 Hello everyone and welcome to Inside Leather History, a fireside chat. I'm Doug O'Keefe, the host and producer of the chats. And the chats are a program of the Leather Archives and Museum. Today, I am in the home of Jill Carter in Newburgh, Indiana, way down in southern Indiana. Jill was Imzel in 1996. How are you, Jill? I'm doing well. How are you today, Doug? Great. I am so pleased you're doing this interview and I thank you. Thank you, actually. I know you haven't been interviewed very much. No. For some reason? It's a little difficult to get a hold of me. That's very much it. Let's go back to who you were when you were very young. Where are you from? I am from a Quaker town in southern New Jersey. Actually, it's born in Philadelphia. And then my family moved to a place called Morshtown, New Jersey. And it's quite an old wealthy place. And I grew up in, you might say, a diverse sort of community. If we didn't even talk about diversity back then, diverse in fact that the schools were integrated. That's pretty much it. I'm a wealthy kid and it was a very good upbringing. My parents are from the south. We grew up in the south. And so in my home, it was more of a southern upbringing. So I have a lot of southern values. And I am currently researching my family, especially on my father's side. My father's grandfather was the first circuit judge, elected judge in the state of Florida. And he was unfortunately impeached. Because a lot of what you're seeing happening today happened back there. He was a slave and I'm learning because books have been written about him. And the only reason I don't know a lot about my family is because of the boy in my family was very quiet. But if you listen in the southern environment, if you listen, you pick up pieces. And so I knew that my father was a great grandfather was a judge. What was his name? Judge James Dean. Why was he impeached? Well, he went to Howard University. He was a valid Victorian, became a lawyer. He was a Republican, which was back then what we call Democrats today. And he also was a minister. So he had a lot of credentials for a long time, I thought. I was the only one to have graduated from college, but that's after finding out what he did. But he was impeached because of reconstruction and systematic prejudice. He was impeached because back then there was a law that you could not do a mixed marriage. As a judge, this gentleman said he was from Cuba, so he was not a white man marrying a mulatto person of color. Nonetheless, because of the racism and whites feeling that blacks were progressing a lot further at the time, they drummed up this and actually didn't lose his judgeship, as per say, because of what was happening in the session of the Senate and what have you, but the governor at the time, Governor Fleming, took away his power to be a judge and then put a Cuban in this place who was not elected. And so he lost his judgeship through that. But he was elected, he was well elected by numbers that outpaced what was a narrow win. It was a very wide win. He took on that role. You said he was a slave originally. Yes, I'm reading that he was a slave. I actually managed to move beyond that, attend university and become a judge. And I managed, they're almost a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopalian Church. How fascinating. I'm finding reading about him very fascinating. And one of the things I, as reading, because again, I have, books have been written about him, is that he was a man of high integrity. Everything I read about my great-grandfather talks about his impeccable integrity. And so when I look back at how I've lived my life through integrity before I even, I didn't discover this until about 2008. And Governor Jeb Bush at the time reinstated his judgeship in 2001. Wow. He was insombrated. And so that's when a lot of history began to come out and was written about him. And that's, because I would occasionally try to go through the internet and see if I could find anything because I didn't have a lot of information. But then one day as I was, again, let me try this and stumble across it. And I went, oh my God, look at this. And got in touch with the lawyer out of Key West, because Key West was one of where he resided a lot. And I'm also trying to even trace it back further because there's little bits that they talk about. And one was that as he was a minister and he enjoyed this particular church that he presided over because they spoke the old language. And I'm like, what language is he talking about? So I know part of that is of the Gullah. That part of that is of the Geach. And how I know that, because my mother kept referring to my father saying that he spoke Geach. Sometimes you can hear it in my speech. And it's funny because when I was down visiting, working actually in Florida. And someone said, do you have a very interesting accent? And one of the girls said, oh no, that is nothing but Geach. For the benefit of the audience, would you tell us about Geach? What is that? Well, you're asking me to tell you about it. It's from the Gullah Islands off of North Carolina. I'm not going to say I know a lot about it. But the language that is spoken there is a dialect called Geach. And I can't tell you more about that. And again, I'm still tracing what that is all about. And exactly which islands are we talking about? We're talking about coming from Africa. And I did have that DNA test, and I'm going to go back and pull out the results. So it's coming from there and how they traveled. And then you stopped off at the islands, whether it was Jamaica or the Bahamas or what have you. So one of those islands I have roots to. And then it goes back to North Carolina to the Gullah. So just this week I was looking. And it's interesting because if you can trace some of your family and back to who plantation you were assigned to, then this faces you back to where there are possible origins. And so I'm beginning to look at that. And I'm like, okay, I think I see a pattern here. I think I'm beginning to solidify a little more of my history. The biggest thing, the thing I take away from what I'm reading about my great-grandfather is that he was a person who fought for injustices. Unfortunately, he died a pulpit. All of his law books had to be sold to just to have the funeral. It was a big funeral from what I understand because he was a high-level mason. So there's a lot I'm learning about him. He was a high-level mason. And then you got the fact that he was close to being a bishop, and then he was a judge. I can imagine that they tried to send him out well. A couple of years ago, I spoke with the lawyer and he said that they were going to put together a park or create a park in his name. Located where? In Jacksonville, Florida. It's either Jacksonville or the Key West. Oh, okay. But a lot of my family resides on my father's side from Florida. On my mother's side, it's Savannah, Georgia. Wow. But that's all to say that I believe that I've really lived my life the same way. It's like, it is skip a generation and you are. Can you give me an example of that? In how I've lived my life the same way, one integrity has been so paramount to me. And in fighting injustice, one of the issues came down, the questioning of my integrity. And that's almost like the core of me in fighting for a situation for some employees. A little bit about my background is that I spent a lot of, maybe part of early some years in HR. I have a degree, I have a business master's degree in business and a dual degree in HR. So as an HR person, I have been very different. I have been different all my life and I believe in being consistent in that. And that's a very interesting line. You have to walk when you're working in corporate America because management expects you to be on their side. And I've been on what is right. So I have believed in doing what is right. I believe in a lot of integrity. My father raised me to remember that my word is my bond because that's all you have. He said that's all you have is your word. So don't say you're going to do something and don't do it. If you commit to something, you really need to move heaven and hell to do that. Otherwise, don't give it. So I've always lived my life that way. What has caused you to have to move heaven and hell to accommodate your integrity? An example? It could