 My guest today is Karl Madsen. Welcome to Inside Leather History of Fireside Jazz. Thank you. Alright, let's start right at the beginning. You're originally from New Zealand. So tell us about your very unique early years. I grew up as a lower working-class boy, which added a flavour to my outlook on life. I also grew up in a house where my mum left when I was six months old. So basically my dad and housekeepers brought me up. But it gave me, because I was always going to dad to work all the time, it means I didn't have your normal friendships. Because I never stayed at school or any of that stuff. I was at eight years old, I was walking the streets of a capital city. And nothing bad ever happened. Wow, wow. So you were suspicious of everyone though, so tell us a little bit about that. Well, because my mum left so early, I became the sort of person who believed that if someone was nice to me, they wanted something. I think it's one of the reasons I survived walking around the streets at such a young age, because any predator that came near me got the same treatment as anybody else who came near me. And it wasn't friendly. What did you do? I think even then at eight, I had such a built up anger inside me that it just came out. People would start to talk to me and I'd snarl at them. Wow. It wasn't like I had no idea about being polite. I just wanted everyone to go away and leave me alone. So what did you do walking around town all day? Walked, I went to the library. I read the, when I was older, I read the kids section to start with the young adult. I started at the age of the young adult section and worked my way all the way through the library books. You did say you read a book a day? Easily. Easily. What were some of the things that you read? Started off mainly ancient history, anything to do with the ancient world caught my attention. And anything that then moved into science fiction and science fantasy. I already knew that real life was shit, so I didn't want to read about it, basically. And books were my escape. Why do you say real life was shit? Again, the upbringing, because after my mother left and the housekeepers came and went and came and went, my father fell in love with a rather unfortunate woman. My stepmother was the classic Disney evil stepmother. But she had good reason I found out when I was 16. She was raped and she had a son almost exactly my age. So every time she saw this kid, she saw that kid, she saw the rape, she took it out of me. Wow, wow. How long did that go on? That went on until I was 19. Wow. I had this weird connection with my dad. My sister ran away at 12, but I felt if I ran away too, I'd be failing my father, so I didn't. And your father put up with this? He was a very weak man. We tried to harass him about it when I was 50, so just a long time in the future. No, 11 years ago. And the only thing he'd keep on saying rather than resolve the issue is, I don't remember, I don't remember, I don't remember. He denied it all, basically. Wow. How did you feel about that? Well, he's denied it. I expected it. I didn't really expect him to fess up, own up, or be a better person. Wow, that's very heavy. It is what it is. Okay. Yet you call yourself a romantic cynic. Yes. So what does that mean? Well, even when I was younger, reading all of these science fiction, science fantasy, escapist novels, and also classic literature with all of the gods and goddesses, there's always an element of romanticism. And I'd love that world to have come true, but I kept reminding myself what life is really like. So I was romantic with my eyes wide open and just waiting for the hammer to fall at every single moment. Okay, that's very heavy material for a young person. I survived. Okay. And you said when we were preparing for this that you're very much a loner. So why is that? I think I got used to my own company and I loved my own company. It's also, I found out recently, it's also part of my, my dad's Danish, the Danish heritage is the friends you make when you're in primary school or earlier are your friends for life. You keep the same small group of friends that you make in your formative years and they carry through. And my father, by coming to New Zealand, had done the same thing. He had a very small group of friends. So what I saw of what sort of friends you have, they were very small, very close because I didn't trust people. It took me a long time to let people in and actually form those friendships. Why did your father decide to immigrate to New Zealand? That's a very big step. He was getting away from his father who was abusive. That I only found out two years ago when I was in Denmark. My gosh. My aunt who's still alive on her adoption papers because she was adopted. She showed me where it actually says that my grandparents should not be allowed to adopt another child. Wow. And they still had her and they were abusive to her as well. Not sexually abusive, physically abusive. That's awful. But my dad wasn't. I mean, my dad went to the opposite of stream. He had no affection for anyone. Like, I only have one memory of my father touching me. And that was to slap me over the back of the head when I kicked my stepmother under the table at 16. Oh. I love the glint in your eye when you say that. What satisfaction did that give you? I suddenly realized you were scared of me. Okay. And the whole power dynamic changed immediately. Even if my head did bounce off my dinner