 Hello everyone and welcome to Inside Leather History a fireside chat. I'm Doug O'Keefe the host and Producer of these chats. We are a program of the Leather Archives and Museum today. I have the unique Wonderful opportunity to sit down with two amazing women in the community Mama Vi Johnson and Judy Tallwing McCarthy mama for those who don't really know you very well Please tell us a little bit about yourself Making a long story short. Let me see now. I've been kicking around since the early 70s have been mother Grandmother and now great grandmother to a healthy portion of this job. Okay, Judy and Kind of like by I've been around since I came out of 1959 Then went back in got married had a bunch of children. So I have I have six children 21 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren but I also have a great number of children grandchildren and great-grandchildren in our Leather community that I'm Inordinately proud of having One thing though, you didn't say is that you're also the very first international Ms. Leather Yes, I was and that was quite an experience and I've been asked if I would ever run for a title again and I said not in this lifetime But if I had had that to do over I would do it and I would do it because of The people I've met and gotten to know over the years We are at the Carter Johnson Library in Evansville, Indiana Being hosted here by Mama Vi and by Jill Carter. So You ladies have an amazing breath of history and knowledge in this community Tell me a little bit about the communities you knew the communities that shaped you So I'm leaving it I'm letting you take the lead a little bit on this the community that shaped me was actually New York Jill and I are both New Jersey girls or a joysie girls as some would say Jill is South Jersey. I grew up in a little town about 25 minutes from Midtown Manhattan And once we got together in a well for me grad school for Jill College and that in and of itself is another long story Running in and out of New York City was normal for us We decided to find where there had to be people like us and we needed to find them and We found them first at oil and spiegel tests as it's now called the oil and spiegel Society in New York and We're kinklings in that group and in that amazing city with everything it had to offer From groups for women LSM or the lesbian sex mafia Game LSM activists GM SMA All of the night clubs because New York had SM clubs and night clubs Including the infamous Hellfire Club, which was another one of those places where I spent my kinkling years We've been privileged to do five corporate moves and enjoy This community is residents in five different states other than the state of craziness, which I'm in all the time and All over North America and a little bit of Europe. So The foundation that was New York City Judy well Coming out in 1959 I was a kid living on the streets with my best friend Larry one of the men loved that in the leather community loved young boys and his friends decided to tease him and Introduced me to him because I was passing as a young boy then Larry was older than me and I still look like about a 14 year old kid, but He knew right away when he walked up to us. He saw me from behind and said no, that's not a boy that's a woman and And everybody was like, but how did you know that we didn't know that how did you know that and he said look at the hips look at the hands and So but he fell in love with my friend Larry and took us in and I had to I've never been good at sitting. So I had to earn my way He was kind of a leader in the men's leather community at the time There weren't that many people into it and there was a bar in Phoenix It was leather night on Friday nights and people would go to that bar But my job was I polished a lot of boots I used to say I polished more size 13 high heels and boots than I ever thought I would in this lifetime So I kind of started out like a boot black and a boy because I was a boy I didn't I didn't even identify as female at the time I was trying to stay out of Catholic girls school Which is what they did to me because I didn't want to go to school in general Um Anyhow That was my first experience with the leather community the men would have play parties They were always quiet and in the home And I brought food and did things and peaked around and watched and got cool But my my real experience with the women's leather community began in 1981 in Michigan Uh, we weren't allowed Leather women were not allowed to be open or public or have anything in michigan in 1981 at the michigan women's music festival But I got lucky to spend time with the quote syracuse dykes and almost all of those were a good portion of them were leather women And so the women's The disabled women allowed us to use their tent. They had a whole tent And so we snuck into that tent and there was a play party I had never seen women play. I was so absolutely enthralled with what was going on and was crazy stricken by one of the women there and um So that was my first experience my second experience was in portland, Oregon Because the woman I was stricken with I Stalked um What was her name? sashi hi And sashi and I I finally told her as I was leaving michigan because I tried to be everywhere She was without her knowing me being there. Um You know apaches are kind of sneaky because I'm I'm uh, uh, I'm native I'm a patchy and and doa and black and About that much. I wish I think and uh We don't talk about that a lot though. That's kind of kept quiet in the family but But I just followed her around the whole weekend in michigan And as I was leaving I said I think you're the most beautiful woman I ever saw I got up my courage And she's her her Response was why the hell didn't you tell me sooner? And I