 My next guest, Amy Marie Meek. OK, please tell us a little bit about where you grew up, a bit about your family. I was born in Omaha, Nebraska. Moved to Colorado when I was six months old. Moved back to Omaha when I was age 12. And that's where I will live forever and ever. My mother and father were divorced when I was about six months old and broke the move. We moved to Colorado with my grandmother. My mom became a single woman again and started dating and working and things. So I stayed out with my grandma, which was a very, very special thing. But my mom has had three husbands, all very, very different characters. Unfortunately, two of them were deceased. My biological father is still alive, but I have no contact with them because I'm gay. So that sums up my family. And I'm technically an only child, but I have two step-sisters through my mom's third parent. Well, the man you've said is your dad was a very interesting influence on you. And you shared some interesting correlations of so. The person I consider my dad would be my mom's second husband. He adopted me when I was nine. And that's when my grandmother moved out of the house because she didn't like him. We had a family unit for roughly four years and then my parents decided to separate. And my mom and I moved back to Nebraska. That's when that happened. He moved to California. And we found out later on that he actually had a boyfriend before we married my mom. He moved to California and became a drag queen. His name was Rex. So his screen name was Anoraxia Novosa. My father was very, very funny. Talked me how to cook. Talked me how to decorate. Created my alter ego named Sven. He was high fag by the time he got away from my mother. And I would visit him when I could. He passed away 91 from AIDS. After he died, I knew about the drag part. I even learned how to sew sequins. Never do it for anybody. I'm sorry. Only my father got the sequin treatment. On a French cut bikini, it looked really... Then after talking to some of his friends after he had passed, I also found out he was a leather man, which I never knew. So I think my father had, and it's probably pretty more secrets, but just amazing guy. Tell us about your coming out. Basically, I was playing around sexually with people at a two-young of an age. Made out with my seventh-grade best friend. Then I started making out with other best friends. And then I met someone on stage crew. I was the prop master at my school for the three years I was there. She was in the chorus line for Guys and Dolls. And we were at a staff party, and we just, something just kind of clicked. So that was when I was 15. At 16, you produced your first conference. Tell us about that. Yes, I did. I was part of basically the state student government, which it was basically all the high schools in the country, the principals were sent letters and to submit, send one person. Fortunately, I was selected to go to my school, then I became a regional coordinator taking over the Eastern region the next year of the council. And I decided to have like a mini council because the regular council, everybody from the states, the state capital, Lincoln, we'd stay there for a week on university campus and have all sorts of interesting workshops and just exploratory things about today's, basically the youth leadership. What I did with the Eastern Nebraska conference again, same format, invited everybody, and it was only gonna be a two day conference. I rented the space at Boys Town, which has a beautiful conference center. We had food and beverage, we had keynote speakers, we had workshops, no vendor area, except for t-shirts. And actually our t-shirts, I think they were at, beware this shirt contains your future type thing. But we had a dance, we had, it was like besides vendors, it was like absolutely everything we do with other events. And we had printed programs, it was a conference. At school you were very politically active, also. I started actually looking into local candidates, our student, basically our school board, our city council, and there's no age requirement to go to city council meetings or to school board meetings, et cetera. And I got involved in what topics were coming out just in general about students in the law area. And it was kind of strange for students to step up and have an opinion about something, but yeah, it was a little bit different. So, and then once I started, actually I came out, after the 15 year thing, I started kind of following and figuring out what gay and lesbian community was about. And yes, I created fake ID, so I was in the bars at 16. Seriously, it was really good for me. So I was getting into the bars. I started attending the drag shows. I ended up helping backstage with the drag shows and just started getting involved with that with the Imperial Court of Nebraska, charitable events, things that I could do, and because they thought I was of age, I got to do a lot more than others. So I got to GLBT stuff at around 16. Well, what was your mother's reaction to learning of your sexuality? I think that it kind of goes back to how she found out. I was supposed to be at a soccer game. My mom was supposed to come home at 5.30. My girlfriend was over. My mom didn't know we were girlfriends. We were just best friends. And my stereo was on one side of the room in a, well to say, explicit act. I was participating in where I couldn't see the door. All of a sudden, the stereo turns off. And I'm like, well, Jennifer didn't turn it off. And it was just my mom and I living in the apartment. So my mom kinda walked in on us in the worst possible way. So I immediately put on my soccer uniform, took Jennifer home, so we were both very, very rattled. Now it stood in the backfield and just wouldn't pick the ball. I just kinda stood there, went home. I was kinda terrified. My mom had settled down a little bit because I was gone for a couple hours. And she goes, sorry, experimenting. I