to high school for me. Okay. Well, when you were very young though, I don't know what's with my voice today. Someone mentored you when you were very young and they taught you what being gay meant. Please tell us about him. Okay. I'm so glad we did that conversation first. Yes, RL. It's Wyoming, so we have to have letter names, RL. And he was an older man. He was like 35. And I wanted to have sex with him and we had sex. But then he started insisting on talking to me about police, about STDs, about San Francisco, about this thing there's not a cure for in San Francisco right now. I don't even know if it was called grid then. And RL was a God's end. He taught me about sex. He taught me about the community. He taught me about bathhouses. He gave me this whole like rundown and like, you know what, if you don't want to hook up with somebody just tell them you're just resting and blah blah blah and like all these different things people might say to you. Although I've never heard Greek passive and Greek active, but that never came up. He told me that might be a way of talking about top, bottom, I don't know, anyway. And I just have a really, really fond memories of him and he just watched me flutter around and I ripped out his heart a little bit and I regret that. And he's dead now. He didn't die of AIDS. He died from a good old fashioned brain tumor back in 1985 when I had moved to San Diego. But thanks for asking about RL because without that, I don't know what I would have done. I didn't have internet. I didn't have other gay friends. I didn't have anything except for the writing on the bathroom walls, which was awesome, but it did nobody, I don't know. Well, since we're on the topic of mentoring a little bit there, let's jump to your thoughts on mentoring within the community. What do you think of that? I think it's one of the best things that can come out of the community. It's family. I've chosen my mentors and they're very important to me and I've dubbed one of them my father. My dad is awesome. He's a great guy. He's super, super great, but he can't tell me what it's like to date another man. He can't tell me what it's like to do a BDSM scene. But the mentors that I have chosen, especially one of them can help me with all those things. You know, can help me with all those things. So that's really, really important. I think it's important to let the mentee pick the mentor. Part of the chip on my shoulder now is like while I was running for titles, I had a lot of people picking me, telling me that they were going to tell me how it works, I had three or four of those and I wasn't interested and I was trying to figure it out and needing help and people were glomming on to me that I didn't actually even want their help or need their help, but they were going to mentor me whether I liked it or not. Disagree with that kind of mentoring. You mentioned that you moved to San Diego. You actually went there to dance ballet, please tell us about that. So I like to say I left the Mormon Cult to join the ballet cult and there was a lot of structure. It was awesome, you know, you come in, there's a ballet master, a ballet mistress and their rule is law and I loved that. I also loved the movement and doing something as a group where you feel like you're part of this whole synchronized organism and that was always very, very, very satisfying. And you know, it makes your body amazing and that was important too. But and I pursued that in San Diego. It got me out of Idaho. I was gonna leave and go to Pacific Northwest. There was this whole conversation with my ballet teachers in Idaho. I ended up going to San Diego and they were right. There were other things to do for me to do if I decided not to do ballet. But ballet was probably one of my first fetishes. There's gear, you wear the tights and the shoes and the whole deal, dance belts. I loved it all, loved the smell of the theater, making magic happen on stage and all of that. But then I auditioned for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and they said I could enter their school but I also found out that ERI is HIV positive. It was 1987. And everybody told me you got maxed two years to live. So I, in retrospect, since I didn't die, part of that was a gift because I still had this like lingering thing with the Mormon church. What do I do with that? And now it was an academic. You're gonna be dead in six months to two years. And I just looked for, you know, I saw where the love was coming from and it wasn't coming from any organized religion at that time. In fact, organized religion is saying this is what you get for being a homosexual. You die a horrible, painful, humiliating death and you brought it on yourself. So I'm like, that's not my message. I need to hear from other people and then just, and it was all queer people. And I mean the whole gamut of queer people stepping up to help those of us who were suffering from AIDS. I kind of went all over the place with that. So I'll just hand it back to you. Okay. Well, you've brought up HIV and being diagnosed in 1987. That was a very tumultuous time, especially to receive that kind of a diagnosis. So how did you