Fakir Musafar (Date Unknown)
by Joseph Bean
as part of the Oral History Project.

Please note that these transcriptions are unedited. As oral history they represent the speakers' remembrance of past events. Please excuse typos and errors. The original tape recording is part of the collection of the Leather Archive and Museum, Chicago, IL.

copyright 2002 Leather Archives & Museum

Some of the passages in this are quite unclear, and other parts are unintelligible all together.  Whenever I couldn’t understand what was said I’ve indicated with a “?”, or actually written beside it.  Also, many spellings are simply guess work as no one actually spelled out the unfamiliar words. 

Tape 1

Interviewer:  You said something very intriguing to me the very first time we talked about doing this interview.  You said “I have something I want to say or I need to say to the readers of Drummer.”  That must mean something kind of, well, more than a little puzzled. I normally think of the readers of Drummer as more interested in, I don’t know, purely sexual matters than in anything you would normally be eager to say.  So, do you remember…

Musafar:  Well, let’s see.  What’s to say that what Fakir is doing isn’t sexual? 

I:  Oh, I’m not saying it isn’t sexual, but when I say purely sexual I mean something like you could read with, hold up there and read while your other hand is busy beatin’. 

M:  Well, the thing I found with a lot of the drummers readers, and your gay friends particularly, the only open community in the world, one of the most open communities, is that number one they’ve gotten over the major stigmas of our culture.  And those usually have to do with who you are, and the body and the use of the body.  See, when I first came out of the closet, with what I do, because it was pretty off the wall, you just don’t go around just showing, and telling people about his kind of behavior and activity.

I:  I assume that while you lived at home your parents didn’t have any idea of what you were doing?

M:  No, it had to be kept totally secret.  Outrageously secret.  So, there are very many interesting stories connected with how that was done.  How far I went, if they every really realized what was going on.  Fact I’m gonna relate just one.  In the Body Play book  I described the experience I had, yea.  When I was 17, where I figured out a way to lash myself totally immobile against a coal-bin wall in the basement of his house one weekend when my parents were gone. 

I:  Ah ha, so you didn’t mention about your parents being gone.   The whole time I was reading this I was wondering when does dad walk in, going on in the back of my head. 

M:  Yes, they were on like a trip, far away.  Which was safe!  At last I have a chance!  So I had this all plotted out weeks in advance.  And then once I got into the experience, then of course it was totally spontaneous, I didn’t know what would happen or how to proceed after step one and two.  From here on it was just whatever happens happens, it was just a grand experiment.  So, I did lash myself against the wall, and I did it in such a way that actually without help it would have been impossible to get myself off the wall, cause you limbs go numb, your circulation stops really, and as I said in the end I still don’t know how I got off of the wall.   But I was so hungry for this experience that I was willing to take the risk, at that point in life.  To do this thing I had to drive heavy staples into the coal bin wall around the outline of a body.

I:  Oh no!

M:  And then of  course when the experiment was all done, I had to pull the staples out, and then I worried would people wonder what was going on with the coal bin wall when they saw this outline of a human form in there with holes!  Well, low and behold nobody ever noticed it. 

I:  Really?

M:  No, and the wall was like painted several times, and the coal bin was removed when my parents changed to gas instead of coal, to heat the house, and they really didn’t need a coal bin, but for some strange reason they cut this one hunk of wall off,  and moved it back to the cement, and took the rest of the coal bin out.  I came back years later, and the piece I nailed myself to was still there!  And there were the holes, still obviously in the shape of a human form! 

I:  To you, but still they hadn’t noticed!

M:  You can imagine what a feeling I had when I went down there 25, 30 years later and looked, and here was my experience all over again right there in front of me!  Nothing in this earth was going to disturb the remains! 

I:  That house is…

M:  Still there!  And the wall is still there, and the holes are still there today! 

I:  Still in your family, the house?

M:  Yep! 

I:  But your parents aren’t still there? 

M:  Yes they are! 

I:  They are?! 

M:  They’re very old. 

I:  I would think! 

M:  They’re both in their 80’s, I think my dad just turned 87, and my mother is 85, something like that.  And reasonably in good health.  So Carla has something to look forward to if she keeps worrying I’m going to die next week or something. 

I:  Doesn’t sound like she has a lot to worry about?

M:  Longevity runs in the family.

I:  Are your parents still as it were “in the dark?” 

M:  No, I try to expose things, and for a few years here I was flying back and forth over their heads going to New York, London, places like that, to speak, or to do something, or in connection with the “Dances” film. And I tried to tell them, and the more I got into the story the more they said we don’t want to hear this!  I said all right, fine.  

I:  I think that’s very OK today, they don’t want to hear it.  That’s OK.  It’s your life, afterall.  There are other people’s lives you don’t want to hear about. 

M:  But I got off the track on this, what I wanted to say was this is kind of the pattern.  This is kind of what happened.  When I did come out of the closet I didn’t really know who to come out to.  My first public appearance as Fakir Musafar was at the tattoo convention in Reno in 1978, I believe it was. 

I:  And you already at that time had your major tattoo?

M:  Yes, and was at that point in extremely good terms with the tattoo community.   Everything had its community. 

I:  Right.

M:  And I had done a book which had been published, and I knew all the major artists out here on the west coast, So, well Doug Malloy was instrumental in getting me to the tattoo convention.  And he was also helpful I think in getting me to go over and talk to these people about doing an outrageous show as Fakir Musafar.  So that was one of the first real public events….1978, in Reno, in December. 

I:  It must have been from that then, because I’m poking around in my papers, and notes, and found that in 1979 was the first time I mentioned your name in any notes that I wrote. 

M:  That’s shortly after I came out! 

I:  Yes!  Cause I knew lots of people who were in one way or another involved in tattoos, or tattooing, the photo record of tattoos, stuff like that.  The first note’s pretty simple, it simply says “ I have to watch for pay prison things in case you make an appearance at some event I plan to attend.” 

M:  Well, I’ll let you know if something came up, because these happened once or twice a year.  And it was a big hit!  I did a little pre-demo, and the local press came in, and they even had Newsweek, people like that were at it because it was slow news time, so they tracked a lot of people over, and there were a lot of people trying to get press.  And I wasn’t trying to get press, but they hung my picture, my big color picture up on nails, and things up, and said “He will be here in the main, whatever, banquet hall on the closing night.” 

I:  Now you have to demonstrate, you know, every electrical electronic device performs normally. 

M:  the Reno Gazette anyway came up with this one.  The guy was good, good writing.

I:  So the big vertical piercings in your chest  were already permanent? 

M:  Yes.

I:  So how long have you had those?

M:  Ah…that was ’78, gee, I have a record somewhere where I got his all down.  At least three years prior to that.  ’76, ’75, somewhere in there. 

I:  That must have been truly shocking to readers of normal paper….

M:  Yea! It is! 

I:  In Nevada of all places.

M:  In Reno, all decked out.  Now here I am behind the thing answering questions, on the top these are some snaps that people took.  In fact, I think it might have been Doug Malloy! 

I:  Oh, I see.  These are swords hanging from your piercings.

M:  Yea! 

I:  This is a wonderful picture, the second one in.  Couldn’t look at that and not know that there’s something sexual going on.  Did you study Yoga in this lifetime?  To learn…. 

M:  Yes!  So this was partly a demonstration of something I had learned.  And partly showbiz.  And there are still times I do that, I mix it up.  I like to do performances in art galleries.  That’s Seymore Sid breaking the rock on my back, he was quite a character, he was mentioned in “Dances”.  The old gentleman with  all the hardware who liked to shake ‘em up in airport security. 

I:  Right! And they suddenly say go right ahead.

M:  Now that was kind of a….that was during rehearsal.  I wanted to do something with my chest stuff, and I really couldn’t do a whole hanging thing.  So for this I found one of these valet carts that they hang suits on, that you pull stuff around the hotel.  I thought great!  I’ll put people in there, I’ll hook it up, and pull it around, up there in the banquet room. 

I:  And you did that?

M: I did that.  That’s what I’m doing here.

I:  So these piercings are really deep, the vertical ones right? 

M:  Reasonably deep. 

I:  How much weight you think…  this looks like they were taking much more than the weight of your body.

M:  No not really. 

Unintelligible second.

M:  I’ve got to show you before you leave just a second or two this piece I did up at Rippley’s, cause what I did up there, I came in dressed in a suit, and they played some funny music, and there was a table in the middle of the gallery with an old-fashioned typewriter on it.  So I opened the typewrite, rolled in some paper, and I sit down and type to the music, “Hello I’m Fakir Musafar, and I’m going to lift this typewriter by my tits!”  Pulled the paper out and handed it to some people.  Then I took the pencil that I signed my name with and put it through my nose!  Now that was the first indication they had that something strange was happening! 

I:  See now this would only work because of that “center of normalness” that I mentioned! 

