By Tim Brough 

There is an addiction spreading through our community. It is turning friends into enemies, turning regularly good-natured Leathermen into foaming-mouthed destructive manimals. Signs include wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth. Members of our wonderful community have even taken to the internets to bash and threaten one another. One even threatened to stash his Masters’ cap in a closet and never wear it again. All because one of these men approaching in the next paragraph was present at his “capping.” When I saw that, it made me question his commitment to his leather soul. It seemed far more a bitchy statement than a masterly one. That’s when I realized it. He’d become infected.

This addiction? This horrible infectious disorder? The mental airborne toxin that turns leathermen into zombified slashers of his fellow travelers?

Protocoholics. Much has been made of a recent book – that I must admit to being friends with the author of. In fact, another person who I am friends with, and have a great deal of respect for, went to extraordinary lengths to discredit the book as well as its author. The primary issue: protocols and the legend of the old guard.

I don’t know where or when it started, but this new obsession with protocols is sucking all the fun out of a lot of our scene. Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot to be said for protocols, and a lot of respect to be offered to the elders of our community. But we need to stop something and we need to stop it now. The old guard of leather has become Norman Rockwelled into some sort of fantasy where all the Masters sat around a roaring fire while their slaves knelt beside them offering them hot cocoa and apple pie.

My entry into the leather scene was with a number of men who could be called old guard Leathermen. They took their leather dead seriously. One hired me to work in his custom leather store when he heard I needed extra money. He often would scoff at me that “men work with tools, children play with toys.” He and his friends were not part of some secret society, nor did they demand that I behave in any sort of fashion other than to have good manners, and to behave myself accordingly in their presence and the presence of their friends. Kink was a serious thing, but they also considered it a pursuit for adults. Eventually, men like Larry Townsend took me under their wings to encourage my work, and Larry once kidded that when he originally wrote The Leatherman’s Handbook, he took a load of shit from people who were offended; how dare this man tell the rest of them what was Leather behavior and what wasn’t?

In fact, one my mentors even told me that the best Leatherman’s handbook would have simply been a copy of Emily Post’s book of etiquette with a picture of a leather man pasted over the front cover. He told me that protocols then were varied from region to region, even from club to club. Some clubs had initiations and hazing. Plenty did not. More often than not, if they liked you, you were simply taken in.

The reason you were taken in was for protection, camaraderie, and that the men who took you in expected you to maintain a standard of integrity among the group. These stories of secret societies, frat house style hazing, and drunken bacchanals are mostly BS. (Well, maybe not the drunken buckyballs.) It was a chance for men who felt they didn’t fit in with certain sections of the gay society – or society in general – to come together with like-minded people. Like-minded people that happen to enjoy rough sex. The fact that most of them were veterans and had motorcycles just added to the mythology.

But this new breed of Protocoholics have determined that the protocol is the absolute. Again, BS. There’re a few things that I think need to be said about the fetishization of the protocol.

• Your protocol is not necessarily my protocol. At a recent event where I was vending and selling books, I made a friendly hug-like gesture towards a man in another booth. He literally shrieked “don’t touch me!” He grabbed his collar and said “see this? Don’t touch what you don’t own.” I laid my finger on the padlock dangling from my neck and said “Yes, I have one, too.” The offended vendor snorted “Well, obviously you don’t know anything. You can go now.” The fact that we were in a vendor market surrounded by large crowds of people who would probably be touching him and his goods on and off throughout the weekend didn’t seem to register with him one bit. But I will say one thing. Anyone looking for any items that he had for sale did not get a recommendation from me and I was right next to his booth.
• Someone else’s session is their session.  Going to a dungeon used to be for experienced players only. Now it seems that every interloper and/or semi-expert will be glad to tell you exactly what you’re doing wrong and why you should be doing it his way. While this has little to do with protocol, it does have a lot to do with integrity. Unless the Sir or his boy is in mortal danger, the proper thing to do is to stand back, observe and keep your mouth shut. You might learn something.
• Be the person your mentors expected you to be. If the behavior you’re exhibiting would make your mentor(s) smack you upside the flogger, do you think it would be a decent “Protocol”? When my original Master did something that the owner of the leather store I was working for found improper, the owner literally reached across the counter, grabbed this 6 foot plus bearded biker by his jacket collar, and said “You take care of this one. He’s special,” before pushing him back across the counter. Master heeded the advice quickly, and it was a lesson in true old guard behavior that I’ve never forgotten.
• When all else fails: think this. One would your mother do? Now granted, I don’t think that most of us have mothers that are dominatrixes, but if you have a sudden urge in a public situation to flaunt your “so-called” old guard protocols in a manner that is detrimental to the gentlemen surrounding you, then you have no protocols. Because you may think that you are quote Big Guy Studley Master Dude end-quote, but your mother would probably just call you rude. And frankly, as you are walking away after your little show of leather expertise, those in your wake are probably taking you off the next guest list.

You never know who is watching, listening, or is just in the background. I will close with a story that I refer to as “The asshole who wouldn’t shake my hand.” My partner Joel and I had recently met and I was still working on the Vulcan America website. That weekend in Chicago was also a Master’s retreat. Joel was curious to meet some of the gentlemen that I have come to know and respect through my first decade of being a Leatherman.

The keynote speaker was someone I had read about for several years in various leather publications, and was often spoken of in glowing terms. How he had organized his community, brought it together, was a welcoming person in everything he did, and had worked hard to keep the community spirit. I was looking forward to meeting him. When the weekend came, Joel went to attend the retreat while I was at the Cellblock Bar Chicago taking pictures of the Mr. Rubber contest. I came back to the host hotel, met Joel and joined in with the folks attending the retreat. The keynote speaker was seated, surrounded by something resembling an entourage. Bear in mind that all I had ever known of this man was his reputation in the press. It was the first night of the event and as I had been trained, I ventured forward with Joel to make a formal introduction. I did so in proper fashion, they shook hands, then I extended my hand and said “My name is Tim; nice to meet you.”

He looked at me like I had come from another planet. After a couple seconds of very awkward silence, I withdrew my hand and Joel and I walked away. Joel leaned over and whispered to me, “What did you do to piss him off?” All I could say was I had no idea, as I’d never met the man before. I felt belittled, humiliated and confused.

The following day during the Master’s retreat, while I was off doing more photography, said keynote speaker explained to the attendants, “I probably upset Joel’s boy yesterday, but I don’t shake hands with subs.” After dinner, when Joel and I were back in our hotel room, Joel explained to me what the gentleman had said at the day’s session.

My response was short and to the point. “I don’t shake hands with assholes.” For the sake of his protocols, he had taken years of built-up respect, alleged integrity and goodwill, and dashed them to the ground. As far as I was concerned he was no longer worth any respect from me and, as they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Even more so to this case since the gentleman in question passed away within the year.

There were many glowing obituaries, tributes, and memorials, while I remained quiet. In my mind, he was worth no praise. He was and now always will be, just for his little queen of England protocol moment, the asshole that would not shake my hand.

So keep that in mind when you decide to savage a fellow Leatherman in public. Or even in private. Or decide that your private protocol should be lorded over everyone within speaking distance. Somewhere nearby may be a young, impressionable Leatherman looking to you for guidance. Are you going to be the person he looks up to with respect? Will you offer him honesty, integrity, even a friendly smile? Or are you going to be the asshole that wouldn’t shake his hand?

We need to remember that we are a community. We are a minority within a minority. If you’re shoving your protocols into my peanut butter, you’re not making a peanut butter cup. But you could be leaving a stain just as Brown and extremely unpleasant in your passing, and on your way to becoming a Protocoholic.