plate. Because my dad, because he'd never hit me. When he actually did hit me, he didn't pull back. How did it feel, though, for you to take back that power from her? Oh, yeah. It was like a drug. Okay. Yeah. Suddenly this bitch who I put up with since I was three had no hold over me anymore. How did that change the situation? I moved out a year later. Okay. Nothing was ever resolved. It's just she started avoiding me rather than deliberately setting me up. Wow. I still, I didn't stay home. If my dad went to work, I went to work right through my entire schooling. Okay. So there wasn't, there was no home life. Got it. But you said that television was both a reward and a punishment for you. So what did that mean? Well, again, we're in New Zealand in the early days. So the TV started at 6pm and was gone at 10, one channel. That's all? Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. She knew what shows I liked and she let me start to watch them. And she had a big thing about my overbite. I had to hold my mouth shut at all times, which was at that stage, say when I was 16, impossible. The overbite was too huge. I could not breathe if I closed my mouth. So she'd wait till I had my mouth open 10 or 15 minutes into the show and then send me out of the room so I couldn't see the rest of it. Oh, wow. And the, yeah, I keep, you look back and you think, I should have just not watched TV. But you're a kid, you want to, you want to get approval even from the people who hate you. So I kept trying and of course I kept failing. My gosh. Because that's the way she'd set it up. She was very good at what she did. What programs did you try to watch? Oh, in the early days it was the very original, as a kid I remember Flash Gordon, the black and white one. Then later on when Color TV came that was in The Six Million Dollar Man. Oh, okay, okay. I don't think I ever saw a complete show until I re-watched it later. Oh, okay, okay. That's dating a bit. I think many of us of a certain generation certainly know that. But you spent a lot of time in the local library and the toilets proved very interesting for you. Tell us about that. Eventually, yes, I had no idea of my sexuality but I was very good at watching people, usually because I was not scared wary of them because I was never really scared. And then I went to the toilets and started reading the writing on the wall. And of course, one thing led to another and eventually I got picked up and taken somewhere. And something that grossed me out completely happened. Such as? I'd never seen a guy come before. Okay. And the sticky white stuff everywhere, that was just disgusting. But even then, the one thing I remember from that is I asked the guy for bus money to get home. I wasn't catching a bus. Mm-hmm. And that leads on to something we might talk about later. But for example, tell us more, what kind of writing did you see in the toilets? I think looking back at it, a lot of it was guys writing about their personal experiences in the toilet. But of course, most of it was bullshit. It was written to get guys horny. So then their guard would drop and they'd be more interested in getting rid of that damn thing. So I mean, looking back at the time, you think, wow, this is all real. Then you wait a minute, you go, wait a minute. This is all really well written. So it wasn't someone's frantic scribbling on the wall. It was a deliberate setup contrived. And this was all in the public library toilet? Toilet, yeah. So was it very busy? Oh, yeah. Yeah. But it was a big old building and there were toilets upstairs, downstairs. And this one was like down four flights of stairs. So it wasn't the one that everybody went to. But it's the one that all of the people who know went to. How did you find it? I followed somebody. Okay. And the first time I went in, I foresaw what was going on. Well, I had an inkling of what was going on. The doors were shut. Turn and fled. A couple of weeks later, I took a few more steps. Cold water, warm water, hot water. Oh, shit. I'm boiling. What sorts of things were going on? Basically, the usual thing of guys standing at urinals, joking off, showing each other their decks. And then someone would come in and everyone would hide it. Then they'd take it out again, et cetera. And then there'd be the peek-a-boo over the cubicles. Okay. But yet it totally grossed you out to see somebody come. The first time. Oh, yeah. Well, I had no idea. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I was a very late developer. I mean, my mind was developed far sooner than my physical development was. Oh, okay. I couldn't do that. I didn't even know that worked like that. At what age were you discovering this? It would have been, I've got to put the years together, probably 13, 14. Okay. So you were very young. How did these other men react to a young boy? Meat. Okay. And I also looked a lot younger than I was, so I was even more meat. Wow. I was a pedophiles fantasy. Wow. That is shocking. That's live. I guess so. So what took you to Sydney at age 22? I'm sorry. Okay. We jumped to Sydney. I went to uni, fell out, got a job, spent two years and working in the computer industry in its early days, and then realized I could make more net, sorry, more gross in Sydney than I did net in New Zealand. And I started applying for jobs and I had three job offers and five interviews before I'd left the country. Wow. Wow. And I had no idea at that time that Sydney was