be anything. You're committed to being at a friend's house at a certain time. I expect I need to be there on time and it doesn't matter what I need to do. You're going to start early and you're going to make sure that you get there on time. If you say that you are going to, and I've said I'm going to deliver something. I'll give you an example. My little sister, she is long past and some folks who may be watching this may know Devon Dabio. Shortly after I became Enzel, before I became Enzel, Devon asked me to be her best person in her wedding. And I said I would. So the minute I became Enzel, her partner turned to her and said, you got to understand, she's Enzel now. She may not be here for your wedding. And Devon said to her, you don't love Jill. Jill will be here. And prior to becoming Enzel, I said there are a couple commitments I've made, a couple commitments I have to honor. So I made sure that I was there for Devon's wedding to stand beside Devon. And Devon was like, I don't have to worry about Jill, because if Jill says she's going to do something, she's going to do it. And I was there. So that's one of those examples where you have other obligations that people expect you to have now that you're this, but no, I have to keep honoring the ones that I've already made. I had another example where everyone was going to Alaska. I had been invited to be a judge there. And everybody who was anybody was going to Alaska. But I had made a commitment to a smaller community prior to that. And so I got a call. And my memory, Scott Rodriguez called me and said, Jill, come on. You can blow off that other place. Come on. Everybody's going to be here. You've got to be here. And I remember saying to Scott, I said, Scott, I made a commitment to this community to be there. Pretty important tool. And if I were to blow them off, what would I do for you? So I committed. I made a commitment to be here. I mean, I sure as hell wanted to be up there in Alaska. It was all paid expenses, the whole nine yards. And they were going to roll out the red carpet. I'm not exaggerating. And I said, but no, I must be at this event that I committed to judge this event for them. So everyone was there. And I was at this community, which I had a great time. Don't get me wrong. But again, honoring the commitments that one has made. So all of that has been intertwined in how I've been interacting in the kink style, in the BDSM, from our roots into BDSM and the evolution from BDSM to leather, to kink, to where we are today. Take me back to the very beginning of leather and kink for you and the beginnings of homosexuality, all of that. Take me to square one on that. Well, first of all, I grew up being very religious. And I'm religious and naive. So I really didn't have a hell of a lot about sexuality. None of that. I remember having good friends, female friends, and we were very close. And I always believed, my thing was that you could have a really, really close friendship with someone without it forcing the line or being something else. And you have to understand, back in the day, people really didn't come out and talk about, you know, homosexuals, gay was really a term that was used. They either said, you know, a person's a bag or this person's a lesbian or she likes women. It didn't click for me what that meant. What does that mean? I remember having a very close friend of mine, and we were so close. And she was a geo-witness. That was the other thing that we had. And that's okay because, you know, I was somewhat religious. I was somewhat, but I had a very good foundation in that belief. And so we became very close. We slept together, I don't mean, and we slept in the same bed. But then our adults, because I was just 18, I was getting ready to go to college, and her family, my family was talking about, it just doesn't look right. It doesn't look like right for two women to be so close. I guess she, being 21, knew more about what they were talking about than I did. I'm like, look at friends. Why are they trying to make it something more than what we are? You know? I just didn't get it. I think she did as to what the implications were. I mean, in a friendship, ended. I was brokenhearted, you know, that I lost my best friend because of what other people were saying. She broke it off? Okay. She broke it off. She broke it off after I spent a week. I write poetry. I've always written poetry. And I wrote the most beautiful poetry book. I set it to music different because I was inspired by it. Music. Parts of it was illustrated and put it together. I thought I was just doing a, just creating the most awesome thing that I could give of myself. And I remember taking her to this nice little park. And then having a little cassette and playing, sitting in the book in front of her and I stayed up all week. I know when I said I was like, sleep deprived, working on this and being inspired and putting this. It was a friendship book. A poem. And shortly after that, she broke it off. So, yeah, you could see what a heart came in, but it wasn't, again, it wasn't sexual. It was just losing a very dear, dear friend. How did it progress for you from that? I've always been quiet and reserved into myself. Very private. There's always been something that's followed me through childhood, through high school, through college. And that was, she's very strange. She's different. I felt I was different. I didn't know why or how, whatever it was, but I just knew that I was a very different creature in the scheme of things. So, from high school, I wanted to get rid of that label because what kid wants to be different, strange, how many outcasts? But the other thing was I was able to blend in to many different groups, whether they were the smart kids or the outcast kids or the athletic board, have you, I was able to blend into those groups, which I found as I look back, it's been interesting that, you know, even though you're a stranger, different, that's how people view you. Still, you were able to be a part of those different groups. So, when I went to college, prior to realizing my grandfather was the first one who ever went to college, I'm thinking, ah, I'm the first one to graduate. I'm the first one to go to college. So, when I went to college, I thought, you know what, here's an opportunity. No one knows me, I can get rid of that stigma of being strange. Damn it, if I can go there and guess what, I was labeled strange, strange but brave. That's what I got. But when you say strange, what does that mean? That was what I was trying to find out, what it means. It was, you're not like everybody else. That's what I, because when I tried to ask, what does that mean? It's like, you're just not like everybody else. And yet there was an attraction to me, you know, because I guess, I don't know what I was putting on or putting out there that attracted men. And I was very much into men. And again, having my, shall we say, religious philosophy, which was, I'm going to say it myself until I get married. Oh, okay. So, you know, and for some reason, every man that I've been with had respected that. Even my teacher who taught, was teaching Swahili, had an attraction to me and wanted to sleep with me. Back when you could do these things and not, you know, be accused of crossing the line. Right. So, when I would ask them to define it, they couldn't even define it as like, it's just something different, but you're brilliant. Because I wrote and people got to know that I was a writer. And not only did I write my poetry, I dramatized my poetry. And that's very, very different back in the day where you would get up there and dramatize it and do it. Like a performance art? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I also wrote flanks. So, I directed, what do you call it? Direct produce. Right. I did the whole thing. Wow. In my old, and I did one big production before I left high school. And when I say for a small time to do, everyone came out. I went door to door and sell tickets. I sold out. It was standing room only. Wow. I went to the high school. I asked them if I could use the auditorium to do this. They gave it donated it to me for free. All right. So that was not a cost out of my pocket. I got people from the neighborhood to be participants in this. It was called Monday's Child. And it really talked, it kind of reflected my life. The child that lived in the suburbs, but really didn't know what it was like to live poor in a ghetto. And so, working on a college thesis, the show the man goes and spends time in a ghetto and learns about the addictions and all. I turned out to be a theatic. And that was the hardest part was to get my head into that whole thing to be an addict. And to reach out for a mother who's trying to save a daughter who has two kids. And then to go back into the suburban life whose father is a minister, whose sister is now pregnant, whose father is losing religion because he's going to, you know, you're pregnant and you want to live your life. And then this son relays what he saw. And the point of it is that there is no difference. Everyone has their problems. Whether you live in the suburbs or whether you live in the ghetto. What was the name of your place? Monday's Child. Monday's Child. I think that's a child full of woes or something, but that wasn't the name of it. And I got to do it again at college and put it on. Where did you attend college? Ah, very good. Montclair State. And it's now Montclair State University. In New Jersey. In upper New Jersey. North and New Jersey. We were there where you could look out of the picture windows where our dorm was. And you could see New York City. The skylights of New York City. And again, coming from southern New Jersey, going up to northern New Jersey is like day and night south to the north. My life has been almost the things I've read about. My favorite author is James Baldwin. Guess what? My wife and her mother entered my poetry book. I've written a little poetry book into the James Baldwin Contest. And then I won Honorable Mentions. And so I have a plaque stating it. I didn't win it, but just 5,000 entries and you get Honorable Mentions after that. But reading his stories about that life. And the first time that they took us, college program where I was participating, and took us to New York City, I was fascinated to see a play. Wow. But I was not only fascinated by the play, but I was fascinated by what I saw. Because these prostitutes and life and the city and all. As I'm riding in the bus and looking out the window, I am just like my face is glued. Like, these are street walkers. And you don't see that in southern New Jersey and according to your town. These are real, live characters. And I just was so fascinated by that. The interesting thing is, I got to see New York at night. What I realized the first time that I'd catch a bus and go over to travel from New Jersey to New York to Port Authority there to catch a bus that would go back to New Jersey and travel down to southern New Jersey. And I got a ride and you come out of the tunnel. The first time we came out of the tunnel into New York and through the daylight and I saw all these people moving. It was frightening. Wow. For me it was like, I was just like, almost like claustrophobic. I just couldn't believe the number of people that was moving and bustling about. And this was New York in the daylight. I had to get used to that. I had to get used to the transition from this really goody-good person to trying to find out what life was out there. This is the journey. So how did that journey begin? Well, there's the track of the artistic side of me. So we'll go down that track a little bit. One of my key mentors who taught me really what I would say how to be a woman was a man by the name of John Downs. Downs? Okay. One of my counselors who I rarely shared my works with, but she was a writer. Paula Danziger. She was a writer. She published a book. She was a counselor. She was my counselor. And she saw that I was different and strange and that I was not... She understood it. Whatever it was about me, there was potential there. And so she introduced me to John Downs. As John relates, the first time he saw me doing a portrait, he was like, but he didn't give up on me either. He ran a theater called Vinter Theater in the touch of New Jersey. And so he took me under his wings. And at the time he taught me how to be a woman. When I say that, he said, if you're going to be a woman, they're drinks. Drink? Urban. 150 proof, right? Straight off. Okay. I'm drinking. You know, I did drink. I learned to drink. But that was one of the things that he said to drink it. Show them that you're a woman. As a woman, when you say no, mean no. And when you say yes, mean yes. Don't play games. Okay. He saw me as a woman who was very strong, articulate, intelligent, and a Leo. And he said, you know, one, you listen. And then you pass. You are female Leo. Watch for your opportunity to go in and to grab them. Whether it was in a meeting, but on stage, he taught me how to deliver my poetry in a way that would go and grab the audience and put them in the palm of your hand. There is a, there is, you know when you have them. Yeah. And that is you stripping away everything and bearing your soul. And once you bear your soul, you can feel them coming in. You can bring them to tears. We used to do a thing called theater and music in the streets. Wow. Oh my God. The first, I'll tell you. People say, how do you endure a lot of things? The first time I went to deliver my poetry in the streets of New Brunswick in the ghetto, I got booed. I was so, get off the stage and I'm trying to deliver and do my poetry and people are like not having it. And, you know, at that point, you're ready to walk off the stage but it takes a lot to stay there and endure that. I don't know what transitioned from one summer to the following but the following summer when I went up there again, something, I don't know what changed but you could hear pin drop and people say, she's doing a project. That's the one. And I would look up because it's like you're in the ghetto, you're in the projects and you know it's like cages and people are looking out in the audience and they listen. They wanted to hear what I had to say. And when I say the audience was quiet, I mean that. And that was just like day and night, coming from being booed from there to being said, shut up, I want to hear, listen. Why were you choosing to do it there? It wasn't my choice, it was what the theater did. You went and performed wherever they funds for it. So New Brunswick was one, Jane Jay was one of the sponsors of it and the urban league, the conjunction with the urban league. And it was something that, you know, you go out and entertainment, something to bring to the people doing the summers. Okay. Free entertainment. Okay. And we would put up the stage. I know I had to, there was a lot of grueling to put up that stage and then break down that stage and then go up there and perform that stage. So, but then in the theater it was different, but still it was about the delivery. I learned how to deliver my words that I'd written. Two various music that I chose that inspired me. And when you say, well, what kind of poetry did you write, whatever, it could be about a child. When we were given witnesses or I was trying to be one. And I remember we were going to door-to-door and this one little child was about to range. Airfoot, she was like, I'm like, don't you think you need to go inside? Because it looks like it's about to rain out here. And the child said to me, I never get sick in the rain. And I wrote a poem about a child who never gets sick in the rain in the ghetto when her mother cries. When things are just dismal and this little child says, I never get sick in the rain. And it was put to music and it was quite a piece. There was programs that were created to encourage kids to go to college. These programs were called economical opportunity programs, EOP or EOF, economical opportunity funds. And so the government created funds for people of color and people from economical backgrounds that probably would not have had an opportunity to go to college, but I happened to, my counselor again, coming from a very good school system. As a matter of fact, today it's probably up in the top 25 schools. So that had a very good educational background. But I was labeled a slow learner. Oh, yeah. Most black kids were labeled slow learners. What I was was probably a gifted. They had ever did the program. My brother on the other hand was a certified genius. And I looked at him because he, though he came up in the same upbringing, he was so brilliant