M:  Yea!  It looks so normal, the gallery was jammed!  I couldn’t get in to start the piece cause people didn’t want this ordinary looking person to push them away!  I was desperately fighting through the crowd to get there to start it.  You’ll see, I’ll show you a little bit, it was quite a gig!  And then I stripped to the waist, I took this large metal tube, and I had these hoops off the typewriter so I put the hoop here, and I just slowly slipped the rod through my nipples, which didn’t have anything in it, so they didn’t know they were pierced or anything.  All of a sudden there’s this nipple popping up, and there’s this bar through it hooked up to this typewriter!  And I stood up, backed away from the typewriter, and “clunk!” the typewrite fell down!  Full weight it weighs about 25 or 30 pounds.  All from the nipples!  And I walked around the gallery with it, and then we had the bed of nails on one side.  I came back,  I took the typewriter off, took off all my clothes, everything,  decivilized, and became Fakir.  Picked up the bed of nails, with a little help, dragged it into the ArtCom Theatre.  In the Theatre I put on a little demonstration with the bed of nails.  Laid down, and had people lay on me, part came up and put cement blocks then I answered some questions.  That was very good, that was a very nice evening, I had good questions, and there were good answers.  Then I announced I was going to set a world record for Guinness Book of World Records lifting the most chairs with flesh hooks.  And the Rippley’s people didn’t show up, I was very disappointed! I mean the Guinness people didn’t show up, they were supposed to be there.  Anyway we had all these chairs lined up, and one by one we kept attaching them to a rope that went up through pullys back down to my hooks.  And I would like back up and lift two or three chairs, and go down and they put more chairs on, and lift more chairs, and lift the whole string of chairs up to the ceiling.  That was quite a nice show. 

I:  Must have left some people screaming? 

M:  I don’t know, the way I do it  doesn’t seem to.  And this isn’t to have the awe, because it’s done in the aura of showmanship.  If they were actually to be in a ceremonial ground, a sacred spot,  where we do rituals several times a year, they would really be in awe.  Meaning the vibrations and radiations of what’s going on here in really strong.  There aren’t too many people that can take it.  Which backs me up to where I started when you asked the question,  cause we don’t want to divert too much.  You should ask what you want to ask. 

I:  Well I wrote things down to which I feel I need to have answers, so…

M:  Great!

M:  After my first experiences, it was like with the tattooed people where I had a wonderful reception, I figured there were people who were seekers, and new-age type people, they were the ones who were looking for this.  Because I had something to contribute here.  I thought I had something to contribute.  So for a few years there I wondered round doing demonstrations, and talking at places like “Shared Visions”, “New Ages” and so on.  And they actually were not ready for this!  This was not my community!  I did not fit in!  Whatever it was they were looking for no matter how off the normal track it was it was fine as long as it didn’t involve physical commitment physical body, except in a very superficial way.  When it got to a point where to do what you were doing, or to do what you were recommending, or to follow me, or to try any of these things, you had to get involved with the body, Ohhhh no!  That’s going too far!  So this was not my community!  Now always I’d had some passive acceptance, in fact outright nice acceptance, primarily with my gay friends.  And it took awhile before it dawned on me why.  Because basically the gay experience deals with something physical that goes against the grain.

I:  And you have many of the same problems associated…

M:  And you’re  a maverick, you have very many of the same problems.  Very much. 

I:  …..A gay person is a leather person. 

M:  It’s even more complex.  The other community I found where I had great acceptance, and I for years I’ve been doing demonstrations and have been gathering friends and making connections and finding a place, is the S.M. community.  S.M. regardless of your orientation community.  Where I really get the best acceptance, as time has gone by, is in the gay leather community, and amongst the radical ferries. 

I:  There is now a leather radical ferry group!  

M:  Yes!  I’m gonna be over there next Friday night. 

I: Next Friday night.  Next Saturday night is there official birthday party.

M:  Next Saturday night?

I:  Yea.

M:  I will be over there. 

I:  I’m supposed to be there too, but it seems the world has converged on this date!  And, I’ve defended it against so many things, and now it’s getting harder and harder.  But, maybe I will make it after all.  I’m supposed to call Harry tonight and tell him either I will absolutely be there, or I definitely  will not.  They’ve exceeded what they think of as the limit of….. (unintelligible)

M:  Yea, I know

I:  So, you’re planning to be there for the party too?

M:  I will be there.  I will be piercing.  And you know (?) Ganninead (?) It is the nice connection here, we co-function.  Ganninead,  Jim Ward is a Pagan priest , Ganninead is a Pagan priest, Fakir is a Pagan “shaman.”  (All spellings are guess work on these names!)  And we have done things together, like, another thing I would like to show you a little of, we did a ceremony for ourselves out at Valhalla last fall, in September.  In which we had all kinds of people running around with bundy frames on, we had as many as 7 or 8 with balls sown over their bodies, where Fakir and some friends did a sun dance up on top of a hill, and we do this regularly.  We’d like to do it again next spring.  This was a little inner group community.  And it was mostly….

I: No spectators?

M: No spectators.  Totally isolated.  For three days of ceremonies. 

I:  Have you ever….

M:  We did it as magic!  We did it as group magic for healing, for ourselves and for other people who needed the healing. 

I:  Even though they might not be present?

M:  They don’t have to be present!  I’ve been up on the same hill now with Carla, with Mark Joplin when he was alive, Mark Chester, a lot of people have been up on that hill with me.  Every time I’ve been in this place it’s been with other people, part of the community, and my function has been to be a helper “shaman,” a bridge, a gap, and I’ve been there to be of help.  To be part of something bigger. 

I:  When you were talking about, I think about expecting acceptance, but in any case seeking acceptance, in the new age community, you mentioned quite a lot of people, did you ever present yourself to any dervish communities?

M: No, I haven’t talked to any dervishes for a long long time.  There was a while, when I first moved out to California when I had a couple of connections.  Since this is also other state oriented, I’m sure that’s a home.  I’ve been there too. 

I:  Cause I know officially one of the things that I am is a shake in the “medlevy” dervishes (again all spellings are guess work.) 

M:  Oh yea!  I’ve heard of them. 

I:  And I think the whirling dervishes would be unamazed, and pleased certainly  not shocked, or but howling dervishes, there are among the howling dervishes some who do like deep muscle piercing, and stuff like that as part of their normal ritual.  Nails thought he biceps,

M:  I’ve seen that.  Films.

I:  Surely, there were films made I think in the ‘30’s, maybe ‘40’s.  I don’t know if there are any howling dervishes in the States! 

M: I would be very happy to meet any that you run into!  I think my connections, I think connections with traditional American Indian medicine men, and I got into a bit of hot water with an American Indian, for awhile….

I:  Cause they didn’t want you, a non-Indian protraying ,

M:  When the film was out yea, a lot of them really took exception to this.  I’ve got a couple of experiences facing up with American Indians, American Indian groups, and they thought, at first their accusation was that by using this film, by putting this film out it was ripping them off, but always after I had a  chance to face them. 

I:  But there are no American Indians doing anything even remotely verging on what you do…..

M:  Oh yes there are!  There are traditional, and I’ve known of this for some years, and it’s taken a long time, but I’ve finally made some connections with American Indians who are practicing traditional medicine, and are doing things like sun dances.  Now I still haven’t danced with the American Indian group, but I would like to.  In fact, I would love to! 

I:  Do you think that’s a possibility really?

M:  Oh yes!  Yes, it is.  And I’ve had a couple express interest in dancing the sun dance, not in their group, but in any group that I put together. So, I look forward to that in the next year or two, this might happen. 

I:  So these would be people who have done the sun dance before? 

M:  Yes, they would be people who have experienced it.  I came from South Dakota, and I was always trying to track down sun dance, and sun dance stories, and what not, and nobody was actively doing this when I was able to go out and spend a summer on a reservation with friends.  Close as I got was old people that had done it and recalled tales of sun dances, but nobody was actively doing this, this would be mostly in the ‘40’s and ‘50’s.  Later years, as American traditionalists out there in those reservations got strong and got rambunctious, and started to say “hey, we lost everything!”  Foolscrow, and some of the other traditionalists revitalized and had sun dances, but they did it fairly secretly. 

I: I would think so.

M: They were doing sun dances like every year back in 1975,’76, and so on, at Rosebud.  In fact, a guy even did a book on that.  He was invited into the circle, and he wrote  a beautiful book on it called “ Sun Dancing at Rosebud…..”  WOW!  It was published by the University of South Dakota press, Vermilion.  (?)  Which is the most insignificant a school as you can find!  But any rate, I have it here, here I see it, it’s a wonderful…

I:  He was allowed to photograph it?

M:  Yes, photograph the sun dance.

I:  OK, let’s do these questions and get it over with,

M:  All right let’s do what you would like to…don’t let me diverse too much. 

I:  Well, we’ll do these and then I’m sure we will come up with other things to deal with.  This is where I think that he Drummer article’s got to go if I’m going to put my byline on it.  Then, of course  it may go anywhere because it’s got your b-line on it.  This first one is real long, maybe I can say it, well the first one is really about the opiate, endorphins all that stuff, you know that we hear about from doctors, and army magazine, and Jeff Mains.  And, I’ve been on the bottom in some pretty heavy scenes, and I think that there’s something a lot more involved in reaching the ecstatic barriers that you can get through, so maybe the endorphins and stuff have something to do with the first hour.  But it seems to me there’s something else involved.  Or, is it your opinion that it’s just higher doses of natural pain killers, or what’s really at work there? 

