 History of Fireside Chap, the Jats, which are a program of the Leather Archives and Museum. I'm in Fort Lauderdale, Florida today. You can see it's a beautiful day out here, and I'm at the iconic Grand Guest, is the Edge. He is a Fort Lauderdale community educator and has graciously joined us very early on a Saturday morning to do a wonderful chat with us. So Edge, tell me a little bit about where you're from, about your family? Well, I grew up in Harahann, which is a tiny little city in the suburbs of New Orleans. No one even knows where it is unless you're actually from New Orleans. So basically, I grew up in the whole cultural milieu of New Orleans. Fairly small, upper-mote class family, mom, dad, sister. Pretty typical. Okay. What kind of, did you have any concept on gay life, leather life, anything like that? I mean, when I was growing up, I had a lot of fantasies of men in leather from as far back as I can remember. Often manifested in the Sears catalog and looking at the guys in leather jackets. That was my first leather ploring. But you know, New Orleans had a small gay community, they had a small leather community. So as soon as I came out, I sort of came out rapidly in the city. Tell us about your coming up. Goodness. So when I was 17, I was walking along the levee along the Mississippi River, and there's an area between the levee and the river itself was called the Bat Shore. And it's usually this sort of fertile rich ground because it's where the river floods. And there are all these trails back there. So I was walking these trails. Super hot guy was walking his two dogs without a shirt on, and I just kind of followed him. And then he looked at me and I looked at him. And the next thing I know, you were kissing. And I remember thinking, this, this, this is what I was waiting for my entire life. And I went back to this place and I insisted he tie me up before we do anything else. Not recommended procedure. Not recommended. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then probably about a year after that, I was on a date with someone. He was getting me drunk. I asked him to leave me at the leather bar. And I was quickly adopted by his two leather men. He sort of became my gay parents and leather parents. Tell me about that leather bar. Oh, God, it was called Jewels. And it was this disgusting little hole in the wall. But like all good leather bars, it had really good flow. You need to be able to circulate in a leather bar. And it had wonderful tea on Sunday with amazing music. And it very much felt like my home. When was this? 1990, between 1990 and 1990. What did you see there that was new to you? Or that fascinating? There was this guy who thought it was really hot. And he had a red handkerchief in his pocket. And he would never tell me what the hell it meant. So this people, there's no interwebs. There's no smart apps. This is like with my princess rotary dial phone, right? Like this is the before time the long log. But there was this gay rag as bars have. And in the back, there was something about like red handkerchief social. So I email or I mailed off to get information. And that's how I discovered what fisting was. What did you learn about it though? What I learned is not for me. Not at that age. But the sort of revelation that there was this whole special signaling within this community. I learned that. And I also there was a man who saw me told me sites that you're in. So you're into guys with leather. You have to start wearing some and that was a really revelation as well that that you need to sort of be able to signal to the community in a way that they can recognize. So which do you see? These days, I'm doing country green on the left. But I'm also signaling with my gloves with my cigar with my West Coast, my language. What I wear, how I wear communicates as much as anything else. Leathers are sort of language. Yes. What does this language say? No, I mean, it obviously indicates I'm into cigars. I'm into gloves. I'm into boots. And then the way I wear my leather, I like to think conveys a certain amount of presence that I like to carry when I'm in a leather space or queer space or in a play space. I hope that it's projecting something. You know, I like to say that leather is an outer manifestation of an inner truth. We are born leather. It is inherent in our souls. And when we put on the leather, that is simply letting other people see what's already on the inside. Let's take us to back to the back to the bar back to the men that had talked to you in the bar. Tell us about them. Tell us what they did for you. Mark and Wally. They put me in chaps for the first time. They had a little playroom in their basement, which is weird if you know New Orleans, but they actually had a basement because their house is on the second floor. They had a playroom. There were a lot of play parties. They had small circle of friends. So I was exposed to slings and classic poppers. So you actually have to pop and bondage and whipping and piercing and drugs that as well. But then they also taught me like, which fork to use at dinner, you know, like you go from the outside in. And they were also part of the New Orleans Mardi Gras Gae Ball culture. So they helped me get my first tuxedo. We went to