 Hello everyone and welcome to Inside Leather History, a fireside chat. I'm Doug O'Keefe, the host and producer of the chats, which are a program of the Leather Archives and Museum. Today I'm sitting down with Lolita Wolfe, the polyqueer kinky leather woman in New York City, who is an author and an all-around wonderful person to have on the chats. So how are you, Lolita? I'm feeling good, a little nervous. Oh, we'll be gentle. Tell us about your photo there, that's very unique. Your background photo. It's an artist called Brasai, he's a French artist, and this is from a collection of his Paris by Night, and I wanted to do a background and I thought I thought I'd bring a little humor into it. That's great, okay. Yeah, and you know, this is kink in the old days, in the 1930s. Very valid point, very valid. Let's start right at the very beginning on this. Would you tell us a little bit about where you're from, a little bit about your family? Well, I'm a native New Yorker. I'm a first-generation American. My parents were German-Jewish immigrants, and I grew up in Queens. I always wanted to live in Manhattan, so now I live in Manhattan. You know, that's me growing up. What was so different about Manhattan versus Queens? Because it was the city, the city where everything was happening, everything, all kind of culture, whether it was museums or theater or nightclubs or everything, everything was in Manhattan. Now it's, I don't know, I went out last night. It was Saturday night in New York. I got out of the movie theater, like, before midnight, and we couldn't find a place to eat on the Upper West Side after midnight, which was kind of like, this COVID has really hit New York hard. So, yeah, it's a little bit frightening, because I'm not used to that. Was it worth trying to go somewhere else in the city? Yes, we could have, but we're due to taxis and public transportation, and we found a place. We found a place. When you were young, you said you knew you were kinky. How did you know this? Well, there's two kinds of people in the world. There are people that discover kink, discover very early. They always knew they were kinky, and then there's people that find kink through a partner. I always knew I was kinky. I remember being as young as first grade, where I had fantasies of being the captured princess, and I would fantasize that I would have to do all these different kinds of things in order to stay alive. So, I knew I was kinky, then, and it went with me my whole life, but I never found other kinky people. I didn't have any kinky role models, so it was a little difficult to find. How about playing cowboy or Indian with the kids, anything like that? Not so much. What I wound up doing when I got a little older, I played backgammon. A lot of times people would play backgammon for money, and I would play for a minute a point. Every point would be a minute. I would start off with maybe back massages, and then I would up the ante and get people to play with me for 20 minutes of slavery. For some people, that was very edgy. I didn't care who won. I just wanted to play the game. From the very beginning, I was always a switch. It didn't matter to me if I won or lost. I just wanted to have that power play happening, and I would do anything to get it. How did the other people react to this? Some people were a little bit scared of that. Most people went along with it. Anything that was very shocking to you or to them? How far were you able to get with any of it? Sexual acts. A lot of times it just started with doing dishes, and it would progress to different sexual acts. I was having sex anyway without the power imbalance. I love power imbalance. I think it's really hot. Tell us more about that. For someone who may be viewing this video, what does that mean to you? Who is in charge? Who is the boss? Who is the master? Who is the slave? Who is taking the orders? I do love that. Unfortunately, right now, my primary relationship with somebody where we're very balanced. I've had different master-slave-type relationships, and I think that they're really, really hot. They can be. Now, where do you fall on that scale? I'm either one or the other. Like I said, I've always been a switch. I've always been somebody that I just want to play the game. When I say I'm in a balanced power relationship right now, it's that sometimes I'm in charge. Usually I'm in charge, but sometimes I'm not, and that kind of works out for me. How have your various partners in this, how have they navigated that with you? Navigated the fact that I switch. Some people have a problem. I've had relationships where people have said, you can't be a real dominant if you switch. I'm like, fine, we'll just blindfold you while I do this. Some people have issues around it. Some people just, the thing that you want to always do is you want to surround yourself with the people that, like you, the way you are and not with people that are going to put you down and not accept you for what you are. That's a major takeaway right there. Absolutely. I agree. You have to be true to yourself. I know people that have not been true to themselves. I'm not going to mention names, but people that have gotten themselves into relationships where they're the master and they miss bottoming. I'm somebody that would, I'll teach a slave how to top me. I'll just say, now spank me. That works for me. I'm very particular. I think the