 Hello everyone and welcome to Inside Leather History, a fireside chat. I'm Doug O'Keefe, I am the host and producer of these chats that are a program of the Leather Archives and Museum. Today I'm speaking with Thor Stockman. Thor is an old school San Francisco and New York City Leatherman. Thor is also the surviving partner of David Stoy of GMSNA. How are you this evening, Thor? I'm pretty good, thanks. A little nervous but not used to being interviewed. This is maybe my second that I've sat for. Well, you're not totally a virgin. So, there you go then. All right, Thor, I'd like to start right at the very beginning. Tell us a little bit about where you're from, a little bit about your family. Yeah, I grew up in small towns all over Southern California, which is why I'm living in a large metropolitan city today. It wasn't the small town so much as the small town mentality, the people who live there. I remember when I was in high school and it wasn't that small of a town. I mean, it was like 30,000 people. An adult bookstore opened up. This was in the mid-70s and the outraged city council, mayor, police department could not work fast enough on any excuse they could to shut it down. They didn't even have any window displays or anything. They just said adult bookstore outside. I just felt like that was totally wrong and unfair and unnecessary censorship. So, that was what I knew I needed to get away from. And like so many gays and lesbians of my generation, I realized as I was going through high school, I would need to move to a larger city to be with more people like me. I mean, bottom line is that it increases your opportunities for sex. You know, let's say that. But yeah. So, as soon as I graduated from high school, I could not move off to college fast enough. And thankfully, I had enough money and grades to get me into San Jose State University. Oh, very good. So, that's where I ended up. My family was of modest means, lower middle class, I guess. I had two sisters, one older and one younger. My father was not good at being a father and I never felt loved by him. More is the pity, but I guess the only positive thing that came out of that was that I feel it made me a better man myself, is that I've always tried to give the men in my life from friends to tricks to lovers to partners the love I never experienced growing up. My parents separated when I was 13 and he died a year later of alcoholism. And it took me, I didn't realize this until years later as an adult, but that was basically a slow form of suicide. And both of those things, I've never really been able to get over with. He also was clearly unhappy, not only in his role as father, which I guess society at that time was told, that's what you're supposed to do. You serve in the war, you come home, you get married, you buy a house, you raise a family. And he just checked out. But because he was so unhappy in his job or his career, I was never career oriented myself. As long as I had a job that paid the rent and put food on the table, I was fine. Let's take a step back. You mentioned the bookstore in your hometown. Did the city succeed in shutting it down? Oh, yeah, within two months of it opening. But I think I was 15 and I rode my bicycle down to the town library and tried to find out anything I could about homosexuality, which is the term, everybody knew it. That's the only term that everybody knew it as at that time, even though Stonewall had occurred two or three years earlier. The public really didn't know anything about that. And all I could find was a musty old tome, some encyclopedia from the United Kingdom that had like two paragraphs with a clinical description of essentially, oh, these are people who like are attracted to members of their own sex. And that wasn't really helpful. It's like, well, I kind of figured that out on my own. Is there anything else you could tell me? And that, as I said, that was it for the entire library. And what was worse is that there was this huge bestseller at the time. Everything you always wanted to know about sex was on the top of bestseller lists for like half a year. And it's, it had an entire chapter on homosexuality written by a purported psychologist. Let's see, no. Or psychiatrist, not sure which. And it was full of lies about who and what gay people were. So jazz. Well, that, and it was all based on like a single patient of his who was obviously very unhappy being homosexual. But that was so many of us were back then. I mean, take a look at Boys in the Band. Because that's what society, that was the only message we were getting from society at large. We, for the most part, had no heroes or people to look up to. So, but some of the things in the book were like that homosexuals, lead it sad, unhappy lives have no satisfying sex, sex lives are scurrying around in dark corners and parks. They like to wear the uniform of train operators because it makes them feel, I don't know, more books or something. You know, the blue and white striped overall coveralls, overalls, there we go. And red hankies in the back pocket and everything. And even that, as a teenager, was so laughably stupid. I knew that. But unfortunately, as I later came to learn, is that this is what informed most of the American public of who we were, what we were like, that we didn't deserve any dignity or rights. And did a lot of damage. And