In Praise of the San Diego Eagle

 

You can't SEE the Eagle, but it's there.

It is impossible to express admiration of the San Diego Eagle without first honoring the men who keep it the way that we love it:

- The bar-staff at the Eagle are HAPPY with their jobs, and it shows. I don't have deep knowledge of their day-to-day challenges as employees, but 1) they tend to stay, once they are part of the family, and 2) they don't complain to me. They just share what is new and interesting. In the current economy, this is really saying something. Our brothers behind the bar (and out at the front door) work together as a team, and they hold the craziness of a busy, busy night at bay. Whoever does the hiring is doing a great job, because we have always had some great guys on the team.

Boy Kevin

- Boy Kevin hosts the Red Hankies Night, and is actively working to make them better and better every time. He has big plans coming up, and the news will be coming out soon.

Preston Steel, interviewing the utterly charming Jeremy Stevens, 

who handed out porn DVD's and answered every question with playful enthusiasm.

- Our own Preston Steel does a masterful, charismatic and focused job of keeping STUD Nights interesting, entertaining, and casually relaxed. He doesn't put the adult-film actors on a remote, inaccessible pedestal - he shows us their fun, human and authentic side.

- Chris and Chip work VERY hard to change the Eagle's calendar to be more relevant in the modern age. Their efforts are paying off big, and their newer, modern perspective on kink and fetish are keeping the old Eagle bar from becoming static or boring.

- The present and former Mr. San Diego Eagles have been provided with an opportunity to learn more about their ability to entertain, educate and guide a crowd.  They've been forced to learn social skills that they will never need to un-learn. How often do we get such an opportunity?

Upper left: Doorman Tom, with boy kevin and Sir Nicholas

- I've known Sir Nicholas longer than the twenty years since he bought the bar and brought it back to being OUR bar. He has a big, big heart. I have never seen him say "NO!" to any request for donations, and I pay attention to such things. He and I are both rather highly-opinionated, Big Dog personalities. Rather than being enemies, we are true friends for life. We tend to lock horns sometimes, and even talk past each other, but we always work it out, like brothers do. I admire him greatly.

Russ in action

- This last Saturday's Mr. San Diego Eagle 2013 Contest shows that Russ can KICK ASS when he runs a team.  I grumbled and growled after last year's contest, but rather than shutting me down, he listened, and incorporated several people's suggestions into this year's effort. It was a TIGHT team, the evening was snappy and flowed well. Together, the team, plus the tallymasters, the Judge's boys, and so many of the folks in the audience (FOUR photographers!), worked together like a well-oiled machine.

We all came together to support our brothers who were stepping up to declare their intention to be more active in our community. This wasn't a "pageant". It was a powerful, shared effort that provides historical continuity. Our Tribe continues its ever-growing history.

Thanks to events like this, and many, many more, we can celebrate: We didn't all die from AIDS, we didn't lose our connection to each other despite being vaporized by a zillion Internet cruising sites, and true community matters. We still need a physical connection, face-to-face, and a way to feel that we are a part of our shared history.

VERISIMILITUDE: the appearance of being true or real: realism, believability, plausibility, authenticity, credibility.

We need a place like the Eagle. We need to feel like our history didn't all go into the landfill when so many good, kinky men died, and their families emptied out their closets and playrooms. We need to know that the traditions of mentoring between the generations can particularly include learning social skills in cruisy environments. Interpreting tricky social signals flying past you is HARD when you're only used to texting. The only way for primates to learn the Courtship Dance is in realtime, in actively social circumstances.

Like at 11:47PM, on a crowded Gear Night at the Eagle.

If you are a well-loved, respected brother in a Tribe, then useful tips are available at all times, from all generations, with no strings attached. In what OTHER gay subculture is this the tradition?  How about Trust, Honor, and Respect. Those have been our watchwords for decades. Not flawlessly, but we keep getting back to them.

When a lonely out-of-town visitor pulls into town, he has a natural, looked-for place to go. He won't find Tribal information on Recon, or Manhunt, or asspig.com.  Those online resources actively dislike local cultural information being promoted. There is no money in it, so it's bad. A local, world-renowned leather bar provides a strong possibility that cruising face-to-face will succeed. Many people don't like the trivializing, vacuous online cruising scene.  If we ever lost the Eagle, we would lose a social opportunity that would scatter our community's meeting-sites, to hard-to-find places.

We still need to continue building community - We got damaged pretty severely by AIDS. The Leathermen's Tribe was hit first, and the hardest. We're picking up the pieces fast, but there is much more work to be done.

We need grounding in a social center that holds historical significance. Imagine demolishing Hillcrest's heart and building a factory. We would all lose a precious part of our community's heart. The same applies to the Eagle. We can't afford to take it, or the people who love it, for granted. The vast majority of the planet doesn't care about such things, but for our special, strongly-loyal subculture, it means everything.