kissed her and well, she kissed me My knees went and we made a date that if we were ever single And in the same city at the same time We would go out on a date and what happened would happen I ended up going to uh, portland. I was single actually I was in washington state with a maca uh medicine person that I knew and um I stopped in portland I spent three weeks with sashi And then because we did go out on that date And I went back to phoenix and packed my car In a u-haul along with what few paintings I had and a few clothes and left everything behind and moved to oregon And then got immediately involved in the oregon women's leather community um And I got conned into it. I I'm very gullible Believe it or not And so I got conned into a lot of stuff Like to run for emzole because my complaint was all of the women who were running for oregon state leather woman Because they had asked me to judge a couple of times my friend lamar and jc also judged with me I met them and we became friends And I they everybody heard me bitching and so they said well, why don't you run? Oh hell no, that's not no I'm not running for anything well when emzole Uh, we had started uh, portland power and trust sashi used to say we are not a bank Our women's leather organization. It was the third Manifestation of leather and you know, we'd die out and then start a new one and Sashi asked me, uh To run she said you need to run and sally who is um Had asked me to run and a couple of the other people Asked me to run for this because we wanted to make sure there was a leather woman running for The portland leather woman, which was founded just to be a feeder for emzole and I said no way um and Got yelled at and told basically put your money where your mouth is Either you know stand up or shut up So I said all right. All right. I'll do it. I'll do it. Well, it ended up being um seven of us running For the portland leather woman title and all of us were leather women I I think I won by accident. I won by one point And the woman who owned the bar which was the primary domain And it was the the class bar and the 927 was our home bar But kate who owned the 927 was a good friend and she promised to Give a $500 traveling fund For the winner of this contest if we would hold it in her bar Well, I built the stage. I mean, you know construction was what I did then and so Me and a couple of the other women I had working with me. We built the stage And the stairs and everything that went with it and I fell up and down those stairs Every time I went to climb them So I knew I wasn't going to win. We did the larry. It was our mc and uh So I won by one point and sashi and I decided that one point wasn't enough to To cancel out of my runner up So we gave her half the travel fund and she and her partner drove with us to san francisco for emsel and I told the portland community because they had a big going away party and I had to come out and wear everything that And most everything I wore Sally and I had made and I told him nobody's going to pick a fat 40-year-old indian dike to be international with slither And I always say those were my famous last words because then from then all hell broke loose So I've been busy ever since But sashi has a very interesting bit of history. I'd like you to share with us big time Sashi was at stone wall She wasn't one of the demonstrators. However, she lived in the village Her apartment she had to pass the stone wall in to get to her apartment and she had been at a dike bar the night the riot started Um, she had just left the dike bar and she said she came out and There was all this yelling and stuff going on and things being thrown and police and And people dressed in drag and she said she had no idea What was going on and she also had no idea That that night was going to change her life and it did Um, I got a medal on the 25th anniversary of stone wall sashi had passed by that time And I got a medal Dedicated to sashi for being at stone wall. She came back the next night and joined the riots so She was a part of that stone wall riot and Her speech at portland leather pride the year before she died that was 1988 uh When she ended her speech she looked at the crowd and it was the biggest Of portland leather pride Crowd we'd ever had there were over 5 000 people there. That was the biggest crowd we'd ever had And she looked at all of those people and she said I never got my rights in my lifetime But she said she said you can't so keep fighting and so and then she was sick enough that she died in march of 1989 and Her spirit was so strong that she stayed alive till Two days after the internationalist leather contest susie won that year Because she refused to die until she knew who won so but sashi was Really special to portland in a lot of ways Sashi was a an innovator and an instigator She Oh my god, like I said, I was gullible if she asked me to do it. I'd do it just about anything for that woman but She also got about everybody else in portland to do the same thing She also had a lot of the seattle community that believed in her, but sashi was the mom You know, I I was kind of the sideline mom But sashi was the mother who led a lot of our young people in portland She also helped found the portland power and trust um She had all these bright ideas. She said i'm an idea person. I'm an idea if she was And she used to also have quite a mouth on her. She was a little jewish dyke from brooklyn new york Who was also a pharmacist and she said, you know, I'm really lucky. I got to be this agent I still got all my own teeth. Nobody said I knocked them out yet and But speaking of fighting mom of I You've worked very hard and fought very hard For your library in which we are doing this bit of an interview. Tell us a bit about this How