said, I don't know. I knew, but I said, I don't know. So it's kind of a fib there. So she decided, school is just about ready to get out. So she decided to send my, and my mom didn't know my dad was gay. She goes, I'm gonna send you to spend the summer with your father then. So I was in Fresno, California, the raising capital of the world. Went to the Red Lantern Bar. My dad was working on, he was in the restaurant business for showbiz pizza and he was building a new one and hiring all these people and he had construction staff. Well, most of his construction staff, were lesbian. The varietal was fabulous mostly, which was my thing at the time. And so I hung out with them at night. My dad knew exactly what he was doing. So he was encouraging me without telling me. Because again, I didn't quite know if it was accurate about him. So I was 16, she was 27. And when I got back to Omaha, my girlfriend goes, wait a minute, you didn't know how to do that before. Yeah, it's even when there's a picture of me with this woman Kelly and the joy of lesbian sex, we're reading it and I'm like, I already done this. There's just a couple of pages like, why would they do that? And then later on I figured, oh, that's why. Well, your grandmother had a profound influence on you. How so? Well, with my mom kind of out being single and with her friends, my grandmother raised me again. She left, she didn't like my father. But she raised me, I was reading right by age three. So it was probably helping with my school advancements. But I learned from her a lot of practical things. And what I found out is, she would always just say, if something comes up, you have an idea on how to fix something, just go fix it. Don't wait to get someone's opinion. Don't ask, which I'm very bad about asking someone's opinion, I just tend to do things. She was widowed and raised seven children by herself. And I think she just had to have that mentality. And it really carried over into my personality because I turned not to ask people's opinions much. From whom did you learn SM? I can indirectly say it became a party just because she was putting out the variations magazine at the time. And my girlfriend, I could go to the 7-Eleven and buy them, they just didn't care. So we read a lot of stories when she stayed over and stuff and we liked it, we tried it immediately. And for some reason I was kind of drawn to maybe those little rocker stories. I was, let's jump a few years, I started kind of doing things with girlfriends. But really when I got into SM, I was lucky that I lived in Omaha because we had an event called Fantasy. And with Fantasy, all the major title holders would come in. And I had just bought a home and my friends that produced Fantasy, it's basically between IML, at that point I'm IML people and Jumper people. The IML people, which he considered his preppy friends would they could go stay at his friends' houses. All the Jumper type people stayed in my house. So I had a playroom already built and all of a sudden I got the best of the best dumped in my lab. And I was, I soaked it up like crazy. But I had a lot of major title holders and again the major players at that time nationwide. I, they stayed in my house and didn't stop. Is that how you became involved in sort of the old guard leather? There was a gentleman that came on one of the trips. His name was Vance Rieger. And he was writing, he ran for IML and Jumper in the same year. He'd run some stuff down the Southeast. But he decided that I really need to learn what it was like. See, he'd been out for a very long time. And the way I just kind of like had the fast express. Boom, you're a player, you know, training. He made me go back and start over. You know, even though I would, he would beat me than I would beat him because you just do with the guy. But I had, you know, I had to earn the right to beat him. Which isn't quite old guard as far as me beating him. But I learned leathers, et cetera. I got a couple of boys very early. And so when we go to events, it'd be, my grandson would go, this is my boy Amy and this is her boy, boy. So we had three generations going at once. But he gave me a lot of really good advice. And unfortunately, like I knew all of our crafts. You know, and all the names were out there and strong because we were talking 89, 91, 92 in there. But it just, it was just the best of the best. And I was just fixated on anything I could find. You know, and this was the time where you had to sneak into back doors even then. You had to take the chance because you didn't have the internet. But you had to take a chance and go into a gay and lesbian bookstore and find something in some kind of magazine or something in the back or something, you know, that loosely related to us. But actually in first fantasy, I went to, I found out about the intellect, do I do it? Wow. Now you're broids, broids, subscribe to it. Anything you find. And I had a fairly good job at the time. I would just grab it, grab it, grab it, grab it, grab it. Said all these magazines coming and all this stuff. But a lot of people, you just didn't know where to go. But I looked at it all just came to me. Tell us about the signature wall in your home. First on my bot, which is the home that all these people came to, wonderful people came to. When they came in, I had a set of markers and I said, if you want to play in my white room, you must sign this wall. Of course, I'm joking. If they don't want to sign the boss, I'm gonna play anyway, but I can get bossy with them. That way it's my wall. I had taken this room and we took an air compressor and it was white. Everything was white. So on this huge wall, well, it's probably not huge, but it's probably eight by 12, eight by 11, something like that. All these title rules would sign it. And there's about a hundred signatures on it. And I would guess that 80% of those signatures are dead. When, unfortunately I