balls. So there was kind of gay cultural upbringing and a leather upbringing as well. You were young then, though. I was super young, man. I was barely legal. So how were they comfortable being able to bring someone of that age into the situation? Older men like 21 year old boys. They were very, you know, they were just, they were both, well, I think they were both from Mississippi, but they were just sort of classic Southern guys. And I think, I think at our core, our community is really good at adopting and bringing people in. When we were at our best, we find people who are just at the threshold and say, come on over and we, and we mentor. That's what we do. How long did that go on? That went on for probably three or four years, until I moved from New Orleans to New Jersey. Okay. What has become of them now? I lost touch with Mark while we passed away a brain cancer goodness, probably 10 years ago. It is, it is. Now tell me more about the things you learned and the things that fascinated you. Specifically, what do you enjoy now that you learned at that time in the community? Probably the only thing I carried forward was just a love of your self and a love of leather. There are a lot of, but you know, you've got to figure out always exactly what you want. And so you kind of taste everything at the shortest board. So and then the other thing I think I carried forward is this idea of mentoring others. Like, you know, I was really, really blessed. I had gay leather parents. When I developed an interest in bondage, I found a bondage expert just sort of accidentally, when I had an interest in boots, I found some guy crazy and went to boots. I've always been blessed with these extraordinary mentors. And so that's something I definitely carry forward. Like if we want the community to continue, we've got to mentor, teach, educate, bring people in. You said you moved on to New Jersey. What took you there? Graduate school. Okay. Yeah. English. Okay. At Rutgers. All right. In New Brunswick. What did you discover when you went up into New Jersey? I discovered that New Jersey is a suburb of New York. Actually, New Jersey is interesting. Because half of New Jersey is a suburb of New York, and the other half is a suburb of Philly. Yes. Like, you know, there's no New Jersey television station, or even getting New York stations or Philly stations. So I discovered New York. And this is early to mid 90s. It was when I went there, the old spike in the old eagle were still open. I was there when the lure opened. I was there when the lure closed. I was there for port night at the lure. I remember when DVA opened, I shopped at the Leatherman NYC. GMSMA was still really active. I did a lot of programs with them. The bondage club was active. Hot Ash was active. So I really, you know, if I was born into Leather in New Orleans, I feel like I grew up in the New York community. Tell me more about that. What sorts of things did you experience there, learn there, do that? I learned a lot about, this obviously is impressed, because you just stumped me on that one. I learned more about the depth of community. And I learned about our interrelations with other communities, because there were a lot of ties between the New York community and the straight, heterosexual Leather community through things like the Boyd Lynch People Society and Leather Pride Night. So my notion of community expanded. I discovered a really wonderful mentor in New York, whose name is Thor, and I believe he's on your TV interview list. Yes. Yes. Coming up. And through him, I learned a lot about power and presence. Like a lot of what I do now when I'm in a dominant mode, I just sort of absorb from being at his boots. He just had, like the first time I met him, you know, this, we met on IRC. That's how old I am. To IRC. Tell the audience what IRC. IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, and it was like this command line, weird chat place. We met on IRC, and so I met him at a hot-ash party, and I saw him come in, and I just kneeled at his boots, and we had his whole scene without saying a single word, because he had such a presence and such an ability to communicate what he wanted to me. I studied at his boots for many years, and feel like I carried that forward today. That's a very strong statement, because in that kind of an environment, it would have been a little overwhelming, I think. How were you able to pinpoint specifics from that? You know, so much to be communicated by eye contact. In fact, you know, one of the reasons I think leather men wear a cover, leather people wear a cover, is because it's a really good way of controlling eye contact, and whether or not they can make eye contact. So, I could look at him, and with a glance down at his boots, I was able to understand, get on his boots, right? And there was some more physical communication. He pulled me in for a kiss, a DMC bar smoke, or whatever. But so much to be communicated by really good eye contact. And that's why controlling that and nuancing it is so critical. Where do you feel that that experience in New York can carry you? Where does it even carry you now? You know, in many ways formed the leather man I am today, because I was exposed to a kind of historical continuity. Like, you