 to Inside Leather History of Hireside Chats. I'm Doug O'Keefe, the host and co-producer of the Chats, but I produce with Mistress Joanne Gaddy. The Hireside Chats are a series, a program, of the Leather Archives and Museum. Today I'm speaking with Liam Clark, who is Melbourne Rubberman 2016. He's the first ever rubber title holder from the Southern Hemisphere, and for Mr. International Rubber 20 you are the first runner up. Welcome to Inside Leather History of Hireside Chats. G'day, thank you so much for having me here. We've been talking about this interview for quite a while. It's finally happened for us. Yeah, I mean, when was it that you were in Melbourne? Was it like 2019? Yes. And I was in Chicago. We had traded. Yeah, at that time I had come to Australia to do a whole series of interviews. Yeah. And I was off at MIR that year, so a little bit of the old switcheroo. So let's begin right at the very beginning. Would you tell me a little bit about your growing up and your circumstances? Yeah, so I'm from a small rural city, I guess, called Albury-Wadonga. It's two cities either side of the border of New South Wales and Victoria, which Sydney and Melbourne states respectively. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere. It's a very nice place. It's a little boring, but it was a really sort of cute, charming, nice city to grow up in. I feel very lucky that I didn't have that sort of typical rural boy experience of heaps of homophobia and all, I don't know, horrible isolation. Everyone was kind of cool. It was just sort of a nice place that was a bit boring. I lived with my parents until I was about 11, and then because my parents both had kind of bad mental health, I went and moved in with my grandparents and lived in a little potminy bit out the back of that. So I've always been a pretty independent kind of guy. I sort of had to fend for myself a little bit, but I don't ever really sort of like to dwell on it too much because everyone had a rough, I think, I don't think anyone gets through puberty unscathed and everyone does the best what they can with the circumstances they had. My parents both loved me and there was never any doubt of that. So it's not the most optimal childhood, but not terrible either. It did also give me completely unsupervised internet access as a teenager, which I think probably explains a bit of this. But yeah, I mean, I had, I think, a under the circumstances a relatively boring, nice childhood. What age did you come out? I came out at 18, which funnily enough, and not to go too much family drama, it would have happened a lot sooner. It's just that my older brother is also gay. And we are not close. We have always had a very strange relationship. So the thing that terrified me most about coming out was being compared to my brother. He came out when he was 12. Wait, no, sorry. He came out when he was 14, when I was 12. So that was the main fear. I was also, for some reason, afraid that my parents would be upset that both of their children were gay. And I mean, I still had this thought after Christmas 2004 when my mom, when I was 17, my mom took me to Sydney for Christmas to hang out with her gay cousin. We went to a gay club and she spent most of the night doing cocaine in the bathroom with some drag queens while I was just sort of awkwardly dancing by myself as a 17 year old who was in the closet. She had no idea that I was gay. My gosh. So I don't know why I thought, you know, that, oh, maybe they'll be upset. No, I was upset. No one cared. Well, take me back to your very early times. Did you know you were different? Did you know you were gay? I knew I was gay from about 11. I have distinct memories now that made it pretty apparent that I was going to be kinky from about eight, I think. Oh. The two memories that stick out, I think this was when I was eight. Stealing a pair of gloves from my dad's shed that were like thick chemical handling ones, which I have a pair of somewhere, but they're not handy right now. Not the same pair, but I stole them from my dad and hid them under my bed and used to play with those a lot. I also stole a pair of his leather gloves. So I'm very sorry to my dad. And on grade five camp, which I think was when 97, so it would have been 10. We were at some adventure camp and there was like a catch the flag sort of style game happening. And some of the bigger boys in my year, I'm quite tall now, but I used to be very, very short and a little shabby. They caught me and tied me up against a tree. And I just remember being like, why is my penis hard? What's that about? As a teenager, I was like, oh, God, I think I'm into that. So that's when I figured that stuff out. Did you have any schoolboy crushes? Oh, Chris O'Donnell in Batman and Robin. I feel like it's a very like, that particular iteration of Batman was kind of very like stylistically fetishy. That was the one way that like, they all had like nipples on their like suits and stuff. And they had like sexier masks and they were all like tied up all the time. I have a feeling and I know that