pat califa, from public sex: the culture of radical sex, 1984, 2000
Oh, well. Despite the experts, seeing, smelling, or handling leather makes me cream. Every morning before I go out the door, I make a ritual of putting on my leather jacket. The weight of it settling on my shoulders is reassuring. Once I zip it, turn up the collar, and cram my hands into the pockets, the jacket is my armor. It also puts me in danger by alerting the curious and the angry to my presence when I wear it on the street.
I get all kinds of reactions. Voyeurs drool. Queer-baiting kids shout or throw bottles from their cars. Well-dressed hets, secure in their privilege, give me the condescending smile of the genital dilettante. Some gay men are amused when they see me coming. They take me for a fag hag, a mascot dressed up to avoid embarrassing my macho friends. Others are resentful. Leather is their province, and a cunt is not entitled to wear the insignia of a sadomasochist. They avoid my shadow. I might be menstruating and make their spears go dull. When I visit a dyke bar, the patrons take me for a member of that nearly extinct species, the butch. Femmes under this misapprehension position themselves within my reach, signaling their availability but not bothering to actively pursue me. They seem to expect me to do everything a man would except knock them up. Given the fact that I prefer someone to come crawling and begging for my attention and work pretty damned hard before she gets it, this strikes me as very funny. In women’s groups, the political clones and the Dworkinites see my studded belt and withdraw. I am obviously a sex pervert, and good real true lesbians are not sex perverts. They are high priestesses of feminism, conjuring up the wimmin’s revolution. As I understand it, after the wimmin’s revolution sex will consist of wimmin holding hands, taking off their shirts, and dancing in a circle. Then we will all fall asleep at exactly the same moment. If we didn’t all fall asleep, something else might happen—something male-identified, objectifying, pornographic, noisy, and undignified. Something like an orgasm.
This is why they say leather is expensive. When I wear it, disdain, amusement, and the threat of violence follow me from my door to my destination and home again. Is it worth it? Can the sex be that good?
