You can wear it if you like darling
A meditation on leather.
Sinéad Horan
My first leather jacket, the jacket that gets me compliments at the leather bar, the jacket that I wear in remembrance of Leslie Feinberg, the jacket I keep my best friend’s gift of sage in (or sometimes my grandma’s “25 years sober” AA coin), was purchased for me by my girlfriend’s ex-girlfriend.
But that’s not really my first leather jacket is it? It’s my first serious piece of leather since I learned what leather means to me and my community. But my father gave me one of his old motorcycle jackets when I was a teenager. Brown instead of black, and filled with heavy duty padding in the shoulders and elbows: making the jacket look huge, engulfing my scrawny teenage frame. I remember wearing that jacket when I was at the front lines of an anti-fascist rally in my home town. The neo-nazis were gathering and me and all my friends wanted a piece of them. One of the organizers saw me in my false shoulders and thick leather and told me they needed me at the front in case there was a fight. Thank god there wasn’t.
Leather in my life has come to mean a few different things. It is, of course, cow skin that has been treated and cut for use in garments and various other objects. But leather also refers to a specific community and history of kink. A history of renegade sexual communities that were not only outsiders as faggots (and later dykes) in a homophobic world but outsiders as “rough sex” freaks and perverts in an increasingly assimilationist homonationalist world. An enclave inside an enclave.
“Leatherdyke”, “leather bar”, “leathersex” are phrases where the word signifies more than a textile, referring to the rich cultural history of the material in my community. I also use “leather” as a standalone word to refer to a specific kink ethos. I have said before that “Leather has given me so much” and when negotiating my 24/7 submission contract with my partner I asked her “how much leather do you want in it”. She, of course, said “a lot”.
I grew up in a blue collar family on the verge of upward class mobility. My father has always worked various blue collar jobs, some of which required very high quality work boots. My father was also a motorcyclist. Not a “biker” as he sometimes corrected people, to distance himself from the unrefined and criminal associations of that word, but a motorcyclist. He rode professionally in off road race events as a young man, and his love of the sport put him much more in league subculturally with professional cyclists or perhaps another European racing sport like Rally. His equipment was leather, but not the rough renegade American biker style of black with silver accents, more often the trim and colorful European style of full coverage protective gear. Athletic, and expressive - often coming in brilliant 80’s greens, purples, or whites.
I would ride on the back of my dad’s bike from as far back as I can remember. I seem to remember him telling me that at one point when I was very small I actually fell asleep behind him listening to the all consuming noise of the V-stroke engine, and feeling the heat of combustion warming my legs as I held onto his belt and leaned into his warm, broad, leather-clad back.
Oddly enough, my proclivity for cigar smoking (a very old-fashioned fetish activity in the leather scene) also comes from my father. Riding his European bikes often concluded with a cigar in some far off picturesque location. My father was always obsessed with the aesthetic of masculinity - often to the point of camp. I wonder if he realizes he would have been flagging as a leather daddy all those years. He always modeled himself after 1980’s Schwarzenegger - including the signature steroids and cigar smoking. But now that I’m more in the know, I realize both Arnold and my father were serving something deeply homoerotic whether they knew it or not.
My childhood memories of riding on my dad’s bike are all deeply sensual. Staring forward at the leather he wore on his back. The smell of his old worn out leather gloves that he’d have me wear, so comically large and rough on my little hands. And the unfamiliar experience of physical touch between myself and him when he would instruct me to hold onto his body or belt. Physical touch was not a part of my relationship with my father, but it was unavoidable when the two of us were clinging onto a 1250cc motorcycle flying down the highway.
My father never really touched me, my father rarely touches anyone. It took me a long time to be comfortable touching other people - especially men. I can perform amateur diagnoses on my father, like how I suspect my autism comes from him (physical touch can be very hard for those of us on the spectrum). I also think my queerness comes from him, in one way or another. It took me coming out as a woman to actually begin engaging in meaningful touch with other humans without a great deal of anxiety.
There was an odd time in Ireland one day, I think perhaps the only memory I have of skin-to-skin contact between us, when we were riding the train. He fell asleep and I was playing with his claddagh, he wore his claddagh so tight and his hands were so sculpted by his work (mechanic work, among other manual labour occupations) that the place where his ring sat on his hand left a deep canal in the callouses adjacent to his leathery palm. As a ten year old I remember being concerned that his hand bore such a mark of wear, that a material object had so obviously changed his physical being. I don’t remember if I put his ring on myself or maybe put it in a pocket somewhere but I remember massaging his knuckle and finger where the mark was. Trying to soothe the callouses and muscles back into a smooth shape, not a visible depression where his ancestral ring cut into him. I seem to remember trying not to wake him so he wouldn’t pull away.