don't have that house anymore, but my ex got the house and they were reorganizing some stuff. They were gonna tear down that wall. And I said, can you at least take pictures of it or something for me? Because I mean, these are people and messages from people. So it's broken into three pieces and it's now in my new basement. And now we're trying to figure out how to fund getting it to Chicago because it's pretty amazing just going over the names. But that was the signature wall that you had to do. What names in particular stand out to you from that? Clive Plattman, John Syracuse, Brian Dawson, Jeff Burnham, Torres, Gene Bendick, Joe Potter, Alan Potter. It just goes on and on. And actually I need to go through and try to read all the signatures, but I know most of them. But that's just an example of Ruth Marks. Can't forget that one. Ruth Marks. She sees it, she'll understand. No disrespect, ma'am. What's the importance of voting in a primary election? I love voting in primary elections. I am a registered Republican, yes it's no one to you. I'm a registered Republican because I can vote in primaries and I can get rid of the strong right-wings. It's the power of what I can do then because if I'm a Democrat, I'm just pretty too required. I vote both party lines. I'm a moderate, but I, and people say Republican, I'm all of a sudden like, oh. I know quite a few important other people that are Republicans, but I'm not naming names, but they exist. But I just think voting in the primaries is one of the best things you can do because again, there's extreme left and even the Democrats don't want. But I can take care of the extreme right at the best of my can with one vote. That's what I encourage people to do. How do you feel about the First Amendment? Okay, the First Amendment is what I fight for and what I preach. Nowadays they're talking about, they just talk about sexual expression. Well, we're talking about expression, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of speech. And my theory is if we keep that First Amendment strong, that covers a lot of bases for what we do. But basically you have the right to say anything. I may not like it, but you have the right to know if I put that right for you to say it. That's why it's the First Amendment. That's why it's the First Amendment. That's why it's the First Amendment. That's why it's the First Amendment. That's why it's the First Amendment. Well, tell us about your work organizing the 1993 March on Washington. I was at Creative Change in Alexandria, Denver, Virginia, and ran around to different workshops and things. I was with Jason Collins and my daddy Vance at the time. And all of a sudden I'm in the lobby. And there had been this woman that came from NGLTF. She came to Tennessee in Omaha and her name was Perry Drew Radicek. And she saw me from across the lobby. And she goes, Amy, what? She goes, Nebraska, yes. And she came over real quick and she goes, you've got to go to this meeting at this time. She was looking for a Nebraska rep for the March on Washington Steering Committee. It sounds like I just kind of like dumped in it because I just went from Nebraska. But she knew I was active in everything. So I took over the Nebraska region and eventually a few of the Steering Committee members dropped off in our four state region. So actually in the four states all. Sorry, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa. And I think the interesting thing with the March on Washington, though it was a really, really good party. I'm not sure what came out of it. Except the fact that we can organize 2.2 million queers even though we're only 600,000 due to the park service. But there was my co-title holder in Nebraska in 1992. His name was Emerson Briney. And we made jokes and he was on the steering committee he out of Dallas. And but he had just moved on long and we're like, we're both gonna be on the steering committee let's work this thing as hard as we can. And then he went ahead and ran for great playing drummer. Well, he won that. And then this all in the same year. He was such a sash screen and a disco bunny. He's like, okay, that's great. And actually with the love of Nebraska thing I wanted the very first of March. And they said, okay, in three weeks you go compete at Emzo. No, I've got a title year to do then I'll compete. I had to own my own title first. But then he goes on from great plans and he goes to in September and wins drummer. And I was talking about all these big leather men all the drummer men who think of her and it's a little blond disco bunny. Yeah, that's the right way we're outside the tent. Yeah, but you see this little tiny blonde boy boy. Yeah. But he was a feisty little creature. So he won international. And so we and I supporting him with that. And we made jokes. I said, would it be cool if we could both be international title holders at the March on Washington? We were just Mr. and Ms. Love in Nebraska. Well, on March of 93, I became Emzo. So like I say, and I've done this in other interviews on Sunday morning, seven o'clock on the mall in Washington D.C. We're staying by the Washington Monument and we look at each other and go, oh, what did we do? And it was just wonderful. And we moved him to San Francisco because it was just more effective and more efficient cost wise to run his title and he did his title there and came home. And he was a different man when he came home. He was he got a lot sicker when he was in San Francisco. But he's just he worked his ass off during his title. He's one of the best title holders I've ever seen. So he and I did that and say it was a magical experience for me. But it's also the day I became very disappointed with Bill Clinton. See, he wasn't there. That was 20 years ago. Yesterday, I, as of yesterday, I was Emzo 20.357 years ago. So it's my 20th anniversary. You're a judge, you're the producer. Well, what drew you to the contest, sir? Platforms, mic