that no one knew what to do with him and he became bad. Not terribly bad because he was a very lovable, likeable guy. Everybody loved him. But he just found his way to do trouble. That was my brother. So my whole thing was to show that the whole family was not like my brother. But I worked very hard. And that's why I said study hard. And while I was, you know, secretary for my church and got to speak from the pulpit or read the scriptures and people, when they saw me, they saw a very different person. I broke away from that whole institutional before I left to go off to college because I remember I was in Bible study, Sunday school class in the senior class. And the minister happened to be in the class on this particular day. And I questioned something. I said, how can that be? And I don't remember exactly what I questioned. But I remember his response was, well, you can't take everything literally. And I remember another question where I had asked him. It was, you know, literally this. And now you're saying you can't take everything literally. And when I went, that doesn't make sense. Why didn't you just say you didn't know? And because of his response, I just didn't have any belief in what they were saying. Wow. I went, you know, you're talking out both sides of your mouth. And so I really don't have trust in what you're saying. And so while I have a relationship with the creator and I will keep them, I'm not going to have a relationship with the church. So I remember seeing Bible study and thinking to myself, I'm sizing them up and saying, now if I'm assigned to one of these graduate assistants, I want the weakest one who turns out to be the good friend of the dorm director. And I'm watching Ms. Johnson and I'm thinking to myself, I don't like her. She's a person of color, but she's bougie, bourgeois. She's noob or rich. She speaks very articulate. She's got class and taste. She's very outgoing. And I'm watching all this and I'm like, I don't want to be assigned to her. Ms. Johnson did something. I can't swim. I was telling Judy, Judy, Judy Talling's been here since Thanksgiving. So she's been here and we're talking about near-death experiences. And I didn't have a near-death experience. I had one. But I remember we're up on this ledge, rocks. I'm sitting there. Everyone's swimming in the swimming hole. Ms. Johnson's an excellent swimmer. I don't know what happened. I slipped and fell. I remember going straight down into the water. And I remember hearing everyone above me because the theory was that if you're struggling, if you see a life last before you, you know, you're dying type thing. I didn't see that. I'm very calm, waiting. And I hear them saying, I don't think she can swim. She did say she couldn't swim. I hear this conversation. Who jumps in a war and saves me but Ms. Johnson? And thus was the beginning of her swim? And thus was the beginning of this journey with this person. So then we're told who our assignments are. And the Dorn Director called me down specifically to explain to me that I'm going to be assigned to Biola Johnson. Prepare me for this. For some reason I was singled out. I had to go up there. And I went up there to meet Biola Johnson. I gave her a false name. He was like, who are you? Are you so-and-so? No, I'm not. All the other ones are looking at me like, I'm like, don't you say I do. No one said anything. We had this little, if I doesn't skip a beat in her orientation, cross out my names. I mean, we go on with it afterwards. Okay. I'm not going to stick to the slide. Okay. I am so-and-so. Oh, you are. Well, I'm your graduate assistant. I don't know what it was about Miss Johnson that she began to, she saw potential. She wanted us again. But I was skipping. I was decided that I had met this lady, this girl who was attending college. She was 40 years old. I was just like 20. She's 40, 45. She has seen life. And I wanted to find out what life was out there. You know, she's very likable. Everyone loved her. Her hair was down to her waist. She was mixed Native American, black, beautiful, so articulate. So, you know, people just gravitated to her. And I gravitated to her. And I said, I'm going to make her my best friend. And she's going to teach me what life is on the outside. So, I did. I etched out everyone and became my best friend. And we became running buddies. And we would go open up the new bars. We just did a lot of things. And I learned a lot about life outside. Drinking and getting up. I end up, I was fucking out. Miss Johnson is watching me. One thing Miss Johnson did one night was she came into my room and I was working on some of my poetry and I had it open. And Miss Johnson asked me what I was working on. And I told her and she came over and picked up my poetry and took it. And why I allowed her to do that is beyond me. And she walked out the room. Couldn't explain it. All I know is I was partying and having a good time. One of the things about my friend is that she learned I was a virgin. And, you know, then they began to say, well, what are you into? Men or women? Well, don't you like men and all of my art? And in that question, I began to question my own sexuality at that point. And so to prove to myself that it was, I went to, I had sex. Let's put it that way, with one of her friends, male friends. So that was my first sexual experience. You know, all the time, not really knowing a whole lot about it. You think, okay, back in the day, you're going to get pregnant or some crap like that. So I said, well, I think that should put that to bed now. There shouldn't be any question about my sexuality. I'm just not interested in sex. But if I was, it would be with the male. In the meantime, I think, I don't think I know what happened. We then met up with two cops. But prior to that, let me just step back and say, now my fantasy. At the time, the Mac came out, Superfly. I don't know where this fantasy came up in my head, but my fantasy was to be a high-class pimp, not a madam, a pimp. A pimp who had a stable of men and women who were articulate. Now that's important, had class, had taste. You know, could go anywhere with a client, others to a business dinner, you know, a gala or whatever. But there was one other part to that. One other part that I, my training, I had this big elaborate training program. And part of the training was that they could endure any physical pain. In case there was a client that had this, I don't know what it was, because I couldn't tell you, it was just thoughts that came to me that, you know, if they wanted to lash them or, you know, inflict some type of pain that they could endure that type of pain. Ms. Johnson, trying to figure out who I was, what I was, what I wanted to do, finally one day just said, you know, what is it that you want? What do you, what do you want to do? What do you want to be? And I think I'd be in sarcastic of smart, smart mouth. I said to her, I want to be a pimp. She says, okay, so if you're, if you were a pimp, what would you do? I would train my stable. Okay, how would you train them? This conversation, I said, well, she said, well, why don't you train me? Now, see, we have to tell you the other side of her thoughts. Yeah, we will later. All right. But I lied to Ms. Johnson, jumping around a little bit. I was supposed to be on duty one weekend. You know, everyone had to take a duty where you stayed around all weekend, stuck in case anything went down. And my friends convinced me, my boyfriend at the time and my running buddy, the older woman convinced me, ah, don't go. Come on, we're going to have a real good time this weekend. So I told Ms. Johnson that I had to go home because I had to have two distractions the next day, which was Saturday. Ms. Johnson gave me permission to leave and she would cover me. So Saturday comes around Saturday night when I was supposed to return. My friends are like, don't go and, you know, we haven't such a good time. Call her, tell her, you know, you're really in pain. Don't go back. Ms. Johnson, great actress that I am. I can't come, it's early, you know, add extraction. Ms. Johnson calmly says no problem. I'll see you tomorrow, Sunday. Sunday comes around, I finally decide to go back. I had a car, my father had parked me a car. I drive a park, I'm walking from the parking lot. And it's interesting as I'm walking, I'm hearing