M:  OK, good question.  Given this a lot of thought, especially in recent times.   Where is it we, people like myself, have been going, and what is it that’s really happening?  I think there’s more to Jeff Main’s story unless you read between the lines you’ll get, I know Jeff quite well, and we talked long periods of time about this.  And I think he knows where he’s at, he knows where he is.  He’s been there.  He’s been in the sling.  It’s for real.  And there’s not much different between that state, and where you went and where I went.  Not that much difference.  Now a lot depends on which way you focus the experience.  You can focus these experiences so that they’ll go anywhere.  And you don’t know what’s n the other side of the door.  It’s like you start an experience in physical experience, and it’s gonna involve, the arouse is gonna involve sexuality is gonna involve the stimulation of the body’s own chemical system and so forth, this is all gonna come into play.  Sooner or later you’re gonna get into an altered state.  And once you’re in this altered state, once you start, depending on which way you fix the direction, you have a choice of  many doors to go through.  Some people will go through this door, and some will go through this door.  And the experience on the other side is different depending on which door you go through. 

I:  Is this “where you are on the other side” different, or it just the language of perception that’s different? 

M:  I think it all comes together on the other side.  No matter which door you go through your experience on the other side of the door will be different, but some of the quality of that experience is going to be common.  That’s why if Jeff had an ecstatic experience in the sling, and Fakir had an ecstatic experience hanging in a cottonwood tree, both starting from totally different focuses, one is out here in a Native American setting, and one is in the catacombs, we can still experience something and have something in common.  Once you’re on the other side of the door everything connects up again anyway.  Is that an answer? 

I:  Yes it is.  It’s a delicious answer, it reminds me of a book title I love, that is attached to a book I can’t read.  The tile is “All Things That Rise, Must Converge.”   With the must being the big word of the title. 

M:  Big “MUST” converge!  The beauty I found with people like Jeff, the beauty I found in the last few years is the beauty that you find in reaching true community.  I never thought I would reach a point where there would be anybody  could share with, anyone who had a commonality in these experiences.  And much to my amazement there have been!  It’s such a delight, it’s such a  wonder, it’s such a joy, to run into people.  They may have gotten there by totally different doorways, it doesn’t make any difference, once the connection is made you’re soul mates, you’re brothers, you can understand one another, you have a common rare experience, a beautiful experience, and from that experience you can bring stuff back that’s useful, not for you necessarily, but for those in the community. 

I: So now, we’ve touched on…I think bringing Jeff into it just that way is very useful.  I’ll be interviewing Jeff this week, if he’s willing, you know that he’s …. real close to the end.

M:  Yes, I know, I’ve talked to him a couple of times…  

I:  I have been in some pretty extreme states of consciousness or super consciousness, whatever words you want to use for it. From being the bottom in a scene that starts out highly sexual, and where the sexual charge either disappears or whatever, and go on, but as a top I’ve never gotten there.  I’ve gotten out of this normal consciousness, maybe even several steps out of it, but never into any extreme realm,  maybe even so to say through a door, but not through THE door, does that mean anything to you?  So my explanation for why there are tops, is the only explanation for why I am usually a top these days, and that is two-fold:  One, the people who want to do what bottoms want to do have to have help if they’re going to go there via some, I mean, you can only go so far flogging yourself.

M: I go quite far sometimes! 

I:  Yea, well, depends who you are, and number two:  besides helping in that way the top gets some share in the experience that is beyond his own, it’s more than he’s paying for, in a way. 

M:  Yea, you get some goodies. 

I:  Yea you get the creepies.  But is it possible in the kinds of things you do which are different in their approach of these, for the other people to enter into it more, in the way that top can only THAT far, while the bottom may blow out the end of the universe.  It seems to me that when I’ve seen certain things like when I went to watch the “?”  turning in Turkey, I felt like I was more involved with them than I as a top had been involved as a bottom, or with a scene that was going on between us.  So, and I suspected as I thought about you, that not exactly spectators, but people other than yourself might be getting access to a lot more of what you’re experiencing…

M:  I think my experiences, experiences are the kind of thing I do, what other people are doing the thing, have been in a lot of S.M. scenes, both directions top and bottom.  I think it just depends on the depth of the scene, what I do on top of a hill with flesh hooks is a scene too.  It just has a chance of getting to be a deeper scene.  I really didn’t know how this would work,  but one has experienced life doing a sun dance and then is a helper to someone else, no one should help you unless they’ve done it.  To someone else it’s doing the sun dance, but not doing it themselves.  I use the word “cassita” “Cassita” is a little different than topping.  And Carla, who’s familiar with S.M. had never really seen it this way either until she got involved with me, I think.  Then we started to mutually do experiences, that were S.M. experiences but instead of topping we “cassitaed.”  It was not a power exchange as such.  It was two people working together for an ecstatic experience.  When this is done it seems like both parties take a trip.  I’ve seen S.M. scenes where a person who normally tops got very humble and very impersonal and started not to top, but to “cassita” which is a little different.  And then the quality of the experience changed for both people. 

I:  This is an important word you’re using.  Is it spelled like KASIKA? 

M:  This is from the Mandan Indian word, this is one who’s gone through the hook hanging, or hanging by piercings and is out there with young men doing it to them. 

I:  The reason I think this is a very ….Oh I see…

M:  Tap tap tap, that’s a Mandan word.  Kassika.  (?) 

I:  The reason I think this is very important, is that something is happening in the upper fringe as it were of the men, gay men, S.M. right now, that has a lot of people, especially a lot of people that have been in the scene for along time very confused.  First of all we’ve gotten people in this particular strap have definitely left behind the idea that a top’s a top and a bottom’s a bottom.  And have gotten over waiting for someone to earn or not earn entrance into the group, pursue.  You can tell, you know, either the person is or isn’t, and that’s that.  And you don’t have to ask for credentials.  Everybody is saying to everybody, what are we doing, why are we standing around here, what is happening here?  If I’m no longer a top who am I?  If I’m no longer a bottom, who am I?  If I’m no longer only into group scenes, or whatever, the “onlys” are fading away.  And this word here may give people, owning the word, may give people permission to take whatever the step is that, I must know dozens, 3 or 4 dozen people, who are standing on the brink of something that this word may empower them to do.       

I:  Well great!  With that in mind you want to say more about it?

M:  Well I’ve seen it happen, like I said, I’ve seen it happen.  You know if you deliberately go about doing this, the kind of thing like an American Indians sun dance (Unintelligible)  Jim, it was easy and natural because first he’s Pagan, he’s been through the experience before in other lives, and it was good because we could be very close from a gay stand point, we could be very close, and he could Kassica.  The nature of his S/Ming seems to me is very much like he’s doing that now.  To have that disconnection, and go for the quality behind the immediate sensual The sensual is all fine and great, and I wouldn’t knock the great experience at all, it’s great, but once in a while, if you want to go beyond the mind, I see this happen with people who play a lot, whether they’re gay, heterosexual, bi, or whatever they happen to be, if they do a lot of S/M play, sooner of later if they really do a lot of this they’re gonna hit that time when the experience isn’t like what they normally do when they play, when he relationship, the roles and what’s going on here changes.  My explanation of that is that they’ve gone, they’ve shifted into another gear.  What’s going on is that you have someone who’s going on a journey, and someone who is rowing the boat.  That’s the Kassica. 

I:  But you get here too! 

M:  You’re both going on the boat!  You’re both going on the boat! 

I:  This is a very important idea. 

M: Some of the times I’ve done this with Carla, and she’s Kassicaed me, and I’ve Kassicaed her, and it’s amazing the commonality of what we get when we come back.  We’re finished. 

I:  And…(unintelligible)

M:  I suppose you could say the top in a normal scene is very experienced, an expert, in sending people on trips.  Generally doesn’t go along. 

I:  Right, and yet, sometimes when I’m topping, even though, especially when there are other bottoms waiting to be attended to, you don’t want to go.  Because you don’t want to turn to someone, who’s just getting into the scene, when you’re already past where….

M:  Well, you might fumble.  

I:   You might fumble, you might stick them too fast, lots of things can go wrong. So you don’t want to get into it.  But this idea can also answer that question.  You can send this person along and go with them.  If you have this idea, if it works out the way I’m perceiving it right now, then as soon as you feel completely at ease with the, the rowing you’ve been doing, it may well be possible to do what I can’t do as a top, and that’s step all the way back to the beginning and turn around and be with someone else.  It may be like a door stop.  I don’t know, this is going to take some taxation. 

M:  Well, we’re experimenting further, that’s the nature of these rights in Valhalla, where we have as many as 12 people up there go last September, to see what happens if we had all these people doing things, and Kassicaing.  In this case, for instance, we had Sharon, we had one woman in the “Kamki” (sp?)  who after seeing the film, wanted to do this, and waited five patient years, and asked again and again, “When you have a chance would you put me in the Cabarbi (Sp?) ?”  And finally the time was right, and I said “ In my honor, it would be my honor.”  So, one part of one day she was the only one who was going on a journey.  We had 10 other people to play instruments, and push it along.  In other words she had 10 Kassicas. 

