tlc: year with
a leather club

a documentary by Randy A. Riddle

Interview Transcripts:
Jim Prezwalski (part 2)

RAR--Let's get back to piercing for a moment. Do some people in the club have difficulty finding someone with expertise in this area to do certain kinds of body piercings since some do require a certain amount of knowledge and experience?

JP--TLC is lucky in that there is at least one person in the club who has done piercings and does do piercings and has good technique. Well, for people who aren't aware, for men probably the most common piercing is to have either the right or the left nipple pierced. Women will usually get their nipples pierced also. The next most common piercing for men is what they call a "Prince Albert" which is sort of...it's called a "dressing ring" and supposedly Queen Victoria's consort, Prince Albert, had a Prince Albert which is through the urethra into the head of the penis.

The importance of piercing, especially in the AIDS era, is to make sure that sterile technique is being followed--that somebody uses new needles, that sterilization has occured, that they know what they're doing because erectal(?) tissue, which is what the nipples, the penis, and the vaginal area are basically made out of, is very tough tissue. It's surprising to people that they expect a piercing through those areas to be like skin or they tend to think of those areas as being, since they're sensitive, they must be thin tissue--no, they're sensitive because they have alot of nerves in them, but they're actually very tough tissues.

It's very important to find somebody that not only has good sterile technique, but also has the experience of being to deal with the different configurations of individual anatomy and also scar tissue that a person may not even be aware that they have. When I had a piercing done, I had a physician doing during a scene. Well, the complication arose in that when I was circumcised, I had scar tissue that built up without anybody being able to detect it and he tried twice and his philosophy was he would go so far and that was it. I eventually found somebody who had much more experience and even that person, somebody out of Chicago who has done hundreds of piercings, had to try twice also. He finally got it on the second try and I remember thinking to myself that I would never go through this again.

RAR--What are some of the different kinds of piercings that people get?

JP--I put piercing down into two major categories. Piercings are erotic-erotic enhancements. Piercings can be erotic enhancements because you'e piercing the tissue, you're in essence you're increasing the surface area, you're disrupting where nerves flow directly to. You're also putting in a device that now is adding additional friction to the individual members, be they in the vulva, in the penis, in the scrotum, in the nipples. The other category would be strictly for visual effect. I don't find a nose piercing erotic--I find it intriguing in certain people, I find it interesting; but, for me to have it done would not be an erotic inducement. However, having a Prince Albert or a Guiche, which is a piercing just beneath the ball sac, is something that is erotic. The guiche is one that I found mentally stimulating when I first had it put in; I reduced it to the category of adornment, and now that it's been a couple of months and things have healed up, I've moved it back into the erotic because now I can play with it (laughs). It's a delight to be able to move back and forth between the two. I like erotic enhancement piercings, even if they're temporary, because of that little extra edge that it puts on. Some people says it's more than a little extra edge.

One of the first temporary piercings I saw was at a MAFIA party back in Detroit. We had a wonderful man who has since died of a heart attack, who worked at a hospital and he used to get the long spinal needles--the insides of those he would get, they were a very thin metal gauge, and he would resterilize those and he had B.J., who was from one of the clubs up there, and one of the bondage implements are these inflatable casts that they use in emergency rooms to do temporary settings until they can actually splint them and put the plaster on and we had those on his arms and legs and George did a temporary piercing of his nipples. And just delicately played them and just had B.J. singing a real tune and that was his birthday fantasy--he'd always wanted that done and he was blindfolded, so he was never sure who was doing what at what time to him. For me, it was quite an experience watching that being done and being taught how to do this and how to maneuver it rather delicately as opposed to some roughshod method. It was also interesting because the only piercings I had seen up til then had been with rather thick gauge needles and this was something that was thinner than a piano wire, just almost hair thin.

RAR--With a temporary piercing, how quickly does it heal up?