Ms. Johnson wants to see you right away. Ms. Johnson wants to see you right away. And it is less than a quarter of a distance to where I parked to where the door is to entrance to the dorm. As I'm walking, all I hear is people telling me. I get to the desk, I'm signing in, Ms. Johnson wants to see you right away. Okay. Go to the elevators, right up to our floor. Elevators open up, I'm about to walk out and there's Ms. Johnson. Before you take a step further, you're going to answer me a question. Where were you? So I open my mouth to tell the lie. And before I can get halfway through it, Ms. Johnson slaps me. And slaps me hard enough that I slaps me down. What just happened here? So I get back up and she asks the question again. And I might stick into my lie. Ms. Johnson slaps me again and I'm back on the floor. And then she says, I'm going to tell you something before you get up the third time. Either you're going to get up and we're going to be the best of friends, or you're going to get up and I'm going to fire you. So think about that for your eyes up. She goes up and she asks me to question the third time. And I tell her the truth. And that's when we had this conversation about what is it that you want to do. And so suddenly we're either in her room or my room. Her room's a little bigger. And I'm doing things which I call training. And I'm explaining to her, based on John Down's mentoring to me, that you can love without crossing that line. You can give all the love you have for a person. It doesn't have to cross that line into anything. That is sexual or what have you. We had that relationship. We had such a close relationship. We think that we were lovers, but we were not. So he loved me. I loved him. And the thought of it being beyond that didn't enter. And so I'm doing this training with Miss Johnson. So what do I call training? I'm tying her up. I'm using my Pimp Stick, which is a wire hanger with electrical tape around it so that it does not create marks or what have you. I am doing things that are coming to my mind, helping her body transition to pain. Helping her body. We set this limit. Now I'm going to push it beyond that limit. And a little further. And a little further. We are secretly doing these things in the room. How did your journey and leather begin? In teaching Miss Johnson the art of pain and explaining that the mind goes places where your body cannot. Little did I realize, little did we realize that that was the beginnings of our SNM journey. She submitted to me and I became her mistress. But in terms we didn't really know about until we started reading more. She was reading more. And the more we did this journey back in the day, she was making things for me. She made my first frail and cuffs, what have you. No leather. If it was leather, it was either the cuffs that she made me and my leather frail. That was it. I didn't have a leather until I became MSL, to be honest with you. Then we were wondering if there were other people out there like us. And so Miss Johnson, because my commitment was I would take care of you. I love you. There's a love there. I will take care of you. You stay here. You do the homely thing. Make sure when I come home things are the way I like it. Dinner's ready. What have you. So we began setting up shop. We went to New Brunswick to a place where you could buy these rags. It's not the sex shop. The novelty shops. And we found this pamphlet. And in the pamphlet we read about this organization called the Orland Spiegel. Orland Spiegel Society. Orland Spiegel Society. And so by site, let's go there. At this point we had involved where I put a chain around her neck. And had her on a leash. And she had her cuffs. And back then a slave, came my slave, would not look up, would not speak unless spoken to. The thought was that you are not worthy to look upon your mistress or master unless granted permission. Went the Orland Spiegel. Came in the door. Beautiful black man, bald head. This voice that just filled the room. Welcome, come in little sisters, come in. That was Jack Jackson. And Jack Jackson welcomed us and took us under his wings. And because of the way that I carried myself and my slave, who was an extension of me, you could tell, even though we had not had any formal training of anything like that. It was instinctive, these things. I earned his respect. And for a little person my size, so I was like a size three or two, the power that I could wail with my flogger. But more importantly, I also learned the art of how you could inflict pain without exerting a lot by the pressure points. So I started to study the body and could do that. And it looked like I was just touching people. Giants meant would fall at the flick of what I could do to them and bring them down. Now you are wailing. You are exuding a lot of power energy out there. And once you got in the door, that opened the door to other places. Because we had to be very discreet. I was an executive, an executive. So my life on the day had to be one way where you were wearing suits and skirts and being corporate like. And then at night, I'm an entirely different person going out when we had energy. And that opened the door to other parties, other secret gatherings and places. And when I would come in, would buy in tow, it was like people apart. Oh, how beautiful. You know, you're naive and don't realize what you're doing or how you're carrying yourself. But people are admiring you. And admiring how my slave behaves. And I remember Jack and the chief was another prominent black person in the scene. There wasn't a lot of people I call it. Not a lot. But Vi and I found ourselves all over. Meaning that, again, back like you fit in, whether it was a heterosexual gathering, whether it was a lesbian gathering, whether it was, that's how we met. Joe Arnone, Gail Reuven, Patrick Caliphia, Dorothy Allison. We were playing and they were talking about a little gathering of women. Come on, you got a cop. We go there, it's an apartment. But all these women were into kink and leather. And I remember we were all sitting there talking and Gail was talking about, well, we're getting ready to move to California and different ones. And it's like, gee, we just met these folks. And they're all taken off. And Joe is going to start LSM. So we were right there. What, for the benefit of the audience, what is LSM? Lesbian sex mafia. There you go. And the process of starting this organization for women of kink, BDSM. That was our leather journey. And it grew and we met Anne Pierce. And we built a place, because it's an apartment, we needed to move. And Anne was in the middle of getting at the horse. We became coil owners. She had her slave, I had my slave. And we built Paradise Island. And Paradise Island became the Disney world of leather at the time. There was no place in private gathering like what we had built, my slaves built. And we had a top floor that was all play equipment. Everything that we created from imagination, suspension systems that had not even been thought about were there. It became a place people were able to create. And then I had my private dungeon on my floor. She had her private dungeon on her floor. And then the basement was the medical room and dungeon. And had, the way the house was designed, had ways that you could come up the back way or the front way and go into these places without going into our apartments. And what drove us from Hellfire, I remember when Hellfire opened up, where it got around, Hellfire, this new dungeon, this new place. It was a bring-on, on the brown bag. Hellfire was our own little hole. And God knows it was a hole. All right? If you went in there, if you touched the walls, because of the sweat, you could feel the grime and what have you on it. But it was our hole. And we also thought we were playing safe. Okay? Chris go all over the place. But, you know, and you also learned how to hit certain spots where it was not abusive, though we didn't talk about abuse. But the thing was, you don't want to injure or damage anyone. So you didn't hit any kidneys. You didn't do this to the heart, you know? Whereas we respected when someone was doing that scene. It was like artistic. Let me explain that. It was very artistic to watch. We policed ourselves. You know, it was like a person like Jack Jackson or their chief, and if they