did this library come to be? um The history of this community Resides a lot in my memory And in the few souvenirs that I was constantly picking up And culling every time jill and I moved because we moved from the east coast to the west coast and from the west coast to the midwest We were down to about seven boxes of stuff. I just hadn't thrown out yet And the next generation of okroma kinklings Started coming to the house on weekends to listen to the stories to learn to read what few books we had Those kids made jill and me more me than jill Realize that our old stuff was actually their history And uh that that hit pretty hard in terms of Honestly going back and thinking about all of the things that had been given to us when we were kinklings And what we had read and what had been shared to us But another factor came into play, which was though I lived in oklahoma I both worked and served in california And oklahoma was both open and restrictive at the same time There were a lot of things you could do but not a lot of things you could mail Um, you could have a tremendous amount of pornography, but you couldn't mail it into the state So since I Worked in california and loved to drive and was driving a 68 Ford galaxy convertible. That's a big god um When I come back from la Whatever I had done I usually picked up multiple copies of Some for my kinklings, but also some for my club brothers Because jill and I are charter members of to lsa the tulsi uniform leather seekers association And again, I was the one privileged to travel So if I went to the early drummer events, for instance I'd grab every t-shirt I could afford to buy in different sizes for my brothers and steal every program that wasn't nailed down um Two or three copies of the leather journal whatever new magazines that come in A couple of copies of books that all went into the trunk and came home with me And the boxes kind of grew and grew Jill and I eventually moved from the midwest to philadelphia With a few more boxes than we started out with Jill had no idea how many because they're written all over the house Until one day she came home and they were all out because I was moving things around She saw how many there were told me to get my happy ass to a storage unit Which I did And then the storage units grew And then there were two and that was getting expensive. So the two became a bigger one and you kind of see where this is going I started to do a workshop Called leather history show and tell which I still enjoy doing Where I would bring a suitcase of stuff with me And like show and tell when I was in school it would get passed around uh that led to um gentleman asking me if I would bring everything that I owned To an event in south carolina Once it was all out not hidden in every corner of the house and in storage unit There was a lot of it And uh, I got more serious about what I was doing with it in terms of workshops But right about then two things came together One was a high speed internet that was a test from my city And the other one was the very early ages of ebay Well cutting this story down um The man who bid on a book that I ultimately sniped and won Turned out to be a book burner Uh, and he was actually quite proud of the fact that he was paid To find What was our history and destroy it? uh What I think a book burners would probably burn at your camera. So we're not going to get into that but about Five and a half weeks later. I had to be in Atlanta And I had an encounter Very personal encounter with a young man Who needed to talk to someone he thought would understand Because there had been a book burning In front of his store the weekend before that um I realized that fate was telling me something And when I initially got over myself because I had a screaming match with god I swore that if I had to beg it Steal it Going to honk to get it Uh swap a book or a poster for a bill that should have been paid and wouldn't be I was going to do it because you don't get to burn my kids history I don't believe in book burning for a lot of different reasons and some of that has to do with how I was brought up And the town I was brought up in But most have heard me say I wouldn't wipe my ass with my gun But I also wouldn't let you burn it Uh if nothing it teaches us where we're wrong And now as a new generation of The far right is coming in the things book burning is normal And the way to get rid of what you don't want to deal with First things are going to be coming after Other than the history of groups that they don't like Is human sexuality Hitler did it And now that our next generation is understanding the human sexuality at the base of most politics You get to kill two birds with one stone But a wise man once said that In order to destroy the book you also have to destroy the writer Because the book isn't what's dangerous. It's the idea behind it And if I can eliminate the idea I can eliminate the foundation you stand on So if all of those books about queer history and understanding your history goes back to the 300 or Bernstein or all of the great women writers and And that what it is we do Goes back to ancient Egypt for god's sakes human sexuality is natural as we are You destroy that and you will convince a queer child coming out That they are sick or degenerate Or that there is something wrong with them or they need to as bullying children do go kill yourself Not on my watch not with my kids not with everything that we are you don't get to do it So if we could create a place Where you could come and Have an encounter with it where you could hold it and feel it and read it at your leisure but also Feel the stories and the souls of the people who wrote it and who walked before you That history would become a part of you because