older I get, the more particular I am. I'll train people how to top me. Wow. That's a fascinating concept, but clearly it's something that works well for you. I don't think I'm the only person that does that. Tell me more about that though. If somebody who would find themselves in that kind of a situation, what would you like to say to them? You have to ask for what you want, and sometimes you have to make it happen. That's other important things to take away from this. You came out into New York City and you experienced New York City at a very dynamic and wonderful time, a lot of nightlife, a lot of kink nightlife. Tell us about the New York City of legends that you came to know. Well, there's a lot of legends that I don't know, because I came out after some of that. I came out around the time where there was the vault, and there was paddles, and those were the two main BDSM clubs. There were also some of the pro-dom houses that would have evenings, like the loft would have BDSM nights and later on different pro-dom houses would have parties. They still do. There were many parties, Lloyd Cache, Arena Blaze, a lot of the old pro-dom houses would open their doors, and Rubber Studio. Nowadays, they still do sometimes, and sometimes even the swingers clubs would open up for BDSM nights. When I first started coming out, there were less rules, but there were still rules. I mean, it was a little bit scary. It was definitely seedy. The vault was known as a SNM and JO club. Back then, of course, BDSM was only a term that came out in about 1994 on the internet, and so usually it was called either DS or it was called SM. When you say SM and JO, the JO was jerk off. We would be doing scenes, and there would be all these guys standing there jerking off, and that was just part of the way it was. Whereas at paddles, it was less jerking off. Paddles in those days had a liquor license. It was a little bit different. I don't think it was as edgy as the vault. You mentioned men being there. These were pansexual places. Yeah, all sorts of people would go there. There were nights that were men only. There were other nights where just everybody was a whole mix of people. You'd find a lot of trans people. In those days, they were called transvestites and cross-dressers. You'd see all kinds of people, every kind of person. Yeah. Tell us how you even located these places. They would not have been. No. Came out online. This is online when online meant the phone lines. I first started calling sex lines, just regular mainstream sex lines. I don't know what I was looking for. One night, somebody said, let me three-way you onto this other line. It's a real hoot. What I heard was, welcome to the dungeon where all your fantasies can come true. They have the whole introduction. It's going to cost you this much per minute. I was like, really? We got dumped on. There were party lines where lots of people would chat. I heard all these people talking about SM and bondage and all of these things. I was like, oh, my God. Up to then, I did not think that these were proper people for me to be hanging out with. I quickly got off the phone with this person that three-wayed me on. I started calling on my own. A lot of it was listening. I was listening. I found people had really good senses of humor. They were smart. They had a lot of other things going on in their lives. I was just like, oh, because before then, the only time I ever heard about SM was when something bad happened. The big thing that really chilled me was there was an art dealer named Crispo. There was some kind of threesome. It was three men and the bottom died. The New York Post, of course, are so sensational. They're like, here's the leather hood and here's the handcuffs. I'm like, this is what I really want. I also didn't want to die. I was like, oh, if you play with these kind of things, you could die because I didn't have any role models. I didn't know people that did this safely. I didn't have the access to that. I didn't see it anywhere. I didn't know how to look for it. This is before the internet. The phone got me in touch with people. From there, I started going out to the clubs. It's kind of funny because years earlier, I wanted to go to Plato's retreat and my date at the time did not want to go. Chickened out. Years before that, I went out on a date and we went to the vault and the guy there was like, he discouraged us from going in. I don't think we look like we belong there. Okay. Why didn't you? I didn't look kinky. I didn't have leather. When I first started going, I didn't have fetish wear. I was just showing up in little Betsy Johnson dresses. I was showing up in Norma Kamali. