Atlanta you owe me nothing.

From the website of South East Leather Fest:

SouthEast LeatherFest (SELF) is the home where all people–kinksters and leather people, primals and littles, puppies and Masters, bootblacks, and LGBTQIA+ — gather to celebrate our lives as sex positive individuals. We teach, we learn, and we grow. We play, we meet, and we party. We love, we laugh, and we create community. We have tons of class tracks, 2 nights of contests/shows, parties, meetups, socials, and play parties. We are the home of the Southeast Master/slave, Southeast Bootblack, Southeast Person of Leather, Mr. SELF, Ms. SELF, and SELF boy titles. We make the space for you to be you.
We celebrate difference and individuality. We are a mixology of all sexual orientations, physical abilities, nationalities, ethnicities, races, gender identities, sexual identities, community affiliations, classes, personal beliefs religious or political, and/or spiritual expression(s).  Participate in growth, workshops, socials, community building, advocacy, queer culture and the affirming spirit of SELF for all attendees!! 

The theme of 2023 was EVOLVE and golly gee it resonated with this point in my life journey. I’d heard of it of course. There are many events I’ve heard of and never pictured myself attending. Remember this is the same girl who scoffed at the word slave and insisted I would NEVER attend MsC.

I’ve traveled far in my 20+ years and gratitude to the Universe I still have strength in these lifestyle legs and open road in front of me.

The girl who stood open mouthed in the doorway of the Black Phoenix in Kensington could not have done what I did last weekend. Thankfully she was not required to figure it out.

That girl was just trying to figure out how to get her ass beat until The Man came to his senses and did right by her. Leather was the fancy outfits in her closet and the too tall heels she loved to wear. It was stuffy and well White..she had not yet experienced Black BEAT.

She never imagined the huge biker with the odd beard would become one of her friends and lovers. Doggie the physical never quite matched the chosen role. It was one of her first exposures to don’t judge the BDSM book by the cover. She didn’t know when she agreed to try hypnosis with the HypnoGuru that 20+ years later she’d be in the middle of certification. It didn’t “work” on her. She never realized the man in the white patent loafers she would meet at Survivor Saturday could make her twerk on demand by way of hypnosis. Shit she didn’t realize there would be a first Weekend Reunion for it to happen at – the twerking – or that WR would make history.

She didn’t meet the other 3 who made the Philly Four Horsemen, and could not predict that the one she was closest to then would be a Facebook associate 2 decades later. The other female member, you know the one she didn’t like as much would open her home to her in one of her darkest life moments. She didn’t realize she would flee that same home later wondering if that friendship was over for good. It evolved but it didn’t disintegrate.

She had not yet met her spoon, or the toaster oven. She could not imagine the woman who lived in Iowa existed and that evil was feminine in presentation with a big butt and a smile.

She was flailing about without center and didn’t know Daimoku was transformative.

She didn’t know that there would be a lifetime – on site – grudge and feud with a wanna be pimp in DC, or that her never wavering refusal to capitulate to his coonery and buffonery would be watched. It would be rewarded and applauded. Who am I she would have asked and I don’t have the words even today to tell her who she will be since on that occasion I ask that question of myself.

A presenter? Da Fuck?

Sure teaching was in her blood, but was it in her destiny? Turns out the answer was yes…who knew?

Who would listen to what she had to say she might ask…that I can answer: her ever growing family of nieces and nephews. The Ratchet Auntie is a thing, and it’s not just the kids from Philly who see it. People she’d met for the first time at SELF started calling her Auntie and this time she had the words of the Goddess in her ears as she accepted the moniker and didn’t fight back.

She didn’t know there was a Goddess who would approach her in her leopard catsuit and call her beautiful. Had she known that would happen I am mostly sure she was agree that the next thing to do was just follow her around and be awkward and goofy and forget how to speak around her. I mean how else do you tell someone you like them…that’s how you do it right? Please clap.

Before that doorway moment she could not picture herself living in Northern California. That was a daydream once imagined with The Man. Too much had happened, too much damaged, too much lost for her to wake up in the sunshine. Besides Southern California was warmer!!

She’d meet the catalyst for that move weeks later and would not know who he was then kind of like I don’t know who he is now.

700sqft of her was not something she would imagine, she was still living in the prison of Limekiln for the commitment she’d made to her family. I could tell her that there are still days she longs for that family – painful days.

I would run out of words eventually and she might ask me what will I become?

I’d find just a few more to say this:

You are then just as you are now – magnificent. I would warn her about how awful 2014 and 2015 will feel. I won’t tell her why because then she won’t do it.

She needs to though because without each and every second until the truck was loaded she is not me.

I get to live in the sun, after thinking it might never rise again. I get to babysit 4 legged step kids and on the 3rd Saturday of most months I get to be a part of Black BDSM history. That is different than the history I participated in last weekend, but no less monumental for reasons. I always knew I would be a published writer. I just did not know it would first be a byline with the pen name given to her, or that my first would be a self published handbook.

As we – that star struck wide eye girl and I run out of words we might look up and out at the open road to the horizon ahead. The figure far in the distance could be future us, waiting for our arrival with the stories of what we do from this moment here.

She will tell us that SELF was a game changer and we would not argue. well maybe it is us after all.