confront these things being said to you six months to two years to live? This had to be overwhelming. So how did you manage that and how did you get through it? To be honest, I think my memory is when I found out I was HIV positive, I was so overwhelmed that I was grateful that I had a ballet class to go to like right after picking up my results. Again, it was the, it was a structure. It was, all of that helped me just keep staying into that. But how did I handle it? I didn't. I was panicked. I didn't know what to do. My roommate didn't know what to do. My roommate was an older man. He was 40 because I was 20. We are still friends. Dominic, hi. And he's a lovely man. He's still alive and still around. How did I deal with it? That's an interesting question. I think I used a lot of denial. I'll do the, I'll go to the doctors. I'll do whatever, but I just, I'm just gonna live my life. Although I didn't accept the invitation to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in Canada because it was Canada and I was going to have to work under the table. I wouldn't be a legal citizen and all these other things. And so healthcare and all that stuff came up for me. And so I really just thought I was gonna die. So I came back to San Diego and I just thought I'll just party until I die. And like three years later, I was drunk all the time and high all the time. My best friend died. My boyfriend died. Soon after that, another mentor of mine died. And I was just going, okay, I guess I don't get to die like everybody else and just being a messy drunk all the time isn't working out. So I got sober. I stopped drinking and doing drugs all together. I mean, I didn't even do poppers for 25 years. Yeah, two and a half years ago, I decided to dip my feet back in and I'm drinking and smoking, smoking pot again. And so far the world hasn't stopped. But that's my story without getting into sobriety. But yeah, the way I dealt with it was to just, plan on dying. And part of planning on dying was like, why finish college? Still don't have a college degree. But because of those choices though, I have this experience that is other, that everybody in here can understand, maybe being the other. And I think it makes me a better older man. I'm 53 now and I'll be 54 next month. And I feel really centered having tasted so many experiences that life has to offer. Tell us how you came into the Leather King scene. Like I said, the Cowboys were amazing to me. That seemed great. But the Leather King scene, well, there was one party in particular. It was a Butt Boy party. It was a Thomas Finland party. It was what's now a Schrader Boulevardner where the Gay and Lesbian Center is. And I knew I wanted that. That was a really amazing party. We don't have very many like that. We walked in. I remember first you had to sign a release. That was amazing. Absolutely, I want to see what's happening in here. I went in and they had all these Thomas Finland pieces, like big art pieces all around. There was a dance area. But then I went back and I saw everything. I just saw boot blacking. There was a guy on a table being completely shaved. They had gear for sale. And then when you think you've seen it all, you just kept going. And there was a smoking area. And then there was a room where I looked through. There was like these portals. And there was like this round bench. And there was like five guys in there, like all white guys, all completely shaved, all like rubbing oil on each other. It's like, awesome. Keep going. And then there was like art for sale. Oh, a silent auction. Of course, we're gay. It was all erotic art stuff. But then like this, then outdoors there was a play. Then I saw a piss scene happening. And that was really amazing. And that's when I had my really first, I was standing on like a platform. Maybe it was like almost a little bit lower than this. I had gotten some boots. I was like wearing a harness. I had bought myself a mirror cap. And this guy, beautiful guy, comes over and puts his just leans onto my calf. And I just instinctively like stroke his head. And he says, thank you, sir. And I was like, oh my God, that was like, that was like a God moment, right? It's just like, this is where I belong. This is amazing. He's saying thank you to me. You know, that's, wow. And then it even went back farther. And there was all these people fucking. And that was awesome. So that was a party that got me into it. But I kept then going to these parties and not telling any of my regular friends I was doing it. And kink was happening in my bedroom and I didn't really realize it. It's like choking and spanking and dom sub stuff. That just sounded, I thought it was just sex. And some of my sober friends were telling me that I was like acting out, that my behavior was like off the rails. And so I just kind of stopped telling them about it. And I was basically closeted kinky person. And, but anyway, until I came to this place where I was two-stepping, and well Ken Harry's my country roots that I understood about that was really, really me was having a leather contest. And I thought, oh, maybe if I just get into that leather contest, I'll get more visibility