know, that was New York. That's where the mineshaft was. I was meeting people who had been at the mineshaft. I knew more about our history because of that. It shaped me as the kind of person I want to be as a leather man, not only in terms of representing a power or presence, a particular leather aesthetic, but also in terms of mentorship and education. And it exposed me to some extraordinary players. Through that whole milieu, I learned I joined Delta, which is a sort of weird kinky camp, and met like these extraordinary men. I actually went to Inferno, another weird camp, kinky camp, and meet these extraordinary players. And sometimes just watching what they do and how they do it, you just get so much. What do you enjoy that you learned from all of that? I still enjoy cigar sacks, and everything I know about cigar sacks I learned from before. I still enjoy a particular leather aesthetic that was shaped and molded during that period of time. I kind of still enjoy bondage. My interest in bondage is shifting, but certainly through my experience with the bondage club, I learned a lot there. And some of the more intense power play I do, whether that's really getting deep into someone's head, or doing a mindfuck, or really strong power exchange, humiliation, degradation, that's stuff I'll kind of abide there as well. That's a very strong statement. How do you find people responding when you do that? Let's go with the more extreme things, the mindfuck and the humiliation, things like that. Well, they're not for everyone, are they? No. But mindfuck's really interesting because the activating energy of the scene is fear. And so, you know, people who are really into flogging, there are a lot of pain pits, and what they really are, endorphin pits. They like to get high on the endorphins. Well, fear activates adrenaline, which is chemically related to methamphetamine. So fear based scenes are different kind of high. It's a really high high. So there are a lot of men who tune into that, and talking about eye contact, I can look at a man's eyes and sometimes just see this man wants to hurt for me, this man wants me to take him into the darkness and bring him back, and in ways that I can't even fully articulate how I know it. And that for me is the really spiritual element of the work we do, is that sometimes you can intuit things between people that are never stated, never spoken, or never signaled. Wow, that's very strong statement. Yeah, very true. Yes. Now, what brought you to South Florida? I came down here for work, and I moved down here in 2005. Okay, how did you find the community here? You know, in general I find like when I moved to a new town, it takes at least a year or many more to find my community, and for it I'm introvert. So, you know, I generally don't like people, like I don't like making small talk, I don't like parties, I don't like mingling, I don't like when random people at the bar start talking to me, I just don't like that. So for me to even find people who I connect with is a challenge, and then it takes time to kind of learn the local landscape and who the people are who are the real respected people versus the ones who are a little shady, and to learn the landscape in terms of spaces available, the events available. So it took me a little while, but then I really, I really keen to love this city for its community as well. I want to take a quick side step here, because you said something very fascinating just a moment ago, in that you don't like people, and especially strangers that want to check. That is correct. Why did you agree to this interview? Well, as an introvert, first of all, you're not people. I'm not? You're juggles. All right. I'm happy to know this. People are an undifferentiated mass, like a group of strangers I can't stand. But as an introvert, you know what? I feel like people don't really understand what it means to be an introvert. It doesn't mean I'm shy. It doesn't mean I have social anxiety. It means I have a limited amount of social energy and I can be seemingly on and extroverted if I have properly budgeted my energy. This is early in the day. You're getting the whole stockpile of today's social energy. Okay. I'm happy to have it. God! But coming back to how you view this community and how you really got your footing here in the community, tell me about some of your first impressions, some of your thoughts when you were finding your way here in Fort Lauderdale. Oh, God. You know, when I moved down here, I was a leather person of a certain time. I wore boots every single day to work, to publics, and I was very, I felt very invisible in leather spaces here for a long time. Because if you go to the ramrod, it's got a lot of people in flip flops and beach shorts and a tank top. And I felt like people couldn't read, again, leather being a kind of language. There weren't people here who were fluent in leather and that was extremely alienating and frustrating for a long, long time. You know, I eventually did find those people and I did find those places. And you know, we're really blessed here because of Leatherworks. I believe you're interviewing there, Matt. Yes, tomorrow. That's what you watch. Which not every city has a leather store. And it's a leather store