well, I know this to be at least somewhat true for a lot of gay, kinky kids in my generation. Chris O'Donnell in Batman and Robin was, that was a thing. I'm sure there will be other people who will resonate with that. That was definitely like an early thing. But take me back to your very first concepts on the kink scene and where you were beginning to fit into that. Our bar here, the lead, where on Thursday night that there was a fetish gear night and just thinking, oh no, no, no, I can't. I won't fit in there. I'm not going to be, you know, I'm this like lanky, scrawny, nerdy dude, but the big buff Leatherman will never like talk to me. I mustn't. So for a long time, I just hit away from it all and I just never really understood what the community was or could be. The first time I really sort of took a step out into it was, interestingly, in all places, Warsaw in Poland. I'm a huge, huge fan of the Eurovision Song Contest to the point where I now work for it as a side gig. Yeah, it's good. It's crazy. Who would have thought being a huge nerd would get your places? Anyway, I just gone to the Eurovision Song Contest in 2014 in Denmark and some of my high school friends and I were had flown to the Czech Republic and we were making our way back to where I used to live in Estonia. And we got as far as Poland and they decided that they did not like East slash Central Europe. So they went to what they thought was like the most exciting part of Europe, which was Belgium. No offense to anyone in Belgium, but like I mean Antwerp's fun. Brussels is not the most fun place unless you like parliaments and government and stuff. Anyway, so they went to Belgium and I was like, okay, love you all. See you at home. So I had like a night in Warsaw with nothing to do, none of my friends there. And somebody reached out to me on recon and was like, hey, we're having a rubber party tonight. Do you want to come? And I was like, okay, well, no one knows me here. I have my rubber with me. Why not? And I went to this rubber party in Poland and I had a really, really fucking fun time. What made it so fun? Everyone was so nice. Everyone looked amazing. And I guess I'd never let it. It was a play party. So I got to play with a couple of very hot guys, a couple of whom did not speak particularly good English, but have subsequently learned a bit. So I got to have some fun experiences and make some new friends and friends who I'm still like reconnecting with now. It was just this wonderful surprise where I, I don't know, I guess I was really hanging out and talking to people openly and freely about my kink and my fetish, while also like getting to make out with hot Polish dudes. You mentioned that it was the first time you had gone out in fetish. Is that what I understood? And that you were able to play? I mean, I guess like six years of previous experience of unsupervised internet access in the early wild days of the internet gave me plenty of chance to research and figure out what I might like. And then a couple of years to practice and put into effect what I do actually like and what is more better suited to fantasy. Tell me about what you found, though, among the men in Poland, because particularly recently we hear so many bad things about how gay and lesbian people and kinky people are being mistreated. This is thing in most of Eastern Central Europe where everyone is just a little bit unhingedly friendly. Like people will go out of their way to help you and they're all like crazy and you know lots of, I mean, I think I'm mostly just thinking of many nights after a bit too much vodka, but everyone is just kind of wild and free and fun. And I think maybe that's a result of the fact that Poland as a Polish society does try to force you into a box and act a certain way so that when you get to be outside the box you can rebel a little bit more. But I've just had like so much, I've been to another four or five events in Poland, including a couple of Mr. Rubber Poland. Sashings and it's always so much fun. It's always very confusing, even with some translation. Oh my gosh, I remember the first. So I was a judge in the first contest for Mr. Rubber Poland and one of the rounds on the scoring paper was just called Decorate the Throne. And we were like, what does that mean? And through bad luck, I guess, they'd put the Polish judges on one side of the table and all the internationals on the other. So we were sitting next to a friend of ours who is from Slovakia and similar languages so he could kind of understand what was going on a lot. And for this round, they just like pulled out all these chairs and like started decorating them. Oh, like, what is what is happening? How do we judge this? And I just remember turning to my friend Charlie and just being like, what are they saying? What are the instructions for this? And he was like, I understand the words, but they do not make any sense. So there's just this, the Polish sense of humor is always a bit confusing, but very funny. Like, it's, you never quite know what's going on. Let's come, let's