and I can get some more guys who are interested in this sex that my other friends are telling me is bad sex. I can find more of those guys and have that kind of sex with them. That was my whole reason for entering that Ken Harry's leather contest. But why that party of all things in the whole city, why did you choose to go there? You know, I don't even know. I don't even know how I got there, to be honest. I don't know if I saw a poster at 665 on Santa Monica Boulevard, or if it was a flyer or what, you know? I went with my ex, with my boyfriend at the time who was about eight years older than me. So maybe he just, he knew about it. He had had a leather past, but just AIDS and all that stuff like really was tied into his, it was super, super painful for him. He was in a poly relationship and then when somebody died, it altered their stuff and then they wanted to stay together, but without the third, it didn't work. So he had a lot of grief around leather and it just didn't evolve, open up with him. But for me, then I just realized this is what I wanna do. This is it. And about the same time, produce inhibitors came out and at least I knew my numbers had been going down, down, down. I officially had AIDS, but then they had come up. Nobody knew what that meant, you know? And they were going up, up, up. And after a year, I'm like, maybe we're not gonna die. And if we're not gonna die, I'm not just gonna sit on the couch and watch Melrose Place for the rest of my life, which was seemed to me the option with that particular partner. Anyway, so I quit seeing him and I at least came out to myself that I was kinky. And it was probably another, it was a few more years before I entered the leather contest. You spoke earlier about the Mormon church and the structure that that afforded you. You were able to parlay that into the leather community. Tell us what you did with that. What the Boy Scouts taught you, what the elders of the church and the other people the men's group taught you, you were able to take a lot of that and use it and apply it elsewhere. Oh, yeah. Absolutely, a big huge, there's rituals, serious rituals. One of the rituals is the laying on of hands. That's where you sit in a chair, similar to this one, people with the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood or whatever it is that put their hands on you and then they say a prayer and something happens and you are then officially a member. Either you have the Amronic Priesthood or you have the Melchizedek Priesthood or you have whatever, you're a deacon, you're a teacher, you're a priest, whatever, you have been ordained to do that. And I'm happy to say that something like that now happens after Leather Contest in Los Angeles. And we tried some other things. I wanted some ritual that like brought the new title holder in. We tried some other things that didn't work, like we passed this gift or we stood in a circle and we passed this gift around and gave him the gift and then he was like confused and walking around and nobody could hear us. And what I'm trying to say is you might not get it right the first time if you start trying to introduce ritual. So to keep trying. And we finally came up with this. I'm like, what if we all just the outgoing title holder looks into the new title holder's eyes, tells him whatever he needs to hear because it's about that house. It's about Oak and Harry's. It's about, you know, thanks for where it's whatever. They just like say, you know, blah, blah, you know, part of this. And then everybody makes a huge roaring sound and he is then part of it. And yeah, I think, yeah, then I got to learn practical skills on how to, you know, survive in the wild and tie knots and hold a meeting and those kinds of things. Why did you come to Los Angeles? Why here? Los Angeles was basically crash landing out of a relationship. I was in San Diego. I wasn't a ballet dancer anymore and the guy I was dating at the time went from being a law school student to an attorney. We got along when we were both, when he was a law school student. But that put us in Orange County. I would like to say I did nine months of time in Orange County in Dana Point with an attorney and I was just like scratching my eyes out. I just wasn't built to be a housewife in Orange County and we got into a huge argument. Oddly enough, this seems like a non sequitur and I still haven't got it figured out but it's when I got AZT pills. This is before, and introducing, showing that there was evidence, before that there wasn't a pill to take. So my HAV was just this existential thing and then when I had pills in the house we both got super agitated and we started arguing all the time and we figured, I think we both lied to ourselves and said the problem is that you're commuting to LA all the time so if we live in LA that'll solve all of our problems and of course it didn't and so when we broke up I was bartending, I was barbacking at Revolver in West Hollywood and so that's how I got to Revolver. I mean that's how I got to LA. I had a suitcase, one pair of tennis shoes and I only ate after the bartenders tipped me at the end of my shift. So that's how, that