time, politics, travel, play. I was watching and listening to the title holders that were coming in and out of Omaha. And some would do, I mean, fantasy was not a contest at first. And so it would just be people going up, giving a speech, having fun, telling jokes. It was just like one big party. It was really big because it was like a relaxing time out for the title holders. And it was almost like mandatory. Everybody showed what they did. But I was looking at what they were doing. And some of them, they were just out there to just have fun their entire title year. Then some of them had platform. And I was still going to be a politician at home. But if I had the opportunity to get on a mic, I could get my point across. Because it's kind of hard to come up with these things. If you came in here as a political activist and asked Linda or any given thing, you asked the producer, can I have a little mic time to tell you about my cause? It's not in the script. Well, I'm an internationalist, love it. Can I have a little mic time to produce my cause? You know, promote my cause? And they're like, oh, sure. So that's what drew it to me. It wasn't the sass or I wore it six times. It's in the archives. It wasn't all that. But I did a lot of travel. I did a lot of work. What does activism mean to you? It's a very simple explanation what activism is. If you look at the word activism, people forget it's the first part of it's active. Well, it's a good thing. You know, it's great if you consider yourself an activist. But if you're not being active about it, so pick your platforms or support the people that do some. If you're not willing to go out and do the stuff, at least support the people that are out there, one way or another. But that's what activism is to me is just being active. It's kind of simple. Who do you feel have been some of the more outstanding activists in the community? Who you threw that one in there. That's not on my list. OK, let's skip that. I knew she wasn't going to let me get away with that. How did you come to produce Hemsul? Let's see, my stepping down when we were at Spencer's Victory Brunch, they took my name tag off that said Hemsul93. And someone slipped in a piece of paper that said border directors. And I was actually the first non-Californian resident to be on the board of directors of Hemsul. Incorporated at the time. So I was like, cool. I was going to be the liaison. It's kind of like what Hobbett bounces around doing now. I was going to be the title holder liaison. So you guys don't have to deal with it. I'll take care of the communication and paperwork and everything because I didn't have that kind of communication with my board. I documented everything and sent it all to them. And I don't know what they even read at that point in time. OK. OK, how did I get it? Let's see, I stepped down in March. Spencer stepped aside in September. But it was actually August 5th. There was a conference call with the other board members. And they had their minds made up on doing something. So they all got on there and they're like, well, we really don't have the funding. We're burned out. I mean, Andre even mentioned city kind of got burned out. It does. You can type a market only so many times before you have to let people rust and refresh and get new blood. And I said, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You can't just close it. I mean, it was almost closed when I ran. But I said, let's talk in 15 minutes. And I said, here's an idea. Let me do it. Here we are today. The board, they didn't really have much disagreement about it. I don't think there's a board member that said, well, that's not going to work. We had conditions on both sides. They did not want to field on IML Weekend. And neither did I because we'd just be a sideshow. Chuck Renzel did offer supportability. But I said, no, it's going to be different. And my conditions were, I'm going to travel it. I need to get it to the people in different parts of the country because some people just can't afford to drive or to come from New York to San Francisco. So if we traveled it, it gave them an opportunity because we always say women don't have money. Well, a lot of them don't. But the travel and the expenses keep them from going. So they were kind of hesitant about the travel thing. And but they were like, OK, we already made an agreement. But then I came into town for the next, actually, open meeting with his own corporate. And actually, Audrey was there. And there was some discourse amongst the crowd. How dare I take it from San Francisco? And I'm like, I'm sorry. I didn't know I had to ask the entire city. The board had already agreed with what I was going to do. Say, there was some community feedback. I think it's most people that attended one of the board meetings or the open meetings for a long time. People got really kind of cranking in San Francisco about it. But it just needed it. It's almost like if they were getting ready to kill it, evidently it needed a new life, a new life. So everything kind of calmed down. We signed the contract, gave it $10. And then so that happened. And then in September, Spencer resigned. So that looked kind of bad. It's already been resolved. And it's documented where Spencer did not resign due to a transgender issue or anything like that. Spencer had a disagreement with HMSL Incorporated. So that's a clarification. And it's actually, I think it's on our Kink Academy interviews. But Spencer and I are at the same place at the same time verifying the story. Check it out. So that was it. And I decided to go. I moved the dates and took away. What's been your greatest production challenge for HMSL? Basically, other titles popping up and it's diluting attendance-based, diluting contestant numbers, creating a little bit. There was things out there. I mean, it was just like there's a contest everywhere now. We always made the joke, bring out the