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have anybody telling me. I didn't know where to buy the right clothes. One thing I can't help but ask in all of this is you were doing all of this initially via these phone lines which charged exorbitant rates. You must have had a heck of a phone bill. Well, the phone lines, they would let a certain amount of women on for free. After I got known, I did have a couple of big phone bills. I did, but it was worth it. It was an investment for me. Then they would let us on for free because guys that call into phone lines don't want to talk unless there's women there. I went to the clubs. I would go out with my mainstream friends and then I'd go hit the clubs by myself and I would meet people. And those people taught me because I'd asked people, that's how I first learned how to use a flogger. I just met people and I was young and pretty and people would teach me stuff. And then I would meet stuff and people and I would go out. There you go. What were some of the favorite things you learned to do? Well, in the early days, it was a lot of flogging, spanking, stuff like that. It wasn't until later that I found other things that I got interested in. The bondage I did, I didn't get into rope till later either. Later on I got into needles and things like that. I learned how to use a single tail later on. Pretty much my entry level was flogging and spanking. That was beginner stuff for me. Anything you really disliked? No. I don't do everything, but I don't dislike things. Okay. That's fair. I'm not judgmental. I got into age play very early too. I was doing some of that stuff down there in the early 90s. Again, not really having role models for that kind of play. I didn't see a lot of age play. There was some, but a lot of that, a lot of them were adult babies and that wasn't really my thing. I was beyond diapers. Hey, very good. At least from my estimation, that is not a very public play activity unless I'm just not well versed on it. My first mommy was a gay leather man. It was something that was very edgy because it wasn't accepted. Fascinating. Why not? Have you met gay leather men? Touche. Okay. I mean, yeah, no. Okay. Hey, there's something out there. Lots of things I don't know. Play it. You can Spiegel Society, otherwise known as TESS, T-E-S. So can I correct you? Yes. Oil and Spiegel. I'm appreciative. So the Oil and Spiegel Society, otherwise known as TESS, that's very influential for you and it taught you a lot about SM and your development in that. Tell us a little bit about that. What is it? What did it do for you? All that good stuff? Well, the first time I went there was a little bit of a disaster. They were meeting in a swingers club, not in a swingers club, a strip club down on Church Street, the Harmony Club. And I went there and I was one of the few women that were there. I was like, there was maybe one other woman there. And it was kind of a sleazy place. And the speaker didn't show up. And Brother Leo got up and talked about his history. And he talked about this, his mistress Roxanne. And Roxanne tied him to a stool and started kicking the stool. And he got very frightened and said, please, mistress, stop kicking the stool. I'm scared it's going to tip over. And she kept doing it. And it tipped over and he broke his collarbone. That's that was my takeaway. And I was just kind of like, this is not the kind of SM I'm looking for. This is this is not my scene. And I didn't go back for a long time. Oh, and then I met Hilton Flax at the vault one night. And he had an outreach table for the Oil and Spiegel Society. And we hit it off and we became friends. And I started going back to test at that point, they were in the same building that the Harmony Club was in. But they were like on the third floor in a big loft. And it was brightly lit. It was clean. It was and I liked the programming a lot better. You know, my my issue was, you know, the whole Brother Leo thing, it didn't have the consent element that was really important to me. You know, I mean, that without that was the, you know, I mean, this was, you know, before I heard the term safe saying consensual, which was before any of these other stupid terms. Crick and rack and, you know, but, you know, I was I was just like, yeah, I need things to be a little bit more consensual and safe. And, you know, that, you know, so it was better than a test. And and then I wound up in 91 running for the board of tests. And I was on the board for tests for about five and a half years. And we we did a lot of really, really good stuff there. One of the planks that I ran on, when I went to test, they had four prices, they had male members, male non members, female members, female non members. And I wanted everybody to I didn't like the gender pricing. And that's one of the things that I got changed. Because I didn't I, you know, that that bothered me. Why were they doing that? I think a lot of places do that. A lot of like swingers places do that, because they're trying to get more women in the door. You know, women are a commodity. I see. I don't like that women would be a commodity. Fascinating. You know, and it's like, if women pay the same price as men, you know, I mean, I've been, I've been I've been to clubs where, you know, women pay $5 and men pay $30 or something. And, you know, men that expect something, you know, and it's like, no, I don't believe in that. Fascinating. Now, how did you find that demographic was pretty much a good balance? Or was it, how did it break down in that respect then? It was a better balance than it was when I first went. Yeah. Wonderful. I have to plead a little ignorance. I didn't know any of that. That's fascinating. Now, that's why you're doing these videos. You have a point, haven't you? But tell us how Oil and Spiegel, how does it benefit people going forward? How did it benefit you going forward as it grew? But as I just, I learned a lot. Okay. And, you know, Hilton was one of my mentors. He taught me a lot of stuff. Morgan taught me a lot of stuff. Morgan was a dominant woman. She just passed away a few months ago. She was, she did a lot of the