 Hello everyone and welcome to Inside Leather History of Fireside Chat. I'm Doug O'Keefe. I am the host and producer of the chats, which are a program of the Leather Archives and Museum. Today, I am interviewing Kilker Alkaraz. Kilker was Mr. UK Leather 2012 and Mr. Leather Europe 2012. And welcome to Inside Leather History of Fireside Chat. My pleasure. You're in Barcelona, Spain. I am and it's very hot actually today. Really? Great. It is. It's great weather. Let's start right at the very beginning. Tell me a little bit about where you're from and your family and your background. So I'm from San Sebastián, which is a city in north of Spain. It's a region called the Basque Country. Quite close to the Pyrenees and like five minutes drive from the French border. So it's very like hit highly. It has lots of mountains. The rainy as well. So tell me a little bit about your family and your circumstances. My family. We're five at home. My twin brother, my twin brother. He's straight. Let's pray. My sister. She's five years older. And then my mom and my dad. Well, they all live in my village, in my hometown. Along with my grandparents and aunts and uncles. I have an FU, which I'm really, really happy for. That's a new thing for me. And I'm enjoying it a lot. My parents are very supportive towards all this. They can speak English, but I'll show them the video. Hopefully. How did you learn to speak English? I started at school and it would sound a bit awkward, but I like like Britney Spears songs. So I used to, you know, translate the Basque boys all their 90s pop bands. So because of curiosity, it was also my favorite subject at school. All the languages. So when you were young, how did you know about being gay? The first recollection I had is, we were at a school trip and there was this guy that, I was about six, five, six. That's the first recollection I had. And this guy had kind of like purple lips, very, very nice. And I felt attracted to this guy. It was very weird. So that's the first recollection I had. At what age did you come out? I came out just 10 years ago. I think 2009, so 12 years ago. 23rd of July. That was 12 years ago, 23. Age 23. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Tell me about coming out. I was living in the Middle East, working for an airline there. And I fell in love for the first time with a Syrian guy. He probably see the video as well. So big kids. And it was everything like really quick. And you know, it was a big change there, living there. It was like a little bit too much. So slowly I fell in a depression. And my family thought it was because I was gay. And I didn't dare to tell them. So they contacted one of my friends that lives actually in Barcelona. Another flight attendant. And she told me, you know, your parents contacted me. So I thought, okay, I'm going to take a flight back, back to San Sebastian. And I flew over there. We spent like three days, you know, when you, when you actually want to open the conversation, but you don't know how. And they're the same. So it was this uncomfortable silent moments for three days. And then one day I just had like three gin tonics. And I told my mom. And the following day, the following morning, my dad knocked on my door, he came and he said, mom told me what you told her last night. I just wanted to let you know that I love you. So for me, it was great. I'm very lucky. Where were you in the Middle East? I lived in Qatar in Doha. Well, being gay in the Middle East must be very difficult. You know, it is because everything happens indoors, but probably they're kidding me for saying this, but there is a big gay community there. And that's, you know, even, even, I think even the country, you know, you can hold hands with men to men can hold hands with men to women. No. So at the end of the day, you know, there is ways to get around being gay. That's, I mean, the laws are straight. So it has to be undercover everything. It was, it was the time when Grindr opened as well. So we all downloaded Grindr and you have to connect to a VPN. It was a little bit everything like this. And every time you met someone, it could, there's a risk that could be an undercover police. So it was a little bit like this. But yeah, that's the way they live. They're unfortunately nowadays simple. Did you have bad experiences trying to meet people there? No, no, actually no. No, because we all have a very, very small community. I'm talking about Qatar. I don't know Dubai seems to be a little more open or Bahrain as well. Qatar is very, very small. Doha is, I think the capital is like 200,000 captains or at least 10 years ago, you know how big they spun very, very quickly. And we all used to hang out through the same places and one gets to know another one and you're invited to parties. You know, so it was a very, very small community, very, very close, all of them. So where did you go after Qatar? So after Qatar, because I continued with the depression and it was not getting any better. I mean, I didn't realize the pressure until I came back to my parents. Literally, I quit my