go to your growth in the rubber community, the leather community, the cake community. Let's cover as much of that as you can tell me, because I know that the circumstances in Australia are a bit different from other parts of the world because you don't have as much access as someone in Europe or North America. So how did those things evolve for you? I think in Australia, yeah, we can never really rely on anyone else in Europe and in America. I've been to so many events where there's always so many international visitors and there's people from other countries, particularly, I mean, obviously in Europe, it's, there's people from everywhere, everywhere. Almost every event I've ever been to in Australia has only ever had Australians at it. So many people are brought, are daunted by the long flight to Australia, which I always find it really funny when people complain to me about how long it takes and how they can't do it. And it's like, I like travel to Europe every year and usually America every second year. If I can do this like one and a half times a year, like I'm not going to be convinced by your argument. It's not like you have to fly the plane. You've just got to sit there. It's not hard. We're on our own. And I think it's kind of a good thing as well. We've developed our own leather rubber fetish kink culture, which it's a little bit less intense, I think. I think Australians, I mean, this may not be entirely true, but we perceive ourselves as being pretty laid back people. I don't think we're as laid back as we think we are. But we're still relatively laid back. And I think our events are pretty fun. They just sort of, it's about gearing up, having a beer with your mates, getting to know the other people who are into the stuff, maybe ducking out into a secluded back dark area, if no one's looking, and then coming back and finishing your beer with your friends. It's, there's not an intensity to it and not to jump ahead too much, but having been a title holder, I found, I find being a title holder in Australia a bit more fun than I find being a title holder abroad. Oh, so in Australia, everyone's sort of, we sort of accept that the roots of these contests are that they are effectively born out of parodies of beauty pageants, where we were sort of like making fun of straight culture a bit and having our own reason for everyone to get together and celebrate and cheer our community and get some revenue for the bar. And we sort of, I feel like we're a bit more connected to that side of things. I've seen a lot of title holders in other places take it all just a bit too seriously and not have fun and not enjoy themselves, not connect to the people. Like the whole concept is inherently, I think, a bit ridiculous. You're, you know, I was, I'm a grown-ass man wearing a sash made of rubber. It's, it's a bit silly. I mean, don't get me wrong, I absolutely got to do some really cool stuff for my community. I got to like help grow things. But that's 50% of it. The 50%, the other 50% is that it is kind of a silly experience. And one that I loved, like, would not have traded for the world. I think part of queer culture is that we get to make fun of, we get to parody straight culture a little bit. And we get to like do weird things outside of the box where we're not conforming to some boring hetero notion of what we're supposed to do with our lives. Unless we want that. I mean, it's nice that in 2021, we're allowed to choose that. If we want to be boring, we now have the choice to be boring in a lot of countries. And that's great. It's not where I want to go, but power to you. I think just, yeah, there's been a few times where I've seen people who had sashes act like they're somehow more important, that they deserve preferential treatment, use it as an excuse to not talk to people, or just otherwise kind of act like they're out there curing cancer. It's like, mate, we're men playing sexy dress ups wearing sashes. It's not that serious. We're doing some cool stuff. Yes. But we basically just want a public speaking contest. That's not that impressive. I don't know, controversial opinion. Well, tell me, I'm sorry. Tell me about the growth of the rubber scene, particularly in Australia. It's kind of weird. There wasn't really a rubber community in Australia. There were a lot of rubber people, but there wasn't a community. A lot of the rubber community, the way that rubber is perceived, is very like that rubber man on American Horror Story. It was all very like full gimpy, submissive, secret, like anonymous bedroom scandalous. It wasn't like as widely open and accepted, I think, as like leather is. Me, having been a little more public about it, helped a rubber group form here in Melbourne. And then Sydney, of course, got jealous. So one formed in Sydney, and then they popped up around and it's sort of like helped create, it's helped us catch up to where so many places like Chicago, especially like Chicago is kind of like rubber mecca in a way. It's helped us catch up to that. Before I was there, the way that the contest came