IML & Me

One of my readers this week was asking me what I felt about the leather scene. To sum it up briefly, I've always felt it was perfectly easy to have great sex without anything in the way of gear. I think guys in leather are hot, but once in a while it seems as if those who rely upon the gear do so as a crutch.

Case in point. While I was traipsing around IML’s Leather Mart during Memorial Day weekend of 2009, fending off offers to try the tester jug of Boy Butter and gently turning down an plea from a barrel-chested older bear to try on a yellow blindfold for him so he could ‘see how it looked on a boy like me, and besides, it matched my shirt,’ I noticed a guy staring at me. The first time I saw him was somewhere in the middle of the Fort Troff booth where I was gingerly inspecting a bin of cock rings floating in an amber fluid. When my eyes caught his, I explained my hesitation. “Hi. It looks like someone peed in here,” I said.

The man had a close-shaved head, big eyes, and a rugged, masculine face covered with an artful one-day growth of stubble. He wore jeans, a white T-shirt, and a leather vest. He was also about as tall as a Smurf, but despite that, had the excellent good looks of a porn star from a higher-budget studio. “I think someone spilled ginger ale,” he replied, with a heavy accent.

I smiled, shrugged, and moved on, declining to investigate. I noticed him a little later, weaving in and out of the racks of leather I was examining. “Hey again,” I said, when he approached me. His eyes were fixed on me and full of intent. “Having fun?”

“You know,” he said with that charming accent again. “You are the first person who has said hello to me this entire conference without me having to speak first.”

“Really? I find that hard to believe,” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

I gestured to his textbook pecs, his perfectly proportioned arms, the narrow waist, as if it were a gimme. “Look at you.”

“But it’s true,” he said. “You were the first.” Then, impulsively, he added, “Give me your email address.” I didn’t ask why. When a handsome man asks for your email, you give him your email. “Thank you,” he said, tucking the slip of paper in his pocket. He flashed a winning smile and then vanished into the crowd.

When I got back to the hotel room much later I found he’d emailed me quite a long and surprisingly literate message in which he confessed that he was attracted to me and outlined in great detail exactly why I should return to the Hilton that evening and, essentially, bang his brains out. Accompanying the missive were quite a few revealing photos that he hoped might appeal to me. Well, what can I say. I was feeling charitable. I sent a few photos of my own back, and agreed to meet. When he emailed me back with his phone number, he added, Please wear all your leather!

I don’t have any leather, I wrote back. Is that okay? Does it change your mind?

That is fine, he said. Come as you are.

As I were was simply a pair of jeans, the white Chucks on my feet, and the yellow and grey T-shirt that had matched the leather blindfold I’d declined earlier. And when I walked into the Hilton’s lobby to wait for my friend, after I’d called him from outside, I looked like a fucking freak.

First of all, the lobby was packed. Every leatherman staying in the joint was packed into the rococo rooms in front of the elevator. Not a single man wasn’t bare-chested, harnessed, and boot-blacked into perfection. And there I was, trying to look casual and confident, but feeling like the only gay in the village wandering into a Westboro Baptist Church tent revival and hoping that no one would notice. It was fruitless. Guys wove around me and avoided me as if I carried a cup and sign reading, I have leprosy, please help.

After what seemed like an eternity, my friend Bruno finally showed up. And Jesus Christ, but he was decked out. He wore the leather-studded cap, the eyepatch, the studded collar, the complex harness, the vest, the studded jockstrap, the chaps, the boots. Upon spying me, he couldn’t simply discreetly motion for me to follow. Oh no. He had to roar, at the top of his considerable lungs, “ROB!” and then lunge at me. I’m probably imagining things, but when he did, it seemed to me as if the entire lobby went silent and stared.

“Hi,” I said, rather mildly.

“Let me take you for a drink,” he said, his arm around my butt.

“Okay,” I agreed.