I:  Ha ha ha!  (unintelligible)

M:  Wonderful experience for everybody! 

I:  This is a wonderful idea.

M:  Or, sometimes you get this sharing, you get this going in a scene where you have several tops working on one bottom, oh my God, what a wonderful thing that is for the bottom!  Two experienced tops working on you….

I:  That’s so rare these days, I tell you. 

M:  Same time, but that comes in a nature of working together and community to me.  This sort of phenomena to occur. 

I:  Part of the reason I have trouble these days going to play parties is often that (unintelligible mumbling) I just so often have shown up with no preconception about whether I’m walking in to be a top or a bottom .  Sometimes it’s very structured.  When it’s not it’s controlled, look around I recognize everyone present, they’re all bottoms.  They’re all ALWAYS bottoms.  

M:  What I’ve noticed at a couple of men’s play parties, What it looked like to me is that we have a preset thing here, and we have demonstrations.  Two or three demonstrations going on, in various corners of the room, the very experienced top doing a very exquisite job on a bottom, it’s all been pre set up, and a whole lot of other bottoms would just stand and watch. 

I:  I think it’s better if in some….

M:  I think it’d bee more fun, if everybody was involved!  The biggest play parties that Carla started originally, and Mark Joplin, in the Catacombs, I liked those….

I:  Oh!  Is Carla the one who started all that? 

M:  Carla’s the originator of the mixed play party.  They tend to be very selective, it’s not that easy to get in.  And the reason for that is so they have mostly players.  In other words you don’t have lookers and you don’t have demos.  There’s more chance of spontaneity.  So I’ve always liked those since I first was invited to come. 

I:  You must know Joseph Campbell? 

M:  Oh yes!  Yea! 

I:  It’s so hard for me to find anyone who saw him, I didn’t get to meet him, after I was in love with everything he was and said for many years. 

M:  Me too!! 

I:  Finally got to meet him in 1985, and then he was so busy, busy all the time.  I only got to see him three times over a one-year period, and never again after that.  Then, I was supposed to go to Hawaii the next summer, when he would be finished making the TV show, as you know……..

M:  You’re most fortunate to…..

I:  Oh, to have touched him, or be touched by him,

M:  Meet a man of his stature…

I:  Someday I have to tell you the story of our first meeting it was a stunning, stunning event!  That I couldn’t have invented!  But as you may know (?) his answer to, well his answer to gay men gay S/M is:  “Does your bliss lie that way?  Well, follow your bliss.”  Does that sound like good advice from your point of view, follow your bliss? 

M:  It sounds exactly like what Fakir was wrestling with when he was trying to come out with what he does.  I decided early that I would follow my bliss regardless of where it took me, even if it was never getting off of the coal bin wall! 

I:  Yea, as you say in body play, even if it was done!  [Death?]

M:  And, I just didn’t know that this notion was more wide spread.  It’s taken a lot of years to realize it’s more wide-spread, and it’s a wonderful discovery to find that this notion is widespread, and I believe getting into the larger consciousness. 

I: It is, I believe that. 

M:  Little by little. 

I:  It will get there little by little, for a long time, and then something will take place.

M:  That’s why I moved to California.  It was hard to follow your bliss in South Dakota! 

I:  Could be why I ended up in California too, see I started out in southern Missouri.  I think that the closer together…

M:  I lived in southern Missouri, I was in the army!  I was a demolition expert down there, in Ft. Leonard a couple of years. 

I:  All of my uncles and my father were in Ft. Leonard too.  I was born in Humansville (?).  A gross little place.  I wrote all these questions very long thinking I wouldn’t need to look at them..

M:  Let’s take a quick short break, I have to pee!

I:  OK     

Tape 1, side 2

I:  There’s no point in telling other people about it if you don’t give it some practical hook.

M:  Ah!

I:  People who don’t already know… don’t already care ….

M:  This being it was very practical to anyone who was in a primitive culture.  Every primitive culture that I’ve been able to research, and visit if possible, had a need for what I just call “general magic.”  Aside from working with tools, and hunting, and cleaning, and whatever.  Like in our society going to work, and typing so many things, and doing this that writing, whatever the hell it is you do.  We’re still basically the same primal beings.  And there’s just as much need for it, in fact MORE need in this kind of culture as there was in the primitive culture because they get a chance to do it more often!  So getting down to , you know, how does this relate to your common, your everyday activity, like cleaning animal hides or working any program out on a Macintosh computer.  I mean, doing these kinds of things, I feel, are just as valid today as working on a Macintosh computer, as they are for that primitive person to have that break, that relief, that magic time, in order to go about hunting the animals, and scraping the hides.  It’s more becoming conscious, people becoming more conscious of the need for more balanced life.  For letting the civilized, varnished, glossy, educated person slip into the primal once in a while.  Slipping back and forth gives you better balance in both places.  If you’re always just in one place, you get totally fixated in that place, and you get very ineffective.  You don’t work very well at what you work at.  But to be able to go off, like primitive people always allowed for this, to be able to go off, and to get your feet in the primal, and become a raging beast, or have these ecstatic, or psychedelic experiences, or altered states, or whatever you want to call ‘em, that’s a balancing thing.  And  it will help you function better.  Getting back, I’m finished with that thing.  What was practical about the sun dance.  An old story.  The Buffalo were very thin now, scarce because the hunters had come, and a tribe was having a great deal of trouble, because the virtually lived on that.  If they couldn’t kill enough buffalo to salt and eat, and smoke and eat they were stuck for winter with very little to eat.  It was tough to eat grass out there.  So the medicine man said “We can’t find the buffalo.”   They’ve been wandering around out there, and I know where they were, I mean I know where these places are, wondering around, hunting the buffalo for months!  And had only gotten enough just to keep going, and not enough to get ready for winter.  So he said “We will ask the Great Spirit.  We will have a sun dance.  And in the sun dance, as many as possible, soar out be the eagle.  So they do a sun dance, and all these, who knows, it may be a young kid who did it for the first time, and maybe one of the old experienced guys who did this 50 times, but one or more of the dancers would go out of their body and become an eagle.  And in that state they could soar over vast amounts of space, they could like in an airplane, you could go out  like in a helicopter, they could scout from where they were located and look all over, but as an eagle soaring, whilst they were in a tranced state, and their body was like a robot.  And they would find buffalo where they didn’t think they were.  They would come back.  They would get through the sun dance, everybody would come down, and the warrior, the person who had the vision would say “Follow me!”  Jump on his pony and lead ‘em all off into some God direction nobody ever thought was a reasonable place to go, and sure as hell there were the buffalo, and they saved the tribe.  Now there was a community use of these rituals, of these experiences, of these powers.  It kept the tribe alive.  I think the same thing is true today.  The tribe is dying.  We’ve got new tribes, unrecognized tribes.  I personally believe that one of the strongest new tribes in the last four years are the “dead heads.”  I have great respect for the Dead, and what’s going on there.  Behind the scenes. Behind the lines we have a new tribalism in the “dead heads.”  I can’t help but feel it’s no different than the Indians in their little community doing a sun dance to find buffalo.  And these other people don’t know what’s going on.  And that’s good.  They’re just a bunch of nutty people running around in old painted up vans, you know.   All right, fine!  The longer it takes the straight focused world to figure this out the better because these people are going to come in and save them someday! 

I:   Right.  Well I do sometimes feel that there is a gay leather tribe.  It’s not everybody…but it never seems to pull together.  Thinks very little….. (unintelligible)

M:  That’s unfortunate.

I:  Yea

M:  It should be a tribe, it is a tribe! 

I:  It is a tribe!  I think what it has lacked till now is a medicine man to say “if you painted this figure on your face, or wore your thumb in this position, instead of that one, or something…

M:  Like these buckles go on your bra?????

I:  You got it!  Whatever it is.  I mean somebody’s got to come along and give sort of a portable ritual to it. 

M:  I think that’s already happened.  I think it happened in the pagan person piercing nights (this sentence is guess work due to poor pronunciation!) that took place in my chesters over the last two years.  It started out just as a piercing night.  Because part of it they were piercing nights, with appointments and things.  Jim was there, and I was there, and we both gave piercings.  I tend not to want to do piercings in a commercial way.  I’d never be a success in a piercing shop.  I don’t like to do this this way, come in sit down, clean ‘em and you know, I just, I’m not clinical.  I’m not a clinical person.  Jim, he’s a magician!  Jim is also a priest, remember he’s a Pagan priest.  So he puts, even though it looks commercial, he puts a little of this into what he does.  We get along well, we’re blood brothers we dance the sun dance together after all.  That’s a bond that doesn’t break very easily.  So, I like the ritual.  So one of those deals of Mark Chester, some years ago, one of our friends came in and wanted a ritual piercing to release, a beautiful gay man, who wanted to use the piercing ritual to release some anger.  And he had three piercings in one tit, was for all the faggots in the world, and one tit was for something else, all the pain he’d experienced trying to do what he did as his regular work, and so on.  Each thing had its meaning.  We burned incense, we smudged the room, most of this was his idea.  He gave me a present, I acted here as a “shawa (?)” in the true sense of the word.  And did this in a very ritualistic way.  He had a tremendous release, we played music, we made a lot of noise, and you should have heard what came out of the room when he did this one and that one.  Each thing had its own release.  It was a  huge release for him.  A wonderful medicine!  This was medicine.  I took a lot of flak after that because this was not done the way it was supposed to be done, and I was ejected as a piercer in these things for a while because I did a ritual piercing, and it caused a lot of noise….