JP--The thing with piercings is that, as far as the body is concerned, it doesn't exist. If you do a piercing and you pull the needle out, you cannot find that hole again. The tissues just close right up, so that you need to have somebody who knows what he's doing because if somebody fumbles and can't get the ring to follow the needle, they have to re-do the piercing--there is no "finding" the hole. The hole will only exist when something is in there and then the body eventually will have cells migrate in to seal it off--that forms a tunnel that goes through. But, a true temporary piercing is something that technically only exists as long as that needle is in there--pull the needle out and you re-pierce. Some people develop scar tissue, so that after a while they can't or shouldn't be pierced any longer, but it takes an awful lot to get to that point.

RAR--If you took out the ring on a permanent piercing, a nipple for example, (JP shows nipple ring) would it close up?

JP--If I took this out, this is a 12 gauge, and if I took that out, that hole would eventually close up the same way that a hole in the ear would eventually close up. The general rule is, in a 12 guage piercing, after about three days you'll need to have a stretching needle, which looks like a miniature old darning needle or a knitting needle without the point on it in order to get the jewelry back in because the hole will close back up. Your body knows what holes should be there and if it's not a hole that the body thinks ought to be there, it will close it up--that's one of the difficulties with transexuals is that they always have to wear some kind of artificial device in the vagina that's created because the body tries to close them off and make them smooth like a Barbie doll.

RAR--Do you know anything about the origin of different kinds of piercings?

JP--Oh, I tried to look that up in the UNC (University of North Carolina) library. Actually, ReSearch publications has probably done the best job of putting out literature on the history of piercing. It's something that Western culture just simply lost. We know that the Celts and the Roman soldiers probably picked it up from them and probably from the Easterns and they had probably done piercings, but even though I've had Roman history and Greek history, that's not the sort of thing they cover (laughs) and trying to track it down has been difficult. It's one of those things that anthropology just sort of shys away from. There are some things, as in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", that "man was not meant to know".

RAR--Are their tribes in "primitive" cultures that practice piercing?

JP--There are. There were a number of British explorers who kept wonderful notes on tribal practices throughout Africa, throughout Asia and alot of times when those people died, their writings were burned as being uncivilized, as being obscene. I believe it was the man who was one of the discoverers of Lake Victoria, who, when he died, his wife took all of his notes and alot of these things were about religious rites and puberty rites, and she just felt that they were an offense to God and she burned them all and it was a tragic loss for all of us. We have had this spilling into Western culture now colonialism has sort of backed off and it's come through in some amazing ways. The oil boom that occurred in Urba (sp?) brought back some of the more exotic penal piercings. The oil workers started coming back with piercings through the head of the penis, some going all the way through, which is a continuation, bascially, of a Prince Albert and some going completely through the side. And those were things we hadn't seen in Western culture before, at least within my knowledge. People like Jim Ward at Gauntlet have done alot to sort of resurrect piercing within Western culture and to bring it back in. Even alot of the piercings that used to occur in Eastern Europe have vanished during this century so that very little is left. We've purged it from our culture and we've purged the memory of it from our records.

RAR--Do you find that some of the trappings of Leather community are spilling over into popular culture? How do feel about that?

JP--(laughs intensely) What would give you that idea? (smiles) Somebody asked me what I thought of Madonna's book "Sex" and I remember running into Madonna a couple of times in Ann Arbor when she was an unknown and I have to admit that her ego even then was warranted. She was a very savvy entrepreneur and that's what her book "Sex" is--it's not about sado-masochism, it's not about Leather, it's about making money. Marilyn Monroe has just about run it's course and now she's going into pushing the edges on this image and when Madonna hits my age, I'm interested in seeing what direction she'll be going. Maybe she'll be pusing Mary Kay cosmetics in another book.