saw something going on, it was not safe. We called out. We called out was the worst thing that could happen. Because called out meant, hey, stop that. That's unsafe. You don't do that. I don't care if you are a master or what have you. And that would, you didn't want to be called out. All right? Because when people play, it's like you stop and watch. Because it was the power, we call it the day, that change, that energy and what have you, watching it and learning from each other was so beautiful, so artistic to me. But once the, we lost that gathering because it became a tourist trap, tourist trap in the sense that people are coming in now. They're drinking their drinks, and now they're interrupting your scene. But they're touching your property. They're touching your equipment. Hit it harder. You don't know. But it was, it's not. So we gravitated to private parties. And to get into these private parties, then you got a private invitation. So, you know, and people were climbing to get invitations to the parties that we hosted for people like Leonard Baumklee who came back to this country and stayed with us. Our parties were elegant with champagne and caviar and people coming in, you know, coming in your best leather gowns or your regular gowns or what have you. And we had the servants that were there serving. They were elegant. I was more like, who's the guy that had the big mansion? Cue Huffman. I was more like Cue Huffman. Cue Huffman would show up for his parties, make an appearance and leave. I'm a very shy person. I showed up for the parties. People asked what Jill was. Jill showed up and then Jill disappeared. Ah, I see. Yeah, I was more, I like to say in the background. But then when we got into the play, we had the parachute room where you could go play. We had the main play. She had a sitting room. So you could go down to the basement, to the medical room or the dungeon, equipment, cages. We had a suspension system that had been designed for us where it was a table. And then you could flip it. You could flip it all the way. You could suspend them this way. This is why it was called the Disney Walk. Yeah. And it was open to our friends and family members. We actually probably were the first to come up with the family. Because we shared our property. And it became known as Paradise Island and Jill and Ann Pierce and part of the family would welcome people in. But there was, again, you had to act like a family member. And if you broke the family rules, we had family rules, no lying, no stealing, and act right. And if you broke no drugs, drugs meaning like hard drugs, because that came up a situation where we had to deal with one of the people we welcomed in. And people gravitated to Paradise Island and wanted to be a part of the family. And I remember, you know, you take care of family members. Mr. Smear, at the time it was Smear. And she was working for Bel Dijon. And I remember one night they were all stuck over there because one of the, they went down and someone had attacked one of them and stole their money. And Bel Dijon had, was not going to put more security and wasn't going to send anyone to escort them out. They called us. And we gathered up, the family, by myself. I met Ed and, forget the other person, people along gone. And we went over there, armed for bear. We went up there like, like we were gangbusters, you know. All I know is we went up there and escorted them out without an incident. And we were prepared to deal with anything that was going to go down. My job took me all over the country. And so the roots started in New Jersey. And then my job took me to, all the way to California. We met people there and started. I mean, wherever we went, we found ourselves a part of helping to build. Yes. We didn't realize that's what we were doing at the time. So we went and was part of the rebuilding of Leather & Lace another Women's Organization Club. And okay, we did many things, not those Janice. Society of Janice. Society of Janice. Not a society of Janice, but in California where I met Guy Baldwin for the first time and Ray Spanian they were in a relationship at the time. And again, we're still at the coming budding, you know, sharing, changing information. One of the things that is key that happened here was that, again, man boroughs and John boroughs had been in the scene a long time and had collected a lot of magazines and things that were very discreet. And so by, I sit by to, as an extension as my slave to go and help them because I believe John had had a heart attack something. I sent her out there and so we ended up moving out there. She was cleaning out the closet and began to see these books. And they're crumbling. I remember that night it came over work and she's like, look at this, look at this. I got it preserved. We got to save this stuff. And I'm like, okay, whatever. Got to save it. That was my reaction. Little did I know that saving it would turn. That one conversation would turn into what we have today. Which is the Carter Johnson Library. The Carter Johnson Library. She started saving a lot of stuff. We left California went to Oklahoma now you're transitioning as times lapsing we're now coming to another a new generation of folks called leather generation and they're speaking a little different language we're still in touch with it but now women were daddies could be daddies and could have these pronouns and what have you and again we went there and it wasn't leather but then they realized that we were pinky and poly and I have to say again we were in a cutting edge Apollo. People didn't understand how to have a public relationship I've had since meeting by she was very open about it and Oklahoma was very curious about that so it opened the door to others to say maybe it's possible you know you're on the cutting edge of family and showing people what family could be what that looked like and now we're on the cutting edge of what poly and what poly could be and people think is it possible is it okay? we were in the rodeo of how two black women never had horses in their lives rodeos beyond me but that evolved from that to you guys are kinky we've got an organization that's going on Tulsa I ended up going there and ended up being a secretary and an officer at the same time just this evolution of just some transition of depth to an ensal was first ensal International Miss Leather International Miss Leather and I remember Devon talking about he had this thing out in Portland and until Devon had met Judy Tall Wing and I stayed in the background I was not out because of my job in contests suddenly they're talking about these contests the feeder contests into ensal so it was fully building and Vi would pull me out to come make appearances here and there and they'd ask me because of our I don't know what it was because she spoke my name and talked about the things in the rodeos that we had traveled so if they could get me out I would either be a judge or I was slowly doing something to these contests or participants and over a couple years I had seen everything have been done mom, whatever it was I saw this evolution of the contests from every aspect even being the emcee and all this and I hadn't seen it through the eyes of a contestant so what prompted you to run for that I hadn't seen it from the eyes of the contestant and I said I want to do it for the experience and boy did you that's when was dancing it was we were in Dallas and I just finished up doing whatever I don't know if I was judged what happened I said to her I think I'm going to run for an emcee that is when she put the brakes on parked the car and asked me what did I decide I said I think I want to run for an emcee I want I want to experience this this thing and she was the head judge for an emcee and she she took step back from that and one of the things she said to me is this is not something you just do for the experience if you're going to run for an emcee you're going to run and you're going to win because my leather family that we put together there some of them were going to run for an emcee we're saying what if you win I'm like but I don't want to win that's not why I'm running I'm running for the experience but they're saying what if you win I'm like I didn't have an answer because I was in my mind it wasn't going to win it was just going to be a