Years later he would give me that ring, when I was 16. Two hands holding a heart, topped with a crown (friendship, love, and loyalty, respectively). A gold ring that signifies our Irish heritage - that reminds us that we come from a place different than our home. That we are members of a diaspora. Irish diasporic culture has been so degraded and watered down by our participation in white supremacy and colonialism that these days the only real remaining markers that flag Irish ancestry are the claddagh and a drinking problem. Both things I carry at all times - along with my daily wear of black leather boots, a black leather belt, a carabiner on my belt loop, and a hanky sticking out of my back pocket - the original queer “flag”. These items form what I call my uniform.
I usually flag either black, red, or hunter green in my left back pocket. Indicating heavy SM top, fisting top, or Mommy dom respectively. Along with my black leather and my carabiner, these items are historical cultural markers that I flag with, just like my claddagh. They serve as a way to indicate my cruising preferences as well as my belonging to a certain subcultural group. Like the claddagh, they are material tokens of my identity inside white supremacist heteropatriarchal hegemony. They make me feel closer to my ancestors. They also just look cool.
The similarities between the centuries old tradition of the Irish claddagh and the decades old tradition of leather hanky code are comically similar. The claddagh is meant to be worn heart side out on the right ring-finger when single, or crown side out (guarding the heart) when dating. On the left ring-finger it can be worn heart side out when engaged, and crown side out (guarding the heart) when married. In my research, reading the old 70’s and 80’s leather guidebooks and pamphlets - hankies and keys could passively communicate as much (and more) information to those in the know as a claddagh ring. In some local leather scenes, keys worn in the front could indicate you were able to host an encounter, keys in the back would indicate you wanted to go home with someone. Left was top, right was bottom of course - as with hankies. Keys tucked into a pocket could indicate involvement in the scene but not immediate interest in cruising, while keys fully visible would indicate that you were on the prowl. These flagging practices vary widely from each local scene to the next with some consistencies across the country (and in some cases, the world). There are enough sartorial rules in the “Old Guard” (referring to the founders of the leather movement: gay leathermen in the 50’s through to the 80’s) philosophy that one scarcely has to make any decisions about their clothing beyond the brand of boots one wears. Indeed, since my deep dive into leather this past year I have begun wearing the leather uniform almost every day without fail. Unfortunately, since the Old Guard is essentially no more, my flagging is a lot more subtle around other queers than I would like - much like the claddagh, the flag becomes a meaningless style choice. I often see non-Irish folks wearing the claddagh just because it’s pretty, totally ignorant of the cultural significance. They always seem intrigued that I have a ring of the exact same design.
As a leatherdyke and a fisting top, I often have opportunity to use my hands for sex. If I’m fisting someone, I will sometimes leave my ring on - literally thrusting my father’s gift, my family heirloom, into the body of my bottom. My claddagh (the symbol of my cultural heritage, which draws a thin line of otherness between me and the more generic unmarked anglo-saxon cultural affiliation of hegemonic white colonizer) being squeezed by the pelvic muscles of my bottom. Often, the force exerted on my hand results in my ring digging into my neighbouring fingers, hurting me in the place I massaged my father’s hand all those years ago. Usually, before beginning the process of fisting, to avoid discomfort or abrasions, I’ll quickly remove my ring and hand it to my bottom. “Take care of this for me” - a gesture of intimacy, trust, and a signal of how far I want to push them. How far they can expect my hand to enter them.
If my hand is going to be inside you then I don’t necessarily mind handing you a small piece of my soul for a few minutes. You can wear it if you like darling. It’s safer for both of us that way.
As a professional motorcyclist, safety was my father’s constant consideration. He would perform the same lecture frequently throughout my childhood whenever we’d see a “young buck” (as he called them) riding a “crotch rocket” (another favourite term of his) with a t-shirt and sneakers:
“The first thing the paramedics do when they come to pick up one of those idiots is gather up his sneakers from 100 feet back and put them neatly on the shoulder. If you see sneakers at a motorcycle crash you know that young buck is dead.”
He instilled such a distrust of running shoes in me that, to this day, without leather on my feet I feel underdressed.
