Leather Thoughts: The Choice

Tonight, I ended up going to the Melbourne Leather Dinner at the Glasshouse, and the speaker at the event talked a bit about being a Leatherboy and what it meant to him.

You've probably noticed on this blog that I don't talk about Leather terribly much. I guess that a lot of that boils down to my identity as a Boy being far more pronounced than my identity as Leather. But I have thoughts that are worth sharing after this dinner, and I have a perfectly good blog here, so why not?

The speaker, Paulus, spoke a little about choosing Leather, and a couple of people made the comment that the decision to become a Leatherperson was one that was almost natural - that really, they were Leather before they knew what Leather really was, and that deciding on becoming part of the Leather Scene was just finding the glove that fit the hand, so to speak. I've felt that for many of my identities (my identity as Boy being chief among them), but I don't think that this holds for being a Leatherboy for me.

For me, the choice wasn't obvious, it wasn't natural. It was a clear and deliberate choice, absolutely, but it wasn't as simple as saying "Yes! This is who I am!" The HILT principles are something that I aspire to, but I don't claim to be good at them (I've talked about my Trust issues previously on this blog). To me, making the choice to be a Leatherboy, in service to my Daddy, was a choice made to become something that I didn't feel I was, just yet.

To me, it sorta feels like I'm wearing a glove that's a few sizes too big, hoping that one day, I'll grow enough for that glove to feel like it's the right size. But honestly, I don't feel I'm there yet. I want to use the principles of Leather to become a better person, someone who is worthy of the mantle of Leatherboy. In a sense, I kinda feel like I'm a pretender to the title, hoping that if I work at it enough, I'll have proven my worth.

I dunno, maybe this is what other people feel as well. But I'm not running into the community as someone who's "found their match", I'm hoping that by becoming part of the community, it will make me into a better person, and I thought it worth putting that perspective out there.