about was literally a bunch of winners and former contestants of the Lead Leatherman competition here. We're like, hey, there's no rubber competition. Maybe let's throw one of those. For some inexplicable reason. But I mean, it was cool. It's nice that somebody outside of our community, which was very late loose and fragmented, had the foresight to like go, let's throw these guys something and then they can take over it and run with it afterwards. What resources did you have to prepare for that contest? Given that the people involved were all former Lead Leatherman contestants or winners, I made like a, I assumed that the format was going to be pretty similar. The other thing, I guess, is that at the time I was studying journalism for my master's degree, and I was like, okay, let's just run through a hypothetical list of questions that I might get and come up with some not word for word answers, but just have a think about the questions and ruminate on what I might say, just have something like maybe like one, like keywords in my mind. And then for the rest of it, I was like, make sure my gear looks nice for the night, but otherwise, fuck it, go out there, be myself. If they don't like me being myself, then I shouldn't win. Was there some reason you chose to go the rubber route as opposed to the leather route, as you did allude that you have leather attire as well? So initially I was going to enter the Lead Leatherman competition in 2016, and that's run by the owners of the Leather. And I mentioned to them in I think January that I was interested in entering with no, absolutely no thoughts that I would win that. I know to that point, most of the winners have been sort of very prototypical Leathermen, and even to the point where like the lead, none of the iconography anywhere in the lead, showed that someone like me could win this sort of thing. So I was like, I just want to do this because it looks like fun. Go out there, have a great time, whatever. So I spoke to the owner of the lead and was like, I'm interested in doing this. And he was like, okay, cool. Yeah, I mean, that'd be fun. But did you know they're doing a rubber one this year? And I hate to, I don't know, sound overly confident, but my first thought was, ooh, I could win that one. I might win that one. Okay, let's go rubber. Because I was definitely known more as a rubber man. I would say that before winning the contest, I was out 60% of the time in rubber, 40% in Leather. It's probably more 80-20 now. And in terms of my wardrobe space, I've got many full Leather things, but I've got way more full rubber. Did you take advantage of the internet and its availability to other people in the rubber community worldwide in your preparation for this? No. I have to admit, I wasn't that connected to many other communities at this point. And my Facebook had been pretty vanilla at that point. So I really only knew the guys I'd met in Poland. And I didn't think that anything, I felt that I knew my local community and that if I was preparing for a Melbourne competition, I should keep, I should focus on Melbourne. I think my main sort of other preparation was making sure that I was seen out in rubber every week for like six weeks before the competition. I wanted to make sure my visibility was high. I made more of an effort to push myself and talk to people that I hadn't talked to before. Not that I was campaigning, but it was like, you know, if I win, I'm going to have to do a lot of this. And I would say I'm naturally quite friendly, but I'm also relatively shy, which surprises a lot of people, but I'm kind of a bit introverted. But my preparations were, yeah, I was like, go out there, be prepared for what might come up, but absolutely be myself. I'm sorry, how many people competed in the contest? Three. And I was contestant three. One of, yeah, the other two guys, one of them I knew was far too busy to be able to really meet the commitments. And I knew that that would factor in some way. And the other guy was a bit of an unknown entity. So I was like, okay, I have the visibility. I'm most of the way through a degree in broadcast journalism. So I'm probably going to be the most eloquent in the interviews and on stage and pressure. Odds are in my favor. Now, what commitments came with your contest? So the only actual commitment was that I needed to judge the next year's contest, much like MIR. But it was strongly encouraged that we turn up to stuff every now and then. They're like, we want you to like turn up to at least one thing every now and then. And we would love you to go to MIR. So I know they didn't say that was like compulsory stuff, but I wanted to do all of that. And I knew that I would be, I mean, even though it's when they say it's not a factor, it shouldn't be a factor. But the fact that I was the only one who was able to commit that kind of time, like I was still in university. I worked part-time, but I also had Fridays off both uni and work. And Thursday night is our fetish gear night at the Laird. So it meant that I had like that slot free, which