that does classes. They have a dungeon you can rent out. They do parties that are both social, part play. They host like the red hanky social. You know, part of what makes community possible is there have to be spaces where it's visible for people to see each other. Yeah, this would be very different from what you knew in New York. So how do you see the differences between basically really old school and what you're finding here? Well, I gotta say by the time I left New York, things were already trending in a strange direction. The eagle would close, the lure would close. I think the new eagle might have been about to open up. Probably. So Leather spaces historically thrive in marginal locations, which to be honest also means neighborhoods of color, right? Like the bad neighborhoods. If you think about the old spike in eagle, they were on the West Side Highway, which was a piece of shit. Once they redid the West Side Highway, ah, real estate values rise, Leather people get priced out. And so New York was already shifting. It was losing a lot of Leather spaces. Once I came down here and really connected to some of the people I felt were really poor, it was really consistent with a lot of the experience I had in New York in terms of mentorship, education, camaraderie, community, support. Now what do you like best about the South Florida community? It exists. Not every city can claim that. You know, I like to think, uh, you know, to use really about both being seen so that we can see each other, recognize each other, but it's also about having multiple entry points. Like, you may live in a city where there's one club, one Leather club. And if you don't like the people in that club, you're kind of fucked. Clubs have politics. Sorry, that's true. Here in Fort Lauderdale, if you're really into sort of strict Leather, you can come to Fort Stress Code Night at the Ramrod. If you want to wear a harness and a jog strap and dance with sweaty men, you can go to Dance Party at the Eagle. If you want to learn something, go to class at Leather Works. If you want, if you want to connect with other fisters, you go to the Red Hankees Social. You know, there are so many different ways for people to enter the community, and I think that's part of what makes this a strong community, is that there's space for a lot of people and there are many ways in. So for example, what advice would you offer somebody moving here, wanting to get involved in the Leather community, what would be the first couple of things you'd suggest? I always point people to Leather Works, particularly their classes, which have been suspended because of the pandemic, but I'm sure they won't return. Because if education is a good thing, we like that. But it also, not only do you get to explore a fetish you might have in a safe space, versus with some random guy you hooked up with on Scruff, you get to explore it in a safe space and then find others who are also starting that journey, so you have a chance to make connections and to build friendships around a fetish as you're both sort of starting on the journey. So I always direct people to Leather Works and their newsletter sign up as well, because sometimes they have parties, and the parties are part social, in the back parking lot, and then part in the dungeon, so everybody has fun. Okay, now you told me when we prepared for this, that you grew up in the digital age. So tell us about that. You had a website. I did. I was part of this strange pitted generation of Leather people where I came out in a really sort of analog Leather environment, and I saw the digital age coming to me. And around 1995, I was on AOL, America Online, that's how old I am. We paid by the effing hour. By the effing hour. And just so you all know, he's younger than me. And you have to take, you have to plug your phone into the modem, and it would go eeeaaYeah-e yeah-e, anyway. So I made a website. At the time, like HTML was a collection of maybe seven tabs, so it wasn't hard to learn. And I was there as the webbrew. When I went on to the web, it was a tiny little place. And I just made a homepage because I wanted to fly people to have sex with. But as the webbrew, every time I updated my site, I added more information, more links, more photos of me, but but also more thoughts, essays, stories, leads to other leather people on the web. And so, yeah, I was really able to see leather move into online digital spaces. Tell us more about that, how did that impact the community? Oh my God. You know, I like to think it was as radical a shift as the 70s, you know, in the 70s, like post-stonewall, post-sexual revolution, some of you've got places like the mine shaft and you've got the same Marx baths and so there's this radical openness that led a lot of people into the community, into the leather community that would not have been able to access it before because in the old guard, question that term too, but anyway, it used to be very closed off, had to kind of know someone to get in. Well, the 70s kind of opened that up. Well, the internet opened it up like crazy, right? Like anyone can be a master on the internet by saying, hi, I'm a master. And so, something that had this rapid, rapid horizontal expansion of who can access the community