 Welcome to Inside Leather History of Fireside Chat. I'm Doug O'Keefe, the host and producer of the chats with Mistress Joanne Gatti. The Fireside Chats are a program of the Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago. Today, I have the honor of being able to speak with Sybil Holliday in San Francisco. Sybil is proudly a former hippie. She's a former burlesque performer, a community educator, and a hypnotist. So, welcome, Sybil Holliday to Inside Leather History. Thank you. It's a delight to be here today. I'm glad. Let's start right at the very beginning. You, when we were preparing for this interview, you told me that your motivation comes from your heart. Correct. You asked me where I was from, and it immediately said my heart. You meant where I started as a child, but my heart has always served me well. My foundation is my spirituality. I didn't know that when I was little, although I fell in love with the moon when I was three. I just knew that the best way to proceed in life in life was to be with my heart, and my heart never lied. My heart didn't, my pussy. My pussy lied. Yes, we got those confused a couple of times, but my heart, if it served me well, it has served me so well, I have had news just a couple of days ago that my heart was right, and other people around me were like, hmm, what are you doing? And I'm like, hmm, following my heart. I didn't think that at the time. I just knew that I was doing the right thing. But you also said here that the moon is your guide. When I was three years old, my mother had to rescue me. I don't remember this, she told me, because I was leaning and reaching for the upper window to look at the full moon. Now it's not unusual for a three-year-old child to be entranced by a big silver disk in the sky. However, it didn't stop, you see. The moon was such an influence on my life. It's steady. We see the same moon all the time. All of us have always seen this moon, wherever you are on the planet, and from the beginning that they were beings. The moon has been there. It's a constant. And it is beautiful and it's mysterious. We only know one side of it, really. I mean, yeah, little rovers have done their thing, but what we see is what we see. And when I got older, I started learning about alternative spiritualities. My mother didn't believe in anything. My mother thought that I, however, that I should be educated. And when we moved to Boston for my grandparents' farm, she took me to every church, temple, synagogue, meeting house, you name it, we went there. Holy Rollers, Seventh-day Adventists, anywhere that we could get in, we went. And none of them were mine. None of them. I wound up, you know, you're taught a prayer, or some of us who taught a prayer. Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Okay, so I would say that little prayer, and then, you know, mom would leave, and then I'd say another prayer, which went like this. Oh, dear Jesus, you know you're not the one for me. What was the point of going to all of these houses of worship? So that I could make up my own mind. Oh, I see. She didn't believe in anything, but my mom, she didn't know the word dysfunctional, but she knew there was something wrong with the way she wasn't abusive. They were just very Victorian, my grandparents, and my family left, and she knew there was something wrong. So she believed highly in education, and I have an excellent East Coast education because of that. And she taught me how to read. I remember sitting on her lap, and just her finger going and underneath the words, and I remember my first book that I remember one page, and it said bat, cat, hat. And it had a picture of a baseball bat, a cat, and a man's hat. And I remember that page. And I was reading, kinda, by the two and a half. Oh, wow. I was reading very early. And that was her whole thing. I, she used flashcards for fun. She was way into educating me. The first time I told her that I wanted to go to therapy, she said, why? You're not crazy. And I said, no, I'm not, mom. But there are some things I can't quite figure out by myself, and I need some help on that. And she said, I raised you to think. And I said, why? I know. And I thought, I'm thinking my way to a good therapist. And that's kind of been my approach. My approach has been very logical and very spiritual to life. I'm highly spiritual, or deeply spiritual, highly skeptical. However you wanna look at it. I'm very pragmatic, you see. Before we go down that road, though, let's take one step back. You mentioned you were from Massachusetts, Boston. East Hampton is where I was raised in my grandfather's, grandparents' turkey and vegetable farm, 18 acres of land for the