the gay capital of the Southern Hemisphere. I was completely, naïve was the wrong word because I definitely wasn't naïve, but I was definitely ingenuous. Okay. I use that word because my lover later on pointed out someone that, no, he's definitely naïve, but he's definitely ingenuous. So I had to go look it up. So tell us a little bit about the Sydney scene that you found when you arrived there. Well, I found the Sydney scene because it was at the time of what they dubbed the gay blade motors. The Greek ambassador got stabbed to death by a call boy, a rent boy. Wow. And that hit the papers and suddenly I knew about Oxford Street because it said Oxford Street was where all the gays hang out. And I went, oh, really? Because up to then the only sex I'd had was beat sex, toilet sex. I didn't know anything else existed. Wow. I mean, until I hit the Sydney scene, I didn't even know that guys my age were into it. Wow. Totally, as I said, ingenuous, but not naïve. So at what age were you pursuing this? You were what, 22, 23? Oh, it would be, yeah. Well, I left 79 to 80, so yeah, it was 22, 23. Okay, okay. But you engaged in a new and exciting hobby. What was it? Ah, yes. I became a, I was a computer person by day and as you guys call it, a rent boy by night. I had two different personas. I used to go to work in my suit and tie and I had my torn jeans and slightly grubby T-shirt in my bag. How lucrative was this for you? Extremely. Again, I was 22 and I looked 16. So how did you most benefit out of this? What sort of techniques did you use that made this so profitable? In the early days in Sydney, it was just by being innocent and needy. Okay. And the customers loved the fact that I needed them. Fascinating. I could go a few directions with this. So I'm wondering, for example, what was the, was there anything about it that was really repulsive to you, anything that was really exciting? It was exciting to be wanted and it was exciting that there were all these older men, you could say father figures, who wanted to take care of me. Okay. So that was kind of nice and weird. Did they buy you things? Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. Usually it was just, they didn't, not expensive things. Like one brought me a new jacket because the one I was wearing was too thin. It took me ages to find that in an hop shop. Was there anything that you refused to do? No. Okay. Not back then. Okay. I wasn't asked to do anything that I thought was weird. Oh, all right. Yeah. Except stay for dinner. That was a bit weird. I did it anyway. Okay. Okay. That's what I mean. They wanted to take care of me after they, after they'd got their jollies. I think some of them got the guilt and then thought, yeah, what can they do to ease their own conscience? But you sold yourself as a Marine. Oh, that was later. That's when I came to Melbourne. Oh, was it? Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I've sold myself as an ex-Marine. Oh, all right. What happened was, along with my leather fetish, rubber fetish, let's dress up and do something fetish, I decided I liked the military scene. I managed to meet a guy who was in the U.S. Navy but had a Marine fetish. Okay. That led to me going on a dare. I went on to a base. Well, there's only one in Hawaii. I went on to the base and I got a Marine haircut. Okay. The full high and tight, which they didn't think I would do. As a result of daring to get that haircut, I got the full Class A's. Okay. From the PX. And I went back a year later and bought the Dress Blues. Because I know a lot of Americans go, that's stolen villa. But that's an American thing here. If you wear the uniform that's not yours, it's just dress up. There's no insult to anyone who's in the service or anything. And I knew I was doing it right because an American warship was visiting. And I was still a working boy and my customer was an officer off that ship. Okay. And I tried to tell him I wasn't really a Marine and he just tapped me on the shoulder and goes, it's okay, I understand. He wouldn't believe me. How long were you working in this industry? Well, off and on for 20-something years. I stopped in 96 when I decided I was too old for it. Why did you decide you were too old? The body wouldn't keep up with the mind, shall we say. Because we've gone past 40 now. So you were working both in Sydney and then in Melbourne. I came down, I met my lover in Melbourne and we both were workers. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So it was your partner that brought you here to Melbourne? No, no, my job said we've got an opening in Melbourne. Do you want to go? And I never heard of it. Okay. I came down here, got rained on, hailed, wind burnt and sun burnt all in the same day. And when I love this place and I moved down two weeks later. My gosh. So tell us a little about, you met your partner, Steve, and you were together 23 years. Yep. So how did that evolve? There used to be a sauna here called Steamworks. Okay. Steamworks was very famous in the entire Southern Hemisphere. I had met a Hong Kong military policeman, English, and we developed a sort of kinky leather relationship where, the reason I say it was kinky was because in public he was the top and I was the boy. But when it came to sex play it was completely around the other way. He was about as top as, you know. But he taught me a lot from the bottom, which was great because it was a great way to learn. But I was sitting with