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Serving the Fetish World |
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John Birch (Unknown)
I: John how does it feel to be going into your third year of Leather publishing? J: Well considering I started this on the pool table at the AA Meat Market, that’s true, with a free bar handout, and now it’s $6.95 glossy, and distributed even in Europe now, I mean distributed, not just people who order it, unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable. I: Well, you’re to be congratulated! J: Actually, I just think, sometimes I just think people who will buy anything, you know I’m a Catholic, I never think that whatever happened is due to me. I’m guilty about it. I: What’s been your favorite thing about publishing? J: Not having to work for someone else. I: That’s a surprising answer. J: And I get to work in the nude, I love that! And you can ask Beau (sp?) She’ll hear me typing, and you can ask Beau because she’s seen me work, I don’t wear any clothes when I type anything, even the classified ads. She’ll hear me typing and I’ll stop. Not because I’m thinking, because I am, I’m jerking off. I’m jerking off to get ideas for my next few paragraphs, then type furiously again. That’s what I mean. There’s no better job in the world! You can be naked, jerk off, type and be paid for it! I: That’s true! J: It’s the American way! I: What have you disliked about the job? J: The personal attacks on me. Which I admit, I’ve invited by becoming public. I: Really? J: And I think it probably starts from my lack of willingness to submit to popular leather community standards. I: What would you say are “popular leather community standards”? J: Well, politically, it would be liberalism, and I’m I a capitalist so that’s out, so I’m at odds there, and then within the community itself, I see leather as a subset of master and slave relationships. Whereas the leather community sees itself as the overall umbrella for these things. I admit they’re much bigger than master and slaves, but I still think it’s a subset, that is was an off shoot of master and slaves historically, there wasn’t leather and then master and slaves. That’s on the chronological order of things. So I guess I see Master and slave as higher life form, yea. I really, it’s a very intense, almost impossible relationship to maintain. I: Isn’t the master/slave relationship really a minority group in the leather community? J: Well, it’s a minority group, but I’m just trying to point that the community’s roots come from masters and slaves. Not masters and slaves came from leather. But I totally agree with the minority group, sure. And it’s in a main, it’s a minority group that changes constantly because the relationships just don’t last. I: Why is that so? Why do you think? J: I tell ya, that is really tough, I think, you know, you’ve got such a disparity between the two that anything at all, I’ll give ya en idea of one: You got a hot scene going and the slave is on the masochistic side, they often are, as you probably know, maybe he’s getting a lot of discipline, and bondage, a lot of that stuff from his master, and it’s very hot for that slave, and that slave gets dependent upon it, the endorphin rush, the feeling of closeness by being controlled by this person, but then the top, the master, gets tired after a while, and, as you know, I’m you top a lot, and I’m sure you prefer bottom though, I can’t say you prefer the bottom, I prefer the bottom, and it gets to be a lot of work over time, and pretty soon you’re down to seeming less, well, seeming’s a bad word, well you’re down to these discipline sessions, you let the slave slip on things, the bathroom isn’t cleaned, you don’t do anything about it, and pretty soon that slave isn’t satisfied anymore. I’ve said, I’ve known, I’ve never known a slave to leave a master because he was beaten with a strap too much! But I’ve know plenty of slaves to leave a master because the master stopped doing it. I: What kind of reception has Metropolitan Slave gotten in the community. J: Well, frankly, if I had to depend on the community I’d be broke. Because a lot of them clearly don’t agree with it. My lack of emphasis, in a matter of fact my condemnation even of the principles of safe, sane and consensual, have raised a lot of ire. I: DO you really condemn those three tenants? J: The way they’re taught, yes. Because, they’re taught that safe, sane, and consensuality, are things the slave invokes. And inevitably, when that’s true the slave will use those three principles to control the top. And make the top his dildo. If the person you’ve gone home with, or you’re even exploring with, if he already isn’t safe, sane, and consensual, and I say consensual, I mean I wouldn’t drag someone out of a bar and tie him up, I mean once they agree to the scene, then they need to go from beginning to end. And if you’re with a maniac, no safe word in the world is going to help. And this might be time to throw in what I consider my, the best advice that I never followed. I: And what is the best advice that you never followed? J: If I guy says he’s strictly a top, run away! Run away immediately! He does not know what he’s doing, he will hurt you, it may not be deliberate, but you will be hurt. I: Why is that? J: Incompetence! They don’t know what it feels like. They have no idea. And so they will administer