job. I parked my car in the desert next to all the Lamborghinis and Ferraris. And it's actually amazing when you see all those amazing big expensive cars in the desert, you know. And literally I took a flight home and I came back to my parents to recover, you know, the depression and stuff. What was causing this? I think it was many, many things. One, all the stress of coming out because it's never easy. Even if you suspect that your family, you know, especially like our parents, even from my generation, our parents, I mean, my generation was already quite open. But obviously my parents were educated differently. My grandparents were educated differently. I'm from a town that's next to San Sebastian. There's 1,500 inhabitants. And even, even though people came out there before me, so I knew it was going to be kind of okay. And I never hid it. I mean, I was very flamboyant anyway, but I was a kid. So everybody, everybody knew, you know, and nearly didn't even have to tell. There are some people that I never told them, you know. Still, it was very stressful. And then moving from Europe to Qatar, finding love for the first time, it was a little bit like too many things coming together, you know, the culture as well, the culture difference is huge. And yeah, I don't know probably I didn't realize. And yeah, I mean, it made me stronger. I'm not thankful that it happened because it was painful. But, you know, I am thankful that it happened because I am stronger. And it made me the man I am today. I don't actually think that I could have been as open as a leather man or a fetish man if I didn't go through that, because the whole experience put me really down. And then right after, like less than a year after, the whole titan thing happened. It was everything very, very quick. And that helped me to accept myself. So, you know. Tell me a little bit about the kinky and the gay scene there in Barcelona. In Barcelona, there is many, many teams that are organizing things. And luckily, there is stuff going on. We are going up. I'm part of Barcelona Rubberman. We organized, we started organizing Barcelona Rubber Weekend. Kind of like seven years ago, at the beginning it was very small, like 30 people, stuff like that. And slowly we've grown into something like 200, expecting 200, 250 this year. The bad thing is that the venues here are very small. Very small compared to the U.S. venues. I mean, like 200 people, you know, the biggest one, there is soundness and stuff like that, which are big up, but venues that can cause something like this, 200, 250, and then if you want to do something bigger, you need a lot of investment because of insurance and stuff like that. Then there's other groups that are doing stuff as well. And, you know, till not very recently, the bars as well, some bars were very adamant to kind of like host these kinds of events because of that, the Spanish mentality of that, you know, there's lots of fetish people that stay at home. Actually, they love it, and it's lots and lots and lots of them, and if they're watching, please come out. Come out to the parties because it's very social. It doesn't have to be scary. You know, people think it's something very, very sexual, and that's it, and it's not like that. I enjoy me, I enjoy more the social part rather than the sexual part, which obviously I do as well, but more in my privacy. So there's all kinds of people, and what I'm happy for is that people are seeing that something is happening, and they are coming up. This year we're focusing on bringing younger people and local people as well, because we do have international attendees because we travel a lot, like all the fetish people, I guess, to all the big parties and stuff like that. So people come from abroad, and they've been coming from abroad for years, but local people is a little bit more difficult. So two years ago, the last time we did another weekend, was 80% foreigners and 20% locals. So we're trying to focus on bringing, you know, I mean, it's great to have international travelers. I'm not gonna complain. We're very grateful, but it is also good that people from Barcelona and surroundings and even from Spain that you come to the parties and they enjoy it. We also started to do something in Ciches this year for the very week, and we did two parties and it was actually like very, very well received. So hopefully we'll continue working with them as well. They've created a leather group which is called Ciches de la France. And, you know, we'll support them as much as we can. Madrid as well is having some parties there, Seville, Torremolinos. So, you know, fetish is kind of like flourishing from homes out to the bars, which is what we need, I think. That's wonderful. It is, it is actually. We're very grateful. Very grateful. It takes a lot of effort as well and it won't happen one day to the other. It takes time to build, you know, people's strides, whether it is bars or, you know, small shops or attendees as well. And I have to say it's not easy as well to accept. First of all, to accept your fetish, because I do think