was my glamorous landing in Los Angeles. Well tell us about the LA Band of Brothers. How did that come about? Well the LA Band of Brothers, I mean this gets back to mentoring and I felt like a lot of people who quite frankly had never been in a contest were telling me how to be in a contest and they were telling me all kinds of things like don't have a drink in your hand, don't be seen having sex in a bar and all these things and I was really confused. I said I thought, I didn't think I was running for Ms. Mormon Utah, I thought I was running for Mr. Leather Kinky Sex Guy so and all of our bar titles are like, 80% of them are like bar titles so why can't we have a drink in our hands? I didn't even drink at the time and it still bothered me and they were, so and it was really my, David Scanick gets credit for this, I was lamenting this like, and then I saw it too when I, after I had won IML and I'd gone all over the place and I'd seen all these different communities, I really, I did see one, I stayed in a house that was a duplex, we were on the top and underneath there was a guy with a place and he had dungeon and I saw him meet up with this guy in the bar and this guy was very, very fresh and young and he ended up, anyway, I don't know what happened, I really don't know, but my take the next day was this guy ended up doing things that he didn't wanna do, he went farther because he was running for a title and he wanted experience, he wanted to talk to somebody, a real person that's actually doing the stuff that we're talking about and I thought, and who else is this guy gonna turn to? So that's what I thought, David says, well, you guys should unionize. What do you mean? He's like, well, title holders should have a title holder community and so that's why we started the LA Band of Brothers and because I come from that Mormon background or whatever, it needs to be very specific, I wasn't okay with like, oh, it's gray, whoever wants to join can join. It's like, no, anybody who's competed for the Mr. Los Angeles Leather title is a LA Band of Brothers member. I don't get to decide, nobody in the LA Band of Brothers gets to decide, it's you get to decide, if you decide to join this, be in this contest and you decide, you just need to be in it, you don't have to place or anything, you just have to compete and that makes you eligible to be in the LA Band of Brothers. And so it's really helped turn things from the title holders being the fresh group of lemmings. I was just watching this documentary before I came here. Lemmings are basically the hamburgers of the Northwest, just all the other predators eat them and that's what the new title holders were and that stopped happening. Now they could turn to somebody, they could turn to people who've run for a contest and that made me feel awesome and we had a ritual and different things and that's how it came to be and I'm still really happy that that occurred. Well is the Band of Brothers still a very active organization, still very successfully operating? I think that it's very active. One thing you should know, I've been basically unplugged from the title system for about a year and a half now. I went to IML, well two years ago, I decided not to go to IML just to give it a break. It was my 10 year anniversary and everybody's like, well you gotta go, it's your anniversary. I go, yeah, but somebody else is gonna win. It's not about me and it was a very special weekend for me because I met somebody at an A-Gay pool party who turned out to be a perfect fit for me, turned out to like protocol, turned out to be willing to do some of these other things that we do and I was like wow and I've been to IML nine times and that has not happened. Nine times, well except for the first year I gotta surf for a year and a half out of the first one. After that, and all of these contests, I wasn't getting laid and I wasn't finding sex. That's one of the reasons and then finding it, it's easy for me to find kinky sex away from those places so I'm finding all my kinky sex other places and then the way that the contest system has evolved it just doesn't feel like a place for me right now. It's a little too broad and it's non-specific. I've been talking about that I guess I'll do this whole interview. That's a problem and I don't wanna diminish the joy that people are getting from the contest system. I had it. It feels great to win something. It feels great to go through a crucible with a whole bunch of other people. It's a scene all to itself but it's very little actual kink happening in the leather scene. So, in the leather title holder scene. But speaking of the title holder circuit, the title holder scene, what drew you to that? What made you compete? Well, the thing that made me compete, like I said, I wanted to get on this stage and get up here in front of all these guys and saying, I like to hit people and get hit and, you know, have people crawl on their knees and say, give me more and say, do you run it? I can't hear you. I don't beg for it. I don't believe you. I'm not gonna give it to you until you beg for it. I wanted to meet people like that. Country people are very nice. You know, you