(Dogmatism) Old Guard…or not…
By BullDawg66 (post from the LeatherHistory Yahoo! Group)
If anyone finds this offensive…sorry in advance but it is something that eats at me from time to time.
Okay, enough about “Old Guard” vs. “New Guard” stuff. Let’s be realistic about things. Those who care to sit down and make a name for themselves, and these days it seems to be everyone in the world, write history. It has nothing to do with what really might have happened or what actually did happen. I’m not knocking that there were some of these “Old Guard” attitude type folks around, but it certainly wasn’t the norm of life, even for the leather community of 20 years ago, and when one tries to pinpoint them to say who “they” were…they don’t exist. We were all different people 20 years ago and will be different in another 20. Society and life has a mysterious way of doing that to people.
20 years ago I could be found riding my little rice burner of a Yamaha FZR-400 up and down Sunset Highway and Interstate 5. Stopping in Laguna beach long enough for a beer or two. The Boom-Boom Room, on the cliffs overlooking the beach, a place for gay bikers by day and dance club by night. Being in the leather scene back then meant having a bike, belonging to a club, drinking beer, and more importantly…getting laid. The bars were about cruising and if you were lucky enough to live in a town with a good bar, a back room might be thrown in for good measure.
Since most of us had jumped on the cold war bandwagon in an effort to do our part against Mother Russia, we all just assumed that the protocol stay at work. Protocol in the leather community, by and large that meant you were an officer of your motorcycle club and were entitled to more beer.
The places we stayed at if we went to Los Angeles were geared towards parties and sex. No different now than it was then either. The infamous Coral Sands Hotel on West Hollywood Blvd. A veritable orgy when things got going. Occasionally we might see something that we of the so-called leather crowd would see something we thought a bit weird…someone might come in, move the beds around, open the windows in their room, spread out some plastic, and open a can of Crisco for some old fashioned fisting. Normal? Back then no, these days… more likely to happen.
Other things the bike clubs thought were kind of eccentric, one of our guys was into riding dildos…laugh if you must but it was out of the norm as it wasn’t cruising for dick after the local bands left the stage. It didn’t involve drinking beer or riding our bikes. We made fun of the guy a lot and then a few years later as our community changed and AIDS took its toll, so did attitudes…lots of guys into toys now. It’s safe.
I had a boyfriend back then too…a tattoo artist who got me into the punk scene. His idea of leather was putting on his jacket and chaps and riding off on his 1957 Triumph motorcycle. I still have his chaps hanging in my closet. Hell, he wouldn’t even consider fucking someone in a sling…too out of the norm, and he was a punker, can’t get much more out there than that in the late 70’s early 80’s. Open minded to anything new,just don’t get into the weird sex shit with him.
History also had no place for the women bikers we knew, both the straight Harley biker bitches and the lesbians who weren’t the dykes on bikes. There was a woman once, her name was Corky…for a living she rebuilt custom Harley’s. These days she would be called a lipstick lesbian, back then she even made all the gay guys hearts stop. Sweet, charming, not kinky…but damn, what a looker. The history we write of today doesn’t include her type…she’s not old guard into all the protocol propaganda.
So where does this leave us…back at the beginning of this dissertation. All these terms we use today are in retrospect. They were designed for a better understanding to describe and to categorize relationships so that people could better understand what was going on. Where did we go with it? Instead a few people use it to dictate to people that this is the way it has always been and to dictate that therefore it should be thus.
The scene and the people involved have come a long ways over the years but in the end still have a lot to learn. The way it was…hell, i was there just as much as anyone else. Most of the military protocol junk incorporated into the scene is jut that…most vets don’t give a rats ass about it unless it pertains to them and their involvement with others on a personal level…it is modified to fit their needs. Most of the people who say that the protocol is there because of the service, have never served. I’m not saying all of them, but a good majority of them. If the “real” protocol of the military showed up on their doorstep and bit them in the ass they wouldn’t know what it was. People can’t be pigeon holed in society and the leather scene today is more concerned with technique and who supposedly did what 20 years ago, 30 years ago, etc. In 100 years, ask yourself…who will remember me? Nobody will unless you were to become president or discover something.
Let’s be realistic, these attitudes of telling people how to think in order to be part of something…it doesn’t attract a younger crowd to further ideas or ideals.
bulldawg
leather, punk, red doc martin wearing, sportbike riding, pen weilding, nuclear radiated, psycho killer skindawg with a blue/black mohawk and packing a 9mm, patiently waiting a new collar – cause it’s a dawg on a journey thing