everyone has fetishes, but to accept it, that's another thing to realize where you lie, then accept it and then, you know, say, I'm going to try this. It's not easy. It's just as difficult as coming out. Lots of people talk about when they came out as a gay person and when they came out as a fetish man. It's like another milestone, yeah? Well, tell us about you coming out into the fetish scene. Wow. Mine was so basically. I met this guy in a hotel room. He was called Sly Hans. He was a MIR. I might get the year wrong, but I don't know if he was 2011 or 2012. I remember him, yes. I think it was 2011, because I met him in 2011. I think. Anyway, I met him in a hotel. He was sleeping at the airport, and I was staying in that hotel for work. So I told him, come over. You know, let's have a chat if you need a break. By law in the UK, we used to have two double beds. And when we chatted through Scraff, he was very, very kind, and I thought he would come to the room. He actually made me dress in full rubber, because at the time I only owned leather in full rubber, top to bottom, everything, everything. With a gag in my mouth, everything. And I actually thought, oh my God, I would never like this. I mean, how wrong I was, how wrong I was. And then he told me, listen, I'm organizing Mr. Le UK in October. This was July, three months apart. Why don't you come and compete? It's in Manchester. And I said, yeah, yeah, I was unsure. But you know, he was so kind. And beginning of October, he messaged me through Facebook and said, are you competing? I didn't know anything about titles. I mean, I was just a few months into the British War after I came from Qatar. Everything was new to me. I was scoring. I started going out to bars like very, very recently. And I thought, OK, I'm not going to win, you know, they need people. I know no one in Manchester. I will go with open mind, you know, and I will know Manchester because I had never been to the city. And anyway, so I went to Manchester. I was so nervous that I got drunk on the train. Because I was like, you know, I was still with, you know, we did last few steps of the depression. I didn't feel good about myself. I was quite shy to get out on stage and show my body and things like that. So I was being secure at the time. So I was really drunk. And actually, as soon as I arrived to the club, the same Manchester has an amazing, amazing, amazing fetish scene. They embraced me. Everybody was talking to me. Nobody knew me, but they were so welcome. I felt like at home. And then, well, I won the title. I won the UK. I can't remember much of the moment because I was so excited. I just remember going back to the hotel on the Sunday morning, having breakfast on my own, in my hotel, in leather, crying, and I just called my family and told them. And they were like, what's that? I'm like, well, I don't know. I will find out more later. Let's take a step back and look more at that. You had never been to a contest before? No. Fascinating. So tell me what you experienced at the contest. My first impression was a little bit intimidated because I was going into a club. I had been to The Hoist in London before, a few times, and some other clubs in London. But I used to stay in one corner. I was not very in mind. This was when I was 23, 24. So I was really, really, really scared and really intimidated by the scene. I didn't know. Do you know when you start that you don't know what you're doing? What you're doing is right or wrong. You do have all those dots in your mind. But actually, the contest was so much fun. It was not very, very serious. It was like everything, it was kind of like a show. We were five contestants, amazing, all of them. I didn't think I would win. But I just showed myself. I guess I had fun and people liked it. I'm curious why they selected someone from Spain for a UK title. That's one of the reasons I didn't think I would win. I mean, I lived in the UK at the time. So I lived in the UK for 10 years. It was not a requirement to be from the UK, but to live in the UK. Same as a lot of contests like ours. The only requirement is to live here. And I didn't think I would win because of that. I was like, okay, I'm Spanish. All these guys are British. Why would they choose me? Would they choose me? I don't know. I think I was, because part of me thinks that, and same with the Europe contest, because I was on my own. I had to, and I was out of my territory. Let's say the other four guys were from the Manchester area. So they knew people. I had to go out and talk to people and meet people. I was on my own. So everybody came to talk to me. And I guess that played the part for them to vote for me, because it was the audience vote. Why were you living in the UK then? I was working for an airline. So after I came back from Qatar, I spent like seven months getting better from the, from the getting well from the depression. And I started applying for airlines again. And I started working for two, for Thomson Airways in the UK. So I moved back to London because I had lived in London before Qatar as well. And