Before reading this, I would like to encourage people who don’t know me to visit my Bio first.
Indonesian often says if you don’t know the person, you don’t care about them.
With all due respect, please do not pay any care of my articles before knowing more about me first 😀
In the previous article here,
I did talk a lot about identity. How identity is so important for queers. As one has physical age, a queer age is a whole different thing. A queer age probably can be defined as the age when one starts to realize they’re one. And depending on their queer age, they will have to figure out their identity and where they do truly belong.
Of course, someone that has a queer age over 30 years might suddenly flip. That can always happen. Folks that have more intersections probably need more time to figure out things. Their socioeconomic and geographic are also definite dependencies on the queer journey.
For myself, I think I did consider myself as ‘probably bisexual’ around my eighteens when I was wondering why I liked watching male porn? I was obviously still in complete denial. The Dragon boy can’t be gay! He needs to succeed in the family. I was undeniably homophobic back then.
Things took a hard turn in late 2012 when a family drama happened, and I just felt that “Perhaps Mother is not always right.” So I started exploring the kink community, straight one, of course. I then found myself in my first dating scene with a big cock African American dude. It was my first kidnapping scene where he kidnapped me, tied me down and broke my virginity by fucking my tight ass for the first time. Well, “Mother might be wrong in many things.”
I was still in denial after that. Then I thought ‘I must be a bisexual’. I gotta be, the Dragon boy eventually needs to secure a wife. As I explored more, I found more myself that I’m more comfortable in male spaces. In the first 15 Association parties I attended, I found my husband.
I started dating him with the declaration that he is going to be just a ‘friend’ that would help me navigate the leather scene safely. He agreed. During this time, I played a lot like a slut. While I enjoyed the relationship I had with my Greg, I was still in denial of my identity.
I can’t be gay, can I? And even if I’m gay, there must be a younger more sexy dude that can be my boyfriend. Yes, I’m always more attracted to people’s intelligence instead of their physical looks. But there must gotta be some cute young handsome dude that can be my boyfriend.
I attended many meetings, and many plays, all by myself. Yet, I didn’t get anyone close. I thought there was an Asian friend that was interested in me, but he never pull anything out.
Then 2 years later, I lost my job.
As mentioned in my previous article, I lost my job due to racial harassment. Someone at work were pulling a relation between my identity as a Chinese Indonesian with communism. Not realizing that my ancestor was leaving China to escape from it. Then it came the illustration with a Chinese caricature with message ‘bloody Chinese’ on it. I reported that to HR and not long after I was fired from my job.
That was the most traumatic moment in my life. As never in my life before, I received treatment because of my race. The 1998 Riot in Indonesia did happen but I wasn’t personally affected. Also, it was a riot against Chinese Indonesian who was assumed to be of higher privilege than the native Indonesian.
At the time, I was on an H1B visa and that means I have to go back. To further the insult, HR told me that I have to immediately return as they will not provide a grace period for me.
And so, facing the reality that me and my boyfriend had to break apart, he proposed to me. I was trying to grasp the reality with these options: Option A. Return to Indonesia. Live the rest of my life in the closet, and try to see if I could revive my Mom’s crumbling printing business. Option B. Let someone who is twice older than me marry me, and figure out the rest of my life with a ruined career (Yes, I’m repeating this again from previous article).
I picked option B. And with that, my denial of my orientation has gone to the Nile river. Yes, I’m a complete gay slut.
Being married to a guy that’s much older than me definitely got the pro and the cons. Pro, I valued his ‘thousand years of queer’ wisdom a lot. Cons….I definitely had to think about this for a moment… I suppose he is not as handsome as young folks are. I imagine even young people still can fart really bad, they can snore really bad, depending their job, might impose curfew on me too. Another pro, despite his constant cursing, he is pretty stable non drama person. You all know how much drama a young gay men tends to have.
Even after we got married, I still have thought from time to time, that maybe there will a younger guy who can be a better partner. But over and over, that thought got dumped over how Greg is a much better person than any. I still went to plays and gatherings where I could find younger people years after that, but I always end up with negative experiences.
A Cult
Young people tend to create a cult, or in the more correct definition, a sphere of influence or followers. The bottoms would surround the tops. All the socials and behaviors can be fake. Their penis tends to talk more than their heart. They need to be seen as a good person by others. Inside, they might be a racist person, they might be homophobic, or they might be transphobic. They tend to be really good with pronouns, or showing solitary towards POC. All of those tends to be on the surface however. When their sex target shows up, all of those went down to the curb. I had to go through many experiences when as an Asian, I had to sit in the corner, observing white cis-man are having orgy towards each other, ignoring me.