don't want to do that. You know, being a whore is a bad thing. So, the reason I competed, well, was that and after I won this contest and I saw this community, it was something attractive to me. And so then I started reading all the books. The Letterman's Handbook, Guy Baldwin's books, like all these books and I'm like, wow, that's amazing. I want some of that. I want a club that you need to petition to be in and not everybody makes it. What I understand now is a fantasy or not. I don't know. Guy Baldwin's the only person I've talked to and Guy and Race and Ray Spannon and a couple other guys who are actually old enough to be there. And, you know, we've created this fantasy, kind of like a Santa Claus idea of what's actually happening and for whatever reason, these clubs, the way that they're described in our, I would call it our scriptures, occur about as often as the stories in the Bible happen in modern times. And I slowly, year after year after year after year, saw that. I'm like, there's not a club of hot guys that are doing their own thing in private that I can just like find one of them and say, look, I want to petition you guys. What do I have to do? And then they tell me what I have to do and like I would meet them and then they allow me to like come to a group and then meet them and then maybe after that I can then finally start to play with them. That is what I was looking for and I never found it. That sounds really horribly depressing, doesn't it? But it's the truth for me and I can find it in little pieces. You know, I had an amazing party but you know what? I put it together. It was a very, very private party in a dungeon space in Long Beach but I've... Anyway, it seems to me now all this stuff that I want to attend is under the radar. All the public stuff is fun but it's like a rodeo. It's not like a fetish sex thing. You know, I don't leave events in the United States feeling the same way as I do leaving events like in Berlin. What do you think was your key to success with the local contests and then winning IML? Well, I think I had something to say. I... Oddly enough, it was like my speeches both at LAL and IML were about... were about inclusivity about recognizing gentlemen, it is unlikely we'll ever win the war of tolerance until we're able to tolerate those who are different among our own kind. That was the opening. That was a Guy Baldwin quote. And I meant it. But I thought that we came together like at the rodeo where it's like I have my brand, you have your brand, you have your brand, you know, you have your cattle, you have your house, you have your farm. And instead of what it seems like we are now, it's like one big thing and if you don't agree to everything that's happening, you're on the outside. And I believe that diversity means that we're different. That we have men's only spaces, we have women's only spaces, we have all these things that we argue about all the time. But we continually argue about them all the time. And to the point now, I want to be woke, I want to be what I want to say is social justice and fairness is very, very, very important to me. But so is diversity. And which means there should be different places for different places. That's not the question you asked. The question is like why did you, how did I do well is I had something to say. And yeah, I could stir the pot like that. I'm very much like, you know, let's face it, why do you have guy Baldwin come and speak at your event? Do you think he's going to come and tell you how everything's perfect? No. He's going to say this is where we need work, this is where we need work, this is where we need work. And that's, I kind of did similar things. I was also compared to the other contestants. Classically, what do I want to say? I was like, I was built, you know, I was 10 pounds more than I am now of muscle and I was actually a little worried about that. I didn't look like the other contestants and it wasn't Harry, I wasn't big. But, you know, the current media makes a body like the one I had then like the body to have. So I think that affected the judges. And then I could articulate things and I also had a job in local government and I think that impressed people that I was working for the leader of a city. And, you know, and I could put thoughts together and organize and, anyway, write essays about leather carpet baggers and things like that. I think that's why I did well. It's a contest, it's a beauty contest, just like any pageant. It's the exact same thing. And I prepared myself to be on stage. I got tons and tons and tons of help and about half of it I asked for, the other half just came and that's where I have to give Los Angeles a lot of credit. I did not know what was going on and people are just showing up when I'm like, you know, I don't have this kind of boots and then all of a sudden those boots are in front of me. So that's what it's like to be a contestant here in Los Angeles, going to IML as opposed to these other places who went to bar contests and then they go, those poor guys, I feel so bad for them, you know, it's hard. So I think I did well because I wasn't afraid to say what I felt and I