At 18 my sister enlisted in the Canadian military, and got shipped off to basic training shortly after graduating highschool. They’d pay for her degree, and she was always a jock so it was an easy choice for her. My family had no money, but us kids knew we needed a college education - so rather than student loans she figured she would let the armed forces figure things out for her.
Upon her return from boot camp, I had endless questions for her. I began diligently folding my socks military style (each individual sock wrapped up in itself for maximum density) and I became fascinated with the process of polishing boots. My sister taught me that a boot is properly shined when you can see the lines between your teeth reflected back at you in the black leather. It must have been around this time I acquired my first pair of vintage combat boots. Steel toe, thick soled, rising up to the bulge of my calf, I loved those boots dearly. I liked to beat the shit out of the toe (it was steel after all) and then see how perfect I could polish it up again after a few weeks.
As a disillusioned young white man from a poor family, it wasn’t hard for me to find my way into punk spaces. I wore my leather boots, busted jeans, and a t-shirt. And eventually, when my sister brought home her military boyfriend - I even began cropping my hair military style like him. I had unknowingly recreated the skinhead look, and maintained it for years. I thought I looked scary and punk - which I liked, but eventually I started getting shit from older punks. Ultimately I decided I needed to change my hair and went with a more vintage greaser look. For the last years of highschool I carried a comb in my right back pocket - along with a small hanky to wipe the sweat off my forehead (since the grease was hydrophobic). Those hankies were always plain white - in the leather world, a white hankie in the right marks you as a virgin: “I’m new here, be gentle”.
When I transitioned from skinhead to greaser the aesthetic throughline was the boots. Heavy leather boots have been a constant in my life. When I outgrew those vintage combats I switched to ironworker boots (purchased for me by my tradesman father of course) which would lead to much slipping on the ice in my hometown. For a brief time I became fixated on finding the perfect pair of vintage black dress shoes, the kind that are beautifully made but not upper class - something like in the old movies. Once I got more seriously involved in theatre, starting in late highschool and then throughout theatre school and a few years of freelancing, I wore Blundstones religiously - a part of the defacto hipster indie theatre uniform. Leather boots with no laces, just two panels of stiff elastic at each side of the ankle - convenient for quick removal on your way into the studio. I wouldn’t be caught dead in a laceless pair of boots now.
It wasn’t until I quit theatre and came out as non-binary that I finally returned to proper lace-up calf-length leather boots. I got a pair of docs hand-me-down from my one and only gay friend and I wore those things into the ground. A few years later when I met my now ex-husband I found an oversized, nearly-destroyed black biker jacket at a vintage store. I wore it on our second date to impress him.
That totally busted leather jacket came with me when I moved to the Bay with him. But once I arrived, I decided I was a high femme tranny like all the girls at the club (and on instagram) so I stopped wearing it. Opting for faux-fur and brightly coloured shawls instead. I ended up giving that jacket to a drag freak in the Soma scene and it subsequently made many appearances on stage across the city.
I had been playing boy/girl with my husband for years as we both transitioned. My femininity could validate his newfound masculinity, and vice-versa. Ultimately our little game of playing house came to its logical conclusion when he became enraged with jealousy about my new friends after I started grad school and punished me by driving his fist into my temple as hard as he could as many times as he could. I went to my wedding with bruises in my hairline. We’d been married already for legal reasons, and I couldn’t leave him because then I’d get deported. And besides, our families were coming and his parents had already paid for everything. I wore white patent leather pumps (Pleasers, if you’re in the know) for the ceremony and by the time we said “I do” my feet hurt so bad I forgot all about my head. I drank so much that night I blacked out.
Of course, it took until my divorce to realize I was, indeed, a butch dyke. In the aftermath of my divorce I entirely remade myself, my husband had destroyed my sense of self and I was building a new identity from the ground up. I met some other dykes who were just as fucked up as I was, and just as perverted. They were leatherdykes. I fell madly in love with one of them. And one day while wandering around Oakland, far from the locales of my abusive marriage, I stepped into a vintage shop and found the perfect leatherdyke jacket, just like the one Leslie Feinberg talks about in Stone Butch Blues. It fit exactly right, I looked so hot. I had $12 in my account. My girlfriend’s ex-girlfriend (who, in classic dyke fashion, is one of our dear friends) told me later that day “if you go back again and they still have it, I’ll buy it for you. It’s too good”.
When I returned a few days later, it was waiting for me. Black, leather, sexy, and perfect.