it was the easiest way for me, like, you know, working for an airline back in a country that I lived before. Oh, let's see. So tell me more about holding the title of Mr. Leather UK. What did you do? What did you learn about it? First of all, my two years, I have to say overall, for me, the biggest benefit was that I learned how to accept myself. Yeah. So I mean, I don't love myself to the point with, that is a little bit pretentious, but I learned how to accept myself. I think that's, that's the key. The other thing I learned is that if you open to people and you speak from your heart, people give that love back to, to you. I feel so, so, so, so loved. And I'm very, very grateful for that from the very beginning. Any regrets about the UK title? I mean, lots of people ask me now. Yeah. Why don't you go for a rubber title? Why don't you go even like a few years about it? They start asking me. Well, I think people evolve. One of the people evolve. I don't think if I, when I consider myself now with what I know now, that, or when I, when someone doesn't, should I enter a title? I ask, or I ask them to ask themselves two questions. What can you bring to the title? But also what can the title bring you? Because it has to be two ways. Otherwise the experience is bad. This is what I think. Otherwise you feel either burned out, or you feel used by people, or you feel, you know, if you're not enjoying it, there's no point in doing it. You mentioned in the UK title time, you learned a lot about the fetish community. All the work that is behind creating either contests, or socials, or charity, you know, raising money, all that was new to me, even then. It was like, wow. It was an eye-opening because people think it's just sex. You know, you don't see all the work that is behind, all the volunteers that it takes, all the work that they do for charities, or even if it's not raising money, raising information, raising awareness about different topics. All that was new to me. And it was great to learn about it. Why did you choose to compete for Mr. Leather Europe? So I went to... I won Mr. Leather UK first, five months after I went to IML. I didn't win. Woody won. Woody from Michigan, or he lived in Michigan at the time. Big kiss to him and my brothers, which I love them. My younger brothers. And then, I mean, my experience, I was still, you know, for me, IML was the end of my depression. When I competed there, it was like, that's it. I won the battle. You know, I was very, very happy. So I just decided to show another side of me at my European contest, you know, because people have seen the smiley, outgoing person side of me, but I don't let... Still today, I don't let to see the more private, perverse side of me publicly. It is something I'm not... In that sort of sense, I'm a very reserved person. You know, I do show them my social fetish man, but I don't show them my playful fetish man. So I decided to show them the rough side of me and I did a fantasy more of a dominant type of, you know, fantasy. Which is on YouTube. If everyone wants to watch it, it's Kielker's fantasy altogether. Now, I want to take a step back. You mentioned going to IML. What were your impressions, your thoughts and feelings about IML? Well, my first... I mean, we started... I think it was the second year. The year before us is the first year when Eric won, Eric Mr. Lele Europe. That is something my kids are very, very nice guys. They started chatting with each other through Facebook. It's the first year that I have a Facebook group. So we were the second year. So I started chatting with my IML brothers months before. I was going there. We were all very excited. And when I arrived in Chicago, when I arrived into the hotel, I was actually going with my friends inside and I didn't see him for four days. From the moment I stepped into the hotel, all the brothers were waiting for me. My first impression was like, wow, this is huge. What am I doing here? What did I get into? This is going to be crazy. But I did feel very, very welcome as well, very embraced. Someone from the previous year told me when the contest ended. I mean, I didn't understand the time. Now I do. They said, you don't realize, but you're the pet. You're the mascot of your edition. Yeah. And I was the youngest as well. So I was very, very nervous and secure as well because I didn't know anything about the contest. Of course I researched a little bit, but I didn't know. I didn't know how to spend. I didn't have as much leather as all the others. My leather as well was not expensive or anything like that. It was just more from eBay. I think like this. People think as well, you have to have like a 2000 euro jacket. Amazing. Let us know. You know, I competed with, with not much stuff like two trousers, two shirts, one bed. I didn't have that as much. I was new. It doesn't matter. It's showing who you are because you represent me. I represented part of the fetish community like everyone else. I did have a good message to give and, and I still think it was a quite, quite a good speech because of what I