None of us is disposable. If we've learned anything from our history, is that things can change in a flash.  Tomorrow is promised to no one. Life can be random. All that we can do is to appreciate what we have, and thank the people who labor every day to make sure that we continue to have useful, worthwhile and socially-relevant choices.

Many thanks to everyone who has ever done the work, paid or unpaid, to keep our Tribal center at the Eagle alive and well. You're doing us all a world of good.

Calling for a Ten-Year Time-Out on Olde Guarde

 I will soon be celebrating 36 years as an active member of San Diego's Leather Community. I'm also the biggest proponent of nurturing our youth, so that our community has a vibrant, lively future.

So, I have a request:

Can we lay off the "Old Guard" stuff for a while? Can we let everybody off of the hook and take a break? Ten years ought to do it, very nicely, with zero harm done.

These are solid, undisputed facts:

- The only possible path for a true Sir to wear and credibly possess a Muir Cap / Master's Cap is to EARN IT, after a long, arduous process issued by at least ONE wise elder who truly represents Old Guard.

- All leather gear must be EARNED, not bought for oneself.

- I own a unicorn that poops ice cream.

All scenarios are just as likely for the average man who would like to embrace his inner Sir. It's a lovely fantasy, but IT'S A FUCKING FANTASY.

I'm indisputably the most well-connected leatherman in San Diego County. No contest.  I can name maybe FOUR men in our area who are deeply qualified to do this sort of work. Are they inclined to? Possibly. Probably not. IF they are, they would be favorably disposed to train applicants at the S-L-O-W rate of one guy at a time. I have even met one guy from another city who charges $200 an hour to get another Sir to the point of earning his Master's Cap and leathers.

Does the math look bad to you?  How many centuries do we have to wait, in order to get back to where our Tribe was in 1979? What are we really committed to, here? Are we seeking to shrink the Tribe down to a comfy little clique of "me and my cronies"? In that case, can we just admit that we have no interest in the new, the shy, the FUTURE OF OUR COMMUNITY?

I'm mentoring a good four-dozen men who are working toward owning their built-in Dominant natures. Why am I helping so many? BECAUSE NOBODY ELSE WILL. A good amount of my efforts go toward informing them that their inhibitions and worries about worthiness as True and Valid Leathermen are based upon assumptions that are a solid three decades out of date.

So, let's review how things have changed since our beloved Old Guard Protocol books were written:

The vast, vast majority of wise, deeply experienced elders either died, or gave up on being actively involved in anything.  I've spent ridiculous numbers of hours trying to convince our elders to come back and mentor our newer leathermen.  I have written articles.  I have spoken directly to over 600 men of my age (late 50's)  or older, using every tool in my arsenal to convince them to be role-models. Yes, that is a true statement. Anybody who has ever seen me in action at public events knows that I'm stating a fact.

You know how many have accepted my request and stuck around?  THREE.  All bottoms, and new to the scene.  Number of Wise Old Guard Dominants? Zero.

FUCK! (((anguished scream)))

Thanks. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let me go on to say that I love my older brothers. We are a generation that is wounded from losing so many of our best and brightest.  We have every right to enjoy a nice, relaxed squat on the porch in a rocking-chair.

But not much else. 

If you don't currently have any skin in the game, you need to quit yapping about how things oughtta be. It's too reminiscent of "You Kids Get Off Of My Lawn!"

We need to quit fooling ourselves about how much influence we have. We are yesterday's newspaper… Not particularly relevant. As I have said before, we are like pterodactyls, surrounded by small furry mammals. It's time to learn to love the small furry mammals, because there are vastly more of them than there are of us.

The men who come to FetishMenSanDiego's events who are aged between 20 and 49 tend to be bewildered and unsure of themselves. What little they know of our culture tends to be judgmental, baffling, exotic and unwelcoming.

If it is ever to become THEIR culture, then we need to start everybody at a crawl. We have to use Operant Conditioning, where we only use positive reinforcement teaching techniques. We want our newer brothers to have the experience that we are all providing a culture of nurturing, supportive, and flexible sweethearts who want them to thrive, and to eventually replace us in the pantheon of elders.

We have many, many books to guide our newer brothers who crave the structure and protocols that sustain Old Guard. That wisdom won't be lost, and that is a good thing, because if the world still depended on us old farts verbally sharing our history, experience and wisdom, then we would be in much, much worse shape. It only works if we SHOW UP.

So, please - Let's all take a step back, tone down the shrill judgmental behavior, and voluntarily dismantle the flaming hoops of unreachable (and certainly impractical) expectations for our newest brothers. We will be a lot more likely to HAVE a gay leathermen's Tribal culture for centuries yet ahead if we come from love and approval NOW, as we rebuild a wounded community.

Otherwise, we are just angry, punitive bitches. Is that how we want to be remembered after we are gone?