things to people based on what they’ve read, and I hope not something that they’ve read in Metropolitan Men’s Label (?) but if they did they’re gonna hurt the person. And I’ve been hurt more than once by bottoming to guy that claimed to be exclusively top. And every time the scene has been shit. I: So you think a top means bottom experiences to make them a better top? J: I think if you’d look around that you see a lot of tops were cute bottoms at one time. They’ve gotten older, they can’t get the dates the same way anymore, and a lot of them switch, I’m 41, I see myself, topping, was unthinkable to me just three or four years ago. Now it’s 90% of my business because I wouldn’t get any action at all if I didn’t. So, I mean I think, you know, that people progress many times, naturally from a bottom to a top. And if you look in the bars, or the classified ads, or anyplace else, you see that age is a big determining factor as to whether someone is a top or a bottom. It’s not exclusive, but I’m giving just a general rule. I: Tops being older, bottoms being younger? J: As a general rule. And certainly tops being not a pretty and bottoms. As a general rule, I mean, the bigger the gym buff the bigger the bottom right? Now that gets me in trouble, for saying things like that, because a lot of guys say well that isn’t true, that it’s not true that tops are older and not as pretty as bottoms, but if it’s not tell me where this is not true. I know that as I’m dealing with middle age that I’m dealing with being a top more and more, and I don’t even like it! But I do it. I: why do you publish Metropolitan Slave? Do you have a mission? J: Metropolitan Slave was created on a rainy Sunday morning. I was horny, and I had the program Microsoft Publisher, that I’d never used before. I wanted to do something. Just want to do something, didn’t know what. Nothing was going on the BBS, on the jerk offs do, I sat down, and I said I’ll play with this thing. And I was nude at the time because I was doing something on BBS, and I like to you know, jerk off to it, and this name, don’t know where it popped into my mind, I said wouldn’t it be fun to do like a magazine, it was kinda like Metropolitan Home, or something, I don’t know, and that’s how, so I sat down and I wrote this thing. And I got real horny doing it! I liked the feeling! So I thought Gee, I wonder if anyone would actually buy it, so I put a coupon, there was, and the reason there was a coupon in there was because there were these Microsoft wizards, there was a wizard to put a coupon in it. So I did that. And then I went to, then I was really scared, God, what am I gonna do with this thing, because it’s really bizarre, and I’m afraid to have it photocopied, but I said well, I’ll go to Kinko’s, you know, the one on Lincoln, because I was gonna go to the AA, that used to be my favorite time of the day, to go to AA on Sunday afternoon, and I went over there, and I dropped it off, and I said do you have a problem with that? And he said we don’t get paid to read, we get paid to photocopy. So I gave it to him, and about an hour later I went back, and the people at the AA were there, I spread it out on the pool table, and they helped me fold it, and I went around to the bars and passed it out. And that’s what, what made me do it was that I was horny on rainy Sunday morning, and had this program. There was no business plan! None! I: So, what makes you keep doing it then? J: It’s the most fun that I could possibly have. See, I’m over sexed. I mean I need, I can’t go to regular job, I can’t do it. I mean I spent 14 years in the army, and even then behind my desk I was thinking of sex all the time. I need a job where I can weave sex into it all the time. I think I am addicted! You know, one of those sexual addicts? I think I am. And it’s certainly a perversion because I would like to go home, if I go home with a guy and all he wants is vanilla sex, I won’t go home with him. If, but if, he said I’ll never have sex with you, but we can do S&M all you want, I’d go home with him. Matter of fact, if God came down and said John, because S&M to me is very sexy, that’s all I ever think of, that’s all I ever think about 24 hours a day, if he said you can have sex everyday or S&M once a week for the rest of your life you have to choose, I’d say S&M once a week, that’d be it. I: But it’s not an either/or situation is it? J: But certainly I will not, it’s not, it’s either/or in my own mind though. Because I would never go to the Ram. I can’t say I’ve never gone, I mean I’ve tried these things, they don’t do anything for me, so I would never be a…. if it’s not, that’s why I built the dungeon. Because no one had anything that suited my particular fantasies. And finally decided if I want this, I’ve got to go out and build what I want. Similar to what you got upstairs. I’m sure that’s what you did you said gee, if I’m gonna have it, what I want, I’m gonna have to build it. I: When you read Metropolitan Slave one gets the idea that your fantasies are somewhat outlandish. J: Oh yea, well, I definitely, I will admit to having fantasies, that if they were ever enacted in real life would kill people. They’d probably kill me first because normally when I write the story I’m the bottom in it. And that’s why I think of me, when I write the stories. And I think that’s caused some problems too for people, and I won’t mention