I:  So getting it was not yet there?

M:  No!  Now later on the idea came around to some of the people who had been there during the ritualistic piercing, that was used for a healing purpose, that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try this themselves.  Somehow Danny Mead, and people got in and they thought now it’s OK, we’ll smudge the room, and I don’t know just how that got started.  I wont even try to say it because I’m probably wrong. 

I: ? credits Danny Mead with starting that…

M:  Daddy Mead starting and making it a ritual rather than a piercing.  So, everything was arranged in advance.  There was no money, no standing in line, ? ready for it to come forward, it was beautiful.  So I was there for most all of them.  I was drumming, I was support troops, I was a “shaman” (?)  I was a “shaman”, Danny Mead was a Pagan priest again, whatever came out of it was beautiful.  We all understood that and realized it was beautiful.  It was making a real purpose out of what we were doing.  And I don’t see why that can’t happen in the leather community.  It just takes any one of the people there to come forward and start making it more than a routine fixed locked in kind of a thing.  That’s all.

I:  I think what ruined the piercing rituals in the community, as you were there, and you know I was not there, every single one of them, I had Mark on the phone begging me “When are you going to be there?”  that kind of stuff.  That was part of the problem for me.  I knew for Mark, and for a couple of the other people, if I would be there, I would be a star there, and that would be all wrong for me in my head.  It got so politically complicated, and so I never was there….

M:  Well, I know what happened, but I don’t think I can talk about it.  I know exactly what happened, I was there the last ritual, I may have been, a factor. 

I:  And what happened outside of those rituals, in the community of people which was much larger, people like myself, who knew of them wanted to be there, and for whatever reason we were not there, was this requirement that Mark invented, that every person present must be pierced. 

M:  Not so!  I was at a dozen of these things and I was never pierced!  I was in a different function.  I was there as a “shaman”. 

I:  He kept telling us that was a rule.  And although I wouldn’t mind going there and perhaps even getting permanent piercings, but at least piercings that satisfy the rule, I did not like the idea of being in a place where that rule could be laid down before people walked in. 

M:  That was not the rule of any of the participants that I know of. 

I:  It was Mark’s rule.

M:  I guess.

I:  Yes.  Anyway, something is going to happen, it must happen, and handing people this very empowering idea. 

M:  You don’t have to look around to find a “kassica.”  Anybody can just get a hold of this idea see a model of it, and just start doing this.  It’s not that complicated, it’s very easy.   Anyone, like I said, any experienced players in S/M, have somewhere along the line had a time when a scene went that way, I’m sure.  All they got to do is try to make a scene go that way every once in a while. 

I:  I’m sure that there are people, in fact I’m sure that it’s true of me, who have had a scene going that way and wondered if it’s ok. 

M:  They should just say “Gee this is great!  Let’s pursue it!” 

I:  Just going for it….

M:  We can’t always start out to do a scene that way, where you’re both in the boat, and it will turn out that way.  Sometime it doesn’t work.  It’s like the rituals on the top of the hill in an Indian sun dance.  You always have great expectations, you never know where the hell you’re going and once you get started you can’t stop it, it’s like a thing rolling down hill.  But you never really know where it’s going to go, and sometimes it doesn’t work. There’ve been times I’ve started out to hang by my piercings, and it didn’t work, I stopped.  This is no go, this is it. 

I:  Hope you weren’t ever in an art gallery at the time?

M:  No.

I:  Well art galleries you do what you know will work. 

M:  Yes, it’s show biz.

I:  I read another area that I’d like to hear from you about, and this is an area, do you ever read The Advocate, at all?      

M:  Oh yea, I sure did. 

I:  I did a piece for them recently about Lawrence of Arabia.  Was very distressed by the title they put on it.  “No Pain, No Gain, the S/M Life of Lawrence of Arabia”  It was a disturbing title.  But one of the things that kept coming up, in recent biographies as I read the recent ones, not the ones from the ‘30’s and ‘40’s, was a reference to the religious nature of sexual masochism.  That sexual masochism in these various people’s view, represented a religious yearning.  But they all seem to have, and this is where this question leads, they all seem to have the idea that there must have been some other answer, and that if he had the answer that Lawrence would have being flogged and beaten,  or whatever it was.  And I kind of resented that, but maybe they’re right, I don’t know. 

M:  Or maybe you misdirected your thinking, and these people’s view is that this is misdirected spiritual thinking or something like that. 

I:  Maybe in a sense they were saying it was misdirected, yea, maybe that’s what it was.

M:  And put it down… if only he’d had another way or….

I:  Yea, well actually one biography goes so far as to say that something was already done for us by Christ and therefore we don’t have to ….

M:  Bullshit!

I:  But of course that does, that brings in the whole other area of questions about whether is Christ a model for the kind of modeling involvement in spiritual seeking.  And if so, is he perfect? 

M:  That opens up about five hours of interview for me, getting into it!  I’ll stick to what we were at. 

I:  I’m trying to figure out what the question is. It seems to me that for Fakir the acts of I don’t even know what to call them, can I call them masochism? 

M:  Why I have no problem with that.    

I: OK, let’s call them that.  I have a little problem with it….

M:  I haven’t a negative connotation to masochism, so….

I: Nor have I.  My problem with it is putting it in Drummer and having them understand it in their pedestrian way.  Anyway, the act of masochism performed by Fakir, it seems to me, are in and of themselves, either spiritual practice or spiritual seeking, and the division between those two may be very slight.  Does it seem to you that that seeking or practice should at any point resolve things that would no longer be necessary, no longer be useful?

M:  Is this like a step on the way? 

I:  That was the…..

M:  Or is this something in itself?  I have very strong feelings about this. 

I:  OK, please.

M:  I feel, and I don’t want to put down what other people do, ‘cause I’ve learned, so experienced, that what other people do is better than what I do, I’m not gonna put anything down anymore, I mean, I’ve learned.  Get all, whatever gets you there is OK.  And getting there more and more is important. 

I:  So do you think that Fakir next year, or next year may no longer be doing the things he’s known for doing? 

M:  I doubt it.  If something tastes good to you you’re apt to go on eating it.  Now if you eat it to excess, it may no longer … may not taste good to you anymore.  If I were to do the kind of rituals I do, and I were to do them on a weekly basis, I would probably learn, loose my taste for them after a while, I’d have to take a rest.  But they’re paced out fine.  I think the same thing goes for an S/M experience, same deal.  I suppose one can overdo it.  And then you loose your taste for it, you get jaded, and it looses its meaning.  But if it’s held in high regard, and it isn’t done too frequently, then you really can’t get too much of it.  Now how can you outgrow something, a vehicle that takes you where you want to go?  I look at these experiences being like a vehicle that take you where you want to go.  And how can you outgrow that?  All I can do is feel sorry for the people who don’t have a vehicle to get there!  Who never go to those places!  I say “Well, I think if you’re going to be so high and mighty about this what you really ought to consider is Hey!  These people seem to go someplace that I haven’t been!  Maybe I ought to try what they do.”  The critics of Lawrence should say “Gee, maybe I ought to get flogged and see what happens!”

I:  He was partially responsible for my first experiences.  I read 70 Floors of Wisdom, and read that passage about him on the point of delirium, and the guard kicking him after he’d been flogged for a long time, and certainly realizes that what he’s experiencing is sexual.  And right  away in my brain I was what, about 14 at the time, in my brain I was thinking “Of course it’s sexual!”  The revelation is other people don’t know that that’s sexual!

M:  I doesn’t look like it! 

I:  I had no idea what sex was like! 

M:  But sexual is defined in this culture in such a narrow channel. 

I:  I didn’t know that yet! 

M:  Yes! 

I:  I didn’t know that yet, so….

M:  I had the same problem.  I had to make the same discovery. 

I:  That other people didn’t know!  But f course you fortunately  figured it out pretty quickly, or sensed it… 

M:  Well, I felt OK with myself, pretty much, but I had a hell of a time fitting in! 

I:  Understandably!  Not…To fit in there must be something to fit into.  And what could you find that was like yourself enough that you would fit into it? 

M:  Well, no, on the other hand, I went to great pains for years and years, and I probably still do to fit in.  It’s important to me to fit in.  I don’t want to be a total outcast.  It’s very unpleasant to be a total outcast.  I’ll be a partial outcast, or be an outcast when I feel it’s OK in these conditions to be an outcast,  I don’t  mind.  But to be an outcast on a permanent basis, I don’t like that too well.  I may not like the society I’m in, my chances of being an outcast are tremendously good. 

I:  Here?  The more they…..

M:  But I’ll still try to fit in.

I:  Well in a way this brings me, you’ve just sent me rolling right back along to Joseph Campbell, who, I don’t remember who the guy was…who did the TV show….