which created, I feel, a kind of problematic crisis in mentorship and education because there's so many people, there's so many more people, it's hard to find the ones who know what they're doing, who are not just in a cyber environment but in the real world, unlike here as well. It became really challenging. I feel some people would argue that the advent of the internet really decimated some of the scenes that we had because a lot of the bars are closed now, a lot of places just aren't doing what they used to do. What have you to say about that? Well, first of all, I'm not sure it was ever a great idea for us to center our community on drinking. The bars were great when we had them, and I love leather bars. I definitely love going to a leather bar in here, having a cigar, being in that space. But that was never a really great place to center a community. What the internet has done that real world spaces never could is allow for niche kinds of communities. If you were the only furry in town, you were effed. But now you can connect to other furries around the country. If you were the only little, how many littles are in any given town? And how isolated would you feel if you had a fetish that no one else in town seemed to share? But if you can go online and talk to others who understand you and get you, then you suddenly have these virtual communities. And I think what happens is, the bars are declining, but events are doing great. And the recent events are doing great because that's where you meet all the people you'd have been chatting with online. Like that hot German adult baby is going to be at IML. And then suddenly you continue to connect to the real world space as well. Tell us more about your website because eventually didn't that go on to become something very, very successful? I mean, it did. It's strange in that I still run across people who remember the site, that was their first instruction to Leather when they found the site. It became a significant resource in the early days of the Leather web. And it was up for 10 years. What was the name of it? Leatheredge.com, okay. Typical, actual name was On The Edge. It was Leatheredge.com. L-T-H-R-E-D-G-E.com. And still what's there is something I call the Book of Edge because I like to be narcissistic. And it's a collection of the best parts of the site, the stories, the essays about Leather culture, some thoughts and reflections. That's all still sitting there. And people still find it. And they contact it like, oh my God, I read the Book of Edge. They met so much, you know, like that's amazing that something I wrote, I mean, some of that content is 30 years old now, but it still means something to people. They still find value in it. That's fascinating. Now, of course it grew from there. What else did you do regarding online teaching, online work? Well, you know, so the site was up for about 10 years. And somewhere in the middle of those 10 years, I started doing in-person education, starting in New York, starting with the Orlean-Schweigel Society's group called TNG, The Next Generation, which were the younger hetero kinksters. And so that started me on this national circuit of education. But the site went down. I stepped away from education, but I've come back to social media. Because you know, it's not about the internet anymore. It's about apps and social media. And Twitter in particular, I discovered people really liked the sort of educational content I would do in these videos on Twitter. So it sort of shifted. And I've probably now more popular on social media than the site ever was. I can't document that, but I feel it. Well, tell us more about that. What kind of videos do you have on there? What do you try to say to each dude? You know, I discovered this by accident because I made this silly little video for Instagram where I just was in leather and I said, you know, don't ever settle. You deserve to be loved exactly as you are. And I put it, for some reason, on Twitter and it went, it was very popular. I'm not gonna say viral, that's a strong word. But it was very popular. And I realized like, oh my God. You know, when you look like this, when you have this sort of real classic leather daddy look, and you look like a leather man, and you say things like, if you're trans, I accept you in my community. If you're a person of color, I want you to be part of my community. Like that has such impact. There's so many, I find Twitter is filled with 19 year old pub gamers, right? And they are so hungry for knowledge, recognition, to know that they have a place in this community. And simply because of the huge backpack of privilege I carry, for me to say simple things like, I see you, is enormously affirming an impact. You just said a very powerful statement. The backpack that you carry, and privileges that you carry, tell us more about that, what does that mean? I've become so much more aware of this in a post-Floy riot protest era. Not only the fact that I'm white, not only the fact that I am cis, not only the fact, but also the fact that I'm, for example, Western. I have a lot of people in Arab countries who contact me, where it's illegal even to be gay, let alone into leather. The fact that I live in an urban environment, because if you're stuck