Dig V at the cafe area of Steamworks and everyone going past into the leather area had to walk by. There's rather hot older man and rather hot young man dripping leather like full kit. Walked by and the young guy was Steve. I sort of perked up and he perked up and they went off to play. I thought no more of it. But what I found out three months later was that the guy that Steve was with knew Dig V. Steve gave Dig V his card saying, get that boy to call me. Okay. But because Dig V didn't want to lose me, he didn't want to pass on the card, but eventually Mike hassled him and to do it. Uh-huh. And yeah, I rang Steve and for the first time in my life I was put on hold. Okay. Well, I didn't know the stage was a working boy and he was busy for the next three weeks. So I went around and saw him on a Saturday morning and 25 years went by. Fantastic. But what did you learn about your kink at this point? What were you learning about that? That basically that I liked power play games and I liked the leather scene because you could take it on and off like a leather jacket. Okay. It wasn't, you didn't have to commit to it. You just did it when the urge was there and you could do what you wanted, how you wanted, how you, when you wanted. And you didn't have to get worried about commitments and love and you know, will they respect me in the morning? You know, like this other old joke, will you respect me in the morning? Hell, I don't even respect you now. Uh-huh. Yeah. That sort of thing. It was just something different because vanilla sex was like... Yeah. But you said your kink journey had a three times rule. What was that? Oh, I write that, yes. I was open to trying most things that weren't going to hurt or kill me. Well, things that weren't going to kill me at least. The first time you did it, the second time you did it again to make sure whether it was just the novelty. And the third time was to make sure that you did or didn't like it. Okay. One of the things I learned very early on was to not say, I'm never into. There were no hard limits outside of sanity because how do I know? How do I know I'm going to like X, Y and Z unless I've done it a couple of times? It's like when you listen to a song, the first time you listen to it you go, I might like that. The second time you go, nah, shit. The second time you go, no, actually it has some value. That's what my kink exploration was like. What sorts of things did you learn about kink? I learnt that it can happen anywhere, anytime. And sometimes when things aren't planned it's the best way for it to be. A quick example was, I was at one of the drumper competitions in Sydney. I was in the light box of the guy and my lover. I was lying underneath, sucking on the guy's balls. I was choking him to death with his rather large cock and the guy threw up on me. And I went, wow, that's hot and we kept on going. It was only beer. But I wasn't repulsed. But if someone said I want to throw up on you, you'd be like, really? So it's situational then. It's completely situational. I was already at this stage where I didn't say no to anything. Well, I didn't say never to anything. You want to do what? For example, what would have fallen into that? Oh, when guys wanted to play with rather large toys and my mind was elsewhere. Well, there was one thing I always said never to. I never switched during a scene. I wouldn't flip flop. It pissed me off. If you've presented yourself to me as a top then you better be a fucking good one or at least have fun doing it. And if you're a bottom, don't start telling me what to do halfway through. Steve and I were both switches and we switched once at the start or at the end. And we turned it on and we turned it off. Again, something you learn from being a working boy has been able to turn your mind on or off whatever you're doing. Yeah. But is there one or the other that is really your preference? Well, I've been doing it for 40 years and it depends on what day of the week we're talking about. Oh my gosh. And also a lot of it really, I believe I was a true switch because it depended on what buttons the other person push. Oh, okay. I mean, I knew one guy who well, they were boyfriends American and one was a hairdresser and one was a computer person. And I both built like Brickshitt House. Oh, sorry, one was a dancer. One was a hairdresser. And to look at them you'd go, yeah, he's a dancer. No, he's the hairdresser. And you only had to get him to open his mouth out of leather and he went, oh yeah, he's a hairdresser. Oh, oh, oh, oh. So, tell us a little bit about the Melbourne, ooh, the Melbourne kink scene when you got here and you began to discover it. How does it compare to other places? Other places are big. Well, I wasn't really in the kink scene as such in Sydney but when I first came to Melbourne you had a choice of Club 80 or The Lead. I mean, it only opened three years. Or Steamworks, which had Leatherone. I mean, it was quite a unique sauna because it had a separate area that you had to book separately for Leatherplay. Because they kept it separate so that you didn't have people walking in and giggling and high-pitched voices and, oh, that happened sometimes. That was the Leather guys. And giggling and running away. So they had it separate. And most of the kink happened there and once I met Steve, well, I'd met Digby through some MRIC I think it was the chat group at the time all text-based and Melbourne's scene was