first five years. And I'm so glad. And then we moved to Boston. We lived, we were poor. Mom went on welfare because she got chased around the desk. This is before there was any HR, you know? And she didn't wanna do that. And then she got a job and, you know, I got bullied. The person you see here, not bad. But when I was eight years old, I blew up in every direction. I got fat, I was very tall, I was smart. I had thick glasses, I had a full body rash. I had this hair when this was not in style. Cher was in style. And my mother dressed me funny. On top of that. On top of everything else, bless her heart. She sewed. But she was of the generation when children looked like little adults. And so she dressed me funny. And I looked like a little adult. When everybody else, in 1955, I was five. In 1958, they were not dressing as little adults. But I was. 12 years old. I got beaten up. I was 15 years old. They were not dressing as little adults. But I was. 12 years old. I got beaten up for it. And I told her, I'm not going. I'm not going anywhere until you let me pick my home clothes. And by 12 years old, I was five foot eight. And I weighed 180 pounds. I was a huge kid. My mom was huge too. See, all the women were big. Nobody thought anything about it. They were all great cooks off the farm. I had a rough childhood. I wasn't abused by my mom. My mom loved me. But the peers, that was bad. And so when I, at 17, shared my Virginia, I didn't lose anything. But I did share something. It was very interesting. I went from a kid to a woman. I had this experience that, oh, this is fine. I like sexes good. How does pragmatism work into that? I would go to the edge. And then I'd find out where the edge was. And then I'd push it a little bit. And I would backtrack a little bit. And when I was 18, I read Heinlein's The Martian. And it's a beautiful book. And I read the Herod experiment, which is all about free love and carrying on. And people asked me what formed my life. And I said, well, those. It was 1967 and 1968. I had to have a good time and break out of being a wallflower. Take acid in 1967. Share your virginity and party, because that's what I did. Well, how were you introduced to acid? A stranger gave me a hit of oddly. It was Boston, the Boston Connors. And I lived close to that. And I was already a baby beatnik. And so just sliding into being a hippie wasn't unusual. And I lived on Beacon Hill, the wrong side. But where I lived, it was very multicultural. And I could just walk down there and walk. I came straight and then walked to Charles Street. And then there was the Collins. And so I'd read about all of this. And I thought, hmm, I wonder. And I was reading about what was happening in New York. And I'd smoke marijuana when I was 13. You know, the street I lived on. Now this wasn't true of all the streets on the wrong side of Beacon Hill. Now it's very nice, by the way. Now the street, I had somebody take a picture. And they said, oh, mistress, civil. You grew up in such a beautiful street. And I went like, what? Changed the light over time. I mean, it was all right. But we were all poor on that street. And the building that I lived in, there were 10 gypsies crammed into a one-bedroom apartment on the first floor. OK? I mean, I shouldn't say 15th. But that's what it was called then. Roman. Yeah. But there were, hold on. There were beatniks. There were gay men. There were professors. There was a delightful Jewish family that lived right up the street. There was Margarita, who hung out the corner and greeted everybody all day long. It was a fun street. So when I got bullied in school, I hated school. I hated my legal name. But outside of that, I had a little life. And I read like crazy. I read, read, read. And mom sent me to good school about which I'm so grateful. Tell us about the beginning of this hitchhiking journey that took you to New York and then San Francisco. Eventually, yes. Eventually, I went with friends. We were just going to go to New York. So we hitchhiked to New York. My good friend and I. We stayed in New York for a month and something, a little bit more than a month. And so, the reason I left New York, I was going to be in prison or dead. I didn't like who I was becoming. I had a, what they call it, my own personal come to Jesus moment. Well, I left. And I wound up here. Two days later, hitchhiking. I got 60 miles out outside of New York on the freeway and thinking I can't do it this way. And along came a Volkswagen bus. My friends three days earlier had said, we're going to San Francisco. You want to come? And I said, no. There they were. They stopped off, picked up another bus. And three days later, I'm in San