I'm still angry over it because the good doctor, or the hideous doctor, never apologized or corrected all of his misstatements of it. Even though he was held to it. I mean, today he would be laughed out of his profession. But back then he could get away with it. And he was also now handsomely rich by selling literally, I don't know, six, seven million copies. Anyhow, blood pressure visibly risen. You mentioned you went off to the library looking for information on homosexuality. Why that topic? Well, yeah, I mean, obviously, I had was had no or little interest in girls, even though that was what was fed to all of us kids growing up as what you're supposed to like. I had crushes on other kids in school, starting in junior high. And, you know, other other boys getting through gym class with all the jockstraps and group showers was always interesting. But but did you have a then what I did was I was a prolific, voracious reader. And I love newspapers and magazines. And I found both the Los Angeles Free Press, one of the country's more infamous underground newspapers, and the advocate in street racks, which I could buy for 50 cents. And back then the advocate was a twice monthly newspaper with an entire section of personal ads, as did the LA Free Press. And a lot of people bought both publications just for the ads. And so, yeah, I it took me a while, for instance, to figure out what terms like Greek active and French passive meant. But yeah, I use those a lot to both whack off to, as well as learn more about gay people and sex. What I what I would love to understand for the audience is, did you even have a concept on homosexuality? How did that idea even germinate in your head to be able to look it up? It didn't. And it was probably slow and organic at the time. All I was known is that all your condition to by family, by school dances, everything is that I was supposed to like girls, right? I was supposed to want to kiss them. I was supposed to want to touch them. I was supposed to want to have sex with them. And I didn't have any interest in doing that. Now, we had some images in popular media, such as the original Batman television series, Wild Wild West. I know I used to also jerk off to like boxing shows. And back then there was male roller derby. And those were the more vivid ones I remember. And there's others, the black scuba suits, rubber scuba suits, and the male external catheters in the Sears catalog, all of that. So in addition to like obviously being gay, but not at all, understanding it, much less accepting it, I was also kinky from a very early age. If you remember when you're very young, kids would talk about anything and everything. They'd sit around in circles and gossip. And one of the things I think, I don't know, I think it was maybe seven or eight. Yeah, no, it was eight or nine. We were talking about what happens when you go to the hospital to have your tonsils out, which back then meant an overnight stay. And some kids who had already done that told me that if you don't behave while you're in the hospital, they tie you to your bed frame so that you're not getting out of bed and running around. And that absolutely fascinated me and thrilled me to the point where at night in bed, I would roll up my bed sheets and tie them together, much like you've seen in cartoons where somebody's escaping from a upper floor window and climbing down. And I used that to tie my ankle to the bed post. And then I would, this was long before puberty. And then I would touch myself down there. And there wasn't any any erection. And but I found it pleasurable. And then, you know, I would eventually untie myself and put my have to remake the bed and and go to sleep. You know, so my mom wouldn't find out and I was doing this weird stuff. But when I remembered this after coming out into SM as an adult and becoming sexually active, I thought it was hilarious, but also fascinating that I was into certain aspects of kink. And SM at a very early age. So what took you away from your your small town and your discoveries and finding the advocate and other things on a shop shelf, I guess you said, or somewhere? Where did you go? Well, you know, as soon as I graduated from high school, I really felt like I could not get away from the small towns or small town mentality quickly enough. And that's been for gays and lesbians of my generation, that's been well documented. They felt they need to move to bigger cities so that they would be around more people like them. And perhaps better attitudes about people who are different or non conformist. Um, fortunately, my grades and the amount of money I had got me into San Jose State University, which also had some programs that I was interested in. But that was in the northern part of the state. And for the first time in my life, I was living by myself, although, you know, in dorms. And I was there for a couple years. And from there, I had gotten some summer jobs that were first in Oakland, and then in San Francisco, only because I couldn't find anything locally. So that was my introduction to San Francisco. And so from there, I moved to San Francisco. And and got a job there. Tell me about that. What job were you doing? Um, I didn't finish with any degree. I had only done two years at San Jose. And I was getting good grades, but kind of felt like I wasn't getting a good education. It