very much one that if you weren't in, you were out. There was no way to break in. The Leather scene was very old guard here. Oh, okay. Melbourne was fairly conservative. You didn't parade your Leather in the street. You didn't wear it before dark and you basically kept your fetish to yourself. So when you'd go out, the groups would tend to be... Melbourne was very clicky. Sydney, anyone who wanted to fuck you would say hello. Melbourne, if they didn't really know you, the game, we're talking in the early 80s, if they didn't know you, they wouldn't bother in the Leather scene. Do you feel one city was better than the other with what it afforded? They were different. Sydney, you went to for a quick fuck. Melbourne, you came to for long-term enjoyment. It was like... Sydney was a smorgasbord of little taste, but you never had a real meal up there. You came to Melbourne to have the full nine courses and go home stated. Okay, I see. But you said there's a difference between private and public faces of King. What does that mean? Well, I knew a lot of people in the scene who, unless you were in the room with them, you wouldn't know they were in the King scene. Mainly because a lot of the circle I moved in were public figures in one way or another. Most of them were public, most of them, not all of them, were public figures in the gay scene. So, basically, once I became part of their group, we kept to ourselves because we wanted to keep our King private. Unless we were up on stage deliberately presenting, performing, for charity type thing, we didn't tell everyone who we played with and who was in our group so that people could still have their public gay life or professional gay life without everyone going, that is it. I hear he's into so and so. How do you know that? Because this person's into that and they've played with that person, therefore they must be into it, that conjecture thing. It also means you could go up to dinner with people and not have them looking over their shoulder all the time. But you were part of a group of five people in a stable Kink family group. Tell us about that. There were two public figures in it who basically ran the show and three boys. Steve and I were two of them. He got me involved and for the life of me I can no longer remember who the third was. Oh my gosh. I was so into Steve at that stage, young love, first love really, that everyone else could just fuck off. There was decorations or bokeh gani, they weren't really important. Was it what we would now classify maybe as a poly relationship? It was definitely a poly relationship because the two tops involved both had partners who weren't involved. Interesting. They weren't involved in the private part of the family but they were both out and about as the public boyfriend of their partner. There was an interesting mixture there. Why weren't they part of the private part of this? Wasn't their scene? Interesting. They were leather people like they liked wearing leather but they weren't really well as far as I know. They weren't that kinky. And what would you classify though as not that kinky, what does that mean to you? What did it mean? The sort of thing where if you slap them on the bum you can go all more but if you actually slapped them for real they'd shriek. It's the public face of kink like oh yeah, beat me, beat me, not that hard but okay. Sort of pretending to be kinky because that was the in thing sort of thing or because their known boyfriend was such a celebrity that they felt they had to be. Got it. I mean both the other guys had a strategy about them all and they were both great people. One of them is still alive so gotta be nice. He knows more about me than I know about him. Oh, maybe we should have him here for this. But you were Mr. Melbin Leather 94-95, right? One of those years, yes. Tell us about your title holding experience. Well, that was when Melbin Leather Pride Association had just started and we wanted to put we had this grand vision of having this pansexual Leather community that everyone could be part of and we actually started here at The Lead. Our first meetings were held here and we were a good mix of straight and gay women men and it's kind of ironic that two years after we started MLPA The Lead went men only which was kind of weird for me. I didn't see the need for it to exclude women. There weren't, but it was at a time where there were reasons I'm sure of it, but it just didn't fit with me because I was much more of an inclusive person. I mean, Steve and I were having play parties at home where there were other couples of other sexes playing as well. There was very little co- you know, cross mingling so to speak, sexually but we'd quite happily play with lesbian couples and strapped couples in a party scene in our own home. And then suddenly the gay psyche went to, we need this place all to ourselves and I'm going, why? What did you feel you accomplished as a title holder? Oh absolutely nothing. I went into the competition because they didn't have enough numbers for the competition. The competition was really a way of giving something back to the community and the competitors were basically free performers. Steve and I were already doing free performances here at the Laird for anyone who wanted us to. What do you mean free performances? Well, a good example is there used to be a motorcycle group here, a gay motorcycle group called, I think they were called the cruisers. They