that's what libraries are They are not just vessels of the past They're the crucible that will contain the future as well and it all meets In the crucible So bring what you're reading now kids bring the stories here And put what you're doing now with the stories of your ancestors and keep it rolling You've traveled with the library at various events. How do you manage to do that? With the wind beneath my wings who is not here right now With a family who thank god believes in the crazy old Uh book hoarder um We will Get called by an event We decide what kind of event it is who the people are that are going to be attending Robbie jack pulse Jill on occasion. We will triage what is here Pack it up pack a van full And go wandering off like crazed book gypsies To whoever it is it is called us They will usually supply us with volunteers And in well depending on the size of the event Anywhere from eight hours to a couple of them have taken two days to set up We will set up a full board library For the attendees to come in Well, not just read it Or view or thumb through But also hang out in The conversations that happen in the library are amazing Um the events that have happened in the library are amazing We have had weddings colorings cappings baby blessings A christening all under the view of the ancestors um Because while we use the term library The reality is We are a sacred story circle This story is contained in the art we travel with The advertisements the books the pillows the photographs the drawings It's all part of someone else's story So we come in as library griots And that's a term that we are very Specific to use because a griot is a tribal storyteller Before anything gets unpacked We request permission To tell their stories We ask them to bless the space and all who come in And then we go from there We set it up We welcome all who come across the threshold To come and have an encounter with those who've walked before you Both of you go Into some real deep material in this community One of them was the response to hiv and aids as it intruded upon Let's let's look at more of the leather community in that respect Would each of you please talk about Your response to that What you saw what you felt People you remember Oh my gosh One of my I lost my mentor Jim Ed Thompson was my mentor he He was an editor at drummer magazine He was my first interview as Emzel It was I I can't even remember where the saturday or sunday, but that monday We were supposed to be on our way to arizona sachi and I and Instead I had an interview at drummer magazine And I was wearing a kind of a fluffy blouse and we walked in and jim ed looked at me and he said Um no self-respecting dyke would wear that shirt And I was ready to fight I was so mad at him immediate and then he grand And he said good Set your own style And then that did it. I was very disarmed and we became friends. We just sat and talked At the interview was just a chat. We talked and laughed and told stories and He was the person who told me Um Where to go and where not to go if I had a question I could call him day or night and ask him so In effect when I lost him and chris his his boy was a wonder too, but That was a high impact and in portland. We were losing so many people. It was crazy I remember being fearful every time the phone would ring Oh, yes, and we were traveling at the time sashi and I never said no We decided that this was Our job because she was as much himself as I was the only time we didn't travel was right after her kimos Which would knock her on her socks and and I took care of her so but otherwise we were on the road I I she said we've been up and down i5 so many times. She felt like a benoit ball But the other thing was we were flying now the first IML I remember talking to some of my friends from seattle Some of the guys And I was reading and hearing how hard it was becoming for Drugs to get carried across People in one state couldn't like AZT There were states that would not allow it even in the state and it was at the time It was one of the drugs that was helping Uh, I keep our men alive and well not just our men our people alive and um So Me and a couple of our other title holders talked about the things that we could do and especially women There weren't that many of us But we started taking drugs with us and so It wasn't unusual for me to be carrying Uh From canada I was just I had forgotten this until last night telling my story to one of the young people here We used the smarties boxes We could put pills in the smarties box if you dump the chocolate out the candies out they make a lot of noise They sound like pills anyhow And you drop some pills in them and you could have like a case of smarties that was sachi's favorite candy That's where I got the idea and then you put the smarties back on top So even if they opened and looked it was still chocolate candy So that was one of the ways but um And I traveled and pulled others almost the whole time and often would wear my sash straight onto the plane And I think because we were so blatant we didn't get We didn't get our luggage gone through hardly at all And so that was one of the ways we did it the other thing was doing fundraisers I never said no to a fundraiser and I always wore my arm bands And my arm band I always had arm bands because the arm bands were what I donated for fundraising and they would auction them off And then I would sign them and I don't know where all those arm bands are But there's lots of them running around the country And that's what we could do Because I never felt so helpless in my life except with sachi's cancer Not being able to Do anything. You know, it's like I I don't want you to die. I don't want you. I don't want to lose you I don't want you to die