was very hard putting myself through college with jobs. So I decided to reverse. Oh, and I was having trouble coming out too. I was still struggling with that. So I mean, while I was in college, I actually went to see one of the repertory cinemas Boys in the Band. And that scared the shit out of me. Why? And I feel that it, it was responsible for keeping me in a closet and from fully accepting my gayness for another full year. And the reason why is that the movie was full of self-hating, bitter, alcoholic men who would pretty much spend their lives saying bitchy things to each other. And I thought, Oh my God, does being gay mean I'm going to be one of these unhappy people? So yeah, I was conflicted about that. So I decided to reverse it. And I started going to school, college part-time at night and working full-time. Once I moved into the city, I wasn't able to find any job entry level jobs in the fields that interested me. But I had very good clerical skills from my years on the staffs of junior high school and high school yearbooks and news, newspapers. So, and you know, I could, I could type really well. And we were just at the advent of memory typewriters and then early word processing systems. It was still long before personal computers, but there were dedicated systems like IBM and Wang. And so I was good at that. I had good office skills. So worked as administrative, admin assists, and legal secretaries for a number of years while I continued coming out. And that was still frustrating for me because I was still a virgin and living in San Francisco in the go-go years and felt very unattractive. I felt like the world's oldest virgin, which I later learned I was not. But it was frustrating at the time. So tell us about the San Francisco you experienced. It was an amazing time. Well, you know, while I was still in college in San Jose, I discovered Drummer magazine and like starting with issue two or three. And then I also found a copy of Larry Townsend's The Leatherman's Handbook. Very educational because both of them were both trying to do sort of like some documentary work, but they were also porn. So that really shaped me as a Leatherman, a great deal, even though it was still a few years before I had any experience on my own. And of course there were gay newspapers in San Francisco and I was reading there was some of the earliest books that were written there. What would that be? Around 76, 78, sort of like the first generation of post-Stonewall writing. I discovered the Walt Whitman bookshop and bought a lot of stuff there. But there were these books, Jonathan Ned Katz. I forget some of the other authors. About how to come out and how to be a happy homosexual and actually more than that a gay person who accepted themselves. I remember using one of them when I went home for my older sister's wedding and I was like running into the bathroom to read certain pages to build up the courage to come out to my mom, which I did. And there are others that said, you know, instead of just the bars, bars aren't the only way to, or for that matter, the parks, cruising in the parks, there are better, more wholesome ways to meet other people, gay people and become involved in the gay community. You should seek out gay community centers, become involved with gay groups. I mean, there weren't even things that everybody now just takes for granted like say gay courses, where every large city has one now. And San Francisco didn't even have a gay community center in large part because it had so many, it had dozens of gay bars. But there was down in the basement of the Unitarian Church, there was a weekly gathering and I went to that. And then I also got involved in gay politics because our community was being attacked at the time, both by Anita Bryant down in Florida to save our children campaign, as well as a state legislature from Orange County, John Briggs, who introduced the Briggs Initiative, later known as Proposition 6, that was basically doing the same thing, sought to ban any gays or lesbians from working in the state public schools. Okay. And just like the laws that were once again passed in Florida, the language was so vague is that the California law would have made it impossible to be openly gay, even if you were a janitor or even said the word homosexual in the school or your teachings or in response to a question. And so there was a grassroots a group called Bay Area Committee against the Briggs Initiative, also known as Bacabi. And I went down to their storefront in the Caster District and volunteered my services. Now, let's take a step aside here for a minute before we get into the to the meat of that. Were you still in the process of coming out at this point? Where were you personally, well, only take such a big step? Clearly, I was pretty sure I was gay. I still didn't have the last piece of evidence. That would like, okay, I really am gay, I guess, if I finally have this last piece to the puzzle. And that's okay. So yes, I was doing these things as advised by the books in order to meet other people, both because I believed in it, but also to meet other people gay men who maybe I could have sex with get some experience. I also have to say that I did try placing ads in drummer magazine and personal ads and the advocate and went out on a number of dates. And none of those were fruitful. Let's take