is also why I was more visible, because I could go to that more often. And I'd made it very clear that I wanted to do MIR if I won. So I think that definitely helped, even though it was not really supposed to be part of the consideration. Tell me about your impressions of MIR. So I'd seen stuff from IML. I hadn't seen a whole lot, but I saw how like sort of structured and serious and how many people there are. And pictures of, again, the kind of guys who won it. And I thought being in the same city, I thought it was going to be a very similar kind of thing. And then I got to MIR and it was fun and silly. And it was like very similar to the kind of vibes we had here in Melbourne. And pretty much instantly, I felt like really relaxed. I remember actually. So the day I got to Chicago in 2016 was the day that the Cubs won the World Series, which is a very specific point in time, which I imagine most Chicago residents would remember quite well. So I saw a city just brimming with elation. And on the way to the center in Holstead, where the contest was held, I was wearing this, my rubber leather man jacket. And I was wearing my sash because I was staying with Mr. Midwest Rubber, who is so generous, reached out to me. He's like, I know you're coming from so far away. Please come stay with me. It's costing you way more to get here than everyone else. Please come stay. So also immediately that brought me. I was like, wow, people are so nice. So we will, he was wearing his sash. So I'm like, well, if he's wearing his sash, I better wear my sash. And we're, you know, walking to the center through Boys Town, the parade for the Cubs has just been through. And there's like straight baseball people everywhere. And I'm like, Oh, God, what am I doing? It's the middle of the day. And I'm waiting for a light at one point. And this guy turns to me and he, no, no, it's a girl. It's a girl. She turns to me and looks and then turns back to a boyfriend. And she's like, Hey, babe, the rubber competition's on again. So I was like, what is this place? Everyone was incredibly nice. Everything was really professional. I was glad that I hadn't really watched much MIR beforehand. So I didn't want to psych myself out. But I was also, I was fully convinced. So there were nine of us competing. And I was fully convinced I was going to be about seven. Again, my mind, I was influenced by the kind of people I'd seen winning IML. I was like, okay, so they tend to go for that sort of look. Cool. I saw the guys I was competing against. And there were three really buff muscular dudes. And I was like, right, well, they're going to win. Cool. There's no way I'm coming home with a medal. Right. Let's have fun. My biggest fear was coming like eighth. I was like, I don't want to be second last. If I'm doing badly, I want to be last. I want to miss them up so bad and come back and go, well, I came last. If I do bad, cool. And then when they called me as the first runner up, I was genuinely shocked. And I couldn't believe it. And I just remember my first thought being, because people were live streaming it back home in Australia. And my first thought was, oh, my God, everyone at home is going to be so excited. Did they react? Everyone was so excited. At that point in time, Ange hadn't won Miss International Leather. So this was the best result of any Australian and any international fetish. Well, I mean, actually, no, it's the best result since Serdi won International Mr. Transjeve, Transgender Leather in 2014. But I don't know that that got a lot of fanfare. So for a lot of people, we were like, okay, so this is like the first time we are possibly going to win something since IML 1980. Yes. Yes. You did have that title holder in 1980. Yeah. Yeah. And for Melbourne, like, I mean, that guy was from Sydney. It was like Melbourne. We really felt like we didn't have anything that much. And again, we definitely had, we had Serdi, but I only found out about that after the fact. Like after quite a while, I'm not sure why there wasn't a lot of, I mean, I guess maybe the translator community and the queer, the gay led crowd hadn't really meshed at that point in that way, because I hadn't come across. Anyway, everyone was like, oh my God, we nearly won something. And then of course, the next year we had Reese come second at International, Mr. Boot Black, in which, so in a weird twist, I found it very funny. So I was beaten by Preston, so and Reese was beaten at International, Mr. Boot Black by a guy called Ryan, both of us. So both two geeks from Melbourne, both lost to Asian Americans from Colorado, Springs, Colorado. Small world, I guess. What are the odds? Yeah. That's a very specific sense of circumstances. What were you feeling when you got first runner up? I couldn't believe it. The first time I thought I was genuinely in with a chance of doing anything was about two minutes before we walked back out. I had a look at my phone and one of my friends had sent a screenshot of a live chat that was going on, where a lot of people were like, oh, the Australian is