and then you're gone and it it it That helplessness is uh What kept a lot of us going and I wasn't the only one I remember Just before Cynthia Slater died she and I and culture thomas Had been asked to speak at san francisco gay pride. They had never had And this was right after sashi had died and I agreed to do it because it's what I was supposed, you know It's what I was led to do Why otherwise why was I being asked? But the three of us Spoke on stage. We were the first openly leather people they've ever asked to speak Out front up front on stage at san francisco gay pride so It was uh, like I said, the the hardest part was when the phones would ring. We didn't have cell phones But you dreaded you're just absolutely dreaded the phone ringing uh One of my best friends who still calls me judasaurus hp was Really heavy in estrus pantry, which was the food bank for the men we went on fighting the organ citizens alliance the oca to try to We were fighting to get recognition for our community and Sashi and I often ended up doing debates on the radio or on a television station because of that uh I remember one of my most fearful things I did as emsel the thing that scared me the most was and everything was Visibility I I've always been and I I know I said it that night and I meant it and I still mean it Because if we're invisible they can wipe us off the planet and nobody will ever know we were even here much less gone So we have to be visible and that was one of my big things uh At the time and um, I did an interview with the newspaper and it was the It was the alternative paper, but it was really big in oregon and He called me the female roddy danger field, but yeah Uh, and it hit front page. It was front page and on and on it was a big article and Uh, I was terrified To be that out in my own hometown but I also felt that Sashi had a saying If you're doing something you're ashamed of You shouldn't be doing it and I decided I wasn't ashamed of who I am. I'm not ashamed of my community. Oh my god I'm proud of this community Uh Leather folks have led the way in so many ways and we were losing leaders daily And I still think of All my friends who are gone um That I miss a lot and uh so I did what I could you know So that I didn't feel quite so helpless Mama vai At least in my twin talking and I I remember the PTSD of sorts that we developed over phone ringing um PTSD post traumatic stress disorder. Yes It's hard for this generation to understand those first years And because of how it chills in my life with We were in new york and went from new york to Los Angeles and it hit new york first LA second and then the midwest and we were in all three Those first couple of years when it was grid Before it was a scary related new disease Somebody could be diagnosed on monday and dead on friday And When you are that Enter each mind in the community you love And the phones are just ringing so and so is sick and you knew what was gonna happen Within a few weeks or a month you knew before it's gonna ring again And it got to the point where we didn't want to answer the phone Because we didn't want to know Who was dead now and whose funeral we had to go to Like my twin said we felt helpless I was young and I hadn't I had one advantage That a lot of the women didn't have Which was I was young and female and black and I remember I got a call and said sam is sick Can you play his girlfriend? I don't know what His family is on the way in Yeah, that was the other and We need somebody who can stop the family from going through that apartment And if they see a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend, they won't be fine Well, as it turned out, um The advantage of being black was that uh They just assumed that I was sam's little secret Because his girlfriend was black instead of white And it gave his boyfriend a three-day head start to clean the apartment out of their treasures And um I wasn't the only Young woman in the community who was doing it for our brothers There were a number of us and they jokingly called the shields Because we were protecting either our brothers or the couple from the family who would come in And either turn that life upside down or go through that apartment the way Sherman went through Atlanta and destroyed everything Um And I learned, you know, they taught me well and then ultimately Jill and I in 84 moved to the west coast And the woman that I was serving Had work that had to be done a lot in San Diego. Well It's a five-minute hop over the border to you on And I was asked Once when I had to run into San Diego and then into Tijuana to pick up something If I would stop at a little pharmacy that was a couple blocks off The main avenue of the revolution the main road Uh prescription was already paid for can you run in and get it and bring it back? Sure It wasn't one bottle it was Easily 2012 and the sudden realization of whoops Uh, so I put it in the springs Up and under the front passenger seat And came back with all the stuff that I was supposed to have gone over to T Wanted to get some printing and programs and things on the seat and I was doing it so often It wasn't a big deal everybody knew who I was But when I was asked it was hop over to the avenue of the revolution grab the prescriptions and bring them back And then ultimately when Jill and I moved to the midwest and we had Douglas you and I had talked about the Tulsa community and it's Within five days it was home for Jill and me And how remarkable that community was The uh veterinarians in Tulsa got together with pharmacists And asked most of the men who rodeoed If they would bring in their horses for an imaginary prescription Because a lot of people don't realize that AZT is a horses drug And prescriptions for AZT would be written at