the magazine, but we know which one, think that when they read my fiction that it’s a how-to guide for S&M. And I’ll tell anyone right now that’s ever read Metropolitan Slave that when you get to the fiction parts you better either just read it and stroke off an enjoy ‘em, or skip over ‘em because it’s not a how-to guide, it’s a how to get killed guide! It’s only a story. That’s all it is. It’s no more than when you read a James Bond book, that Ian Flemming is really able to do all those things, he just an author. And that just is his fantasies. That’s all it is. And those are, I agree, those are my fantasies. Pretty sick, but they’re mine. I: But obviously there are some things that aren’t fantasies aren’t there? J: My editorial. Although I think my editorial, if I’m not hard when I write it, that I don’t think it’s a correct editorial. I mean, I want people to think about it. I want them disagree. I: Well, a recent editorial talked about your organizing a system of matching masters with slaves. J: Glad you asked about that. Glad you asked. The following is a paid commercial announcement! This is the latest article on it, this is the latest issue of Leather Journal, I’ll give that to you, that’s what they wrote about it, you can look at that later, or you can look at it now. The question was matching masters and slaves. I: Yea. J: Ok, everyone talks about masters and slaves getting together and being a slave to someone else. You see it on the bulletin boards, on the computer bulletin boards, you see it on the classified ads, and maybe a little bit in the bars. Never Atlas, bunch of bullshit right? It’s a bunch of fantasy. So I thought well, you know, there’s got to be a few out there are real. And what it’s gonna take is someone to, who has a deep understanding of the master/slave dynamic, I decided that person is me. OK, I just decided that. And I had the forum to do it, it’s not just, you know, it’s not just, you know like, I know there’s people with more expertise than I, but you have to have a mechanism, a forum, and an opportunity, and I said you know, I’ve go the opportunity, and it’s not my idea, one of my readers called, a guy that I slave to, and he said John, this is what you ought to do. This is what I think. And I said you know Chuck, that is a good idea, and we’ll put the theory out there which theory says there are slaves who will give up everything for a master. And I said OK, what would the criteria be for that kind of a slave? Well, he’d have to be relocatable first. No family that’s tying him down, no job, all that kind of stuff. He’d also have to be willing to take all these fantasies about who his master is, and shove them aside. And accept whoever, not whoever is available, but essentially trust a broker to find someone as close as you’re gonna get. It may be a 20% match, I mean, for Heaven sakes, we all have our ideals, when I jerk off, I’m basically the Hun of writing, you know, when I jerk off it’s very Hun like. Although I’m anything but. What would he master have to be? The master would have to be financially secure, for one thing. He’d have to understand that this is a human being, that needs health care, that needs health insurance, that if he puts the slave to work, that 10%, would I threw that, that’s an arbitrary figure, would need to go into a trust account in case things should bottom out, but I’ll tell ya, (?) Well John, 10%, I mean that’s nothing, the master’s gonna get 90% of this person’s income, to what I countered, how much do you think those slaves are saving now? And every slave I’ve spoken to I said I bet that’s 10% more than you’re saving now. They all said, Yea, you know, it is. So what difference does it make if they give 90% of their money away, there’s still 10% ahead! And so I thought I get lots of master applications. That’s what I thought. And I thought I would get NO slave applications because I’d be exposing their fantasy for what it is. Just pure fantasy because rules are they don’t know who their master is. They come to me in Chicago, fully funded, transportation is paid for, their training is paid, the masters are paying for everything, and when I’m satisfied that they’re ready, they are turned over, in the nude, to their master. I thought no one’s gonna go along with this. Well, so far I’ve got about 6 master applications, all self employed, every last one of them, none of them in the community, not a one. I: I called! J: Sorry, you did call! I stand corrected. I: I didn’t send anything in writing. J: I stand corrected, but essentially they’re all, one in New York, one in Iowa, you know, all self made men. That’s the one thing that they have in common. And they all said, you know, they’re all willing to spend a buck, they’ve all said their slave will be a wage earner in their business. They didn’t have any problem with it. So, I’m going to be sending out the slave applications at the end of January, I’ve got about 8 slaves now, I expect maybe to have 10, or 12. I: Oh really? J: And then we’ll see, but the point is does this thing work? And I will tell you, if you come to my party on Friday night, I: Plan on it. J: You will find out whether it works or not, I’m placing the first slave, is being placed, he’s coming to me on tomorrow, at 10:30 at O’Hare, slave Robert from the cover of a magazine, and he’ll slave through the party because his new masters in California, want