let's come back to the Briggs Initiative because that's very important. It's a very big, important historical piece in the community. You said you went to the office to volunteer. What transpired with that? Okay, well, Bacabi, as I said, was grassroots, all volunteer and firmly believed in progressive coalition politics, which means that we would align ourselves with groups that were fighting for the rights of farm workers in the state, saying you support what we believe in will and will support your struggle as well. I didn't even know what that meant back then. But as I was 20 years old, you know, and that that was thing. And so a lot of our work was to fight to fight this was passing out flyers holding organizing and holding rallies and speakouts mailing parties where we would like fold and stuff seal address stamp thousands of envelopes urging people to, you know, vote against this horrible proposition later. It's later in the whole procedure of the propositions, they're finally given numbers. And at that point, there were other like more corporate groups that has like paid staff that would do fundraising from wealthy businesses and individuals to like by media. But we were sort of like the grassroots arm. And then there were other groups that were also fighting this as well. And when we first started that year, the number of people against this proposition was vastly outnumbered by those who supported it. And that was also the year that Harvey Milk ran for a seat on the city's board of supervisors. And but a little bit more, I want to talk a little bit more about what I did for the copy, I had design skills. So I designed most of their flyers and posters. And one of the things I did is that I gave them all a sort of cohesive look by using the same distinctive typeface, I can even name it to the state, ITC Corina. So if you saw something like that, oh, this is from the copy, of course, our name in big letters was at the bottom of it as well. But when it came time for the June parade, pride parade, we also needed to make signs and banners. And so I went into work on a Saturday and made a set of stencils in the same typeface 10 inches by, and those were used to trace and then paint the letters on huge bolts of cloth we had died. And then you stick them on to broomsticks to, you know, hold high over our heads. And we also made signs that said, no, on the Briggs Initiative, BAC ABI at the bottom, and we printed up thousands of those and distributed them to all the groups throughout the parade. And so that was also the year that Harvey Milk rode in a convertible in the parade. So if you Google Harvey Milk and Parade up will come photographs. And because there were so many of these signs, they are in almost every photograph you will see. So if I ever want to see examples of my work, early examples of my work, that's all I have to do. And by the end of the election come November, we had turned the tide and won that, or rather defeated that proposition. I think it was like 58, 31, maybe, yeah, maybe, yeah, maybe, yeah, 58 to 31 or 32. And which was absolutely phenomenal to change the public's opinion that much. And that was done because a lot of gays and lesbians, excuse me for tearing up here, learned the importance of coming out and telling their family, their friends, their coworkers who they were. And why it was important to defeat this. In hindsight, it's largely considered California's Stonewall. And I'm very proud of my political involvement. I, at that time, I would go on to do other stuff mostly for GMSMA, but I kind of felt like I had earned my first gay merit badges. I knew I was only interested in leather bars and that as, you know, still essentially a starving college student, I didn't have the money for leather. All I had was a pair of old used army boots. But I also realized thanks to, I don't know, maybe maybe the village people is that a army uniform would get me in. And this was just a few years after our withdrawal from Vietnam. So there was tons of really cheap military stuff in the Army Navy surplus stores. So, you know, for very little money, I went down and bought myself a full army grunt uniform complete with a white t-shirt and dog tags, wore it, and then knew which bar to go because I was interested in the heaviest leather bar of the period, which was the arena. I knew that from my reading of, you know, the bar rags and drummer. And then, and this has never happened again, I get into the bar, buy a beer, find a place to stand. And within two minutes, I'm approached. And the guy, you know, grabs me by the front of my shirt, pulls me close and growls into my ear, are you willing to obey me tonight? And gosh, it was like out of a porn scenario. And I said, yes, sir. And went home. And we did all sorts of fun stuff. And this is the reason I want to tell you this is a very good thing happened in the early hours when we fell into bed at around dawn and engaged in just a little bit of pillow talk. And I told him that I would sometimes still have guilt and shame about my interests and what I got off on. And he just asked me a couple of questions that seemed very simple now, but had never occurred to me. And the first was, he says, Well, do you enjoy this? And the obvious answer was yes. And he says, Does it hurt anybody else? And again, sounds so simple, but I'd never thought of that way. The