I Can't Believe I Turned This In (and Got an "A"!)

5/7/2019 Preface:  The assignment was to do first-hand research into one of San Francisco's minority subcultures. I was definitely seeing how far I could push the envelope with my professors at the time, but this just goes to show you that if you are a good enough writer, you can essentially turn in porn and still get an "A" on it! By the way, most of this is fiction!

VARIANT FORMS OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOR

IN SAN FRANCISCO'S

GAY MALE LEATHER COMMUNITY 

or

EVERYTHING YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW

ABOUT KINKY SEX

BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK*

Jeff  Mitchell

Eng. 214 - Multicultural Composition

San Francisco State University

7 May, 1985.

*Not to be read by anyone with a closed mind or weak stomach.

. . . To the denizens of this nightmarish world, there is not and never can be any end to the variation on the sexual theme. The basic reason for this is that sexual indulgence -- and this is true of even normal sexual activity -- must ultimately lead to satiety. However, where the average man and woman find peace and relaxation in repletion, the invert, the pervert, the transvestite, the devotee of sadomasochism, the nymphomaniac and the satyr, the voyeur, the sexually-compulsive photographer, who must take pictures or have his picture taken in the "act," the necrophile, the thrill-seeker who needs scatological trimmings in order to climax his sexual experiences -- these unhappy souls can not stop with satiety. In truth, for these tortured ones, no degradation achieved or foisted upon another is never enough. Once on their treadmill of abnormality, they must perforce go on and on until ultimately they achieve their own kind of sexual Götterdämmerung . . .

from The Velvet Underground, by Michael Leigh

There is an alley in San Francisco called Ringold, south of Market, in the center of the Folsom Street "Leather Belt." After 2:00 AM, it fills up with men leaving bars with names like The Brig, Ambush, The Arena, and Stud. Most of these men spent the last two or three hours in smoky bars, drinking beer I and feeding their senses with images of ultimate stereotypical masculinity. Black leather pants, chaps, vests, jocks, harnesses and restraints are tightly laced over rock-hard, muscular bodies. These men are packed into these bars so tightly that to pass one another, they must press firmly against each others' hot bodies. Although their eyes may never meet, their erect nipples may lightly brush against each other as they pass. Although they may not speak to each other, a hand may reach down to feel the hard cock restrained in a bulging jockstrap. But no verbal communication is ever made at this point. The ritual is only beginning. Now, we are only drinking, to lessen our inhibitions. We are only looking, to get our hormones flowing. At 2:00 AM, the lights come up, and these leather-clad men venture into the dark streets, their pumps primed. The ritual continues on Ringold Alley.

I was drunk, stoned and horny. I'd been there before and I knew the rules. "Cruising" was a game that I played well. After taking a piss on a stack of old tires in a vacant lot, I veered past empty auto repair shops and abandoned warehouses to Ringold. I checked out the night's meat supply. In this game, love is not on my mind. Neither is intimacy, privacy or emotion. I don't want to know any names. My libido is in control. It's on its own, and I let it go.

The alley is full of night crawlers. I position myself against a wall and strike the pose I know will attract. This is my favorite part of the ritual: The Kill. After ten minutes of watching the parade, I spy the man I want. He is tall, dark, and bearded. He is wearing tight leather pants, in which I can see the outline of his hard cock stretching down one leg. He has on a black leather motorcycle jacket, unzipped, so I can see his shirtless torso. His tits are massive, and covered with coarse black hair. Each nipple is pierced with a tiny stud, and a silver chain connects the two, forming a delicate arc between them, begging to be pulled. He is also wearing black leather gloves.

I am in one of those rare moods when I know I am in complete control of a situation. I know I can have this man with just the right look. That unnameable vibe is exuding from me. Our eyes meet, and my face does something that is similar to a smile, but worlds apart from it. He recognizes it and acknowledges it. I turn and leave the sidewalk, going between the side of a building and a parked semi-truck, deeper into the shadows. He follows.

Now in a somewhat secluded area, he approaches me and immediately grabs me through my pants. He begins to rub me forcefully as I reach for the chain suspended from his nipples. I begin to pull it, gently at first, then with a steadily increasing pressure. He begins to hiss. "Easy baby . . . not so rough" he hoarsely whispers in a voice that lets me know he likes it. I find myself getting more excited. Taking his cue, I grab his crotch with one hand l while keeping his titchain taut with the other. As his hands come to my chest, I detect a certain arrogance it his attitude. He twists my nipples severely, causing a jolt of pain/pleasure to shoot up and down my spine. As he continues to twist, I tighten my grip on his balls. Our eyes meet for the first time, and his smug, commanding look is met by my defiant stare. More than the pain in my tits, I am aware of his attempted domination over me through this eye contact. But with his testicles tightly squeezed in my fist, I'm not about to submit. In this manner, never stopping my intense staredown, I make my position quite clear.