programming and she encouraged me to teach. So I, she's the one that got me going with teaching. And that, that was a very influential thing for me. I, you know, I, I didn't, you know, I just did little Tuesday night things. In 1992, I went to Living in Leather in Chicago and that blew me away. Because really there weren't any, any big national events before Living in Leather, which I think started in 89 or something. And I went in 92 and it was workshops all day. And like people who really, like topics that I never saw at home, there was dungeon play every night. And there were things, you know, it was the first time I saw somebody hitting somebody with a single tail. And I just thought that was crazy. Now, I hit people with single tails. I teach single tails. I mean, it's, I guess it's not so crazy. But, you know, it was like, oh my God. I, you know, I just saw a lot of things. It was the first time I really saw needles. And that fascinated me. And I learned how to do that. I learned a lot of things. And I brought a lot of stuff home to test. And that was very exciting. And the whole concept of national event was very exciting to me, too. I should think. Absolutely. Yeah. How did your local community react to some of these things you were bringing back and teaching? It was great. I wasn't the only one going. So it wasn't just me bringing, you know, it wasn't just me. But it was exciting. People liked it. You know, we got other, New York was interesting because people always traveled to New York. So we'd get a lot of people from out of town come and teach a test because they would be in town anyway. We brought in people from GMSMA, the gay male SM activists. They would come and teach for us, you know, people from LSM, lesbian sex mafia would come and teach. And both GMSMA and LSM were founded in 81. TESS was founded in 71. And TESS was a lot more pansexual at that time. And then when GMSMA and LSM were formed, TESS became still pansexual but but less lesbian and less gay. Okay. It became I don't want to say straight because there was even a bisexual special interest group at TESS. So it, you know, it, yeah. But when you started teaching, what did you most enjoy teaching? Well, I mean, I, the first thing I ever taught was a class on bottoms and assessing bottoms, you know, finding people. So it wasn't skill based. And later on, it did become skill based. Like the earliest things that I taught were spanking, beating ass. And I even went and, you know, GMSMA would have two open meetings a year that were open to all genders. I even taught at one of those meetings, maybe more than one of those meetings. And when we had the international leather celebration in 94, that was the first time I taught nationally. So that was, I taught spanking at that event. So, you know, now I could teach a lot of different things. You know, I teach, I teach polyamory classes. I do a whole thing on switching. I teach single tails. I teach needle play. Wax play. Just mummification. Some rope bondage. Just a little bit of this and a little bit of that. That's wonderful. Are you invited to a lot of other places to do this? More in the past. But I do some teaching. I'm part of Midori's cadre for her rope dojo, which hasn't happened since the pandemic. I teach at LSM usually once a year or so. So, I teach at Dark Odyssey. And I do their programming for one of their events called fusion. Usually just fusion. Although last year they didn't have fusion, so I did the summer camp programming instead. So, I like doing that. You know, I did programming at TESS. And I learned a little bit about that. And then when I was chair of LSM, I did a lot of that's what the chair does is the programming. So, I like doing programming. I did programming for BR 10, which happened in 1997, which was their 10th anniversary event. And then I also did their programming for the classes at BR 98, Black Rose in DC. And I used to help Tony, Tony de Blas, with some of the living and leather programming too. Because, you know, he was very West Coast oriented. And he wanted some East Coast input. And I just adored anything that Tony did. I went to, I think I sat in on his CBT class like a dozen times. I could just like watch it over and over again. I mean, A, it's something I'm into, but B, I was totally into Tony. But the 25th anniversary of Stonewall was a very big deal for you. Tell us about that. Yeah, yeah, it was a big deal. I mean, a lot of big deals. I was part of the Leather Pride Night Committee. And the Leather Pride Night Committee put, it was LSM, GMS, GMSMA, TESS, the Excelsior's MC, NLA Metro, when they had a chapter here in the city, Defenders, New York, which was the Catholic group, the Catholic Leather group. And we all would get together once a year to do a big fundraiser. And I was on that committee. And I was at that committee, I really made a connection with David Weinbaum, who was another one of my mentors. And who was actually my first Leather Mommy. I mentioned him earlier, but not by name. Anyway, and he, I worked a lot with him, and he taught me a lot about community and fundraising. He was past president of GMSMA. Anyway, so we did this event. We decided that it's the 25th anniversary of Stonewall. We're going to do the International Leather SM Fetish Celebration. And we got the Hyatt Hotel in New York by Grand Central Station. We had Friday and Saturday. We had 64 workshops. And