answer was no. Right. And with that, a huge another huge weight lifted off my shoulders. And I've never looked back again, not an ounce of shame or guilt about who I am or what I enjoy. And that's beautiful. It seems so simple, but at the time, didn't didn't understand it myself. But I was very blessed to have that person remove any stigma that I was still carrying around because of of what society was teaching me. So you spent a wonderful time in San Francisco. You learned a lot. You worked for the rather against the Briggs Initiative. Why the move to New York? Oh, that's a good question. I met David Stein, who lived there, a mutual friend. He was coming out to San Francisco on his first visit there and a mutual friend gave him my name and number. And he called me. He came over. I took him on the grand tour of the city because I love playing tour guide and I love being in an urban night. Bookstores, restaurants, other cultural things. We had sex. And then we stayed in touch more by letter than phone. It was still decades before the internet. And it sounds unlikely, but as our correspondents got more personal and maybe even a little flirty or by my part, maybe even a little bit of seduction. We fell in love long distance through our correspondence of more than a year. How romantic. Well, it's not anything you hear about much these days. But yeah, I guess it was. I think he was an editor and I was, you know, did a lot of writing myself. So that was just our preferred medium of correspondence of communication is I guess is what I meant to say. So I went out there a couple times to New York the first time actually with the mutual to visit and stay with the mutual friend who introduced us. And then the second time while we were considering being a couple, he begged me to move out there to be his master. And the reason I would go to him is that he was older, more advanced in his career. And the thought was is that I would finish my or I could finish my degree at any number of colleges in here in New York City. So after that test worked out so well, which also included seducing me with like a Broadway show and a home cooked five course Chinese feast. I agreed to his suggestion. Or his offer, I guess I should say. However, I had to do it on my terms. He was happy to give me the money for the move. But I said, no, this is something I need to do on my own. So I worked two jobs for a little more than six months to save up the money to move out there. That's what got me to New York. And I realized here, if I can jump ahead, for my point, is that I realized that I had had New York ideation for many years before actually doing this. Maybe I willed it, I don't know. But I remember as early as high school, I was reading The New Yorker and then New York Magazine, which was just starting. Milton Glaser and Clay Felker were essentially inventing the new journalism. And then college, The Village Voice and The Sunday New York Times. And to me, New York was always this like center of sophistication. All the shows I grew up watching were the panel of Let's Make a Deal and the talk shows. And they'd be wearing gowns and tuxedos and exchanging really banter. And with the fake mural of the city lights in the background. And of course, then in college, when I was started, I was able to see old movies again, even though they were probably filmed on backlots in Hollywood. Again, New York was always this bastion of sophistication. So I always had this attraction to it. And now I was living in, oh, it's called the greatest city in the world. And it wasn't until David's death, a number of years ago that I realized that this part of me, and that I would have never moved, I don't think I would have ever had the guts to move to New York on my own. David's invitation made it possible. And thus, he's responsible for much of the happiness of that in my life. And I'm very, very grateful for that. Tell us a little more about the New York you met. The places, the iconic bars. Well, there's the mine shaft. And I'm actually, my backdrop here is the original street entrance to that sex club. I guess I should say infamous sex club. Although I was, I just did the math earlier today. And it was closed 37 years ago, in 1985, during the AIDS hysteria by the city, as a response to the AIDS crisis in lieu of doing anything at all helpful or constructive. It was like, oh, we're taking action here. And the bars, there was the eagle, the spike, later the lore, the altar. Those were just the most popular leather bars that I was here for. Impressions? Well, I had David as a slave. So I would go largely socially or win gay male SM activists, which I'll now just refer to as GMSMA, had events there, fundraisers, social bar nights, etc. But yeah, even though ostensibly, for me as the master, it was an open relationship. David kept me pretty busy and very satisfied. But I certainly loved all of the other cultural attractions and offerings that New York had, museums, theater, restaurants, and also living in a multicultural melting pot, hearing language, music, food, other people that really wasn't exposed to in small towns in Southern California. When I go back and visit one of my sisters, who's like in a moneyed part of Orange County, and all I see are white people, except for the Hispanic gardeners, I get physically uncomfortable, because that's what I'm no longer