The trappings, by that I would take it to indicate fashion more than anything else and, yeah, that's always gonna happen. But that's something that comes and goes. People who wear the leather jacket, wear the accoutremonts that's something that, "Well, it's time to go to work", it all comes off and away you go. I think the people who get the piercings and get the tattoos, by and large, have another motive other than just simply fashion. Yes, you there are people who will get the fashion; you'll see the little diamond stud in their (indicating the ear), but you're not going to see, by and large, the fashion .... clip a pony-tail on the back of his hair when he goes out to dance at the disco in New York is not the same person that's going to get a piercing done, is not the same person that's going to do some kind of body modification, is going to get a ritual scarring, that is going to, in a sexual scene where he's going to build up to some sort of event, be it an activity or a rite of passage of some sort. I do see people experimenting more and more. The trappings will certainly allow people who were firmly in the closet as I was to take that first step out, to find out that "Ohhh, nobody's throwing rocks at me, I can go a little further" and "I like this, I like the way that smells" and to start to meet other people who are like-minded. There's something about finally realizing that you're part of a group that gives you more courage to go ahead. That you'll eventually take those steps that were impossible for you to take as an individual because you didn't have any sense of a group.

RAR--Let's talk about the signals that Leather people use in becoming part of a group, for example hanky codes.

JP--Basically, the Leather/SM community is a subversive community which is why both the religious groups and alot of the political groups put so much focus on us. We are not only highly visible, but we're basically subversive. We do things differently; we think for ourselves and like any subversive group, we have to have ways of sort of signalling what you want to do. In some cases you can't take the risk of being open like here in North Carolina I would be very careful about approaching somebody I had never seen before and there are ways of indicating what your preferences are, whether you top or whether you bottom.

Part of that is dividing things down the middle, left and right--usually anything on the left-hand side, whether it's a nipple ring, whether it's your keys being worn on one side or the other or a hanky tucked in a left or right hand pocket, will indicate whether you are a top or a bottom. Then it gets even more complicated. The hanky codes are being continually updated. The type of hanky one flies can indicate different things so if one wears a blue hanky that means that one likes to have oral intercourse and if you wear it on the left side, that means you want to be the pentrator, if you wear it on the right side it means you're looking to throw your feet to Jesus. If somebody has a black hanky that means they're into whipping or flogging and, again, left side means that's the flogger or the whipper, right side means that's the whippee. But, it's not always clear because black also stands for heavy duty, that you're a heavy top or that you're a heavy bottom. So, there's always some ambiguity.

And some of the hanky colors are very hard to tell apart--I happen to be color blind, so that when we get into some of these more exotic colors like robin's egg blue or lavender or magenta or kelly green or brown, I can't tell them apart and when most people are in bars, the bars have either a blueish light or red light and the lights are dim. How anybody can be sure without taking along a little flashlight to double-check is beyond me.

Hankies, keys, piercings, these are all ways to sort of indicate a generality and things are always open to negotiation. The thing that I love about the Leather/SM community is the communication that has to occur--you just don't have anonymous sex, you really have to talk with the person, you have to negotiate, you have to get to know the person and develop a raport, a relationship and a trust in order to connect, in order to fulfill each other. And I think it's a much deeper process than I've seen in alot of the relationships, straight or gay.

RAR--Could you explain Safe/Sane/Consensual?

JP--Back in the late 70's and early 80's, there was alot of criticism of SM. In fact, I think it was in '80 or '81, there was a Lesbian manefesto against SM, a radical feminist analysis and the basic premise of it was that SM was a domination, a total domination--in essence, they were interpreting it only in terms of DeSade's writings, that you were enslaving somebody and they argued against consentual, they said that SM really isn't consentual because somebody could be in a subordinate position and give that consent reluctantly or give that consent and it turns into slavery, which was a bit unfair on their part.

Alot of the thinking that went into the phrase "Safe, Sane, and Consensual" was really in response to that sort of feminist attack on what SM was. They tended to view SM only as, if it's only women doing SM, only women beating women, who does that profit? I mean, that was the level of thinking, but they did come up with some valid points and I think the Leather community, both the male and the women's community, have done a good job in sort of building on that and learning from that severe attack from within the Gay and Lesbian community. Safe has more than just the connotation of being careful in this era of AIDS, it's also on knowing how far you can push somebody, it's knowing anatomy so that if somebody's doing fisting, which is the insertion of the hand into the rectum and doing manipulation that way, that you know the anatomy down there, that you know how to do it safely without damaging a person. But safety also indicates that, in this era of AIDS, that you use only lubrication for that person, that it's used on nobody else, that you put a glove on to protect both of you and to cut down on the possibility of transmission.