it was, oh, I should have brought over the program book reads like a who's who. Everybody was there. Like everybody, think of a name, they were there, you know, whether it was Guy Baldwin, whether, I mean, David Stein, just like everybody that you could possibly imagine was there and teaching. And on Sunday, we did the March. So, you know, that was very exciting. It was a very big event, big fundraiser. We raised a lot of money for a lot of different groups. Yeah. What were your feelings, though, about that being the 25th anniversary of Stonewall? It was very exciting. I mean, you know, it was very exciting. I mean, the biggest thing about this was bringing all of these different groups together to make something big like this happen. There were 2,500 people there. And to get 2,500 people together before people had the internet. Yeah. Okay. So we printed 1000, 10s of thousands of flyers. And I remember sending out flyers all over the country to every leather event and every leather bar and every leather group. And there weren't that many, you know, but there were phone trees that back then, people would call each other on the phone. And the mail was a big thing. You know, and it wasn't till right around that time, there were people saying, do you have email? You know, they weren't asking what's your email address. They were like, do you have email? You know, because people were starting to get online around then, but most people were not. Well, I have to say, I feel almost a little jealous that I wasn't able to be there for such an amazing event because the way you've depicted it, it would have simply been incredible. It was incredible. And the way everybody worked together. I remember they had this steel bondage exploratorium because David Wyman had a big metal collection and Jack McGeorge had a big metal collection. And this woman Becky from Baltimore had a big metal collection. And the three of them put their collections together and made a whole exhibit. It was incredible. Yeah. The classes were incredible. Everything was just amazing. It was amazing getting all those people together. Now, what were your thoughts on how the people interacted? Was there a lot of drama? Was there a few or anything like that? I mean, the biggest drama was Talia and her whip. There was a bunch of people that didn't want Talia to have her whip at the parade because it wasn't a parade. It was a march. So some people were like, this is a march. It's supposed to be solemn. We're trying to, I'm not going to mention names, but there were people that were like, we need to calm it down. And then there were other people like we're SM people and we should be proud of that and that it was a pride thing. So that was the big drama that you would see. And that was mainly on Sunday at the parade about should Talia be there with her long whip. There always seems to be some controversy in any kind of parade in the community whether or not the kinks should be part of it. What do you say to them? Well, we bought our way in. I mean, the way we got into the march on Washington, we raised a lot of money. That was like part of what Leather Pride Night did, was raise money for that so that we could get in. We donated money so that Bruce Marcus could be up on stage at the end of the Stonewall march and give a speech. So sometimes you buy yourselves in. I mean, Leather Pride Night was started as a fundraiser for the Christopher Street march, which is the predecessor to the Gay Pride march in New York. And for many years it gave money and then they didn't need as much money because they had corporate sponsors. So we just would give them a little bit of money just to have them on the marquee. But we were giving money to like Anti-Violence Project and Hedrick Martin and just like other places that we felt needed our money. And we had a good relationship with like Domestic Violence Project. And they wrote that we talk and that there might even be less domestic violence in our community than in the mainstream community because of the way that we are trained to talk and negotiate. Wow. That's fascinating. But when we prepared for this, you told me that you like breaking people's assumptions about things. Tell us about that. What does that mean? Well, there's a lot of people out there that believe that there's a right way to do things. And I do believe that there's many right ways to do things. And it's kind of like what I was talking about, you know, as a switch. You know, there's a lot of people that think you can't be a real whatever if you can't make up your mind. I think there's a lot less of that going on now. The youth of our community is a lot more open to being switches and playing with gender and etc. Why do you think that's the case? Because we showed them. We made it happen for them. I think the internet has opened things up a lot more. Anyway, a lot of people expect a little girl to be submissive to their daddy. And no. If you meet a real little girl that's six years old, they're in charge. They're going to sit you down. They're going to tell you going to do tea now, how you're going to take your tea, where you're going to sit, you know, everything. So I mean, the reality is little girls are in charge. You know, and I'm lucky I have a service daddy who's not in charge who does what I want. You know, I'm the princess. You're entitled. I am entitled. I could do whatever I want. That's the