him to get a little training in public, because the people he’s going with John and Matt in LA, but if you do, he will be used as a public slave quite a bit because they’re very very high profile. And on Saturday morning he’s on his way to Southern California. And he’ll be flying out in ostensibly street clothes on the outside but with a rubber suit, which his masters sent for him to wear, on the inside. So if you come on Friday, you’ll be able to see, and I want you to speak to him, off to the side, I don’t want to know anything about what you two discuss. You take him aside and I won’t interrogate him after words, just have at it. And then you can see whether it’s working or not. I think it is, I’m surprised! At first I thought it wasn’t gonna work. But Now I’m starting to think maybe I was, I: Robert’s gone through your Metropolitan Correctional Center once already? J: Already, I: As I understand it. J: Already, already once, and he’s coming back, they just want him tuned up before he arrives, because John and Matt are very very heavy players. They’ve never hurt anyone, or anything else, but they, sorry, they always hurt, they’ve hurt plenty of people, but they’ve never harmed anyone. They’re very intense, very psychological, they make you believe that you’re going to die, all the fun stuff, but they’re harmless. At base they’re harmless. Trust me. I: You know them very well, it sounds. J: If I could, just to refresh your memory, did you read the story of my visit with Master Kurt? There was an issue where I got bull whipped, and electrified… I: Yea, yea yea… J: That’s them, that’s them, Master Kurt is a euphemism for John and Matt, they didn’t want to use their names, Id don’t know if they want to hurt, but I don’t know if they want to use their names. I: Well you know John, listening to you, you know, you don’t sound like a renegade. J: Well, I’m a capitalist. That’s the problem, I mean I think that’s part of the problem is that most of my readers are in the hinterlands, they don’t have access to this stuff, like in Chicago, so they don’t have any preconceived ideas about what leather is, in fact most of them think, gee I don’t like all these rules. And there’s a guy who comes on and says the rules are no rules. There aren’t any rules. It’s OK if you’re not a slave to wear a collar and a boner if you want, go ahead, you can even lock it if you want. Just go out there and do it your way, if you’re a slave don’t sit there on the wall. You get out there, an you get in those master’s faces in a polite way. And I tell them, ‘cause I get a lot of slaves that come to me for training, and they want to be trained how to find a man, and I take them to the bars, I have them go out, and I say look here’s you line: “I would like to be your slave sir.” That’s your pick up line. That’s it. You’re probably gonna be told “no”, but you’ll not get a hundred nos. Sooner or later someone’s gonna say “Yes”. And the reason I have them do it that way, it’s not to be crude, it’s to get them over this worry of someone saying no. Cause who cares if you’re rejected by someone in a bar, it’s a trivial event. You just move on to the next one until you hit gold. I’ll have slaves come to me, and unfortunately in old age, they come to me and they say they want to be my slave, whatever line that they’ve got, to make me think that I’m something special, so I’ll turn back and say if you want to be my slave, you’ll immediately drop to your knees and kiss my boots! And they’ll say “I can’t do that here!” “I can’t be doing that here in the bar!” And I’ll say excuse me, I normally wear a little hat you know, a leather cap, and I’ll hand I to them “Would you mind holding this please?” And they take it in their hand, and I drop to my knees and I kiss their boots, sometimes I like them, and I stand up, and I say “Can I have my hat please?” And I look around and I say “What happened?” They say “Nothing happened.” And I say “Well then what’s your problem?” And I’d say I have a pretty good success rate, maybe 80%, they’re down on their knees, and they’re slobbering on the boots, and I got them over it. That’s how I take their approach to me. Of course, they’ve got to be cute. So if anyone’s thinking about approaching me in a bar, they should be smooth, cute, dumb is OK, dumb’s OK, just willing to go along, another paid ad! I am generally available, the younger and cuter the better. I: I’m disqualified. J: I admit, I like them young I don’t go out with teenagers, but I get it as an argument all the time, I say to people, you heard about a 14 year old who shot someone and they want to try him as an adult, what do you think? They say “Yea! Try him as an adult! This crime is horrible! “ I go well you know I think the boy’s cute, and I want to have sex with him! So if he’s an adult, is that OK? They go no, it’s not OK! Well is he an adult or not? If he’s not an adult that’s fine with me, I really don’t want to have sex with a 14 year old, please that’s , for the police reading this I do not want to have sex with a 14 year old, it’s an intellectual argument that I’m making, is he an adult or not? But I do like them young. Yea, I admit. I: It’s probably safer to say you like them younger. J: Younger, well at this stage the pyramids are younger than me, so you know. It’s a relative thing, you know, when you’re the same age as the president of the United States