said, I took from my heart. You know, my speech was about to, it was about being grateful not to worse me because, okay, you do get, you do get kind of like a light for a year, you know, all the, all the eyes and ears are on you. And it's great to represent people and that people listen to you. But what about all these volunteers that never held a title and probably never will, or they're never interested, you know, the work in the background. What about all these bars that open? Some of them don't, don't make much money, but they still open so that people have a place, a safe place to enjoy their fetishes. My speech was a speech to thank them for doing that, to, you know, to actually praise those people that we forget and to make people think about, you know, all those people that don't get the attention that title holders do. Now let's talk about Mr. Leather Europe. Tell me about that contest and that experience. Wow, it was a, again, like I said, I went there to show another part of myself that people don't usually see. So that people got the full picture of Mr. Leather UK because I didn't think I would win. That would be the end of my year as a title holder, yeah? So I'm like, okay, so as a, you know, the last time that people is going to, I'm going to have that attention towards me, I'm going to show them that other side. I was held in Cumber by the clubs there, very, very well organized. It was a little bit intimidating as well because all the European clubs, the European motorcycle, now I cannot remember, ECMC anyway. European Confederation of Motorcycle Clubs. That's right. They do the annual general meeting, yeah, and that's when they hold the contest every year in a different city. So that year was in Cumber. And so all the presidents, vice presidents, all the, let's say, important people meeting the same place and they watched the contest. Very minor had only been a year or something into the fetish world. So for me, it was like, again, meeting everyone, meeting lots of people, everything came, you know, it came so fast and so quick. My fantasy, I had thought about it just a month before. In my mind, it was very, very clear what I wanted to do. It was a storytelling and we didn't rehearse. Me and my, well, my fantasy partner side, we only rehearsed it once before the contest. The music, we did it the same afternoon. I knew which song I wanted. It was very, very clear in my mind and he did it so well. I'm very, very thankful to him. Tell us about your title year as Mr. Leather Europe. So my title year as Mr. Leather Europe was more, I would say, I mean, Mr. Leather UK was fun, but I was still learning a lot and I was kind of like, you know, more insecure about the whole thing. Mr. Leather Europe was very secure. I knew what I was doing. I knew people as well in every place, so it was easier there for me. Also, because you get invited to so many events and stuff like that, as Mr. Leather Europe, I chose places that have never been or places where they didn't have Mr. Leather Europe there before, you know, so it was a way for me to get that enjoyment as well from the title. So I used the title year to travel, to places I wanted to travel. Such as? Like I went to San Francisco, I went to the reality that I had never been, stuff like that. So I never got burned out because it was always a new event either that I had never been to or a place where I had never been to. You know, it was so much fun here. What was the most fascinating place you visited? I say one of the most beautiful memories that I have apart from the big parties, which, you know, they're always great because you meet so many people. It was Malmo in Sweden. I have never been to Sweden and what it was shocking to me is, because I don't know, I feel like a normal person, just like everyone else. But the way they treated me was like, wow, you know, everything, since I arrived, it was like, you know, I was there, you know, I was up there for them. That was sweet, very, very sweet. It was very cold, it was snowy. And then in the club, one of the most beautiful things they did, they did the dinner and I was proceeding the table. So they all suddenly stood up and they started singing to me, typical Swedish folkloric. Yeah, which I didn't think how to feel. I didn't know how to feel, you know, it was like all very, very odd, but very beautiful, very beautiful to experience. It was kind of like surreal in the fetish crowd. It was amazing. What advice can you afford a new contestant trying to do a title? I wouldn't take it a second. When they asked me, like, when someone wins, yeah, like the next contestant, next month, when he wins, I always, always, always, always ask them something, because this is my way of seeing contests and titles. Okay, you won't say Mr. Robertson, yeah. How do you want to take this forward? Because you can either go to other contests like Europe or MIR, you can go to win and have one in 50 chance of winning. Or, in my choice, you can go to enjoy and still have that chance. Do you know what I mean? I think when you enjoy, like I said, when you