used to. And it's like, this really isn't the America I'm comfortable in. So you alluded earlier to an amazing gay leather scene, amazing gay scene in general in New York City. You alluded to some of the bars and being able to go there with David. But you've never really told us who David was. David, first off, more than anything other than being as accomplished and hardworking, and passionate, and very lovable, was very, very smart. And that always attracted me, probably because I felt it was something I lacked myself. So, you know, when I'm asked if I have any type, well, intelligence is up there on things that turn me on. And that certainly came through in his letters and his interests. He was a doctorate student in philosophy and left that basically for his own journey of coming out and wanting to be a part of the gay community. And he was one of the editors of the Pittsburgh Gay News, which, believe it or not, was the country's first city gay newspaper, even ahead of New York, San Francisco at that time only had bar rags, and even Boston's gay community news. So, interesting little footnote there. And later he would also move to New York and get involved with the National Gay Task Force before they added the L for lesbian. And then became hugely involved, a founding member of GMSMA, which was formed. There were group, there were essentially only two groups that predated that were gay and about SM. That would be the Chicago Hellfire group. And I think San Francisco's The 15 Association was a year older. And they weren't, they didn't want to hold sex parties. Can I say sex parties? Yes. They were interested in being politically active, taking the mystery and the danger out of SM, and maybe shining a little light on it. Up until then, it had been a very closed society, as kind of documented in the Leatherman's Handbook, where you kind of had to know somebody in order to even know where the leather bars were. They didn't necessarily like advertise way back when. And getting to know people and getting trusted. And essentially, they wanted to be educational and social, political, all of those things. And they were. GMSMA, largely through David's hard work, and many other people too. It was by no means a one man operation. It had a host. It had dozens of volunteers and upwards of 400 paid members at one time at its height. So they had twice monthly meetings, that again, program meetings, which ran the gamut of mostly educational. And there were some that were social, cultural, some that were social, some that were, you know, like demonstrate. They also had demonstrations and hands-on workshops, parties, fundraisers, and many, many, many firsts, which are young people, not that they need to care, are just, they're unaware, have today and don't even think twice about it. So many of these things, GMSMA did it for the first time. And I was very involved too, as an officer, a hard worker, helping David on all of his projects, and encouraging him and essentially being an editor's editor for all of his writings, which were extensive. And so very proud of my contributions to GMSMA's many, many achievements. And here's another fun fact. I coined the concept and the term leather pride. It's hard to wrap your head around it that at the time nobody had ever put those two words next to each other. But there was also a time that nobody thought that being gay was something you could be proud of either. But the thing was is that GMSMA had this fundraiser each year called Pride Night of the Spike, the spike being a leather bar, where we would raise money for the city's committee that organized and the Gay Pride March each year, Heritage of Pride, previously the Christopher Street Day Liberation Day Committee, Sizzle Deck, then it became Heritage of Pride, which still uses now. And it's hard to believe that the few thousand dollars that we raised from a bar night and a leather bar was a big deal, but back then it was. It gave them the seed money to produce a lot of what they needed to do. Rent chairs, bonds, paint, they actually had a separate fundraiser with that, but even to paint the lavender line down Fifth Avenue, only because the St. Patrick's Day Parade, which excluded gays for decades, painted green line down. So we wanted that too. So anyhow, Pride Night of the Spike and after a few years, it had gotten so popular and overcrowded that we needed to find a larger venue and thus a name change. So I was on the phone with Brian Odell, another one of GMSMA's founders, and I suggested how about Leather Pride Night. And these days there's, I think, and that was the name and that on the flyer. And it was, we moved it to the St. Disco and Night Club in the East Village and for the first time raised five figures instead of just a 10,000. Yeah, for late 80s, that was pretty good again because of the hard work of many, many individuals. Patrick Califio was one of the MCs that night and did a great job. So yeah, there's that. But you know, if not, I know that there's Pride Night this and Pride Week and that and Pride Everything. And it also, of course, got a huge boost because Tony de Blas designed the Leather Pride flag behind you there. Yes. I think probably a couple years later after the term got and Tony smartly recognized in its time what a revolutionary concept Leather Pride was. Yes, yes. But the flag just made it go