Stepdown Speech for Washington State Mr. Leather 2015

My stepdown as Washington State Mr. Leather 2015was on Saturday March 19, 2016.  Thanks to Hobbit, I have a video of my stepdown speech, which I’ve trimmed and will attached to this post.

Here is my Thank You letter from the contest program:

This last year has been a lot of fun — as it should be!

As I told the judges in my contest interview in 2015, a major personal reason for me to run for Washington State Mr. Leather again — last year was not my first title contest, nor the first time for Washington State — was that having a title sets goals, requirements, and deadlines in front of you, and for myself, that forces me to focus and be my best the entire year. 

I will save the meaty items for my on-stage comments and limit this letter to my thank you list.  And if I forgot to list you, I promise, it’s only because I forgot, not because I am not thankful. 

To the WSMLO board, for your support during the year.  And the boards of Seattle Men in Leather and Rain Country Dance Association, beyond your support as clubs and as individuals, for letting me utilize your pull for my events, and for pulling me in to do events for you. 

To my clubs and club brothers (and sisters): Seattle Men in Leather, Vancouver Men in Leather, Alameda County Leather Corps, Rainy City Rubbermen, and Seattle Pups & Handlers, plus the support of Seattle girls of Leather and Flaggers PDX.  To Rusty and Kent, for style.  To Norm, for being a sounding board.  To Gylan and Phil, for when I tried to reach too far.  To my IML 38 brothers.  To Odie, for having the foresight to arrange for our first WSMLO fundraiser last year.  And to all my Menagerie fisting bros — (insert clenched fist image here, just because!) — thanks for all the well lubed support.  And especially to Cole in Portland and Reid in Vancouver, and Bob from Rubberzone.com. 

And above all else, to my sash partners, Liliya and Beau.  You are beautiful.

By request from one of my Facebook followers, here is a transcription of my speech.  (This is an edited transcription, fixing up some of the text to make it more coherent for reading.  The speech was followed by awarding a Leather Emerald Award, which I have omitted here.  That is why this seems truncated.)

Thank you all for being here tonight. 

I’m not going to give the litany of “thank you’s” — that’s all in my step-down letter in the program.  Instead, I want to give you a rundown of what I did this last year.  Many of you have followed me on Facebook, so you know that I went to Rubout; I went to International Ms. Leather; I went to FistFest twice, in different states; I went to IML; I went to Mid-Atlantic Leather; I went to Folsom Street Fair; I went to Oregon Leather.  I don’t know how many trips I took, but one of the key things I want to tell our incoming titleholders and any of you who think about doing this — the number of trips that I took this year that I took because of the title rather than because of my activity in the leather community is two: Folsom Street Fair and Richland Pride. 

A lot of people come into one of these titles thinking “Oh my god, there’s no way I can put out the effort and put in the extra work to go to all the events and do all the things!”  So I want to give our incoming titleholders and any of the rest of you a hint: it is easy if you are already deeply embedded in your local leather community.  If you are already in the habit of going to the socials, being involved in the organizations, supporting the existing titleholders, the Sisters, the Court, whatever it is… if you’re already doing all that stuff, it’s 10% more work, plus a couple of fundraisers.  Which is still a lot of work!  But it isn’t this humongous mountain to climb; it’s a hill.  If you are interested in being involved in the title community, be involved in the leather community.  It’s easier, and it will make you a whole lot happier. 

Beyond that, I got to do three workshops this year: one for Seattle girls of Leather, one for Seattle Men in Leather, and one for FlaggersPDX in Portland, and I’ll be doing two more for CLAW in Cleveland next month.  I hosted eight play parties this year — my travel fund is based on having people over to my place to have sex.  One of the things you will hear for the titleholders is “Your year is what you make of it” or “Your year is your own”.  That never gets explained to people, so let me explain it to you.  If your passion is traveling all over the country spreading Washington love, do that.  If you passion is teaching workshops, sharing your skills, do that.  If your passion is expanding the sexual community in the area, do that.  But for God’s sake, do something! 