M:  Bill Moyers.

I:  Yea,  Bill Moyers said to him, something to him about people wanting to save the world, and Joseph Campbell just cut him off saying “The way to save the world is to vitalize your own life!” Moyers said “That’s just your own life.”  And he said “No, not at all.  What else do you have to contribute to the world?”

M:  And do that first! 

I:  Do that first, and then….

M:  Then something else…. 

I:  Then if that becomes easy you may find you have a heroic destiny.  And….

M:  There are all kinds of people.  People who think they’re being very very helpful aren’t there.

I:  Oh yea.

M:  And they’re not. 

I:  And Joseph Campbell was…..um, So where does, where does what you do stop being for you, and become available for others?  Jim Werk (?) was changed by your sun dance.

M:  You feel?

I:  I feel, he was.  I didn’t know what had happened in his life until I saw the film “Fix the Date” (?) And I began to think.  Bill was thatchem, more than there was thatchem (these two words are pure guess work!) More than there were two different….The focuses were similar, the radiance was different, and the freedom he granted himself to be physically different than others around him was utterly…before he gave himself no freedom to be different in other people’s view.  And after he granted himself complete freedom to be himself.  So, he was changed, but you were the one who did the sun dance.  And I know he was very close, very close, very involved, I also know that these things can affect people who are no where near, and not all involved.

M: (Phone rings.)  This time I have to get it. 

I:  OK.

M:  Bad timing signal going here.

I:  I see. 

M:  On the phone! 

M: (Back to the tape),  All the things we do together. 

I:  But that ties directly into my question! 

M:  OH! 

I:  It really does!  She’s close, she’s part of your network.  A part of what you do, so  she would surely be affected by what you do.   Wouldn’t you think? 

M:  Yes

I:  But some way, somehow, people who were not already on your network are affected. 

M:  Yes, I think so.  But it’s not just me!  Because all kinds of people can do this.  Now Jim is out there, so Jim is more radiant than he was, you’ve noticed it, and so have a lot of people….like you say.  He seems to understand something that people…other people don’t know, he’s learned something here.  It’s just there, He doesn’t have to do anything, or demonstrate, he just has to be there and he kind of radiates, see. 

I: And yet he does also do things that he would have done before.    I saw not too long ago being lead around a bar with a dog collar, and chain, and….  There was this wonderfully self possessed humility about him. 

M:  Could be….

I:  The previous Jim Lawrence would have had no access…

M:  Just could not have….

I:  Would have been embarrassed, or unable to do that, or there would have been, and this is probably the Jim Lawrence version of it, there would have been a tremendous arrogance about being able to let himself look the way…you know what I mean? 

M:  Yea, I gottcha. 

I:  That was not there.  There was this….

M: Now he can do it and be lead on!  It was real.   

I:  …Humility…

M:  For real! 

I: It was real.

M:   It was beautiful!  It is!   

I:   And I know once in seeing him that does reach out to other people and make them see, even if they couldn’t say what they’d seen.  They’re changed too in very small ways, even wandering around the Eagle, or the Power House like that, he’s changing people, changing what’s possible for them.  What’s within the realm of the conceivable for them, and I think that it sort of, it, it does, it reaches out, it touches, you won’t ever know, I will never…none of us will ever know, but it touches a very wide circle….  Really the question is, do you have to, do you as Fakir, as the center of something like a sun dance, or one of these other things you might do, do you have to do something intentional to let other people into it? 

M:  No, it’s what happens.  And there’s no way I can describe this Joseph.  What happens….had this good experience last September with this group up at Valhalla, a wonderful people, what really happened there, was sort of a , because of experiences I’ve had to be able to do these things, gave myself freedom to do the things that I do.  It was possible to really slip off into a state of just kind of nothingness, and just learning what’s behind it come through.  And I think, get a sense, that’s what I describe as going on with Jim right now, I mean, you can seek these kinds of things actively, and they’re things that most people would not seek in a way they would not seek.  It’s like the new agers, Oh this is fine, but don’t put a needle in my body, ya know, I said “Well, maybe you need a needle in your body to get this trip started!”  Well, I don’t want to go on that trip then. 

I:  How new is this age?

M:  Yes, how new is this?  I’ll go this far, but not far enough to have anything happen, because you know, God, if something happened what would I do with it?  In this case I’m saying something has happened, and something can happen, and getting into the Kassica mode, and being in the Sahwman mode is not a conscious act.  It’s kind of letting go of your consciousness, and just letting yourself drift into a space where you were, or you discovered through your own experimenting, through your own trips.  And then, it’s amazing what happens to the people around you, they always pick up on it!  It’s like this group at Valhalla last September, Jim was in the group too, it’s amazing how the energy fed onto others, and then it untapped, and that same kind of energy started to filter through, seep through the other people.  And by a number of hours, or day out there  like this, it was marvelous, we were all like reading each other’s minds it was wonderful what was going on! 

I:  So, it’s not an intentional thing, or are we still talking about people very close, but I know that some, at least according to the historians that are available to, some of the Native American things, the…the healing act could be done by the medicine men, or the Shaman over there, everybody in the tribe was expected to be improved, protected…

M:  Otherwise, what good is a Shaman?  He’s no good!  Get another one!  Anybody can be a Shaman, as long as it works, who cares! 

I:  Right

M:  I mean it’s some broken down idiot who’s nuts half the time, or drunk, who cares as long as it works! 

I:  So, but you’re saying that this is not a matter, it’s just a matter of being in that mode.  It is not a matter of special acts or special …..

M:  Yea, there we’re getting away.  You gotta realize…this is why I like the term Shaman, or I like the medicine man, or the concept that these cultures had.  It’s so totally reversed from everything we know, it’s so totally reversed what Joseph Campbell  would point out, from, you’ve got to have the go between you’ve got to have, you know, and this is man exerting power over man, for man’s gain, and it’s got nothing to do with anything beyond it.  So egocentric it’s horrible!  The priest, the interpreter, ah, come to me, and God through me will absolve you of your sins!  First you gotta convince them of course they have sins.

I:  Yea

M:  Once you do that Step in, and I’m the big power, blah blah blah, …the concept of Shaman, the concept of medicine men on the other hand in the other cultures, is totally in reverse of that.  No Shaman who’s a really good, thinks he has any power at all, usually.  So what, me, I can’t do anything.  And then go off and do something silly to prove that this is a person who is in most cases barely competent.  It’s important NOT , NOT to get in an important role, and say I got the key.

I:  Well of course the, yea, that ties in wonderfully with the, some of the Shamans of course were actually, when they weren’t busy being used as used as Shamans they were busy being major outsiders in their tribes.  You know…they were men, but

(The two overlap!) [berdache]

M:  They specialized in this. 

I:  Yea

M:  That was quite a revolution, The Spirit in the Flesh, or whatever it was.  I read that a couple of winters ago, Jim gave it to me.  That was a wonderful revelation.

I:  Now I had read Shleeman and Power (?) before so they’d both written about it, but they both did weird things with it too.  Schleeman (?) decided that the, all of those people were actually celibate, they had to be, for years.

M:  Ha Ha! 

I:  Things kept coming up with all kinds of records that prove they weren’t sexual beings.  The things they were doing…got real weird.  See his latest book, I get all the anthropological books mixed up, I think his latest book is “Beyond the Wolf” or “Beyond the Powers of the Wolf” or something like that.  Oklahoma endings or something…and he finally admits that all these  people that he denied in sexuality too in the past might have probably, yea in fact they did, yea yea they did! 

Uproarious laughter…..

I:  I think I have something really lovely to share with the readers of Drummer already.  Probably send the Topeka Guardian as well, that which brings me to a question that’s also Fakir, and that is has Carla thought this through?  Has she decided that she wants to be involved in the Topeka Guardian article?

M:  Oh, I yea, that depends, here you’ll have to ask her, I can’t answer for her because I don’t run her, she’s a dominant woman in one mode, she’s a total babbling submissive in another….don’t tell her I told you that….

I:  No of course not.

M:  So….

I:  Well, I’ll check with her but……

M:  I think what she has in mind is she was not a professional, it makes a difference.  She’s so willing to talk about this, this is a life style for  us.  But it may raise complications, it may not, it depends. 

I:  Yea well, the general one is…..

M:  She’s an interesting person, she plays an interesting role.  And we play complimentary roles.  It’s like, and what’s gonna happen at the 15.  Or what happened the last time she was there, she was the only woman there, and she functioned, she got a lot of attention, and was a very important figure in the energies that were brought.  Carla, for years I never really understood this, I think Gannamead, more than anybody else helped explain to her what her role was….She’s an energy source, she’s the goddess figure, she’s the flow of another Polarity (?)  something like that, and a very need place to fill the cup at that kind of a gathering.  And they always of course realize it’s kind of important, they’ve got to have that female energy.  It’s extremely important, but it can’t be tainted, it can’t be tinkered with, and it can’t be warped, and torked like most are, so they’re very exceptional.  Very few women like Carla who can fulfill that role, and do it in an unselfconscious way.  She can, she’s been accepted into many many circles of gay men.  Her whole life has rotated around gay men. 