a rate that would probably have filled every horse in the midwest Just so that they could be given to a couple of our brother pharmacists who set up a I guess you could call it a floating pharmacy Um So that our brothers could get drugs if we knew someone was dying Whatever drugs were there got cleaned out And and put in the pharmacy so that other men could have prescriptions and possibly live Because it wasn't just that the drugs were expensive and they were insanely expensive Yep, but a lot of times they weren't even prescribed. They weren't and they weren't available. Um So running drugs. Yeah, I get it. We did it all the time. Didn't even think about me either It was just what we did um I mean, you weren't so helpless then you were doing something Like going to fundraisers if there was a fundraiser, you know, and they asked me to come and And help get people to come. Oh heck. Yeah, I went Uh, like I said, we never said no and Sasha was really sick, but we still traveled uh We spent over $10,000 because there was no travel fund. There was there was nothing, you know We spent over $10,000 the first five months We were emzel Out of pocket and since i'm probably going to date this By saying world aid state was just a few days ago right december 1st and uh Incoming here And learning a lot about our next generation of youth And what they do know and what they don't There's a part of me that is relieved in that they will not go through what we went through But there is a part of me that's absolutely horrified That in not having to go through it. They also don't know it One of the many souvenirs that's part of this library Is the original red ribbon that was sold by Broadway Cares when they started the red ribbon campaign And I remember Well, I put that card with the ribbon still on it in the hands of a lot of the next generation Who suddenly realizes that the two ounce card weighs about 3 000 pounds In terms of its spiritual aid But I remember I had it photographed and it goes up on my facebook page every year The first time I did it I was horrified At the number of private messages that I got Telling me that they didn't know What the ribbon was That they thought it was just one of many colors That go for pic a disease any disease pic a cause any cause with no idea what's so Of its importance or that it was the first uh The second year there were a lot less But I had to repost the ribbon three days in a row with stories about its importance and its significance And sending some of our youth to the Well, it's now the descendant of the Broadway Cares page The talks about the red ribbon in the campaign and why it was important And telling stories about The fact that the ribbon originally had a little gold safety pin in it And the pin wasn't to hold the ribbon to the card The pin was a pledge that you would play safely And even when Broadway Cares went from the ribbon to the ceramic ribbon There was also a fundraiser. There was a gold safety pin going through it And talking about braiding ribbons Into the hair of a lot of my friends So that it would be there until the you know until it fell out or the braid wore out or whatever So that that ribbon was visible It wasn't just a pin that went on your jacket It was a part of us either around the arm or in the hair or a little bit ribbon The first slaves was constantly woven into the chain we wore so that it was always there Switching gears slightly Judy what advice can you offer? Someone new to the community who might be aspiring to be the next inzel Get involved in their community one find who they you know We've got all of this stuff. I think that the media I've got to go back a little bit on this I think this public media is a good thing in a lot of ways But I also think it's a bad thing in a lot of ways because I've heard these people who are all of a sudden masters I've never heard of before because they think they've learned a few things online and now they're this big Don't fall for that. Don't buy into it There is an organization Or somebody part of an organization in almost every part of this country There are some of us who are highly visible and and try to stay that way Contact them try to find out who the best people to go to in your community are Don't get hurt. I remember in the old days And especially with the young men But there were a lot of them I had horrible experiences coming out into our community And that's because they got with somebody who thought they were something and weren't So Make sure you learn who the people in your community are to go to If there's somebody you're going to go see That you're interested in Find out about them because find the people in your community who we know And there's one of us in every city In every state in this country and some of us outside this country I know folks in australia. We got friends in south of us out the in South africa we got we got friends everywhere So find somebody who can now if I don't know anybody in that state I know somebody who does So Don't just go with the the media too many people get hurt that way So don't get hurt one two Really learn your stuff Don't start saying well i'm gonna do You know i'm gonna start whipping people. Oh my god. We used to do so many It's hard. There's so much you need to know first of all don't buy into the internet That's bullshit find a real human being and ask them Get involved in your community there is something going on in almost every major community and a lot of the smaller ones Go to fundraisers, you know uh, I went to I remember we went to detroit. I didn't know anybody in detroit. I was embo but so what You know with that sashi used to say With that and a token you can get on the detrain in new york city. She was talking about the subway So you