in a rural place, you probably don't have a leather bar. The fact that I have economically advantaged enough to afford leather, because leather is not cheap. The fact that I have a fairly nice looking body, like all of these, I'm able body. Let me just put it that way. All of these sets of privileges allow me to speak in a way where my words have a gravitas that can make a difference, but I'm super aware that it's about a set of systemic privileges I've been able to benefit from, that not everyone gets to benefit from. So reading between the lines on this, are you indicating that you feel you need to share that with other people? Yeah, right, so it's really hard to get rid of all your privileges, but what you can do is listen to other voices and then open up spaces for them to be heard. Part of what I try to do is let people know that there's room, I like to sit in this room for every one of my leather bar, right? So I don't care who you are. If you wanna wear a tutu, if you're in full drag, if you wanna come with your straight, best friend, girl, roommate from come, come to my bar. Here's why, okay? I don't drink a lot and my bar needs to stay in business. So I need all the people, all the people to come drink at my bar and keep it open. The other reason is that I do a leather a very specific way and frankly, I think it's the right way to do leather. I don't judge anyone else for doing a different list, but no matter how many people are at the bar, the people who want leather the way I want leather will always find me because I may be the only one at the bar doing leather this way. So I try to create very inclusive spaces, not just virtually, I want them to be physically because other people's presence at the bar does not impact my build etiquette sense. All righty then, that's a strong statement. And it's true. You're actually a title holder. What is your opinion on title holding? Oh goodness. I was a title holder. Yes. I was Fordale Leather Sir 2020. I was appointed to NAPA because there was no contest, there was a pandemic and the motor kind of wanted the title to be going. Title holders are an important, unique subculture. In the same way that good blacks are a unique subculture, right, they have their own apprenticeships, their own lore, their own knowledge, their own community connections. Same thing with title holders. They have their own lore, their own knowledge, their own inside circles, which can seem very clicky, but it's really just the fact that they're sub-community. Most of the title holders I know do good. They have some sort of presence and visibility in the community and just being visible to let other people realize that they have a lot of title holders of color. It's great for young people of color to see like, oh my God, there's another person of color. I can do that, right? That being said, most title holders are not introverts. There's a particular title holder personality. It is because you have to go up to everyone. You have to like people. If you're a title holder, you have to like people. So I have this kind of feeling about title holding, not because of title holders, because they're clicky or they're egotistical or they're frivolous, but because they're extroverts. And extroverts just sort of rub me wrong because they have too much energy. It's wrong. Oh, righty there. Sorry, extroverts. All righty there. How do you see the future of title holding? What's your opinion on that? That's really hard to predict because no one controls the shape of the community. It is formed through this numerous one-on-one interactions and a kind of chaotic system with this element of emergence where order emerges out of chaos, right? We go to chaos theory. I will say, I don't know that in the short term, title holders are going away, but I will tell you like the young people moving into this community will be able to shift it in ways that we never predicted. You know, I recently watched this YouTube, it was a YouTuber who was comparing MAL to MIR and talking about how boring the contest was at MAL and how exciting, and if we want more Gen-Z people, we need more exciting contests. And my reaction was, I've never been to an FN contest at MAL. I don't go to IML for the contest, I go for the people. So the fact that they were even thinking about how to make contests more interesting, I was fascinated. So like contests are not the point of big events for me. But it does tell me that these younger people are already thinking about like, God, what would be an engaging title contest for us? And that means that it will probably persist for a while. It's okay, very good. Now, you just mentioned younger people. I'm gonna build on that a little bit. Okay. What advice can you offer someone watching this video, someone who thinks the grass is greener by coming into the community, particularly here in South Florida? What advice can you give that person? If you want to be a member of the leather community as I envision it, as I participate in it, my first piece of advice is get a pair of boots. Short lace-up boots. Pair of Carolina loggers should cost you about 100 bucks, right? So not a huge threshold financial investment for entry. Boots, like if I see a man in boots and a pair of shorts, I recognize him