stratospheric. Tony's Leather Pride flag was the first Pride flag after the gay rainbow Pride flag. And of course, now we have all sorts of Pride flags. But you know, I can't, you know, as they say that and two dollars and 75 cents will get you on the subway. But nonetheless, it's still something I'm personally proud of. And you know, if it wasn't me, it would have been somebody else really soon. The world only spins forward. So you were in New York City, even in San Francisco, at a very tumultuous time. You were coming from a wonderful time in history, which was party and fun and sexual exploration and the go go years. Yeah, suddenly you're hit with the AIDS epidemic. Tell us how your community responded to that. I'm going to need to get my hanky here. And since that's since I'm sitting on it, I'll just pull the Kleenex. This is going to be difficult. It was scary. It was horrifying. Our friends were dying horrible, painful deaths within months of contracting the disease. GMS may lost two of its presidents and any number of its members. I had friends who were held the hands of their dying lovers and bearing them only to die of AIDS themselves just a few months later. But what was even worse was societies are political leaders are educators are doctors and medical professionals and their response. They were happy about our extermination. They were calling for us to be shipped off to an island. They were laughing about us in Reagan's White House meeting rooms. Doctors refusing to treat us. Very little compassion. Very little funding. We had to fight for years to get funding for treatment and prevention and research. And so when I saw how quickly all of these areas pivoted during the latest pandemic to fund research and treatment, it only caused PTSD and maybe made me relive those period all over again. But you survived the AIDS pandemic. Why? Why did you survive? What do you think happened there? Here's a deep dark secret which I haven't shared with many people. It's basically because of my looks and my size, I didn't have as much sex as most of the people who we lost to AIDS. And that's a sadness and a heaviness that I carry with me to this day. I know I should rejoice in surviving that era and still being alive. But that's how that's my feeling about it. Growing up, I was moved upon a lot because of my size and my looks. And that sticks with you. How do you want David Stoing to be remembered by the community? David did a lot of work for many other groups besides GMSMA. He was the safety columnist for Bound and Gagged. He was a writer and editor and publisher of numerous books for the leather community, both non-fiction and fiction, both himself and other people. He contributed a lot of writing. He actually coined the phrase and the concept, safe, sane, consensual. But he was also a very shy and unassuming person like me and was fine kind of like being in the background. He also did not suffer fools gladly and did not allow a lot of people into his circle of friends. But I know that those that who remember him or who were touched by his many contributions think very fondly of him. Like David, I guess I just want to be remembered fondly by my friends. And I actually plan on bribing them to do so. In my will, for a small circle of friends, I've left them enough money to enjoy a nice meal out with a friend or partner and toast to my memory. That's beautiful. On a lighter note, what advice can you offer a new person coming into today's leather BDSM community? Thinking back about my own coming out I actually have to quote an old school icon and that would be that Middler's song, You've Got to Have Friends. It's very, very important for you to do the work to cultivate friendships both real life and online. You need that support system in order to grow in a society that is still very negative of who we are and our lives. So that will help a lot. But other than that, it's also like from what the books told me is like get involved both in the vast number of gay groups that are out there based on interests and activities, sports, culture, and also doing political work, which once again is very necessary because so much of our queer youth and trans people are being attacked. I guess my late in life viewpoint is that there's still work to be done and in a larger sense there will always be work to be done. So in whatever way you can, whether it's going to meetings or rallies, talking about it with friends, educating yourself, work toward that sort of progress. Oh, and I obviously voted, yeah. I mean, these all sound like simple concepts, but that's my advice. What's the biggest misconception about you? That was the wildcard question, which I've never really thought of or answered for myself. And I have to say is that I'm not a heavy, rough, tough Leatherman 24-7. I love language and how it's changed by young people in some cultures. I watch RuPaul's Drag Race mostly to keep up with slang and enjoy using it myself again really when the proper occasion exists. And a lot of times people want me to be that 24-7 rough, tough Leatherman because it fulfills their fantasies, so they project that. I really have no interest in doing that. As Walt Whitman wrote, I contain multitudes. Well, Thor Stockman, I've got to thank you for this wonderful interview. Well, thanks for the opportunity to gab on. And I'm... Okay, again, thank you.