Francisco. But arriving in San Francisco at that time, the stuff of legends. What did you encounter when you got to San Francisco? Well, I had four cents to my name. I had a purse that was functioned like a backpack kind of. I got a room at a crash pad that night. And I wound up fleeing with heroin. It's not my thing. I got very sick about two weeks later because it's not my thing. And then I moved to North Beach because what was happening in the hate was not as good as it had been. 1967 and the hate were fine. 1967 in Boston was fine. But speed and then heroin was coming into the hate. And so when I got here in North Beach, I panhandled for a while. People were doing that like crazy. And I would go down into tourist areas and look all sweet and pathetic and hit up couples for, could you have a quarter? So I could get something to eat. And the woman would go, oh, Fred, give her a dollar. She could be a little merry at home. It was great. So I got a room at the Antelah Hotel, which is now an Airbnb. Wow. Yeah, it was a really good hotel. And then it became a hippie hotel. And now it's an Airbnb. You never know, right? You never know. You mentioned you met Janice Joplin there. Yes. Yes, that was in North Beach. Janice Joplin. Oh, my. What happened was that living in the Antelah, my boyfriend, Janice Bidiachi, was one of Janice's first guitar players. Before. Before she was with the holding company. Before it was Pearl before, all of that before, before, before. And so he knew her. And her roommate at the time was the bartender and waitress at the saloon on Grand Avenue. And they had, not a hoedown, an open mic. And you could sing along in the other room. So I would go there. And I would hang out. And Bidiachi lived in the same hotel. And one day he said, I want you to meet somebody. Let's just go play. And so that's how I met Janice. And he would play guitar. And she would sing. And I can't, I wish I could harmonize, but I can't. And so this was just pretty everything. It was 1968, just before. What were your thoughts when she made it really big? I was happy for her. She deserved it. She is unique. She had such soul. She was so raw. So raw. And, but I wasn't surprised when she died. No, I was deeply saddened. Deeply, deeply saddened. That I wasn't surprised. Why not surprised? Well, people used her, you know. You become famous like that. You can't help it. There are people who will latch on. And they want, and they just want your name. They want to be say, they know you and they want to use you. I am this, this bit, this bit famous. And I have that still. I mean, there are people who say they know me. They'd never met me. They've never met in a class, but they see me somewhere. But coming back to the situation in San Francisco. At that time, San Francisco would have been sort of a mecca for everybody. Everybody. Everyone. And it would have been an amazing time to have been there. Tell us a little bit about the San Francisco you knew late 60s going into the 70s. I lived at the Antella, as I said, which was a short walk to Broadway. It was very close to Lombard Street. And I was a hippie. I had left the bikers behind. I was no longer a biker hippie chick. I was done with that. And I had my colors. I burned them. I was done, done, done, done, done, so done, done. And so panhandling would take me to Broadway. Panhandling would take me all around the city. And the city was very vibrant at the time. The music scene was happening everywhere. There were, this hotel was crammed full of hippies and musicians. So you could just go in that hotel and you'd hear music. There were people playing on the street. There you go to, just, everything that you have seen is true. Everything that you might even fantasize about. It was a fairy land, really. And the sexual freedom, the pill. Women could have sex and not worry about getting pregnant. All we had to worry about later on was herpes. And nobody was worried, didn't realize how bad herpes could be. So we, you know, until you got a shot, if you got the clap, ooh. It was very free and very loose. And for me, one thing I wanted to do, and I got to do it, was be a stripper. Tell us about being a stripper. How was it for you? Great. Great. This shy, too fat, too tall, got a rash. Mom dressed for funny. That's just like a bad coat that was put on me. That's not who I am at all. I am a woman, a human, that enjoys life to the max. I'm not the most beautiful person, but I'm not ugly. And I did take ballet, and I have a certain innate grace. And the first place, how it happened was I was sitting in the lounge in the hippie hotel smoking a joint with everybody else. And the barker from this small itty-bitty