point. That's the big takeaway is ask for what you want and then set it up so you can have what you want. Okay. You know, another way, you know, like people would always like, you know, it's like, you know, I had a master-slave relationship and, you know, I taught my slave how to spank me. Like spank me now. And that would just blow people's minds. You know, or I would, I love, I remember one time we were at Thunder in the Mountains and I tied him up in the dungeon and then I got on my knees and blew him. And people were like freaked out because it's like you just don't see the master blowing the slave. It's just not done. And it's like, I do what I want to do. So it's done. Okay. And so I did it because I want to do it, but then I really got off on the fact that people were like, oh, look at that. That's like really crazy. You can see where that would raise a few eyebrows. I certainly can. I do like raising some eyebrows. Which is why you have so many wonderful things to share. So as you mentioned a moment ago, that the little girls always in charge, and you were the first international little Miss Little's. Tell us about that. Okay. So that happened in 2010 in Chicago at Kinky College. Okay. I have had opportunities to run for titles in the past. And honestly, every time I saw that kind of opportunity, I would open so many doors. It's like, you know, I've got my doors open. And actually, a lot of the things that you had to do as a title holder would have maybe held me back from a lot of stuff that I was doing. Well, you know, I was asked in 93 to run for IMSL, the International Miss Letter. And, you know, I looked at the contract, you know, because I have a contract, you have to sign. And it was like, you have to do six fundraisers and half the money has to go back to IMSL. And the other half of the money has to go into your travel fund. And I'm like, I'm already doing all these, these fundraisers and shit. And it's like, I, but I want, I didn't want the money going to my travel fund and back to IMSL. And I think this is first generation IMSL. This is before, you know, this is when it was still in San Francisco. It's different now. I don't know what it is now exactly. So, you know, it's probably different. Yeah. Okay. And I just, I just didn't like it. And I, I was not a big fan of the title circuit as much. That's not to say, I mean, I did judge IMSL. I did judge IMSL boot black. I did judge IML. I've judged a bunch of titles. I, you know, I'll go to my local titles, you know, because it's a fun night out. But I'm not a big, I didn't see myself as a title holder. But, you know, there's all the fun part of being a title holder. And when this international little miss littles, I was like, well, I'm a little, this looks like a lot of fun. I want to sash. And I, I, I entered. I had amazing judges. I, I got myself a brand new party dress with lots of pink ruffles. And I, I had a, I had a, everybody had to have a skit, like a fantasy. And I brought, brought my bear. Oh, that's cute. And, and I had a friend of mine who was my dolly. And, and, you know, we did a tea party and she misbehaved. She kept picking her nose. So I had to spank her. Okay. That was my talent. And my, my question was, do I know my ABCs? Which I stumbled on. Because, you know, I did the whole ABC. I got to L and I was like, L, L, L, A, and M. And then I was like, L, M, and, and CSF, you know, I started playing with, with some of these letters and there were like Rick Storer was, he was in charge of L, L, L, L, A and M at the time, Leather Archives Museum. And he was in the audience and he was, he was on the floor. Susan Wright was there, who had started National Coalition for sexual freedom. And she thought that was amazing too. So it's like, I took this pop question and messed it up in a really good political way. Okay. I'm off track. Oh, anyway, I won. And I got a stash and it had no responsibilities. But I had a stash and I went up on stage at Mid-Atlantic Leather and at IMSL. And I went up on stage at, you know, Folsom Street East, you know, every, everywhere I went, whether with title holders, I got myself up on stage with them because, why not? You know, and I just had a really fun time with it. So it's, it's definitely the title for me. But let's take a step aside, a step back for a moment, because when the AIDS pandemic hit in New York City, a lot of negotiation was required to keep the SM clubs open. And you even mentioned that the separation of BDSM and sex in the community is partially your fault. Okay, okay. So basically, New York, New York's pretty good about sex. Okay. The problem was during the AIDS pandemic, sex was the reason that people got AIDS, unprotected sex. And in the clubs, that was happening. And in order to keep the clubs open, they had to convince the city, look, these sex clubs need to stay open, because that way we can teach people, we can do outreach to people, people can do it safely, we have some control. So New York City came up with these safe sex guidelines. And the same sex guidelines were that there was no penetration with a dick, whether it was oral or any other whole. And you could use hands, and you could use toys as long as they were covered in latex. There was rules. And that's what kept the clubs open. And when tests made their dungeon rules, they were first and foremost based on Tony de Blas's dungeon rules. Because Tony is the originator