Go Back
I first became part of the gay men’s Kink, Leather & Fetish community starting in July 1977. For years, it was wonderful.
When AIDS kicked in, in the early 1980's, the men in my life died. I was going to two or three funerals a week, for years. I stopped counting the deaths of loved ones at 140, because it hurt too much for me to deal with it any more.
When those men died, I saw their families arriving to kick out the boyfriend of the recently-deceased - He usually had no legal standing to claim the home (that he may have shared and paid-for, for thirty years). There were NO legal weddings or domestic partnerships back then. The relatives would change the locks, and empty out those men's home. A HUGE amount of our shared gay and kink-related history was thrown into the landfill, and lost forever.
I was furious. My anger caused me to start gathering everything that I could, for decades:
As far as I am concerned, I just wish that I could have gathered MORE. Due to erratic health, I am frantically trying to organize it in the simplest and easiest way, so that browsing is easier for anyone viewing this. It's not PRETTY (that is a low priority at the moment), but it works.