as a leather person. If I see a man in jeans and boots, I recognize him as a leather person. If I see someone in full leather and tennis shoes, that is a little bit more dissonant for me, right? So, number one, get a pair of boots. Number two, because boots make you recognizable to others. It's all about people being able to see you as part of the community, as much as you being able to see the community. So number two is form networks of friends. You know, I have so many boys who are looking for a daddy or a master, but I like to think that boys need networks of boys to connect with, because they need someone who understands the struggle and the frustration and the disappointment and the excitement of meeting someone new. They need that support system. So find others like you, not just like the daddies or the serfs, or if you're a daddy, find other daddies, right? Find others like you, because the community exists. You like to think of community, you really need to see the trees, not the forts. Community is about the friendships I have with individual people that enable me to do things. Meet me in these public spaces, and then we look like a community. So get boots, find friends, and the third thing would be to pursue education. There's a lot of great education online. There's some great events with education. Go to Plaw. It has a wonderful educational track, but also check out, if you're coming to South Florida, check out Leatherworths for their education. And then finally, claim your birthright. If you consider yourself a leather person, the bar is your birthright. You belong here. No matter who else is here, whether they're kind of prankety old leather person or they want to judge you, they have no right to judge you, because this space belongs to you. So you come here and you own it. Even if it's just sitting in a corner watching people, this is your space and you're home, and you have a right to be here. And you can learn a lot just from being in a leather bar and watching people. Any dangers, pitfalls? Of course, there are a lot of, I hear a lot of stories of bad tucks, bad dominant studies, serves. And so you want to be a little cautious. However, I don't think that they're bad because they're bad people. I think they're bad because the community has failed to provide good mentoring to dominant people of all flavors. You know, most of those dominant people, how are they learning what to do? They're watching porn. Porn is not a great educational activity. It's a great recreational activity, but it's not a great place to learn how to be a leather person. And so yeah, be cautious. That's part of why you have this network of other boys or other friends because the community is small and everyone knows everyone and you can ask, who's this guy? Do I have to be concerned about him? Be cautious because there are people who will willfully or accidentally hurt you. And I find so many people in life who have bad experiences and they have trauma and they've been hurt. And that makes me very sad. What do you like best about living in Fort Lauderdale? Well, it's hard to eat the weather. It is February 5th. It is 79 degrees. My air conditioner is on her home. So I like that. And I love that it's very easy to access other places, right? So there are a lot of cheap flights to and from Fort Lauderdale because we're a vacation destination. But I can also fly out of Miami. I can also fly out of West Palm. So I have three airports to choose from, every airline, I can get to lots of places. And then I don't think there are a lot of cities who have as many entry points into the community. We have two leather bars. We have Leatherworks. We have Stompers, which is the only sort of queer oriented food store in the world that I know of. And if you're into gloves, we have the world's entire supply of tough gloves sitting at a warehouse down the street. We have a leather store. We have a fetish store. If you think about the fetish factory you're into rubber. We have a lot of good groups and communities and there are a lot of ways to get in. What do you like least? This can be a very transient place to live because snowbirds, tourists, people come here they don't like it, they leave. And that means it can be really hard to form really good friendships. That's the one, a lot of people come down here and they don't like it and they leave. And the number one thing I hear is that it's too hard to make friends and I think there's a lot to do with the transience. I've heard that too. In fact, I've had leather family that moved here. We're not happy and ultimately left. So, when we prepared for this, you mentioned you're in sobriety. Do you mind telling us a little bit about that? What's going on with you regarding that? Yeah, so I'm an addict and an alcoholic and I discovered that really when I moved here I've been using crystal meth. Increasingly towards the end of my time in New Jersey and when I came down here I was using it a lot more than I wanted to and I had an experience that sort of brought me to my bottom. And I entered recovery. Fort Lauderdale also has an amazing queer recovery community plus the amazing straight recovery community. Tons of fellowships, a clubhouse, plus meetings at our community center. So, I entered