going to win. And I was like, wait, what? What, what, what, what? So from that point, I started to freak out a little bit, but I was like, that doesn't make any sense. Why would I win? I'm some nerd from Aubrey, Woodonga. Like, who's going to be impressed by this? Aside from Melbourne. I also, I wanted to win Melbourne and I would have been disappointed had I not won in Melbourne, but I would have, I was fine with wherever I was going to finish at MIR. Even if I'd come eighth, I would have been like, well, that's how she went. So when I came second night, I started crying, which was funny because a lot of people thought I was crying because I didn't win. I wasn't. I was like, oh my God, everyone at home must be so excited. Oh my God, oh my God, I got a medal. So I was just like, I was so happy that I felt like I'd done Melbourne proud. I felt like I represented where I'm from and who I am really well and that that was well received was stoked. It made me stoked. I was just so happy. I got lucky that I was good at on the microphone and that I killed it in the interview. How did you kill it? From what I have understood from the judges afterwards, I was a bit of an unknown entity to them. They sort of followed a lot of the others and a couple of them had followed me on social media, but because I try and keep my social media relatively controversial free, I'm not, I don't deal well with being yelled at either of the internet. It just sort of makes me really shrink. So I try to be positive for most of the time and I mean, I'm definitely not the best at activism that I try and like advocate for things that I believe in in a relatively uncontroversial manner. So I think I'd come across to them and I know one of them thought that I was a bit of an airhead. And the night before on stage, I was very nervous. So I was like bouncy and excited and then when I'm in the right mood, I am like most of the time actually, like when I'm out and doing stuff, I'm quite bubbly. So I think they expected my answers to be very shallow and vague. And then I got into the interview and had well thought out answers and could articulate myself well. And I don't think they expected that. So I think I was already, the way they perceived me was definitely an advantage because it meant that I think my interview wasn't quite as difficult as some others. And then I really, I think I, well, no, I know I really exceeded expectations there. How was your reception when you got home? Everyone was pretty fucking excited. Yeah, it was just, I didn't feel like there'd been a lot of reception, I guess, to me winning Melbourne Rubberman in the first place. Like it was just it had happened. It wasn't a title that existed before. So there wasn't really any prestige attached to it. So I was kind of like, I was lightly flavor of the month until the Lead Leatherman competition happened. And then like, okay, we're back with the real title. So no one really had taken me too seriously up to that point. And then when I came home with the silver medal, then people started to like take note of me. And that's when wheels started getting in motion. That's when our rubber club was formed. And that's when events specifically for rubber started getting created. And yeah, wheels started going in motion. And again, I don't, I did not really make most of those things. I helped work out plans for some of them. And for like a couple of years there, I did run the rubber competition and I'm still like, and the events around it. Now I'm, I'm still just involved with the competition, but the events around it aren't me anymore. But I got to be like, me coming second at MIR, I think was so, so crucial to the early days of what is the current iteration of the Melbourne rubber community. Tell me how the club is going with that? I think at the start of last year, we broadened out to be not the Melbourne rubber men. We just Melbourne rubber. So now we're, we sort of merged with the loosely existing pansexual groups that were out there, which I have mixed feelings on, but it's mostly been good. I say mixed feelings because what Melbourne rubber men felt like at our cool little queer dude clubhouse. And now there's definitely more people and I adore so many of the rubber women so much. But there's also a bunch of straight guys now coming to our events and not, not all straight dudes are bad, but some of them just are not very fun. And they have like a very narrow views of what rubber and King Confedish is and a lot of them really seem to resent the fact that rubber on a man is seen as a very gay thing. And they do that sort of straight like, there go, I got gay. So they're like sort of weird to this gay guys a little bit. And it sort of feels like, okay, I don't know somebody, maybe can I not approach them anymore? It's, you know, ebbs and flows. I'm sure at some point soon they'll be like a some gay specific things. And in the meantime, I've got the land. Now, how has the contest and the passing of the title progressed since your time? Weirdly enough. So we now have four of us. We've