of everything. Well, maybe not. But but it's the whole that it starts with, do not touch anybody, do not touch anybody's things, do not interrupt the scene, all of those basics. But then we added in all the New York safe sex laws. You know, there's no penetration with a dick. And there's, you know, no oral sex, there's, you know, you have to cover everything with a with latex yada, yada, yada. And those became our rules. Well, as the internet started, people began to find each other in different places, because really, when in the beginning of the 90s, you could list all the clubs, all the BDSM clubs, on one sheet of paper. And there would be the the mixed clubs, the women only clubs, the men only clubs. And, you know, and that was the national list of clubs. And so there wasn't a lot. Anyway, when the internet hit, people found each other. And they were like, we need to start a club. How are we going to start a club? So they would get to, they were right to test. And I was answering a lot of that mail, that email, you know, can we have a copy of your bylaws? Yeah, here is cut and paste, boom, there's the bylaws. Can we have a copy of your, your, your, your dungeon party rules? Yeah, here you go. I didn't think about it. I didn't think about, I just said it. And so all over the country, people were like having these rules that were kind of anti sex in the dungeon. Even though their cities might not have, you know, demanded those kind of rules, you know, our rules were very New York City focused. Does that make sense? But in the end, do you think that these benefited the population on a bigger scale? Okay, that's fair. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, you know, now I go places where we don't have those rules. I mean, where, you know, barriers are encouraged, you know, and I do have to say, you know, I want to plug New York City, because during the pandemic, they came out with COVID safe sex laws, safe sex guidelines. And they, they mentioned glory holes as being safe sex. I love New York. Okay. So I mean, they didn't say the word glory holes, but they said, if you had a wall between you, that would be really good. Okay. You know, I mean, New York is amazing. Where I work, there's free condom distribution. And where I work, where if we are a distribution center for free condoms. Where do you work? I work at Purple Passion, which is a fetish store in New York. But you received a lifetime achievement award from the NLA. Tell us about that. You know, that was 1997. I think that was kind of early. Because, you know, 1997, I was just getting started. I've had a few other awards, too. I've had a couple Pantheon awards. I mean, I don't know what to say about the award. That's okay. Okay. Was an honor nonetheless, yes? Yeah. Great. Yeah. Yeah. What is your opinion about mentoring in the community? Okay. So first of all, I've had a bunch of mentors. Nobody ever came to me and said, I want to mentor you. It just was something that developed and happens. I think a lot of people, there's a lot of abuse by people that want to be mentors. And I've seen people be mentors and hold that out as a cherry here. I'll mentor you and teach you. And then they wind up sometimes isolating people, teaching people things that that's not necessarily true. And taking advantage of people. You know, it's like, you know, I have mentored people. But it's never started out as a mentoring relationships. It's been, it's just something that developed and happened. I think some people have ulterior motives when it comes to mentoring. But I think mentoring is very important. Yeah. What advice do you have for people who are new to the community, newly exploring this? Well, you know, it's going to sound like a broken record. Ask for what you want. You know, you make it happen. Don't believe everything you read on the internet. Don't believe everything that people tell you. You know, figure it out. You don't have to figure it out all at once. I have, newbie does not mean young. I've met new people that are in their 40s. And I've met young people in their 20s that have been doing this for 10 years. Yeah. So I don't like the ageism that happens with the young people. You know, and I've just seen people that just entered, bought themselves a vest and all of a sudden were like honored because they were older. And it's like, you don't know anything. I do have a lot of hope and respect and love for the younger people coming in the future. And, you know, they're not doing things always the way we did them. And that's okay. I really kind of like that. You know, I like, I love the gender fluidity. I love the openness to different types of sexuality. It's just, it's something that I didn't see as much, you know, when I was younger and in the scene, you know, it was, it was, it's a lot more of anything goes now. And I'm very happy about that. But speaking of being young in the scene, in your journey, was there anything you wish you had done differently? Yeah, I wish I started younger. That, you know, I was like, wow, I wish I found this earlier. I agree with you on that. Yeah. Yeah. You've talked a lot about LSM, lesbian sex mafia, so far during the interview here today. But what is it? Tell us about it. Okay, so lesbian sex mafia is not lesbian. And it's not the mafia. Okay. So it's always been open to all women that are into BDSM with other women. You know, it's always had a