He stuck his hand down the back of his chaps. “Crap,” he muttered. “I forgot my wallet.”

“It was the one too many pieces of leather to keep track of, huh?” I said. “I can buy you a drink.”

“No, no,” he said. “Come with me to the room and we’ll get it and then come back down.” Through the lobby he steered me as man after man stared at him with envy, and at me as if I were the ugly drag queen that the cutest Jonas Brother had suddenly started dating.

I had a sneaking suspicion that once we were in his room, we wouldn’t be going back down. I was right. The moment we were up there, he was pushing me down to the bed so that I could be at face level with him. He kissed beautifully. Because of his height, the leather-to-weight ratio of his body seemed awfully high and he was very heavy on me, but I didn’t object. “I need you to make love to me,” he said.

“Where are you from, anyway?” I asked, curious at his accent again. He told me he was Brazilian, and then rattled off a long sentence in Portuguese. “What was that?”

“I said that you are a beautiful man and that tonight you are going to strip me naked and use me as you will, that you are going to turn me into your little bitch and that when you enter me with your mighty member, I will whimper and become totally yours.”

I debated it briefly. “Well, okay.”

I yanked off my pants and let him suck me for a while in his full leather regalia. Every now and again he would lean back and show off for me, flexing his arms or holding his hands over his head and stretching to display his hairy chest. Gradually we got his clothes off—not easy with all the fastens and snaps and buckles, and the darkness—and got his ass into the air. I buried my face between his cheeks and sure enough, he began to whimper. And buck. And beg. “Are you ready?” I asked, a few minutes later.

“Yes,” he said, squirming. “Fuck me. Please, please fuck me.” I got myself ready and began working myself in. He clutched the pillows and yelled, “Yes! Yes! Do it! Make me yours!” Just when I reached the base, he wriggled off and declared, “Okay. That’s enough.”

“What?” I almost yelped. My head spun.

“I need a rest,” he said, panting. So I gave him a rest. For twenty-five minutes we just talked. Or rather, he talked about his job and I listened, while we cuddled and I rubbed his back. It was nice, but I was soft when he suddenly grabbed my dick and announced, “Now you fuck me again. Fuck me right.”

“Let’s do it,” I agreed, hardening instantly.

Again it was the same routine. I entered him slowly while he shook and shuddered and begged for it. The moment I was all the way in, he leapt off again, and followed it with another half-hour of talking. When he was ready to go again, I felt I had to be firm. “Listen,” I said. “This time, we’re fucking longer than fifteen seconds.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “But you are so big!”

“Well, you knew that when you invited me over,” I griped.

“You will have pleasure this time,” he promised. “So much pleasure.”

I flipped him onto his knees, reapplied the lube, and slid inside. He seemed easier to get into, the third time. “Yes!” he yelled. “You feel so good! I am all yours! I am your little bitch! I am taking your big cock inside me! I am coming! I am coming!”

“What?” I asked, startled.

The little Brazilian thrashed and jerked, spewing ropes of semen across his bedspread. My dick popped out of his hole as he fell full-faced into the pillows. After a moment in which all the blood seemed to drain from my head into my still-throbbing dick, he popped up again. “That was fun!” he announced. “You can clean up in the bathroom.”

I grabbed my T-shirt and stomped off in the direction he indicated, silently thinking evil things about leathermen and their perverted notions of sex. “Maybe we can do this again tomorrow!” he chirped, while I got dressed.

“Maybe,” I grumbled, thinking, Never.

Bruno text messaged me all that weekend, but I politely declined the opportunity to see him again, even though he attempted to sway me by saying he had a really special leather outfit he wanted me to see him in. I told him that I was out with friends, the following night, and couldn’t get back to his hotel.

Not all the dress-up in the world can disguise the fact that when sex is bad, it’s really bad. Not even the cutest accent in the world can compensate.

If there are men out there into leather who'd like to make me change my mind, though, I'm all ears.