participant but when I finally hit me that you needed to do this to win came a whole different ball game and just before we went out to the stage I remember by giving me Judy Sash telling me to go look in the mirror and see what I saw and I said when I looked in the mirror first of all, Judy Sash was big as I don't know what heavy as I don't know what I put it on but I said I see a winner and I also felt the heaviness of that Sash and the heaviness of that responsibility that's right and when my name was called I didn't hear and the person next to me said it's you Jill you're the new Enzel what were your feelings about that because you were the first this was a word I was taught BIPOC, black indigenous person of color to win Enzel thoughts on that back then, 1996 it was like Jill is the first black Enzel I thank you for believing politically correct but that's what it was it did not even cross my mind that I was making history in our leather community in that way as I heard it more and more it was like okay so you're the first black Enzel what are you going to do and I wanted a platform and my platform was about preserving the women's history that was my platform and we had the Get Link Joe Gallacher was IML and he had the Get Link where everyone was putting links on and linking up to who their family and I'm looking at this chain as it's growing across the country and I'm like I'm just collecting women's history that's nothing that's pale compared to what Jill was doing it was mid-atlantic I remember going to mid-atlantic it was the first year that no major title holders were there every year everyone mid-atlantic kicked off our leather season yes still does but that was the year that IML didn't show up that was the year that was the leather didn't show up all the international title holders went somewhere else what was going on some other event we were just going to skip this it really was shocking and I remember that Chuck Rinslow was a judge he was a judge that year so I was the only international title holder that was there it was a time that they allowed the international folks to speak they called me up and we were at tracks like 2,500 people with tracks I didn't know what to say I just spoke from the heart and talked about our history I talked about AIDS and I explained that we didn't realize that what we were doing might transmit this disease called AIDS we were playing as we knew it took out a whole generation of leather people leather men who would have taught the next generation we lost them through this we need to preserve our history Chuck Rinslow was in the audience and I talked about the leather archives in the museum and it was always in the red since it opened up had been in the black I looked at the audience and I said, you know what we spend more money on drinks this is our history this is our legacy so I'm asking everyone here tonight to just donate one dollar one dollar would get us out of the red and into the black one dollar the rest is history we collected the hats were going and we collected close to $3,000 that night and people heard about this speech and what had happened because for the first time the lamb was sold to pay its bills and it was in the black and so everywhere I went that year not only was I collecting the women's history but everyone wanted to be a part of giving history and it took on a life of its own because you also were able to gather enough funding for the current building that houses the archives that was the following year the time of collecting all of this what happened was at the end when it became IML well when I took all the history that I had gathered it covered a big stage they had to get a stage to put all that history on it and to display it and buy, we cataloged it one of the things I can say is that they accounted for every dollar that I collected there was no scandal about any money because I collected it I counted it and I came back and told people what was the total and if one penny was missing it came out of my pocket and I sent certified checks to the lamb every place I went and kept that for that year the community thing about it is we did a transition we were so used to doing for AIDS and it was such a sad that my transition to the community was we can preserve our history and it became uplifting and the community came together to uplift ourselves out of the depression of AIDS we continued to raise funds for that but now we could do something else in a positive way have you any idea how much over the course of the year that you gathered? no I don't I don't it's quite a large sum I can say that all I know is that you know anywhere I went it was at least over a thousand and every gathering wanted to hear this so following it, because I gathered so much history and then the day I won in so the next day I said to my community hey let's gather enough history that we will force Chuck all that to get a bigger building that was my speech to him well we had gathered that and Chuck realized that so much had come in that they needed a bigger building so now it's 1997 Chuck has found this building literally almost the night before IML kicks off they had the big board meeting I'm no longer in so what they're like we've got to raise $30,000 and Chuck will match it so that we'll have this down payment for this building gotta have it by Monday morning and Vice there as she is done right here shoved me out there and Vice said well your biggest cheerleader your biggest person is us that is Jill so she comes to me and say guess what I need a favor from you I need you to go up there raise money for this I'm like what how as if you didn't know oh well I'm like I'm not ready for this and she said get pictures of this building and they're going to have slides in the back showing this building and you go out there and you do what you do best I went out there and inspired the people I said this is ours this can be ours but this is what we need I need everyone to give what you can get and we raised $30,000 within 30 minutes 30 minutes well yeah I thought that I stayed out there for 30 minutes it was that they collected the money we went back there was Chuck Bobby myself and Queen Cougar and we are pounding this money and went back out and told them we had raised $30,000 all within 30 minutes incredible you that had to have been a source of immense pride for you yeah yeah that's an understatement yeah I will tell you as a very young leatherman coming into the scene I heard all about that wow so that is a story that is so profound in the leather community and here I have the privilege of sitting down with you the woman who did it imagine the woman who was the inspiration but I always say it's the community and what you can do when you come together as a community we did it and all I did was inspire people to remember that we are doing it for the next generations come I could not have done it without them what are your thoughts you were one of the founding members of the onyx pearls oh wow um I am called an OP an original pearl because again there were not a lot of especially women of color that was out in the leather community and so Vi, myself and Queen Cougar were very prominent known out there along with Stacy Thomas and so when men of onyx made their debut in 1996 because I was judging BW and that's when Mufasa came and announced Mufasa onyx announced this new organization I remember Mr. Marcus, myself Ernst Stuart and he's gonna hate me for it oh my name he's the prominent emcee Frank Nowicki damn good friend I can't even think of Frank we were all like who are they and we didn't know who they were but beautiful black men and I remember going up to they having this little party you know housewarming and we went up there and they knew us walking in and just being in awe of these beautiful black men who had started onyx men and I told Vy and Cougar because they weren't at ABW I came back and I remember saying you've got to meet these guys you've got to see these men who have come together so we're at IML a year and I remember they were throwing another party and now you really have seen people of color together and outside this little room a suite now we moved up from a room to a suite and I remember the three of us walking down and seeing the sea of leather of people of color and first of all not having