Finally, he relents. "I bet I could master you if I got you home," he grunts. I give him my best snotty kid smirk. "You think so, huh?" Suddenly I am aware that this stranger has come to represent every authority figure I have ever been forced to submit to. Through him, I am re-experiencing the feelings of rebellion I had towards my parents, the priests in Catholic school, the pigs that had recently arrested me. Here was this man trying to force his will upon me, and finally, I get to win. The fantasy was in full swing now.

He began to stroke my face with the back of his leather-gloved hand. Too firm to be a caress, it felt more like an assault, and my jaw jutted out defiantly against his hand. He began to force his fingers into my mouth. Teasingly, I let him put his index finger between my lips, before firmly planting it between my teeth.

Now I had him. But at this point, something happened. Suddenly I was outside of myself, looking at the absurdity of the situation and the fantasy was instantly shattered. Perhaps it was because the drugs were wearing off, or maybe I was just bored, but I couldn't maintain my "serious" attitude anymore. I was hopelessly filled with images of mom baking blueberry muffins and Flying Nun reruns. I began to smile at first, then to snicker. I increased the pressure on his finger, and he began to wiggle his hand free, leaving me I with a black leather glove dangling from my teeth. I spit it out onto the asphalt and burst into laughter. I told my mysterious stranger I would see him later and walked away.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

So was my first experience with "leather sex," my initiation into an area of gay sexuality that I previously had little knowledge of. I liked it. It was fun, on a mental level. Obviously, it was a mind trip, but in these days of AIDS, perhaps some mindgames are in order, as opposed to the usual fucking and sucking that happens on Ringold. Not that leather sex could ever become my primary means of sexual expression. I'm too much of a romantic for that. But as an interesting diversion, I think I could really get into that role-playing/fantasy trip. So, with my curiosity peaked, I proceeded on an organized exploration of this way of relating to another man.

I set a few ground rules for myself before undergoing this investigation. Should I decide to use myself as a human guinea pig, I would not allow myself to get "bound up" in a situation I could not get out of, and I would not engage in any unsafe sex practices. It turns out that I never got intimately involved with any of the men I met. My research took the form of interviews -- casual conversations in the homes of and bars frequented by men who enjoy leather sex with other men.

The first question on my mind was, "What is it, exactly, that you do?" The answers I got varied from the humorous to the macabre --  a wide range of sexual experiences, practices and preferences. Hernando, a Latino in his mid-forties with whom I talked for a half hour or so in The Brig told me that he was "basically into being a master." When I asked what he meant by this, he described the basic premise of most homosexual S&M (sadomasochistic) and B&D (bondage/discipline) encounters. One man usually assumes the master, or dominant role, while the other assumes the slave, or passive role. These are not merely labels put on the Fucker and Fuckee, but the roles assumed in complex, and often quite elaborate psycho-sexual experiences. Hernando's trip was to find a man, usually younger, who could get into totally orally "servicing" him without any reciprocation on Hernando's part. Given the package Hernando was packing, his powerhouse body and rugged good looks, I doubt if he has any problem finding his eager young slaves. He said he didn't get into bondage much, and was looking for "hot, no-strings-attached sex in which he was the subject of worship."

Peter, on the other hand, a white guy in his early 30's whom I met in a dirty bookstore, described his sexual fantasy (which he often realizes) as such: "I like to get tied-up and fucked." When I pressed him for details, he told me that although he likes intimacy, romance, and more-or-less normal relations with his men, when it actually comes time for intercourse, he likes it face down, spread-eagle, with his arms and legs tied to the bed. Furthermore, he said nothing gets his blood flowing faster than a good paddling and "dirty talk". When I asked him about AIDS, he said he "has nothing against rubbers."