I:  Actually that touches on something very interesting, that just came up very frivolously at the Eagle one night, There’ve been millions of contests they do, maybe it was Mr. Eagle, Mr. Bare chest for April, whatever it was and they asked him what he likes about gay life and what he doesn’t like, and when they came to what he doesn’t like he said “ I really hate drag queens.”  And Marcus who was wearing….?…. He said “ Be careful!  Three out of three of the judges are sometimes in drag!”

Laughter

I: They’re all sitting there, laid out as ………NOISE….One of them is Lilly Street who was, just a few weeks before, the Empress of San Francisco! 

Laughter

I:  So Lilly said “ I think you can step down now, I don’t think you’re a contestant anymore.”  Listen to this honey scratch a leather man you probably got a drag queen.  Scratch a drag queen, and listen you’re gonna find a leather man! 

M:  How true how true! 

I:  Poor boy, he did not win the contest by the way, but I think for that, especially here where the leather community is a leather community is probably the wrong word, because there’s an awful lot of leather people who dress up in leather fashions, and stand around in leather bars …….the two now talk over each other, makes no sense!……………… 

Realizes the need for that other energy , and maybe that has something to do with the fact that when you scratch a leather man, you’re like likely to find a drag queen. 

M:  That drag queen underneath. 

I:  By giving in to that to a certain extent, you give…you give your energy sort of the option of moving in one way or another.  It’s not You don’t become a woman, you can’t become a woman…..

M:  No, but you can certainly explore the possibilities.  And you can certainly experience beyond a limited range, other things, you know.  I’m always amazed, even at my age, how many things I haven’t experienced.  It’s just really, you know….Would you believe it, I went to the E.T.V.C. convention, dressed

I:  The what?

M:  I went to the banquet night down at the Shangraly (sic), I went as Rolanda.  Carla took me to the E.T.V.C convention as Rolanda. 

I:  Really?  Had you done that, had you done cross dressing like that…….

M:  Only the second time in my life.  The other one was some sort of program meeting, just as a dare I went cross dressed.  But this time was different.  I went all the way out as Rolanda to the E.T.V.C. thing.  And you know what she told me? She encouraged me, she went down in the morning to take a look to see who was in the convention, she came out and they were out like on the street like at 9 o’clock in the morning, she says “Gee Rolanda I don’t think, I don’t think you look half as bad as most of them do!” 

Laughter

M: So….

I:  Well, so you’ve done that now what’s left? 

M:  Oh there’s a lot of stuff left!  I figure…….  I used to focus on photography, I do less and less now, but what I probably could is get better stuff because I shoot Polaroids.  I go through a fantastic amount of Polaroids.  There is the Fakir as Rolanda! 

I:  Oh!  That’s wonderful!  That is really, that’s excellent! 

M:  And then here was a guy that had seen us in the afternoon……so……to make matters worse check this out!  Now do you know what I’m doing? 

I:  Now I suppose you’re kissing this person’s boot?

M:  I was trying for a cigarette, and he said “Kiss my boots and I’ll give you a cigarette!”  And I did!  In that mood I would never do that……Pretty outrageous, here’s a better one here … I’m doing it, but you can’t see the boot too well. 

I:  Oh no, this is better.  Laughter…..

M:  Oh the interesting thing is I went out to the car to get the Polaroid, and this is, I had more fun Brian street than……(mumbles)  So I went onto Brian Street and I opened the side of my van, it was parked across the street there, and I forgot that I was in this dress and all this stuff, and I had high heels on, I was doing this, I was looking for the Polaroid, and these guys are cruising by with the radio going, and they whistled!  And it took a few minutes before I realized what had happened.  That was pretty wild! 

I:  Yes, that would be good! 

M:  Then we came home and went in the dungeon. 

Laughter

I:  Fakir Rolanda here….Actually, is this now? 

Mumble, and talk over each other….

M:  Actually, you see, that was part of my checkered career, at one point I was, for three years, I was the world’s only corseteer.  I resigned in May.  The only new corsets and patterns that had been made for 90 years. 

I:  Everyone was just copying what was already done. 

M:  Well you couldn’t really make them because it took modern bodies, and the patterns had been lost and the craft, and the art of corseteering.  So I researched them, I started out to be, I was a masters in drama at San Francisco State.  I studied make up and costume with a very nice gay guy down there, I learned to be an expert sewer and costume designer, and it lead me from one thing to another, and finally I made a period gown and I couldn’t get anybody to wear it because it didn’t look right, and I didn’t realize it had to have a nipped in waist to make it look….so I said we need a corset, then I realized there weren’t any corsets, nobody had made corsets for 100 years,

I:    And nobody was …with the Fakir’s corset. 

M:  I finally I eventually ended up being in the corset business.  Now here’s more serious play, but we do this all the time, this is…

I:  Oh but this is this is, the real Fakir here. 

M:  Now we’re doing things that would be more associated with exploring personas, this is what it is, I mean…

I:  Oh is it?

M:  Yea, all of us in this little group that I’m in now, right now, we’re all kind of in our middle or our later ages and we’re exploring personas.  And we’re all trying to find these things that have been tucked away so long.  Cause I had this all away so long…. These conflicts with these different personas, Here’s Carla in a different persona, that’s on the little pedestrian bridge over here, look at this one, she’s only 12 years old there! 

I:  At least 12, maybe 9 or 10! 

M:  And she’d do anything!

I:  Don’t say anything!  NO no no no….

M:  There’s a seminary, there’s a Catholic seminary over here, they’re still training priests, and we go in there for walks, we went over there at 1 o’clock in the morning, had her dressed like this, and I had her walk up to this huge lighted statue, it’s all night long with flood lights on it, and Jesus right in the middle, with all the windows of the seminary facing out looking at the statue, and I had to go up there to pee for Jesus….I think I got a long shot in here somewhere, here’s a distance shot, there’s the Jesus finishing up the pole, here’s Carla and me, there’s the Jesus, the seminary is back here, and here’s a close-up, here’s the piss, peeing for Jesus! 

I:  But it’s just a little girl, it’s not the Carla you lived with during this, it’s a little girl. 

M:  I’m living with  a little girl too.

I:  Apparently! 

 Mumbling

M:  Kinds of suspension out here, this is with crotch loops, crotch harness, and chest rods.  Gotta have a little support.  So we’re out here exploring these different things…..

I:  Little playroom there, it’s gonna cost you fortune in Polaroid film. 

M:  Well, it’s worth it. 

I:  You usually have some kind of tube or something in your nipples don’t you? 

M:  Usually, (overlapping chatter) Your nipples you know are usually pretty small.  These are small size, these are like A Mr. Business man tubes.

I:  Yea, cause you could….

M:  ….Really get big you see, really get big.  (?)

I:  It must have taken a long time to get them out there though? 

M:  Not so bad, it’s amazing, I’ve had a few people who’ve, I never thought I’d find anybody who’d want to go with my great urge to enlarge piercings, but I’ve had some in the last few years who’ve done it with other piercings, some with nipples, a lot have done it with cocks, I think they’re afraid….

I: Like foreskin piercings and stuff…..

M:  Or like a P.A. hole, a P.A. hole you can stick your thumb through, or ear piercings, I’ve had a lot of people going around with, Jack has a crystal in his ear, stretched it out real big, big as your finger, I’ve got a couple of women who’ve done that, the first one was Dan Tomain (?) the old piercing belt, where is that?  And we went so far, we had a friend of the family named Leon, and we both put neon tubes in our piercings, ever see that?

I:  No! 

M:  We did an article in P.F.I. called “Blowing Gasses” …..   You never saw that issue? 

I:  No. 

Mumbling

M: I tell ya, I’ve got stacks of magazines that’ll be donated….Oh here we go.  He was the first one, he got an ear piecing that Jim made in the Philip gage that only took about a month and a half and the result was a finger sized hole, really not that difficult. 

End of Tape One Both Sides.

Start of Tape Two, one side only

M…From the train station, HO!  And you got there in one piece?!  I’m not a very good driver, I’m very inattentive, and really just don’t give a damn, and I just kind of point the car in the general direction, and forget about it. 

I:  Ha ha ha!  Seemed to work out all right for me.

M:  Well if I wasn’t a Shaman, I guess it would work, or if I didn’t have something going for me.  You know I would have ended up in a pile of crumpled metal long ago. 

I:  Maybe the universe kept …. In a pile of crumpled metal, so…  So it gives you permission not to have to learn to drive in order to get places.

M:  Well I want to get places, but I’m not going to wait for other people, so you just gotta take the risks. 

I:  So is there anything hanging in the air of your mind that you want to say to, say in the Drummer article, that you haven’t touched on? 

M:  I think we pretty well touched on everything, Joseph, I think we got into heart of some very neat stuff here. 

I:  So, I will do the Drummer thing, I’ll talk to Carla before I try to do also ….Guardian.  There will be somewhat different, but not radically different.  And, maybe we’ll be including Carla in that.  Is there any other place you really really wish you could be?  A place that might maybe not normally think of that self as a publication, or Fakir belonged?  Once I get sitting down writing (Loud laughter)

M:  Who knows!? 

I:  Anything can happen! 