got John, who won the 2017 title, Matt, who won the 2018 and Jason, who won 2019. Since my title year, both John and Matt have also gone to MIR and been first runner up. Oh, really? We're three for three on Melbourne Rubberman coming first runner up. Oh, wonderful. Yeah. I mean, there's a part of me that's like the deep dark part of me that's like, damn it, I thought I was special. But it's, I mean, for Melbourne, it's kind of wonderful. And also I don't know that. I mean, I think if either of the three of us had one, we would have been a Mr. International Rubber, more like Michal from Poland, who won back in 2017, where we just had to focus on our region. We wouldn't have been able to do an international thing. Particularly, I think all three of us have been able to achieve what we wanted to achieve with silver. And I think it brought Melbourne prestige. And I mean, I feel like I turned up to MIR and told everyone that Melbourne was one of the greatest rubber cities in the world. John came and backed me up and then Matt proved it. That's amazing. Yeah, it's incredible. And I feel like if Jason gets a chance to run, I wouldn't be surprised if he beats us all and comes back with a gold. Of course, I will be insanely jealous if he does. But, you know, where do you see your community in five to 10 years? I think it's going to continue getting bigger. But there will be more things in general, not just things for every single group. I don't ever have a problem with niche communities within an umbrella, having their own space and having their own time to just be with people who are the same. I think it's a problem when it's not done evenly. I do think there's definitely a bit of a problem in the queer community where we just make events for gay men and tell the queer women and the kink women that, well, if you want to make it your own, but we then don't help them do it, we've been lucky that through whatever it is, we have been able to make all of these events and all of this stuff for ourselves. But what is the fucking point of having a community at all if we can't share those resources, share our knowledge? And it's not that hard. I mean, even just passing on to a prominent person in their community, just be like, in other communities, be like, okay, here's how you do this. Here's how you do this. Here's how you do this. Here's a great venue that'll help you out. Let us know if you need to borrow our square thing to do tickets with. We can help. Lending resources is easy. And I think there will be more of that, and particularly because Melbourne Rubber is going to be that umbrella for everything. Melbourne Rubber will be able to help facilitate those little groups having their own things while still creating fun stuff for all of us. Now, what advice can you offer a new person coming into the leather fetish and the rubber fetish and the general fetish communities? I think if you are interested in and even if you're not specifically interested in the specific fetish scene that has a title holder, reach out to the title holder. As far as I'm concerned, the best thing a title holder can do, and whether it's a current one or a formal one, is to be like, you've got the name written on the thing. You're a person who's put their hand up and said that I'm a leader in the community. I know stuff about this thing. Come talk to me. I think reach out to those title holders. I think most of the ones who still want to be identified will have it in their social media handle somewhere. Find those people and be like, hey, how do I get into this? How do I look after my rubber? How do I look after my leather? Where do I get it from? I want something that looks like this. Do you know anyone who can make it? I'm looking for something cheap to start with. What's a good starting base? We've put in the slog ourselves. In the early days of the internet, we had to figure all the shit out ourselves. We don't need to anymore, and that's great. You can just track down those people. What's the biggest misconception about you? I think there's just this aura of mystery and that the people find me intimidating. I'm a huge dork. I spend my whole life devoted to the Eurovision Song Contest, and over the last four months, I've done nothing but play video games in my bedroom with my boyfriend. I'm a dork. I'm not cool. I'm not suave. I'm not slick. I mean, I'm slick right now because it's all the silicon lube. There's nothing really that anyone should be intimidated by, and I'm definitely not unfriendly, I guess. Although when I'm tired, I have narcolepsy, so my energy levels could drop real low. When I'm tired, my voice gets very flat, and I sound like I'm entirely disinterested in everything. I'm not. I'm definitely not. I just have a medical condition that makes my energy levels really low, and when that happens, I need to have a nap, and I sometimes force myself to go to things that I shouldn't, and I should just take a nap instead. Well, Liam Clark, thank you very much for an amazing interview here for Insights Other History, the fireside chat.