While on the subject of AIDS, I found that several men, because of their preferred form of sexual pleasure, need not worry much at all about it. Terry, a Chinese man in his mid-twenties, a friend of mine with whom I sing in the Gay Men's Chorus, describes himself as "into rubber." When I asked him to  show me his toys and explain how he plays with them, he pulled out from his treasure chest all sorts of devices designed for sexual play. Of course, I was expecting to see an ever-popular dildo, an artificial penis made of rubber, but Terry's was over two feet long and had a head on each end. He showed me his butt plugs and ben-wa balls (an ancient Chinese toy consisting of five or six 1" diameter rubber balls strung together with about two inches of space between each one). These objects are inserted into the rectum to stimulate the prostate gland and anus. He also showed me some scary-looking medical equipment used for rectal exams. He had several different types of vacuum/suction devices for the penis, and plenty of tit-toys, including small suction cups and alligator clips. Terry was also into body piercing and not only were both of his ears pierced, but so were both of his tits, his nose, his lip, his foreskin, and his perineum.

Another activity associated with the leather crowd is fisting, or arm-anal intercourse. Because of the "fist-fucking" label, it is often misunderstood as a violent, bloody act. But a couple I know (who have been together for nine years in a monogamous relationship) who enjoy fisting described it to me in a way that made it sound almost euphoric. Max and Caesar explained the amount of time and trust that goes into the act, and the "severe pleasure" that it causes. Starting with a lot of hugging and kissing, Max begins by gently kissing, caressing and fingering Caesar's anus. When Caesar is relaxed and comfortable, Max begins to slowly insert two, three, four fingers into Caesar's well-lubricated anus, eventually sliding in his whole hand. A "fist" is never made, nor are "fucking" movements. Instead, it is one long, slow insertion, a sort of birth in reverse. Caesar says that the sensation is extremely intense and greatly tied in with a feeling of bonding and trust that occurs with Max. Max too described a feeling of union he felt with "half his forearm inserted into his lover's body cave." (He really did say that!) Obviously, Max and Peter are not fisting on a casual level, and I regret not getting the perspective of someone who gets fisted by several guys in one night at a sexclub.

Moving even further away from "normal" sexual behavior, I found people who get off on various types of human waste matter. David, a 29 year old man from London wanted me to take him home and piss on him. He said he'd buy the beer. Apparently, he had developed a taste for it and he said that "there is nothing like the feeling of warm piss being sprayed into your hair and all over your body." He did indeed seem genuinely appreciative as I peed on him, and in him, while he lay beating off in his bathtub. Others like to take "rimming" or oral-anal sex one step further, and enjoy ingesting human feces. That seems dreadfully unhealthy to me! A gay witch described ritual sex practices involving the letting of blood, and the use of hot melted candlewax, though I never spoke directly with anyone who claimed to be into genuine pain and/or violence as part of their sexual kink, nor did I meet anyone into extreme forms of humiliation and punishment that some people get off on. Some stones are better left unturned, I suppose.

Perhaps you are now wondering, "Why all this 'weird' sex?" The only answer I can give is the standard, "because it is there." The sexual revolution has allowed people to explore and experiment with alternative ways of relating sexually, and to be quite frank and open about it. But don't make the mistake in thinking that the practices I've described in this paper are anything new, or practiced exclusively by gay men in San Francisco. Men and women and people of all genders and sexual orientations have been engaging in these acts for centuries. However, it has only been in the last twenty years or so that we have had the possibility to be open about it, much less write a college paper about it. This freedom of exploration has led to new discoveries about our sexual selves, and opened up new possibilities for self-discovery in general.

As I wrote earlier, these acts often occur between relative strangers (though not always), and that is perhaps what most people would find "strange" about this interaction. Most people generally agree that whatever goes on between consenting adults in a monogamous relationship is OK. But for many urban gay men, the ability to have casual sex with whoever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want, and however much they want, is part of their very definition of what it means to be "free" and a core attribute of their gay liberation. Indeed, many gay men have grown to relish the "Sexual Outlaw" personna they've adopted in a culture that rejects homosexuals.

The purpose of this paper is not to judge, but to explore, so perhaps the question of "why" should be left to the individual reader. Speaking from a strictly personal standpoint, I occasionally enjoy sexual activity that might be considered "weird" (even by some of my gay brothers) because I like the insight it gives me into my own psyche. As I described in the first part of this paper, it's fun to get in touch with those inner realms of your being. Psychologists stress that not only is fantasy and role-playing normal, it is healthy and good, and gay men living in San Francisco in 1985 can quite easily live out their own fantasies and participate in others' as well. When this exploration is done in a healthy way, with the people involved respecting each other's limits and rights, the resulting experience can be not only sexually exciting, but enlightening as well.

Work Cited

Leigh, Michael. The Velvet Underground. New York: Macfadden, 1963. Print.