picked a topic, inclusivity as opposed to something that you could sum up in 90 seconds as opposed to a topic like domestic abuse in the leather community, which is you can't do that in 90 seconds. Don't pick that as your speech topic. It's a really important one, but you can't do it in 90 seconds. I'm going to stop talking about that. Have you any regrets about your year as IML? Yes, my regrets aren't saying, we need to close this down now because that guy's looking at me and I want to fuck him. I have those regrets of spending way too much time in interviews and less time having sex. And I really do regret that. My last IML, not this year, but the year Chuck died, I just had to go. And I went and I literally missed two interviews and it's funny, people are just like, not two, people are just like, well, I guess we're not going to have time and people didn't say, oh, because I'm going to this dungeon to play tonight so I don't have time tonight. Instead of them saying, oh, I see, they're like, well, you need to make time if you want this to happen. Misunderstanding with this event is about to me. But now I do know what this event is about and it's about title holders and it's about the whole machine around title holders and it's a theme. Fetish is a theme, but it's not the main event. You alluded a little bit ago to extensive travels when you were IML. You mentioned Berlin. Tell us a little bit about the leather kink scene. Sorry, my voice is not holding up today for some reason. But tell us a little bit about the leather kink scene that you experienced in Europe because it's completely different from what we know. Yeah, it's very different in the sense that people are allowed to have sex in bars. I don't know. I can't get this out of my mind. I was in the middle of having sex with someone and there was a dungeon in this place I was staying so we were doing some things and he got a text and his friend had texted him. And at the time I was with a sir and I was being very passive at the time and his friend was like, he's a sub and he had been showing up as a sub. Anyway, that communication I thought was very nice of his friend to give him that intel like in the middle of our time together. But the difference is, I love the Germans not just because I have a German last name but their attitude towards sex is everybody has sex. Let's just regulate it and make sure that it's as safe as possible. And so forget all of that. What I love about Berlin is they're very, very specific. I went to a sports biker fisting club and everybody was in there, was in sport biker gear and they were into fisting and it was huge. They had a big top room and then two other rooms and so I was in there. I'm actually not a really big fister but I loved bike gear and all that stuff and it was amazing so I was like way in the back and they were giving me, taking me all over places. I was IML at that time and a big difference so that's the way they're having sex. They're having sex very specifically like that and if you go to a sneaker night it's going to be all about sneakers. Take everything else off. It's just your sneakers that's all we care about and if you're wearing boots, nope, it's sneakers tonight. You know, and you can't get in. And I love that. Something crossed my mind while I was thinking that I wanted to talk about but I can't remember. Something about them being specific, I don't remember. I guess they did have a problem for a while with the dark rooms in Berlin but being very German they figured out they just weren't regulated and once they said you have to be able to clean the wall from two meters down and there needs to be a drain and there needs to be things to clean your hands with now we're okay with it. That's the difference. And because they're able to have sex everywhere the Folsom event, the street event almost no play is happening on the street none whatsoever that I saw my year and it was in everybody's an amazing gear because first of all it's cooler and you can wear a bunch of leather and all of that and they're just like if you want to have sex you can go to that bar or that bar or that bar you know but it's not like we're just like I feel like we are like little tiny like dogs that we've like domesticated into like they're just these crazy animals that just bark all the time and do all that stuff we're that way sexually and we show up that way to Folsom it's like one day of the year we get to do this and we're just out of our fucking minds and they get to do it all the time so there's like healthy attitude towards sex and they don't you know and then they have other cues about like what is friendly and what is romantic like this guy walked me to the train and said oh he walked you to the train that's a sign I'm like what? Yeah it's like otherwise it's just bye I don't know they were very cool too this one guy I was over there for ten days and on the fourth third day I met this guy right off the bat he was actually in the military he was like six four he was constantly in gear always wanted to fuck me it was awesome but after four days of that I'm like there's a lot of other Germans here and I said you know I