but you needed that token So I did code check that way. I got to know everybody and I I wasn't embo I was a code check person, you know, so Be willing to volunteer and and be a part of the community Uh, it is it it you'd be amazed at how much you can learn doing code check But it just just get to know your community before you get hurt And Experiment be willing I always had people fill out a form for me before I would play because I like to improvise I like to switch Around a lot when I'm playing. I don't like to do the same old thing. Well, you know, okay, be be No, I want to be able to like move around a little bit, but I also want to make sure That it's enjoyable for the person I'm playing with or at least getting an experience that they want So I used to have a list I want a list of the things that you're pretty sure you're gonna like I want a list of the things that you want to try but aren't real sure of And then I want a list of the things you're like, no freaking way. Am I going to do that? Now Down the road you might change your mind about the no freaking ways You may find that some of the things you wanted to try you really love doing so Kind of get to know what you want to do before you jump in full-fledged because if you jump in full-fledged You can end up getting hurt and then that turns you off and that makes your experience is negative But the biggest thing is get to know your people I have a leg See this leg. This is my leg It's my real leg And if it weren't for the leather community, I wouldn't have this leg. I'd be walking around in a my idea was I would have a carved peg leg I wanted it carved out of mahogany with monsters running up and down And I would be walking around with a black eyepatch going To everybody so I could be a pirate Because I had a bad motorcycle accident and I was slated to go into surgery and have my leg amputated and Audrey Joseph Audrey Joseph my sister that I inherited from sashi because they came out together in new york Many you're up to oh my god. Did I and I but I love my Audrey. That's my inherited sister I'll never let her in a kitchen with an eye You'll be in a new emergency room before you even know it but anyhow She came for she would come to us for dinners and she wanted to help me in the kitchen. No, Audrey I am not spending Thanksgiving in the emergency room. No But anyhow, uh, where was I? About a peg leg. Yeah, so I was gonna do that and Audrey and The guys at the oh god, why can't I remember? My memory is getting really bad but it was the mince leather the the leather of the the motorcycle group that raised funds for injured motorcyclists and but the san francisco community and chicago and even hawaii and washington and origan They all did fundraisers and raised over 37 thousand dollars in a week To save my leg. Oh, wow It wasn't the total bill But it got me into the hospital and got me one of the best surgeons possible And saved my leg. So I have this leg Because of the leather community. So I still can't say no I still have I just don't say no Unless I'm sick and flat out can't move I don't say no because This is it really is my family. It's not just a term I use and The heart it's the heart Of this community that you can't You can't miss there's we've been that that's that's the thing even In the heart in the midst of all of the insanity with the age crisis crisis, you know, I like this little post I just got a couple of days ago. Fuck the rib and find a cure But Even in the midst of all that even our men who were sick and our women who were sick Like sashi had cancer it killed it We still did things to help All of us everybody just did what they had to do and The community has always been a leader and Helping So how could you not love this community? I just you can't You can't not love it So mama vai people May want to come and visit your library. How can they do that? Come on down? Sound like a car salesman I want to face the page Uh and uh, mom i'm going to be in town on touch and touch today cool The advantage of the two buildings so far is that in the center we have a room as you know That we have available to young scholars and artists and visitors So that they can stay here Uh, you get the keys to both buildings So that if you don't sleep all night and you happen to be running around or fall asleep in the library From the young scholars room. That's fine So all we need is a little bit of advance notice That you're coming or if you can't get a hold of any of us on the facebook page And i'm about to throw tony under the bus because I can Contact to list tony salin from the news drummer who is the senior scholar in residence here and uh If nobody else can reach me including my boy and my spouse, which is rare tony always seems to find a way to to go, uh, mom I just booked the room for this weekend go check the calendar and then we fill it in So we are in evansville, indiana We are about a mile and a half from the ohio river And some call it until the hub city In that we are just north of nashville We are west of louisville and east of st Louis and if you really like driving we're about six hours south of chicago or by car So come on down and 12 hours from Baltimore A euro is slightly longer drive, but that's okay Worth it. Oh, yeah So come on down bring the club bring some friends It's not like we haven't had slumber parties in here before gets a little crowded, but stuff happens Fall asleep with a book Find out what it feels like So come visit or is the cool kids say see you in the library Ladies, thank you. This has been amazing. Thank you For participating in inside leather history of fireside chat and thank you for doing it, Doug I think this is wonderful And this is particularly wonderful because I get to interview you twice Very cool