enjoy, people enjoy. So you have more chances of winning. And yeah, just be yourself, enjoy, learn a little bit of history. Because for me, one of the things I was fascinated on my journey to IML, it was learning about how, especially the U.S. scene was before, yeah. All those books that I read, it was amazing. Everything, the leather archives, when you go and see it there, it's just amazing. Every time I go to Chicago, I visit the archives. It's an amazing place. What major differences do you see between the American scene and the European scene? The European scene is more inside to sex and sex to sex. And the U.S. parties are more into the community charity side. Of course there is sex and there is charity here as well. But I would say that balance is like this. There's more charity work and more community spirit in the U.S. It's not even normal here to see fetish families like you have in the U.S. It was actually, for me, it was shocking. Like 10 years ago it was shocking, learning about all that as well. Because I had never seen any of that. Now there is a small part of the fetish scene in Europe to have fetish families stuff like that. But it's more in the U.S. that you see, you know, all these daddies and serons and masters and all that was very, very new to me. Okay. But you are more in the rubber scene now. Tell us about that. I mean, I have to say I still enjoy leather. However, one thing that happened to me after the Dytons, which probably because I didn't know as well, now I would take things differently, is that I went to so many events in such a short time that it's not that I don't enjoy, it just became normal. Like now I will go like this to the street. I have a meeting afterwards. It just doesn't have that kind of forbidden feeling, you know, that steel rubber gives me. You know, when I go into rubber on the subway, it still gives me that, I like to give that image to people. They look at you like you are leather, it just became normal. I know it's in our minds anyway, fetish is state of mind. When we were preparing for this interview, you indicated you're doing more activities in the community now than when you were a title holder. So what are you doing in the community now? First of all, I like to say that people think that in your title years, you have to do something. For me, your title years are for you to bring something into the community, but to enjoy and to meet people, make connections, stuff like that. The real work starts after your title or titles. So in my two years of title holding, first of all, you don't have much time. You have your normal life, like work and stuff like that. Weekends, it was just parties, after parties. So I don't know how people take the time of doing it. There are some people that in their title years have found the way and they've done amazing things, but most of the people do the hard work afterwards. And that's, for me, when you're, or at least in my case, when your fetish life starts. So for years, I've been doing modeling for some runs, which was something that came to me as well as a chance and I couldn't believe it, because I never saw myself doing something like this. And I love it. And then when I moved, especially when I moved to Barcelona, I mean, I hosted and helped to organize the first Mr. Leather Spains, like a few years ago. I was vice president of Leather for Spains, the club that hosts this title. And then I'm concentrated in the Barcelona rubber group. We organized Mr. Robert Spain, the rubber weekends here, and we helped create different rubber clubs in Spain like Madrid government. And tried to help others as well, you know, to create the scene in the respective communities. I mean, Madrid is now with the fast train that we have in Europe. It's two hours away by train or one hour away by plane. And then miles away, something like some hundred kilometers from here. So, you know, I mean, people travel to these events, but if you want to do something more occasional, you have to create your own group there. So we have them to create their own group. The other groups from Barcelona have created groups in and around Spain, like the Sevill guys or Torre Molinos, the San Madrid Leathermen as well. So yeah. What is the biggest misconception about you? Well, this is what I think. People don't think that I am actually shy, but I am in a, you know, when it comes to like connections. Yeah. I'm very, very good. I mean, flight attendants, we're very, very good at pretending. So I can appear to be very short and very confident, but inside, in some situations, I'm buying inside. Yeah. I mean, a good thing is that I don't take myself very, very seriously. So I make it full of myself so often because I'm very, very fancy and very, you know, but I laugh at myself so. But I am very, very, no insecure, but very kind of like a shy person inside. I would say that one. People will disagree. I'm really sure. Well, Kilkar Alkaraz, I have to thank you for an amazing interview today. You have made my job easy today. Well, you know, it's been very, very nice and I hope people enjoy it.