got all I kind of him hot around and I'm like you know I'd like to just kind of like hang out with other people he's like oh that's totally cool see you later he just took off it's like no scene that's very different than my experience in LA so I don't know Well when we were preparing for this interview you passionately spoke about tremendous changes that are happening within the realm of radical sex what are your thoughts on that a lot of the things going underground things are very PC tell us your thoughts on that well this is where I'm going to try to be honest and not be an asshole to me again to this gets back to like I like my little boxes I like the men's contest to be about men I like the women's contest to be about women I you know and we've we're not there now there were two corsets and high heels on stage was it last year or the year before the last contest that I went to and great but that's now we're not in my fetish area I'm very you know the only women I've ever been attracted to look like men surely Christie McNichol she doesn't count there's this woman who dance here she's an amazing lead I get really weirdly attracted to her but she's like she's got great arms and she's you know I don't know why I'm bringing all that up except for I'm allowed to be a gay man I'm just saying that because I don't think a lot of people in the community understand that at Imzel I was constantly being told we'll have sex it's not the same you know it's like yes I get it but for me fetish is sexual for me and if I'm being whipped by you or flogged by you or any of these things I still it's still a sexual thing for me and I'm fully gay I mean I'm a gold star gay never had sex with a woman and I know I don't need to have it to like figure it out I'm just saying there's that kind of attitude that I should my girly you should feel different you should be more open to other things and I am open to other things I want to celebrate um puppy play you know but maybe I'm gonna like you know say at my event my private event for sure no puppies because it's a non consensual scene that's the whole other thing but um consent is really really important to me um and I'm dancing around what I really want to say is um Mr. and Leather are two words that are in the Mr. Los Angeles Leather title contest name and I just I'm just I'm exhausted from conversations about whether that should include um non male people um just for the record I'm just like anybody who identifies as male is male to me but I want you to identify as male in the men's contest I don't care what your gender origins are when you're in this contest you are identifying as a man into um Leather fetish sex and the contests now are more about um how much money did you raise um an organization who would um doesn't care about us like kids and things like that when um you know I'm glad to see that we're starting to raise more money for the Leather Archives or the Woodhill Foundation and are these other things that actually serve us um rather than apologizing for who we are by raising money for kids um and um other things that matter is how um PC you are you know and I I've you know I I want to speak directly to the trans community and it's like if I've said anything that that that um makes you feel disrespected I feel really really really bad about that um because I have a really um soft I have I have a lot of empathy um for the trans community I just and that is too it's like fiercely trans men like I teach yoga now and I teach gay men's yoga and I don't trans men is just it's just another man and and I'm going to treat you just like another man if you're competing for a contest you need to be hot you need to be interesting you need to be fun you just can't show up and be oh well I'm a little bit different in this way so you know I need to get extra points um that's um that's it well okay great um anyway okay my last question for you is what's the biggest misconception about you I knew yeah I knew this was coming and I um I don't know I try to be really really honest I don't know if there is um I really said that thing about um trans men in particular because I think there was some misconception there um which really bums me out um um my biggest misconception about me I don't know I think I used to uh when I was trying to fit in rather than now I just feel like I belong where I belong I belong in this bar I belong in the leather community um and I'm not trying to fit in anymore um but when I was trying to fit in I um was uh you know I think I something crossed my mind um you know I would try to pretend like I know more than I do and then you know and the fact is I only know what I know um I tried to uh pretend I had more experience than I did and um now I have more experience and that's the only way you get it is by having experience um I don't know I don't know maybe um people can bring things at me but most of the things that people have said about me are true and I'm okay with that if if yeah if you're saying something about me that's true then I need to either change that or um or uh be okay with it well Mike Gurley I'd like to thank you for an amazing interview thank you