nightclub, way down the end of my way, just near the freeway, comes in and says, we only have one dancer. We need two more. Does anybody hear a dancer? Does anybody want to work tonight? And I went, I do. So I bought out some clothes. I bought a pair of heels that were too small to help me. I had makeup, and I did my best hippie finery makeup pair. I put a thing here. I did something with this. I showed up. All's Broadway Inn, A-L-L Broadway Inn. It had been just a bar, but he was cashing in. So he threw up a bench against the wall. The smallest cocktail table, as you can imagine, the smallest itty-bitty, bitty cocktail chair built a stage at the end in between the men's room and the ladies room. And that's where I started. Go, go, dance. It was go, go, dancing. And there were both. So at the end of that, he said, you got a job if you want it. And I said, yeah, I said, bring me an ID. I was 19. Okay. Next day, and I got 25 bucks. 25, that was a lot of money for then. To just, as far as I was concerned, I had a good time taking out my phone, right? And I was low woman on the totem pole, so I got the leftover songs. There were three of us. That night, there were three of us. Two had been working, and I was the third, and they taught me what to do. And we rotated. One danced, one sat with customers, one was the waitress. On and on and on. 20 minutes on, 40 minutes off. Well, I see, I see. We would hustle the customer for quarters for the jukebox, but we had, what do you call them, tokens. So we had all the quarters. We were talking, a very mini hustle here. And it was bee drinking. So you'd get the guy to buy you a drink, and there was very little alcohol in it. And to sit with you. You got a heck of that for that. So along with your 25 bucks, you got that. And that's where I started. And I had a great time. It was a song nobody wanted to dance to. I didn't care. So jazz? Oh, well, nobody wanted to dance to Jump and Jack Flash, which is a great song. I did not. I didn't want to dance to that. Susie Q is also a great song. The pusher. Nobody was going to dance to that either. And I did. I can't really remember all of them, but I didn't care. They had a good D, you see. Did it progress for you? Well, first of all, a pair of shoes that fit me right. And I got phony ID, and that worked. And I danced there for a few months. A few months. And then I was just, you know, I thought, I want to go up the street. I want to start developing this. I was the most overdraft go-go dancer, by the way. Because go-go dancing was boring. I mean, you dance your ass off for one thing. And boy, did I hurt that night. Oh, I hurt where I didn't know I had muscles. I had no idea. So, okay, the next day I was pacing myself. But it was weird. And then on the break, a little minute break, in between the songs, you take off something. That makes no sense to me. Taking something off is part of the whole thing. Yeah, yeah. Why are you just like... No sense. So, I started adding things. Okay. I started shipping. And I thought, this is really what I want to do. Finally, somebody said to me, you're not a go-go dancer. You're a stripper. You really should go somewhere where they strip. But I thought, I didn't know enough, really. So, I went up on Broadway, you know, and I watched them there. And I thought, I'm not ready. But then, somebody mentioned the chai paris. The chai paris is on 150 Mason Street. And it had a big pink and neon can-can leg outside. It had been a real night club with a band, singers, all kinds of stuff. And Meyer Neft owned it with his wife, who was Japanese. And a diva, she was carrying the little purse dog back then. And she was a stripper that was a ballerina. Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. And boy, was she the iron fist in the velvet glove. But she stayed up on Broadway with the good girls, you know. And we down there were the girls who didn't quite have it, were too old, whatever, or just didn't want to deal, didn't want to deal with her. And I worked in the daytime. Well, I got to tell you, working from 12 to 8 in the daytime at the chai paris where sometimes there was no one until 2, I got to practice. I got to be up with two girls on, three girls on. I got to practice and practice and practice and practice. I got to watch supersts with experience. Tell us about moving on to burlesque. Well, that, you know, that was working on at the follies. So I got a very good education at the chai paris. And eventually I started working nights. And that's when I really got an education. I worked with somebody called Tori Lin, who if she hadn't been black, would have been a big star. She really knew Afro dancing, modern jazz, ballet, and