seen that gathering and as we were walking down the hall I remember the respect that the men gave us again it's like a party everyone just parted for us to enter the room and at that point Rufasa and the other co-members they said you are you are our jewels you're like our the pearls of us they wanted us to start the onyx pearls for women at the time we couldn't because we were traveling so much so we didn't have the time to do that so we turned it down and it was Lady D who really was the one was instrumental in starting the first chapter of the onyx pearls Lady D Harrison I gave it to her she's went through hell it wasn't for Lady D putting the chapters together onyx pearl women organizations even though we struggled we wouldn't be where we are today the different chapters that have sprung up all over the country I handed it to her I cannot take care of it what advice can you offer someone coming into the community who might want to be a title holder what have you to say to them first of all I wrote the book on it so you want to be a title holder so you want to be a title holder so you want to be a title holder still have copies and people are trying to get me to to put, republish that book and it really does set the tone for if you want to be a title holder I think these are the standards the standards that title holders have diminished over time I watched that happen because you couldn't find contestants and so you grab any person off the streets literally you're flowing in these judges and now because you have such high power judges you have to tell the judges because these people aren't really leather people you can't ask about your leather history you can't do this and this and that and over time we diminished the standards that we had for title holders or what that contest meant that it wasn't just anybody who came off the streets so my book tells you the standards of how you prepare your mind, body knowledge, knowing your history presenting yourself the best of yourself it doesn't matter what size you are what you want to do is you want to make sure that what you put on your body you wear it and it emphasizes the good points of you and it emphasizes your body and you wear it so if you want to be a title holder let's go back to lifting up the standards let's not accept sub standards and title holders who really aren't supposed to be out there because these people are supposed people and can be have the potential but guess what, you don't have to be a title holder to make a difference and that's what my unsung hero board was about is the people I learned in the background they were the people most important yeah, that's true but you never hear from them they don't get recognition they don't have a title but if it wasn't for the volunteers and the people in the background these things wouldn't happen to me that was the most important part of my journey through the title thing was meeting all those those people and when I created Ms. Warrell Ms. Warrell was about a platform one may take home the goal but guess what you have communicated your platform everyone is hurting your passion you can go out there it's about your passion it's about all you have to do is not look for someone else to do it but say to yourself I can do it because it took me a while to figure out how to reproduce a contest I didn't think in a million years that I could do that and yet I broke the standards I made it a very transparent event it wasn't a contest it was an event it was for the more mature and experienced woman in the leather community it was about can you we had crossfire where we had the reporters that fired these questions of these contestants 90 seconds you had to be able to feel those questions that part became that's what people love to watch to see the crossfire how they handle it it was about the whole time you're there when the minute you start the platform is on display the interviews were open up for people to sit and watch so you don't have the question why did that person win over someone else so you got an opportunity to see the judging to hear the questions and what have you it was about the experience and the passion of that participant and raising your charity and what have you we did it for lufus we did it for breast cancer although Coleman didn't want our money Coleman the best known breast cancer out there that was collecting for money oh ok it was her right I'm sorry I don't know the number one breast cancer organization raising money at the time I think it was the Coleman they didn't want our money because we were leather people so we found another organization that would accept our money we did a leather day of caring where we as a community came together all across the country to do a day of caring leather people and to show people that we don't be afraid of us it opened doors and it linked us all across the globe actually that was my brain child Karen McGee was the one who was the face of a leather day of caring and it was an awesome day now when that happened I was like wow I must say even when I did Miss World and I finally looked back and looked at what I I had actually put together I was like wow anything you wish you had done that you haven't yes I still have a few more books that I like to put out there one back in time it's called The Writer Passage that talks about what it was like to be in the BDS community back in the early 70s wow so it's sitting up in my I want to publish that book I'm not sure the people want to read that or hear about it I do that was my thing and then I'm actually working on my own memoirs which I called My Leather Journey because I will confess that the book that I put out to obey loves her I've not read it and we have an understanding I will not read it because as my bringing up into the leather community was that I had a responsibility to take care of my slave my property and if I loaned my property out I expected to come back the same way you take care of your property you know destroy it one of the things that I did and I'm going to wrap this up for you is that I taught Miss Johnson to be a slave and you're out here to serve and to serve in my name could you reflect me that's what I said I'm going to stay here and go to work and keep the be the anchor you go out and serve the community in my name bring honor to me which she has done but I said no one has the right to abuse you not even me so if there ever comes a time when I'm not in my right mind as your mistress as your owner and I put you in jeopardy you have every right to defend yourself or do whatever you have to do now you will pay for it later as a reminder of your place but just know that just because I'm not there don't think that you can take any abuse from anyone that's my responsibility because there are things in the book that should not have happened do you have to only say goodbye why did you let them happen because if you knew about them they would have been held to pay and they will still be held to pay to this day because I feel an obligation as your mistress as your owner that should not have happened so we'll leave the book it has been an inspiration for others who've come into the community that journey all we want to do right now we are both 70 years old we just not only want to leave a legacy of history and knowledge because that is power where they are burning books and destroying sexuality is the most love, most powerful energy in the universe but the legacy it's that we have in place where this will live on for many, many generations to come after we've transitioned over we want to make sure that this goes on but these precious items that we have collected for our community stay intact for all the community to enjoy to learn that's we've been doing it on a shoestring budget we've been doing it out of our own pocket that's okay because we've been blessed to be able to do that we've been blessed to take it to the community not charging them, not trying to make money off of it just making sure that you have resources and you learn about where we came from, where we've been and then you go out there and create the next whatever Joe Carter I don't have vocabulary adequate to thank you this has been an incredible review and I am privileged to have done this one thank you if you do this we have but we're still in a pandemic thank you