One other piece of “explaining it all for you” is something that our incoming titleholders and everybody else hears a lot: “The title patch is a target” and “The leather community is full of politics”.  So here’s another secret: half of the politics is self-generated.  We make our own Hell.  Don’t send yourself to Hell, and you won’t suffer the politics.  If you don’t give them something to aim at, the target is not a patch… er, the patch is not a target.  Live your life as a titleholder, as a leathermen or leatherwoman, open and free and proud and all these things that you hear horror stories of probably will not happen.  Be bulletproof. 

I wanted to also share three pieces of advice that I have gained from people over the years: 

• From George Wong, who was one of the founders of Avatar in Los Angeles, rest his soul.  He told me at IML years ago: “Never tell them you’re tired.  Tell them you’re weary, because if you tell them you’re tired, they might agree with you.” 

• From previous year’s IMsL, Patty: “At the end of the day, you still have to take out the trash.” 

• The other piece comes from before the Internet was the Internet, back circa 1989 on one of the USENET newsgroups — and this is a humbling thing for all of our titleholders — “None of us here are more important than anyone else, some of us just have bigger mouths.” (And are willing to use them.)

 

Kinko’s Copies

Don’t get me wrong.  I love having a 24-hour copy shop available just about wherever I go.  Among other things, it lets me produce meeting agenda updates and the like on the night before a meeting, rather than doing them ahead of time, carting pounds of paper with me on the plane, and having them be out of date when used, to boot.  It lets me do what I want, when I want, how I want — the metaphor for the 90’s work ethic.

But the company doesn’t train their “Copy Consultants” worth a damn when it comes to dealing with self-service copies on anything but 8-1/2x11 paper.  You see, their counter keys record every pass of paper through the machine.  The keys don’t care if that is on cardstock, 11x17 paper, double-sided, and so forth, despite the fact that Kinko’s has different price structures for each of those.  As a result, the cashiers will read 109 ticks on the key and try to ring you up for 109 single copies.

Since double-sided copies are priced at a penny or two less than two single copies (often 7 cents per single, 13 cents per double), this can really add up when you are making 30 sets of six double-sided pages.  (That would be 12 sheets per set, 360 sheets total if done singly, or $25.20 plus tax; 180 sheets doubly is only $23.40.  A couple bucks at a shot!)

But as I said, the counter people are poorly trained to deal with this, and it’s even worse if you do a mixed run, some single and some double.  A recent job involved 271 ticks — 67 single sheets and 102 doubles (204 ticks) — which should have priced out at $17.95.  After the cashier gave me my receipt to charge me over $20 (271 singles, plus tax), I pointed out a second time (knowing it would be ignored the first time anyway) the list I had written of what copies I made.  Ten minutes or more later — and with several people in line behind me — he gave me a second receipt, this time for only about $13 (67 singles, 100 singles, and 2 doubles!).  So I took it and left.

Another recent event should have been about $3 and I was charged $4.  My insistence that he do the bill right so flustered the cashier that he gave me the job for free.  (Fine by me!)  And then there was the time in Ft. Lauderdale where they had to get two other people, including the manager, before they could get the bill entered correctly.

Usually the managers know what they are doing.  I recently got rung up by one of them with a very mixed bill: some 300 ticks, on two weights of paper, on two sizes of paper, some single and some double (all carefully enumerated by me, with the math checked twice).  She rang everything up, nice and quickly, but mistakenly rang up the 11x17 copies as 8-1/2x14.  (If the store goofs in my favor, I usually point it out to them if they haven’t already been screwing up, but in cases like this where the difference is about 8 cents, it’s not worth it to either of us.)

So the moral of the story is: if you’re doing anything more than single-sided copies, expect them to get it wrong, and to get it wrong in their favor.  (That is, the poor training actually brings in more money for the company.)  Keep track of exactly what you made, and fight for the extra dollar or so that they owe you.  And if you get them really flustered, you can come out way ahead.

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Updated on October 10, 2000

Updated December 11, 2009

A lot has changed with Kinko’s — now FedEx Office — since this piece was originally written.  No more counter keys, pretty much everything computerized.  My last job that they did was two PDF files brought in on a thumb drive, and the guy knew exactly how to produce a booklet from it, including assembling a proof for me on the spot.  Kudos.