were having their opening night and they wanted a performance something on stage that wasn't drag. Because at that stage if you had a performance on stage it was drag. And I was a motorbike rider since I was 17 and I was back on the bike and Steve and I suggested we would do a basically make love to a motorbike. Because what is a motorbike to a guy? It's something hot and swarming between his legs. So we took it from there and we were always stirring the scene. We were both dressed at a leather night at the Laird in white twink gear. Oh my gosh. Right, shorts, white sandals, white socks, brand new screaming white clothing surrounded by grunge and leather and everything. Some people knew us at that stage because we formed a couple of other times and they're going they're up to something. And there was just a bike on stage. And what we did is on our queue the lights changed slightly, the music changed because everything Steve and I did was set to music because that was our count. And we got up there and we started just looking at the bike and touching it and of course a couple of the queens in the audience were going they're touching the bike. And then we took it as an excuse to strip we took our shirts off and started to clean the bikes with the shirts. We then got rid of the shirts somehow we got from shirts to down to only wearing jockstraps, white jockstraps, of course. Of course. And then we started cleaning the bike with our tongues. You know, handlebars. He's a handlebar and he exhaust pipe and so we were making love to the bike. The only bad part of that is funny though because the bike, the guy the president of the club had provided the bike and he had polished it with a wax polish. Okay. I was hungful, covered in wax. But we couldn't stop. And then what we did is we came about each end of the bike met in the middle and suddenly noticed each other and then it became more erotic. At first stage you couldn't have your dick out in a pub that would lose their liquor license so everything had to be left to the imagination and what we did, did near the end is he was bent over the bike I was up behind him I pulled my jockstrap down because I was facing back to the audience and the light started and all we heard from the audience was that's the sort of performances we did we did one for the bike club we did one for the launch of a VEX, SNM booklet that VAC put out, our AIDS council and anyone else who wanted a performance to add something to whatever their special night at the lead was we'd throw something together. Fantastic. We did that for quite a few years and then it got a bit it became touchy with us because every time we went out people would talk to us because oh, they're the performers they're not doing anything and they turn and walk away and that started to piss us off after a while and the final note was when we stopped performing and the lead paid the next lot of guys to perform oh, wow that was like a, wait a minute it was funny, but we enjoyed doing it. Well, tell us how you saw AIDS impact the local community? Well, it killed a lot of my friends basically I mean the leather community it's one thing that really brought the leather community together in Melbourne being a bunch of insular families because suddenly people were dropping left, right and centre. I remember that you saw someone had lost weight and you were instantly worried. You'd see someone you hadn't seen for three weeks and you wouldn't say, how is name of boyfriend? Oh, I haven't seen you in a while you just kind of avoided the whole damn thing and eventually it killed the leader of my house. Oh my gosh how what are your thoughts on things now like prep and oh, fuck yeah. Yeah, I'm not on it, but then again I don't play outside of my group very much at all, but two of my pups are on prep and it gives them the freedom to do what we were doing all the time I think it was a great idea I mean, okay I can see the downside there is a lot more syphilis and gonorrhea and chlamydia out there but is it any worse in the late 80s where our idea of safe sex was don't have sex with an American? We really believe that. I'm not late 80s, early 80s. Wow. In the gay community age was an American disease. Wow. Wow. How did you see that eventually change? How did people begin reacting to it? Okay. When people started dropping like flies literally in both Sydney and Melbourne, people had to start listening and going, what is this damn thing? Yeah. But you also said that the kink community, the leather community sort of devolved here. So what went on with that? It devolved because a lot of people died a lot of the mentors died and the ones who are left were either grieving or in long-term relationships and had lost their partner outside of the community and didn't want to remember. Do you really want to come to the pub where you spent the best years of your life with your lover who died two years ago? Yeah. Did you want those memories to be in your face anymore? And so everyone just, I think everyone was in shock so they were through. Wow. Wow. Do you feel you did? No, because I've always been pragmatic about death for a start so it affected me but I just kept going with it but I had many other interests outside of the scene and I think I just by Stephen I channeled our energy in a different direction and we still came out, we still went to things but yeah, the spark was gone for a while but it came back. Okay. Do you