it’s a sobering thing. I wonder if he reads my magazine? I: Well I don’t know. J: Hillary probably does. They’re out of control, Bill. I: What’s the circulation of Metropolitan Slave? J: That’s a secret. And I’ll tell you why. I don’t, I formed the corporation to avoid answering questions about, it’s substantial, OK, it’s not as big as Drummer, it’s not as big as Leather Journal, it’s a one-man operation from start to finish, there’s no one else involved except me, but I don’t want the government knowing anything, so that’s why all my mail is first class, if you’re looking at a magazine “statement of distribution” where they have to publish how many copies, and how many were comped, I’m not going to tell the government anything about my operation that I don’t have to. But it’s nationwide, and distributed in Europe now. And a whole bunch of people subscribe to it to include, bless them, many MANY married men who are, reached a point in their lives where they realized they’re stuck in a marriage, when what they really wanted all their life was to be a slave to another man. That is a very, that is probably a good 25% of my readership, based on subscriptions, how do I know? Because they write on the order “be very discrete, I am married.” So I’m stating it as a fact, I get his all the time. I do respect their privacy, I never have sold my mailing list, or rented it, it’s not just the government, I don’t tell anyone anything. If you come to me it’s like coming to a priest. I: John what do you think the secret of your success is? J: Being radical. Not being the, you know, first of all the success is that I thought, being radical is wrong. I’ve had slave feelings since I was a little kid. I just presumed that there were a lot of people out there who I said had the same feelings. I didn’t do any market research, and I don’t know that there’s anyway to do that. And there was no publication out there catering just to slaves. There’s excellent magazines out there with good stories, but there’s really nothing out there for slaves, there’s a lot stuff out there, how to be a bottom, how to get into the leather scene, there’s good fiction stories like in Drummer and stuff, but there was nothing catering just to that feeling of pain, I really want to be a slave to another man. It was my passion, and I just hoped and prayed that there would be other people out there who wanted to be male slaves. As I said, my motto is dedicated to improving the breed of gay male slaves. And I’m just lucky that with no market research available, that my feelings were right, that’s all. I: Well, anything you want to add before we turn off the tape recorder? You’re nowhere near as vehement as I’d thought you were gonna be! J: Well I could talk about politics, then I would be, OK, I will say, I don’t owe the leather community a whole heck of a lot for my magazine. I’ll say that. And in fact they are the ones, I’m talking about, and you know, by the way, when I say that YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. I’m talking about everyone in the Eagle, you know who you are, who back bite, who lie about me, who claim that they’re people who come to see me and they’ve had bad scenes, and they’ve never gone back to S&M again because I beat them up so bad, and you know it’s lies because you can’t tell me who the person is, when it happened, I’ll tell you the most I’m sure you’ve ever had, some boy has come to me, with his fantasy, and I’ve given it to him, I’ve delivered it to him, a hundred percent, there’s no one that I’ve ever been with that’s going “Oh my God that was horrible.” They’ve all had a good time, and what happen is reality hits maybe in the morning, maybe they sobered up, then all of a sudden, you know I’ve had sex with people and the next morning I’ve felt why did I do that, well I think that’s probably the case. I’ll tell ya folks, I had a lot of scenes, I can’t have as many scenes, I invite them, I’m out there always, you want to come back with me, I’m out there recruiting, I can’t do as many scenes as I do and not have some dissatisfied customers. I’m sorry about that, but I’ll tell you this much, if anyone’s ever been injured in any way I’d just step forward, I’ve been accused of doing things in 1989 to people. I was a major in the US Army in 1989, I guarantee I was so hidden, so closeted, that there is no way, I was still doing girls, I mean, you know, the story is unbelievable, the second one person raises their head in Leather Tail, you know who I’m talking about, they all circle and they start making up a bunch of bullshit and lies, and they won’t come to me. And you know this is true. They’ve never come to me. They go to other people to third parties, and I hear about it, and I say “Well who was I with, when did it happen?” Just give me some clue, no. It’s gospel, the allegation is in itself enough to convict and that’s it. That’s the worst part of the biz, right there. I’ll tell ya, for everyone that hears that I’m too extreme, or it’s a bad bad scene, that pushes someone’s button, and that gets my phone ringing, and someone comes “ I heard about you John, I want to come over.” I want you to know you’re hurting me personally, but you’re not hurting me sexually. I: That’s enough. J: I think so. I’m sorry to drag. I speechify too much, I hope the ending is all right. The end. |
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