Meanwhile, older people. Older people tend to speak more from their hearts. They can be a really racist person or transphobic. But hey, they will be honest about it. They will blatantly say that they won’t have sex with Asians or blacks, and they will honestly declare that they have difficulties with pronouns. We will know they are racist, we will know when they are discriminative, we will know if they are transphobic. They know it and they will deal with it.
The 15 Association
Fast forward, as you can read in the rest of my previous article, I end up in the brotherhood of the 15 Association. Before the time of Eric See, the 15 Association wasn’t known for good things. They seem to have that elitist feeling. Me and Greg had scenes at the 15 parties where our scene was disrupted by an ex-fraternal that thought our scene was not safe.
We went to play parties once in a while when we want to play in a dungeon, but I think my relationship with the 15 changed a lot when I went to their first Bootcamp.
I played a lot, and I had really great scenes there. From there I found out that there are many like-minded people outside of San Francisco. I found my sacred ground. I found Delta Brotherhood from Billy Lane who led a kidnapping scene I had at Bootcamp. I found myself loved there. Compared with the younger Gear Up Weekend group, I found myself that I don’t need to compete for top, and my kinks align more.
My involvement with the 15 increased dramatically since that. At the Bootcamp after, I got my pig of the run award. And not long after that, I became the youngest fraternal member.
My involvement as a fraternal member of the 15 is definitely not an easy thing. The easy parts? Volunteering and doing actual work to make things happen. The hard parts? Dealing with human.
In San Francisco, the 15 is known pejoratively as the ‘old whipping club’. Well,, many of our members definitely do whipping and we have a lot of older members. However, that term is pejorative as it is an ageist thing. People see that it’s mostly consist of older white cis-men doing whipping, an action that white cis-men did in the past towards black slave.
There are a lot of assumptions within the younger gay community, probably popularized by the “OK Boomer” movement. I was once talking about a transphobic event that came out from IML to someone in younger spectrum that’s not deeply involved with leather community. The respond was “Ah,,, it’s the older people thing huh?”.
You see, this “Boomer generation” that a lot of younger people assume is not that monolithic. Many of the issues that we faced in the presents are already happenings since in the 70s and the 80s. Many of them have been fighting towards a better resolutions for that. Yes, some of those issues might not completely in a good terms yet. But they have been fighting for it, and it is our job to take the baton and fight for what’s right.
In terms of the whipping thing, the slave and the master. Yes, they are not politically correct. But kink is never politically correct. They are a taboo play, they’re sexy because they are otherwise would be forbidden. They are a political act in order to reclaim of what would be a traumatic negative event, into a positive experience where consenting adults enjoy and love.
However, in this world, cover of books, especially for younger audience, is more important, than what’s inside the book.
Well,,, at this point. I guess I have pointed out what I dislike about the young leather community. As much as I want to be among them, there’s this rift that divides me from them. Ironically, the way I get along with younger people is only when I’m in the digital world.
Back when we are talking about cult. Cult is something that is pretty common within the Queer community. Queer people tend to group together with like minded folks to create this concept of ‘safe space’. Something that can be ironic given that the Queer community is supposed to be inclusive, at the same time it can be exclusive. I think that’s fine and it is what it is. Often it’s the painful part of everyone to navigate the community.
Within gay community, the concept of polyamory and open sex opens up this possibility further. Usually we can see a group of bottoms gathering to a certain top. Or a group of switches.
The 15, was a fraternal brotherhood originally was created just for a close brotherhood of ‘elite corps.’ Membership was limited to only 15 people. So in a sense, it was a cult. However, later on, it expanded to allow associates to join in. It was said that back in the day that joining required you to sign the application with your blood. Obviously not anymore.
Peter Fiske’s “My Leather Journey” explained more in-depth the history of the 15 Association as he was one of the first associates of the club. The club expanded only to almost find its demise during the 80’s AIDS Pandemic. He took the chair not only to keep the club alive but to turn it in a better direction.
As you can see, an organization that is not a cult is not about the founder or the chair anymore; it’s about the people inside it; it’s about the family or the brotherhood. The founder of 15, Alexis Sorel and David Lewis might not intend the 15 to be what it is today. We would never know that, but for a fact, it has become a brotherhood that many people love today. The Eagle was a club only for those who strictly wearing leather and boots, no longer that is the case today. In fact some Eagles have led to be the much more liberal definition of leather bar than all the others these days.
With about 150-200 members, The 15 can claim these days that we are the biggest BDSM club on the west coast. However, we also have realized that we are not much known, especially in the face of social media. Compared to the rest of the U.S, we are smaller than our brother’s club.
A porn influencer on social media probably has much more followers than us. It is really interesting that as a Fraternal member, I know the things that the other Fraternal members and associates did for the community.
Few of us were involved in the foundation of many other organizations that contributed to the vibrant leather culture in San Francisco and the world.
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