feel that the local community is as strong as it used to be? I really don't know. I mean, I've always been a bit, if you've gained my loner status, the community a lot of the time when you hear what's going on it's a farsk. It's not a community, it's still us versus them. It's this community versus that community or it's this subset of this community, leather community versus that subset because you said X about Y and said 10 years ago. We've all seen it, we'll all see it again. We'll all change. So what are your general thoughts about the current leather kink scene? Oh, it's amazing. I love watching it. I mean I'm much more of a people watcher than an active participant now. I mean, I still come out now and again and I've got all the pups in my pack are all under 30 so they keep me young, you know, keep me out doing things. I mean, it's actually a very good quote. It said basically if you're over 50 do you have a mentor and the added bit of that is who's under 25? Because the only way older people are going to stay up to date is you need a mentor to keep you up to date with everything that's happening now because as we age we ossify. New thoughts, new ideas, new ways of doing things we basically run away from them because it's too hard. Okay. So it's been challenged by and that's one of the reasons I love my pack because they challenge me to keep up to date to keep doing stuff and don't become a grumpy old hermit. What do you think is the greatest challenge to the community? Cohesion. Not letting petty insight and fighting destroy the actual goal of working together and we don't have to love each other. We only have to work together and present a public face that's acceptable. You mentioned mentorship, what are your thoughts on that? I think it's crucial. You can't learn everything from a book that Larry Townsend wrote back in 1970 whenever. I mean, I read a book on pup play after I'd been doing it for four years and I wanted to burn it. Okay, why? It was an infuriating it was written by someone who wasn't in the scene who decided that the pup scene was not part of the leather community. It was, it didn't belong because the masters were looking after the slaves therefore that's the wrong way around. And I looked at it from a point that if you were a pup or if you're a dog back in the day you would completely depend upon the person who was handling you or looking after you because you were locked into your gear. You didn't get off all fours you didn't walk around you didn't talk to people you didn't take your hood off and on as you suited. I mean, I remember coming here to the pup in the nineties, I'd walk in the door I've dropped all fours and the only time I'd stand up was when I left. And that could be four and a half hours later. Oh my gosh, my gosh. And I wouldn't talk to anyone that entire time. Because I was in that space. It's like being a slave who's not allowed to talk. Being a dog slave is exactly the same thing but you've got to have a lot more fun because you didn't have to worry about whether Sir had a drink or a cigarette or needed something that's his fucking problem. If he was silly enough to take you off the lead, well, we'll see you later bye. Oh my gosh. And I think that's why a lot of the top, the letter tops enjoyed it because it gave them a time out as well. I had a master in Canberra who loved pup time because he got to show me off to all of his straight friends but also didn't have to worry about me at all. Didn't have to worry about what I needed and what my concerns were and he didn't have someone like, there are a lot of the very demanding slaves out there what can I do for you now? What now? Have you got a drink? Can I refill it? Can I fuck off? Right, a pup doesn't do that he goes, oh yeah, you're busy, I'll go sleep on the couch until you catch me. That sort of thing. It brought a fun aspect back to the submission. But what drew you to that? Well, I've always preferred animals to people so it was very easy. My attitude with animals is they're always honest so they don't like you, they bite you. If they do like you, they show it. There's no fakery among animals they're not good at it. For me it was an extension of being submissive. What advice have you for people new to any of these scenes? Don't listen to anybody try everything for yourself and try it three times. What's the biggest misconception about you? Oh, interesting question. I suppose the biggest misconception would be that I'm a complete extrovert. Okay. But you're not? No, this time it's when I want to run away and hide from it all. All that time spent on stage and in the public eye, it's like these interviews, I'm quite happy to do a private one. I got asked to do the public one I went fuck no. When I won my title and got off that stage I saw I'd never get on one again. Did you ever? Well, not yet. I'm not dead yet. Okay. I basically gave the best performance in my life and time stopped. I didn't want to fade away I just wanted the full lights out black not fade to black, just go black and leave. That's it, I've done. Wow. It worked. But before we conclude I forgot to thank the Laird for hosting us today. So I'm going to say that right now for the audience viewing this I extend special thanks to the Laird Bar in Melbourne, Australia. But Carl, thank you for an amazing interview. Thank you. It's been a pleasure on a rainy day here in Melbourne. It's Melbourne, it ranks. Thank you very much.