This past weekend was a delightful one of vending at the local kink festival. This particular one has only been going for a year, and my little shop was present at the first as well. It’s growing like a weed, and I cannot express how delicious it is to be surrounded by people imbued with love. For that is what Leather is. Love. So many mistranslate us. They see our people walking about in dark leathers, floggers or canes at their hips, boots and belts and harnesses. See us with people on leashes (consented of course), or cracking a whip on their skin until they bleed, see our severe haircuts and expressions, see our gloves and our shine and the way we carry ourselves, and assume the worst. There are extremes expressed between one another with just a glance or a carefully placed hanky, a blooming of bruises barely glimpsed as we move.

I remember very clearly when I was growing up and we’d take a rare trip to the cities about an hour away to go shopping for new dresses for a JW convention, how my mother would try to “protect” us. For in the city were so many beautiful people who didn’t limit themselves the way most did in my small cow town. The “extremes” that pushed boundaries and made my mother gasp or avert her eyes always made me look even closer. For I didn’t know it then, but I’d recognized in some people what I felt inside myself. Mom would scoff at me when I’d go for shock value with a few quipped words or actions. I wasn’t allowed to express it in how I presented myself but I FELT it oh so deeply. I didn’t even know how to express it. This time in the city we were waiting in line to check out with the dresses and shoes and hose and such we were required to wear as women in the JW congregation. Ahead of us in line was this statuesque Amazonian woman who I couldn’t break my eyes from. Mom stepped between us. She fussed something about how that person was disgusting and likely diseased, a man in a dress. My heart leapt as I looked more deeply at this gorgeous human before us, trying to recognize anything male about her. I didn’t see it, all I could feel from her was an emanating strength and power, a femininity I’d rarely seen before, even surrounded by women from our congregation. For we were expected to diminish, to fold into ourselves, to allow men to lead, to be a “compliment” to our male companions and never to outshine them. This woman in front of me, as she most certainly had nothing male about her in my eyes, was radiating in her possession of her own body, how she dressed and held herself. If this was a “disgusting and likely diseased” person, I saw nothing wrong with her. She was everything I’d been taught to be, and more. Many things I knew I’d never even gotten close to approaching. Still haven’t.

I devoured movies with that element of pride in oneself and a taste of the “other” gender. Orlando with Tilda Swinton. Labyrinth with David Bowie. Anything where they’d push outside the expectations of the assumed gender they presented. When I found the Marquis de Sade as a preteen I read everything of his I could get my hands on. My mind was awhirl with this whole entire world that was denied me. And I was absolutely sure that there would never be any way I could move from the black and white right and wrong world to one much more colorful. That sort of thing didn’t really happen, right? Only in movies and books and in glances at others waiting in line to check out in cities. Never in the world I inhabited. And as much as I could feel I was in color, not black and white, I denied it. I kept in my little chosen cage and stayed in my closet, and never let myself out to breathe.

Now almost 13 years since I abandoned those shackles I’m deeper into a world that is unfortunately denied to most. And yet…I can’t live in it 24/7, as the “normies”, “muggles”, “vanillas” dominate our puritan-based country. And they’re trying to drag us back into an existence that is only black and white as we scream and grasp at our colors, unwilling to cage them up again.

So when I get a chance to embrace and live in a world that I chose, that I belong in, it’s a shock to be thrust back into the mundane. My weekend was full of happy pups and their Handlers, queer humans full of affection and love in a protected environment where they didn’t have to hide holding hands with their lovers. A hangover of momentous proportions afterwards causes drop that no ‘nilla could ever truly comprehend. No hangover from alcohol, as I’ve been sober now almost five years. But one of allowing my heart to swell and be fully itself and accepted and loved in every dark demented way it twists.

To be loved BECAUSE of who I am, not in spite of who I am. “Hate the sin, love the sinner” was a binding chain that kept me in line for far too long. I don’t want to be loved only for parts and bits that are chosen by people who don’t realize they live in a cage. I need to be loved for who I am, every last little molecule finally fully myself. Everyone deserves that.

After events while navigating the drop that’s inevitable I enjoy going to places alone where I can sit back and watch others. Luxuriating in bright sunshine with a coffee I find a spot where I’m not easily visible to passers-by. I don’t want to be looked at in a world that doesn’t accept me. But I do like to watch people who have no clue that my universe actually exists outside of books and media. It’s liberating in so many ways, all the tangled synapses that have been allowed to branch and reach for the color in my world, they stand back in awe at how big that world truly is. It’s a tangible reminder of where I came from, the mundane worries, the small travails, how big they seem in such a small universe. I remember how massively legion I was inside my own mind, capable of great things, terrible things at times, but great things nonetheless. My energy spills out into a little protective oasis of my own, sitting in the warmth of the sun, blooming in a vacant garden.

How I pity them. From time to time my heart leaps in recognition of someone like myself, but for the most part it’s a study of a world I rejected. One that rejected me first, over and over again for the entirety of my life. Still I ache inside seeing “normies” who very obviously are like I was. Lost and searching, whether they know it or not.

If they could but taste this world, and not feel they have to hide how they thrill at the flavor, how different existence could be.