Consensual means just that--that two people, three people, a house full of people, talk and mutually agree on what it is they're going to do, that they have an idea of compatibility, that they have an idea of where they're going to go in this relationship. Maybe the ultimate goal of the evening is orgasm, sometimes it's not. Sometimes somebody just wants to be dominated and alot of times, somebody who is a manager and gives orders all week, simply wants to give up control for the evening and to him that's as satisfying as reaching an orgasm.

Sane, of course, is trying to keep it within the bounds of reason. They're still debates occurring trying to define what Sane is. Human beings, I don't think, being basically insane creatures, will ever define what sanity is. (laughs) To most of the straights, in fact to most of the Gay and Lesbian community, which really doesn't have an understanding of what SM is about, much of what we do is insane. But, when somebody starts to actually get to know about things, there were activities that, when I first came out to Leather, I never thought that I would be participating in that I thought were insane and now I've seen what people are trying to get out of it and how their thought processes (work) and sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's a compulsion and you have no idea where those are coming from.

RAR--What are some of the other organizations that you have been involved with?

JP--TLC's actually the first club that I joined. The man who brought me out to Leather lived in Chicago and introduced me to a number of different organizations--that's how I first met some of the people in Hellfire, that's how I first met some of the people in dicussion groups in Chicago, and I wound up meeting somebody in Detroit who brought me to my first MAFIA party; MAFIA stands for Mid-America Fists in Action and it's a fisting group. I had been associated with them for four years before I joined them and I actually joined them after I joined TLC. I saw no reason for joining the organization if I was always being invited to the parties (laughs).

There are different levels of what Leather/SM organizations, clubs really do and what they are. MAFIA and a number of other specialty clubs are social organizations; they're a way for people to get together and have parties together and get together with like-minded individuals. There are other organizations, like Chicago Leather United, which is simply a Leather-fetish club, which is actually sort of overstating it or understating it because at some of the meetings, I've seen people show up in kilts--it's a uniform fetish, too. They don't have play parties and, as near as I can tell, it's mostly just a social and sometimes they do political work and (fundraising for) health issues and causes. Then there are groups that are basically educational--GMSMA is one of those groups, Hellfire, of course, is probably one of the biggest promoters with their Inferno and then there are groups that are political and, again, some of the bigger clubs are that way.

Most clubs wind up getting politically involved at one time or another. TLC just kind of seemed to have started off political from the start and it's done what alot of good, basic clubs do--it tries to tend to all the needs of its members--it's a good club for being politically active, socially active; it tries to bring awareness to the community. I remember Reverand Zallman (sp?) Sherwood, who used to be a minister down here and wrote a book about his experiences coming out as a Gay priest in the Episcopal church, making the statement that the only way we're going to change the church is for people to show up with their lovers and sit side-by-side as a couple with all of the other couples at the Sunday church dinner and it's gratifying to see that type of information being taken to heart by a number of TLC members who go to MCC in full leather and have gotten the congregation used to the idea that Leatherpeople are like everybody else--okay, they dress a little different, their practices are a little different, but they're not going to kidnap us and tie us up--unless we want them to. It's that sort of all around involvement and an attention to educating new members and to keeping issues alive that would otherwise be swept under the carpet or things that would be uncomfortable for the rest of the Gay and Lesbian community to deal with and to also try and reach out to some of the straight members of the community, that we have all of these resources at our disposal now and really straights have very little and they have to look to the Gay and Lesbian communities in order to get that and we're providing that for them. The more that we can show people that we're not, as the Fundamentalists would paint us, these evil beings that hatched from eggs from hell, but your uncles, your fathers, your mothers, your aunts--it's in the club.

RAR--Speaking in general about Leather clubs now, do you find rifts between the older members coming from the older-style, close-knit sex clubs and the newer clubs which are more educational and political in nature?