a 12 step recovery program and then most recently I restarted, I had about 15 years, well right now I have 16 years free of crystal meth. But I started because of some of my fetishes, I had started doing G in relation to some scenes I was doing and I decided that wasn't really on it. So at the start of this year I completely restarted my day count. I'm on day 36 and it feels good. I do think meth in particular is this kind of, if we think about AIDS as the pandemic, it's not really infected our community. Meth and opioids is the second pandemic in some ways isn't quite as visible but it certainly is quite as deadly to the leather community. How are you seeing that impact for community? What's going on? A lot of people are only able to get into leather when they're high, they start coping with fear and shame. A lot of people who were already leather people get wrapped up in drugs and find their lives falling apart and a lot of people die. Addiction is a fatal disease particularly with the introduction of fentanyl which isn't only contaminating opioids and causing death but now it's being cut with crystal meth because it's so highly addictive that it'll be even more addictive, right? But you don't know it's in there and then you do it and you die. So we are losing people, people are dying from this and we just can't afford to let our marketing members die because we're not that new guys. We don't have any to spare. How do you want to be remembered by the community? That's only up to you to say that. But in, for example, someone watching this video in 30 years, what do you want them to know about you? I want them to remember me as a really good example of a leather person of a certain type, of a certain aesthetic. Someone who was passionate about this community, who thought about it, reflected on it, lived it but did his best to pass it on so that it can continue on past it. You know, why the hell am I doing all these fucking videos? Can I say fucking? Sorry, YouTube. Why am I doing all these effin' videos on Twitter? It's because I am not always gonna be here. If I don't teach other people the kind of leather I love and it's so important that it may not exist past me and so it's critical that I teach and I hope that people remember me as someone like it was not the best leather person of all time so really good example, really good example of the time. Anything you wish you'd done differently or you still maybe want to do? I would really, really like to find a man that I can wake up to every morning and that's been a journey for a while. I've had some really wonderful relationships that have ended sometimes for really tragic reasons but that's, I feel like it's the only thing left on my bucket list. I've done every sexual fantasy I have, sometimes multiple times and some of these were really complex and required specialized equipment. I've lived them. That's something not a lot of people can say. True. You know, I've had a title, I've been to all the big events I want to, I've met some wonderful people but the thing that has escaped me is being able to build a life with someone on a daily basis and wake up every morning with them and not only just play with them in the playroom but also go shopping with them. I just, that's what's left on my bucket list. Why do you think you haven't found that? Oh, we need to talk about Alan on if you want to get into that. Oh, all right, well. You know, it's also a box ticking. Like if, you know, the more boxes you have to tick, the harder it is to find a partner. So, okay, I need someone who's gay, I need someone who's single, I need someone close to my age range, I need someone who's not just single but emotionally available looking for a relationship and then I need someone into leather and I need someone into cigars and I need someone into bondage and I need someone who's going to be submissive and the more boxes you have, the more impossible it is to find a partner. So a lot of my relationships have been long-distance which is fantastic but frustrating because I don't get to wake up with them every morning. So, I try compromising and ticking fewer of the boxes and that didn't work. So it's really going to have to be about finding that one and building a life. What's the biggest misconception about you? Um, goodness. So, I've heard that I'm scary. And I said, what? And then I have a friend, one of my, I have two friends in town so I'm an introvert, I don't like people and like people come off and be like, I don't think Barkley likes me. And he's like, no, it's not that. I said, my name is okay. I don't think Barkley likes me. He's like, no, it's not that, it's just that I'm an introvert. So people, because when I'm at the park, I'm just standing by myself enjoying a cigar and I'm standing in the crowd and looking at me and Terry and intimidating. And also that aloof and alitas and I'm not really any of those things. I'm just an introvert that as friendly as I want to be, I only defend certain people. And unless you really understand that, I will always, I think, come off differently too. Well, Edge, I would like to thank you for an amazing fireside chat. And for Lauderdale at the Ramrod Park. It was amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for watching.