I just, I would be cocktail waitress saying, and I forget to cocktail waitress. I'd be there with my traitors. And a lot of what I, she would come out a lady, would get down, and then back up into the lady again. And I thought, yeah, yeah, so that's it. So I started, and she, oh, and I have to tell you, baby doll, I have to tell you about baby doll, because baby doll taught me how to walk. I didn't know how to walk. Baby doll was the bartender and the manager in the daytime. And she was relatively petite. She was about 5'5". But she wore sky high heels and sky high hair. And was built like, whoa. I mean, built and accentuated it. And I didn't know how to walk. At the time, I had this little like side thing, and I really hadn't figured out how to walk. That walking is a dance move, several. I had to put that together. That was a little dance thing. She said, come watch me. And I'm like, okay, we're leaving the bar? Why are we leaving the bar? She goes, watch. She was billed as baby doll, the girls who stops traffic. So we got two markets straight and the traffic's going zing-zing. Without looking, and not on a crosswalk, she just starts walking slowly. And everything is moving. And she is fucking as she's walking. But she's just walking. Traffic stopped. And they didn't start up again. That's what is so interesting. I mean, she just started walking. It was slow, but cars would come. But then, you know, cars over here and cars over here were like, what's going on? And then she'd get past these cars and they would move. Why? Because everybody's glued, watching this. Defying traffic. The power of a woman walking. Think about that. How lucrative was Berlesque for you? Berlesque at the time was fading. What happened was I was working at the Shea and I learned about 15, 16 street follies. And I thought, oh, theater. Whoa, with the live drummer, right? And an organ player. And a comedian. And an opening and a closing. And a little bit. That was what I really wanted to do. It sounds like real fun. I took my best outfits. I went to the manager. He just asked me to take off my clothes. No problem. I mean, he didn't ask me to strip. Just wanted to see my body. I wanted to know my name. And he said, sure. In two weeks. That was five. But it's only a week, you see. Because girls would come through. That's the way theater is. It turned over. Now this place had a very weird, very weird thing. The manager thought that if you changed your name, your wig, and your act, the audience wouldn't notice. Of course they did. The light men didn't know that this was from the manager. And the light men thought we were all nuts. Because the strippers who came through, you see, on an agency didn't do that. But the local ones, us, we did that. And they thought, what is going on with you? Are you all multiple personalities? What? So I had four that I rotated. There was Senkinda, which was my own hair, which was bright red at the time. And it was a hippie chick with all kinds of flowing stuff. Here comes the sun, you know, like that. I was Tina St. John, and I danced a mac and knife. And I had a pair of cheap, cheap, over-the-knee boots. And it was pretty... It was an SM without being SM. You know, it was sharp. I had a black wig. It was very different than Holiday O'Hara at the time Holiday Heart, who was the blonde bombshell. And... Oh, and Dusty Raven. And Dusty Raven was brown hair, and just a little, not holiday, not glamorous, but more slinky. So we had these four different things. And I would rotate them. And so I do the... You do the same act, you see, for the whole week. Poor show. You do the same act. So, okay, well, the next month, I could have a different act for all of those three... four people. Well, I got to work. There. Then I met Holly Hills. And Holly Hills said, you want to go on the road? Well, yeah. Yeah, I want to go on the road. What does that mean? Sounds like fun again. So she introduced me to Jess Mack. And she said, you need pictures? You need a little bio? Oh. Got pictures? You need a little bio? I said, no, Jess Mack. Jess Mack sent me to Guam. Oh, wow. And I went twice. I loved Guam. Oh, it's awful now. Now it's all neon and hustle and cheap hustle. But then they had strippers, good strippers. Everything was very culture segregated. Not segregated in a bad way, but like the Filipina girls didn't strip. They were the waitresses, as were the Vietnamese later on. But the Filipina bands were awesome. They hardly spoke any English. They were adorable. And you ought to hear, you know, I got to eat out when you don't speak English. But they could play. The Japanese had the big hotels, like the Hilton and all that. And then there