titles to the stage, which we used to do. But I think Karen said it last night, three people in the audience who were not wearing a sash, please come up with a woolcloth. But I think it was basically the community came dilute. And so it was more of a hassle to try to get the numbers in. But those other titles have done great. The other producers have done great. The events have been pretty charitable. It had a little bit of a stress around us. Why did you choose to pass on the production torch? I produced it for 12 years. Basically, I was at HMSL in 1993. Ordered directors in 1994. And then I produced it for 12 years. I am a switch, but I'm not that much of a masochist. But I just financially become penetrating. I had to move home, move it home to Omaha. I'm classical beers because I had failing health at the time. So with health and money. And I kind of went back to my family. I took it to its 20th anniversary. I thought that was a good breaking point. So I kind of made a promise to myself a few years before that I'll take it to 20. And then I got to stop. Well, this is the 15th anniversary of the internationalist Mood Black. I was able to see Leslie honor you on stage. And I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the Mood Black contest. Yeah, it was really great having Leslie on man's stage. The coins were really cool. The whole thing with the Mood Black contest. And this has been the 15th anniversary. I walked around all weekend just female Mood Black. This, this, this, this, this, this. I've been coming up saying I'm going to compete next year. And there's already a few contestants ready to compete next year. When I formed the Mood Black contest, there was explanations of, because it's hot. It's erotic. It's part of our natural service nature. It's part of our old guard. And I go on and on about that. But with the 15th, just seeing that many Mood Blacks, the female Mood Blacks here, when I formed the contest, I knew of two Mood Blacks that were openly out in the leather queen. We were doing service work. But it was like the ones that would go into the bars. And I could name two really prolific ones at that time. And I couldn't name them today. But now, if there was, now we've had, or we have to 29, 27 or 29 different women have competed for international group. So if we went from two to that, and there's a lot more out there that just don't compete, I, that my, I'm, my formula worked. What does Ohana mean to you? This is my Ohana thing. There's a movie called Lilo and Stitch. And this is my silly part. But the theme of the movie is Ohana. And Ohana means nobody is left behind or forgotten. And that's my, especially at my age with the community, that's where I feel our community should be striving for, where nobody is left behind or forgotten. We're losing people. Even we're losing people that are still alive because they're drifting from the community. We have to remember, you know, don't forget those. You got to keep them in the fold. But it's, it's just my family thing. It's, so it's, but I, but I can apply it to the other community. What are some of the best rumors you've ever heard about yourself? I have been asking people for like two months, tell me the rumors. There's the rumors that people told me, I can't, I'm not putting on tape. No, no, I will, the one rumor I will say, and it's got kind of negative antidote afterwards, but no one take it personally. The rumors were always, if you wanted to win, and so you have to sleep with Amy. You remember that? And my, my return to that is, oh, hell no. You know, I was even friends with some of my title holders, but that was the whole thing. I was like, you know, I watched my own soap opera, soap opera, it's called Days of Our Lives. Get your own life, shut up about mine. You know, and there's a lot of rumors that came up that were very, very, I mean, that hurt the contest. There was a whole big round of rumors that by the time we got Timzell in San Diego, a bunch of Timzells came down and they were going to take that kind of, Andrea was there too. It was basically to decide if they were going to take the title away from me. Well, I owned it at the federal trademark. There's, all my decks were in a row, there was nothing they could do. And everything I said would try documentation and it all worked out, but it was rumors that started all this stuff. And I think it's unfortunate human nature is you can't say anything nice about people. You know, I heard this rumor, Audrey is so nice. Really? Sorry, sorry. Okay. It's not true. But can't we start rumors that are nice about people? Or are we going to play telephone and start a rumor that's nice and it's going to turn into something morbid by the end? If you got something to say about someone, say it to their face. And during the Q and A I said, if anybody has any questions about rumors about me, which is there's a whole bunch of people because I'm sure they pop up. If you ever have a question about anything to do with me, it will not offend me. I absolutely respect people that will come and ask me directly if something is true or not. And actually, I'll put the side note in here, rumors about how I was handling books and the money coming in from the tickets and the travel phone and everything. The travel phone's always been straight. It's always turned out straight. But this is where I'll refer back to Audrey. The best advice I ever got when all the rumors are circulating, she goes, Amy, it's your business. Not unless you're a not-for-profit, it's your business. Your books are none of their business. Say, unless I'm out there claiming 501c3, it's not their business. So again, if you have any questions about people, ask them. So that's a mature way to handle it. But I guess now that I'm in this stage, I can be mature. Though I don't want to. Amy, Maria would like to thank you for a wonderful interview. Thank you for being my subject. Thank you, Lucas.