JP--For those of us who had come out pre-AIDS, it's been a real change and, by and large, that's the same group that's dealing with getting older. I had dinner with a friend of mine and he was talking about answering personals, things out of "Drummer" magazine, and going through every ad that didn't mention that they were looking for somebody 18-35. That particular friend happens to be in his sixties--very knowledgeable, very wonderful, warm, caring man, financially stable, and I kind of took him to task for going after younger people and wondering that he was taken advantage of by some of these and his comment was, just simply, "You wait another twenty years, and when you're my age you just see how discriminating you can be." That's something that is a generational gap and I think what we're seeing in the Leather Community, in some ways, that gap, that breaking apart and age has alot to do with it and some of it is the experiences.

There's also the tendancy in the human species to be elitist anyways. People always say that courtesy is to sort of "grease the social wheels" and that was one thing that I remember, having to read a two volume German book on for a class I had, and courtesy as we know it actually involved when the middle class was rising and the nobility wanted to reinforce the idea that they were better than the rest and so they started all of these elaborate social rituals. Like, instead of grabbing into a common bowl when eating, they started using utensils, rather than blowing their nose on the ground or in their sleeve, they started using bits of cloth and gradually the rising middle class adopted those and so the nobility had to invent new techniques--we see the same thing in the Leather community. You've got the old guard in there, they've made their reputations, they're giving the demonstrations, and you've got the people who are new to it. I've seen some demonstrations that are nothing more than pontifications and, if you're going to show somebody how to do something, fine, but leave the stuff from the "Propagation of Faith" (sp?) behind, because that's just serving to say "I'm more knowledgeable than you are."

But, every club I see, it isn't just one club from another, but every club, every organization, goes through this generational conflict every so often. It eventually resolves itself--the new eventually takes over, but, if they'e smart, they'll listen and talk to the old guard. I'm one of those people that's a hybrid--I learned from both what's been considered New Leather and Old Leather and I have respect for both. I have very little tolerance for somebody who pretends to know about SM or about Leather when it's clear all that they have done is adopt the trappings, that the glitter is there--they have the facade all set, but it's like a Hollywood set, once you get behind, you suddenly realize it's all props or you wind up with, sort of like "The Wizard of Oz": "Ignore the man behind the curtain."

RAR--What is a pledge?

JP--Pledging is a good way to show the difference between the New and the Old. When I was coming out to Leather, I was lucky enough to find somebody who told me I was going to learn how to top and these days, I think most people start off bottoming and then learning how to top. What I learned first was how to top, then bottom, and now I can go both ways. The Old Guard pretty much, if you read books like "Leatherfolk", people will talk about in the fifties and sixties, how bottoms abounded or was it the other way around--I forget. At any rate, the Old Guard used to talk about how you first had to train as a top, when you were good enough, then you were allowed to become a bottom. These days, it seems that joke always is, in the bar--Donovan (sp?) drew a wonderful cartoon, which is the bartender going, "Okay, we want all the bottoms over there and, come on, there's got to be some tops here." That was one of the reasons that David wanted me to learn how to be a top, was that I would know how to do things correctly, safely, but also that there was somebody to sort of carry on some of the knowledge that people had and that I could also do a better job of spotting what was an unsafe situation before I got too deeply involved, that if you know the way something is supposed to be done, you're a better judge of whether that person is really going to be able to treat you safely and whether that person is indeed sane. There's alot of people who violate that by pretending to know more or do more than they can.

RAR--First off, what is a pledge?

JP--Somebody who wants to join the club. Pledging serves a number of purposes. The pledging process allows somebody to participate and to mingle with the club members on a social basis and also on a one-to-one basis, depending on the particular pledge structure that's set up, so that people have an idea of this person's personality, this person's psychology, the person's social skills. That's how you can weed out the weirder aspects. The other thing is that the pledging process is an opportunity for the pledge to learn about the club, to learn about the individual members, so that he or she can make the decision whether that is an appropriate club for them to join because not every club is going to mesh with the person's personality or desires and where they want to go with their Leather or SM fetish. The other thing is that it gives the person an opportunity to learn about Leather, to learn about SM so that if they've always wondered about what it's like to surrender, to be tied up, to be immobile, they have the chance to connect with somebody to experience that or, through educational programs, learn what different things are. For alot of people, this is the first time and only time that they will get to see a number of things, something like piercing, urethral manipulation, catherization--unless you work in a hospital. It really is a two-way process--the club members learn from the pledge and the pledge learns from the club. It's also a way of passing on traditions, of incorporating new ideas, and one always needs sort of a fresh influx.