lot of bisexuals. You know, in 93, we added transsexual women. And then later on, we added and anybody that was trans that felt they were part of the women's community. It's really hard to do the words here, because there's so much, you know, people transition and you don't, you know, it's very difficult to draw a line with our women's community. And I think one of my biggest things that I did at LSM, you know, I always have a platform when I start. And LSM, when I got onto the board, and I became chair after a few years, my big thing was that our meetings were members only, and our parties were open. And I thought that was kind of asked backwards because the meetings had all the education, and I wanted that to be open. And the parties, I thought, I mean, you know, it's like I want to have educated people at my parties. So I got that changed. And now the parties are still open. But also our educational meetings are now open too. So that was a big thing. Also, I was on the board when we had the LSM 20 celebration. And that was an amazing celebration. It was in October 2001, right after the Twin Towers came down. Yeah, right after 9-11. So we lost some of our people that we're going to show. We recently had the 40th anniversary, which we got hit by COVID. We are so unlucky with our anniversaries. But I put together with the board, I'm no longer on the board, but I put together a whole show for LSM that was on Zoom, all live performances. Some of them BDSM performances, some Burlesque performances, all different kinds of things with an orgasm contest. And, you know, a bunch of different things happening. And we had about 100 people attend. And we had an anniversary pin, because I said we have to have merch. You know, I don't know what we're going to do. We originally were going to have a big celebration. So I love LSM. It's a great organization. It is the oldest BDSM women's organization in the country. Wow. Yeah. Maybe you can do a 45th celebration. We'll see. Maybe with the year there, it won't be quite as dramatic. But you are a writer. Tell us what you write. Tell us about that. Okay. So my big achievement was I used to do a weekly newsletter online. And it had a couple of thousand subscribers. I lost that list. Oh. Anyway, every week it would come out on Monday, usually Monday, sometimes Tuesday, because I'd be late because life got in the way. And it would have news, BDSM news, some of it Dave Rhodes would put into the Leather Journal. So I was a contributor to Leather Journal through that. And it would have what I did over the weekend, whether it was go to an event. And I would talk about different events that I went to, because I did a lot of traveling. And it would talk about upcoming events. And it would talk about politics. It had links in it. This is before there were a lot of pictures. Because there weren't really pictures in it. It was very text-based. Oh. And that was called Lolita's PNP, also known as Lolita's Predictions and Predelections. I think the Leather Archives has copies of it. Because Tony said it was a really important piece of, and Joseph both said that it was important documentation of the BDSM Leather community. I also did a couple of books together with Joseph Bean as editor. There were videos with book and they're out of print. One was Spanking. And the other one was CBT at a nutshell. Yeah. So I did those. Unfortunately, they're out of print. I also did a video that called the Details of Flogging. There were four flogging masters. And I was one of them. And I'm kind of proud of that. That turned out really good. I also wrote things for Prometheus over the years, which was the Oil and Spiegel Magazine newsletter. And I wrote for on our backs a bunch of times, which is a women's BDSM magazine. Back when they had magazines, no magazines anymore. And I wrote chapter two for Tristan Taramino's Ultimate Guide to Kink, which is on painting, no, Spanking, painting and flogging. So yeah. Yeah. And that's still in print. And you should buy that. Okay. I don't get money when you buy it, but it's a really good BDSM book with a lot of amazing authors in it. You know, you could look at that author list and start interviewing all the people that added chapters in there. I saw you on Instagram with Edge. Edge is in that book too. Okay. Yeah. So there's a lot of important people in that book. What's the biggest misconception about you? I think people sometimes are intimidated by me. I went to an event a little while ago, and the person that was at registration was just like really nasty to me. And I was like, I was on my best behavior. I had my driver's license and had my registration. I was doing everything right because I'm not one of those people. I don't need a stinkin' badge. And they were nasty to me. And I called them on and I said, why are you being nasty to me? Well, because I just figured that you, they looked at me and they were like, well, I just figured that you would be full of yourself. And I was like, I haven't done anything or said anything like that. And she said, you're right. I'm sorry. So you know, that sometimes people think that people that are well known are full of themselves, I guess. I don't know. That that's, that's a misconception. Lolita Wol, what an amazing and educational interview this has been. And thank you for joining Inside Leather History, a fireside chat. Thank you for including me. This was great.