was Chinese food and there was Vietnamese, I love Asian food. And there was, oh, God, the food was heaven. And the water was beautiful, beautiful and clean, so clean. It says you studied basic to advanced sexuality, AIDS education at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. Right. Tell us about that. That was a lot of fun too. After a while dancing and traveling and being with women and doing my thing, which is wind up talking and listening and going, hmm, what have you thought about? I was back in San Francisco. I had had a great time traveling. I needed to do something else, so. And when did I first do that? That's a big leap, you see. So, 77 last time I was in Guam. Then what happened? 78, 79. Dancing on Broadway. We're dancing on Broadway. We're dancing at 16th Street, doing that back and forth, back and forth. But now really dancing on Broadway. There was a time when I did the amateur contest on Broadway. I never won. I wasn't weird enough. There was this really fat girl who was adorable and wore an angel dress. She just pulled down her tits and she could really dance. She had a beautiful face. There was this other woman who was flat as a board, buck her down. And there was this other woman who was funny as fuck, beautiful, and said she was on grace and she was a lay teacher. And then there was me. And I would be Sintenda Hippie. I never won because I wasn't weird enough. It was all a rig, anyway. We were sitting in the audience, but it was just funny. I thought that was funny. Anyway, when did I start? Oh, okay. So, actually, I got kinky first. In 1976, see, I didn't do the Institute. But what happened was in 1976, I was dancing at the Chaperie. And I'm not clear de Bois. For the benefit of the audience, please tell us who she is. Clear de Bois, well, who she is. Clear de Bois, in her own right, is a ritualist, an SM educator, the creator of the Clear de Bois Intensives. She is my dearest heart sister. I've known her since 1976. We lived together from 76 to 80, like, 80 something. She moved across the street, opened up her own little dungeon there. We worked together. And she, ultimately, married Paquire Moussifar. Yes. So, yes, she was my girlfriend. And she was the dancer. She was a belly dancer, is how we met. She was a belly dancer. I was a stripper at the Chaperie. She wanted to learn stripper moves. And I wanted to learn belly dance moves, because I wanted to create an I Dream of Genie act. So, we went into her apartment and traded over on Leavage, and traded dance moves. What about her work? Tell us about the work she was doing, and how you were called to that? When she said that she wanted to put ring bolts in the wall of her entire bedroom, which is entirely wood-paneled and wood-showed, beautiful Edwardian home, I said, what? No, you can't ruin the woodwork. Why do you want a wood? So, my boyfriend can tie me up and spank me. What? What? Oh, my God. What did I let move into my home? Where did that lead? She also was going to the Society of Janus, which is the second oldest SM educational and social group in the United States. And so, she came to me about a week later, and I'm thinking how I need a new roommate. I got to kick her out. I got to kick her boyfriend out. Who's in the other room? Oh, wow. And, you know, he was fine. He kept to himself. So, I'm very upset, actually, because all I know, you see, is from that awful porn. And either, in that awful porn, the boss who spanks his secretary because she's been bad the hell, or the burglar, this is my favorite, the burglar breaks into the home, the wife catches him, hits him over the head with a rolling pin, ties him up, and then gives him a blowjob. What? Wait, what? That was my favorite. So, that's all I knew. As you know. I'm not an environmental person, but no. So, I said no. And then she said to me, these amazing words. She said, SM is not what you think it is. What do you mean? Please go to a meeting, to an orientation of the Society of Genes. And just listen. You don't have to join, but please go, please. What did you learn, though, going to the Society of Genes? SM is not what I thought it was. What did you learn that it was? Well, I met these people. I just met people like you and me. I met an accountant, a sweet little old man whose thing was just shoes. He just wanted to be down there under his shoe. Okay. I met somebody who just wanted to be spanked and was really very hesitant about saying the words bank. I met all these people. I met an accountant. I met a cab driver. I met a teacher. I met humans. Here's what happened. It all became not porn. It became real. It became humans. It became people talking about things that were beyond my