RAR--Do you find that people bring their real-life work skills or hobby talents to contribute to the club's work?

JP--I suppose that people can, with their diverse backgrounds, business backgrounds and professional skills that people have; they always bring those into the club--they always bring those into any organization they work in, even if they're doing something that's utterly different. I think that most people like to do something that's a little different than what they do in a day-to-day job. This is trying to put off the work world and work on creating a different world and so, if you're an accountant, you may be so in love with accounting that you want to be the club treasurer, but I don't think necessarily somebody who is a secretary would want to be the secretary for a club. The Scribe in our club is a black hanky profession--the piece of paper goes along with that. Somebody like Franc, who has the skills of a manager, he also brings with him theatrical skills so that when they were putting a chorus together, Franc could draw on those skills from his past and help with that. Franc also does managerial work and book work and he's an excellent accountant and he's our club Treasurer and does that very well. We've other people, though, that don't really have those skills that they use in their day-to-day life, but they've got some innate skills that they bring with them. We have one person who an excellent photographer who does not do photography as a living and that's his contribution to the club.

RAR--I've heard it said that Leatherpeople like to bring their fantasies to reality. Do you feel that Leatherpeople are more driven by certain senses, such as touch, smell, etc?

JP--To say that people who are into Leathersex are "supersensual" is quoting Masoch exactly; you're reaching back to nineteenth century thought. It doesn't really translate well from the German, but I think there's quite a bit to be said for that. There are people who's chemical, electrical reactions may be somewhat different. We already know that people react to different stimuli in different ways. Something that say, for one person can trigger an allergic reaction, that something somebody finds disagreeable, somebody finds "just right". It's no strange thing to find out that you see the same sorts of things in Leather/SM sex, that people who are drawn to it are somehow linked in some biologic way. I think, to some extent, all human beings are drawn to the pain/pleasure complex, that's what life is--it's trying to get a balance between the two. We live in a culture where pleasure is rammed down our throats to the point that it's painful--life is trivialized, it has no meaning, it's absurd, it's empty. Pain is something that helps yank us down again. There was a saying that "the texture of life needs the valleys as well as the peaks, that it needs the shadows as well as the light or one cannot find the way."

(during a break, Jim noted that he wanted to talk a little about the idea of tradition in the Leather/SM community)

JP--Bill, Stewart, and I had a conversation one time. Bill was talking about his background and how Bill is adopted and doesn't even know what his heritage and background is--Bill doesn't even know what nationality he actually is. So, for Bill, the big attraction for Leather is that it offers him some sort of a tradition, a family that he can choose himself and that's very important to him. So, for Bill, these traditions in Leather that are five years old or older, are family traditions, something that he's almost dogmatic about. Stewart, his family is originally from North Carolina and Stewart kind of said, "Well, that's curious. My background is that I can go up to the graveyard and there's two hundred years of ancestors of mine buried there and I feel like I have very deep roots and that's very comforting to me so that I really don't need to focus on traditions. I try to find things that are leading me elsewhere; I don't need the anchor." From my perspective, even things that occurred back in the sixties and fifties aren't traditions. Because my great grandmother was born in 1842 and didn't die until 1957, I remember hearing first-hand accounts of how the Czar's troops, we're talking Czar Alexander II, attacked the village where my grandmother and my relatives had started a rebellion. To me, nothing's a tradition unless it's hundreds of years old and I think that sort of comes through on the way the three of us approach the Leather/SM community--Bill tends to focus on things within the last decade, Stewart tends to focus on things within the last twenty to thirty years, and I tend to focus last century.

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