knowledge, but really trying to figure stuff out. That's where I'm from. My heart and my deep curiosity. Well, what's real in this world? What's this about? The porn that I saw, the submissive, was a groveling worm with no self-respect. The woman was just abusing him. I love men. That was so 180 degrees for me that I'm like, no. What did you learn that you found desirable? Well, at first, not a lot. What I found desirable, so I started to join and I started figuring things out. I went to every meeting because I realized very quickly that I don't know anything. I thought I did. Oops, wrong. I went to meetings on piercing. I didn't have any interest in piercing, but I went to meetings on it because I was intrigued. I went to meetings on bondage. I went to meetings on various things. And I also started listening more to people and talking about various things. Somewhere in there, and I can't remember when. Oh, phone sacks. That's it. There we go. So in 1983, I stopped working at the Sutter. And another Sutter. Yes, I became manager at the Sutter Theater. And I was dancing there. And then after Guam, I became... I was everybody's relief girl at the Sutter Theater. And then I became manager. Oh, okay. I started working doing phone sacks and I developed my own phone sacks line. And that is where I came across infantilism. I'd never heard of it. But interestingly, I got turned on by just being a very kind mommy to this baby boy. That's all. And I thought, this is so sweet. This is really sweet. Huh. I didn't know that it just suggested. Then I heard about the Institute of Advanced Sexuality. I thought, I... And they had this... No, then I did Swissie. I did San Francisco sex information. And I got on their hotline. Okay, once a week, answering questions about sex. Then I thought, I need to know more. So I did the Institute. And I became a certified sex educator. And then an advanced certified second one. And became an advanced safe sex educator. Now, what did that entail? What did you have to do to earn those? Well, it was a whole week of... Panels and questions and breaking into small groups and talking about very similar to Swissie. Which is panels and people talking about alternative sexuality or what it's like being straight in a queer world. What it's like being gay in Columbia. And that was Swissie, not Swissie, but sex institute. Because you're going to talk to people. You're going to be with people. You're going to meet people who know nothing or who are deeply wounded. You don't know. I mean, being gay in Columbia is not easy. But that obviously led you to working more with Clio Gouba on the SM Intensives for Women. She and I worked out of my home. And she moved across the street. She worked mainly in the dungeon, which had been her bedroom. It's a seven room flat, by the way. And this, where I'm sitting, which is now my office, used to be the fantasy room. And so I had the babies, I had the crossfesses, and I had slaves. She had the bondage and the SM like that. I did bondage and SM too, but as you can see, I'm not wearing leather. I'm a leather woman, but that's not who I am at my core. What did you do with this information going forward? That's so difficult to really explain. It's not about me, it's about me being big enough for you to be all of who you are. The hidden parts. The parts that you don't know. The parts that you're ashamed of. The parts that you...what? The parts that you've hidden for so long. That's what I teach. But it's simply about being a receptacle for you to be who you are, to show up for a while. My job is to sit here and let you show up. What do you think has been your greatest accomplishment? You know, I've accomplished a lot. I met my person. We did great work together. Bill Henkin and I. I did a lot of personal healing from the abuse that I had. I wrote my book with Bill. What is that book? Consensual Sadomasochism. How to talk about it and how to do it safely. And I don't...I don't realize I showed up too. It's out of print now. You can find it on Amazon. Sometimes it's $100, sometimes it's 11. I'd recommend going for the 11. I have. It's a good book. It's an SM-101 primer, really. But those...my accomplishments... I have had a f***ed up line. After being bullied, you know, you can't keep a good kid down. I swear. That's my accomplishment. That at 72, I can look back at my life and say, you healed from all of that. And not only that, you turned it around and turned everything into an asset and a tool. Well, Sybil Holiday, I've got to thank you very much for what is going to be a fantastic interview when we're done. I appreciate it. And I hope I will speak with you soon. Well, me too. Thank you.