M:  Well It’s hard to find places you see.  The only media I could find for many years, and we’ve got this many of them, are like P.F.I. 

I:  Yea, there’s P.F.I.

M:  That was my soap box!  Doug says Roland this is your chance to stand up, let Fakir stand on a soap box!  Here it is!  So for years and years you know I’ve been contributing, writing in depth, and if you go back into issues, the black and white issues, way back when and so forth, you know, man I cranked a lot of effort into that and it was a joy, sweet joy.

I:  What would now there’s….

M:  I don’t know if I’m going to go anywhere where there isn’t some chance of being some receptivity. 

I:  That’s what I was asking.  I mean I write, most of the places I write for there’s no chance that anyone’s going to understand what you’re talking about, what I’m talking about, but I thought maybe there’s someone out there that you wish you could….

M:  See I don’t see why some of this couldn’t be brought up.  Well, it was amazing to me.  For instance, Magical Blend was terribly negative. 

I:  Because of the body involvement.

M:  The body involvement, exactly.  They had approached me three or four times.  And somebody did an aborted interview, and they scrapped it, and then finally, I think it was Richard Gab (?) finally came around, and he said “I don’t care, we’re going to do the interview anyway!”  So they did an interview, and I went back, and they wrote an article, or wrote the interview up, and it got rejected by the editor, this is just too far out for the readers of Magical Blend.  And sat there for two years.  About two years after it got ….he called back and said “Guess what?!  They changed their mind over here, their attitudes, they want us to print that article now!  The interview you did two years ago!”

I:  Do you think the world changed that much in two years, or did the editor change that much?

M:  I don’t know.  It was the same editor.  I think the world did change.  The world we had changed, and so…changed.  It seems hopeless.  It seems like nothings changing.  But really, it is. 

I:  Have you ever been in Shaman’s Drum? 

M:  I was in there only as a review of the film.  And part of the interview was a review by Deborah Carol (?) she was editor, and I know the people there quite well.  I wouldn’t mind going again.  Again, there was at that time, there was a desire on the part, particularly Deborah Carol, after it turns out, and I found out who she was, and got personal, and got more experiences, I could understand why, she had very interesting experiences, and she could relate to things, but the other people over there couldn’t, and they thought it was too far out.  Since then they’ve had Lucy, the lady in the Philippines, who gets crucified every Good Friday, you know, and things like this.  So they might be open, you see. 

I:  I like Shaman’s Drum.

M:  I like Shaman’s Drum too! 

I:  I think it’s like everything else, it’s in it’s own separate little world,

M:  It has its place.

I:  It’s the only magazine that I’ll ever see that will be absolutely perfect, and reaches everyone that matters, and touches everything that touches me, is gonna be this magazine.  So I can accept the limitations of all the ones made of paper.  (Mumbling…..) [and things … just small circle]

M:  There are other ways of communicating!  There are other ways of communicating, if it were just a little more diversity.   I do write as the Old Corsetier, the old corset newsletter. 

I:  Really? 

M:  There was a period in time…when I would write…

I:  Is that a fetish newsletter?  Or is it a…

M:  Well fetishes I guess.  See what I did, I trained and sold my patterns, and my expertise, to a couple of mountain gear, and they now have a company called D.R. Creations.  The world’s largest supplier of corsets!  And she got my patterns, and we trained for a year, they pay me royalties on every corset they make, and they do this little corset newsletter for lovers of corseting.  Tight Lacing. 

I:  So this is, this is, the…their corset customers are primarily fetish customers, rather than….

M:  Not necessarily, it’s amazing!  They started running ads in bridal magazines and Harpers, and so on, in the catalog sections and what not, they got an awful lot of people who were just curious, tweaked by it and wanted to try it, they wanted to look different, realize that this was a way to change the body, this can be major body modification. You can tattoo it, you can pierce it, you can enlarge the piercings, you can paint it, you can shave the hair off, you can add hair on, you can add things around it like coils of wire, you can cover it with leather, you can bind it, you can twist it, you can shape it in all kinds of ways like plastic or putty…

I:  And there the corsets come in. 

M: Bodies can be a hell of a lot of fun! 

I:  Your own, and others! 

M:  Right! 

I:  Of course other people’s bodies would be totally useless if you didn’t have one yourself. 

M:  That’s true. 

 I:  Yea.

M:  It’s awful hard to tap somebody on the shoulder when you’re out of the spirit body.  But if you’re really good sometimes you can….if they’re sensitive you can make connection. 

I:  Make them think at least they’ve been tapped on the shoulder.  Or make them make the connection in the same way that you would. 

M:  No it really does work.  You can pass energy.  There is…are there any questions, unanswered questions, things that you would like to know?

I:  I don’t think so. There might be one or two that I don’t know are there, until I start writing, and I come to the end of the paragraph, thinking I know what it is….

M:  Always feel free to give me a call.  If you get stuck, or you want something further….that’s a neat problem.  We never got into it, what did he mean? 

I:  You know, you’ve written so you know this can happen.  So you’ll still be daytimes at your office number?  The same office for awhile?

M:  For at least for a week.  And then they’ll refer this number is no longer in service, and refer you to a new number which will be…

I:  You won’t be there. 

M:  Yes, (?) Brody Evert Loomis (I’m guessing at the name of the company) …I’m going up to a multi million dollar agency.  I’m going to the up time here!  We worked out a deal here.  I’m going to be absorbed into a bigger agency. 

 I:  Will it still be nearby for you? 

M:  No, I have to go down to Santa Clark.  This is Palo Alto, it’s been very cozy, but I have some bad memories from this place, bad memories. 

I:  Will you still do things like Jim’s Gauntlet stores? 

M:  Not through this agency….I might do it at home! 

I:  Fakir’s business on the side! 

M:  Right. I want to do it, I didn’t want to get out of his dirty, I could have quit, and I have ways of supporting myself, what-not and maybe going off and starting something totally new it would be more related to what I do, in a sense Jim kind of did that, and I admire him for it.  I’m not quite ready for that.  I’m gonna go and do this one whirl, one last dance sort of and (?)  I see it as a transition.  I’ve had my own business, sponsored a couple of stages, and finally for six years it’s been down here as a quasi-fear sized success business, and it kind of deteriorated, I had this son problem …. Things got really fucked up.

I:  A son problem?

M:  A yuppie son problem.  So I make the transition… it all… the legal documents are OK, we’ve been two months…trying to…(mumbling very quiet.) [stock]  I learned a lot! 

I:  No doubt! 

M:   I did learn one thing in jail, how to run a business n profit.  (Mumbling again)

I:  So is it growing in ways of this world experience for you. 

M:  But it always relates.  These strides these triumphs trials and tribulations have a better chance….

To go in there and bring something back, or whatever….

I:  Getting knocked out of balance in this world is another excuse for going into whatever experience helps you. 

(Too quiet to make out) 

I:  I think we’ve done it. 

M: Al l right, fine Joseph.

I:  I’m sure there are questions left unanswered, Oh!  There is one question.  (Trails off too quiet….) It’s not a question for the article, it’s a question about it in a way….What shall we do about photos for such things as Drummer and the Guardian?  Does Tony have files of things he can draw on? 

M:  He probably has a Fakir file.  There’s an awful lot of stuff available either my own stuff,

(mumbling)

I think Mark Chester has probably the biggest idea of what’s all available. 

I:  Has he taken lots of pictures of you?

M:  No, he’s taken no pictures of…nobody knows taken pictures of me, I’m trying to think where else has a repository of Fakir pictures.  Outside of the one that’s on the poster over there, that’s about the only one that Mark Chester ever shot of me. 

(More mumbling)

 I:  So if one of the things that we want is like just almost as if they were rolling moments (?) pictures probably you wouldn’t mind someone shooting you for that. 

M:  Oh straight kind of pictures?  No, not at all. 

I:  I kind of like the idea of having the Fakir pages, and maybe at the bottom the interview pages, the ordinary….

M: Yea, well they did that, we did that with the film, that was very important, when I did an appearance, or did an interview, and met the press, they would see this thing and come out looking and ceremony and here’d be this neat looking middle aged guy in a gray suit, not what they expected.

I:  In a way I think that the readers of Drummer need to be kind of, have their buttons pushed that way,

M:  People who wear leather don’t wear leather all the time.  Most of them. 

I:  But this will give them that much….

M…Ass OK that’s different.  Seeing a full-time slave like Jim, that’s different.

I:  Seeing both of you in the same place at the same time, could help all those men who only get to wear their leather on special occasions, or on the weekend or something, to relate and feel that much closer, that much readier, to understand what you’re saying. 

M:  Sure, I don’t know.  Did you know that Fakir wanders around, looking, and dressed like this, being a nerd business man, 363 years of the day ( he actually said that!) days of a year!  And he goes out and hangs a cottonwood tree for two!  That’s it!

I:  And then I have a very very personal for me question, Would you sign my Body Play book? 

M:  I would love to! 

I:  It’s my way of keeping myself from loaning or giving things away.

M:  Yea, that’s true!  (They overlap talking)  I’ve got a whole bookcase in here of originals signed by the author.

I:  They’re signed by the author! 

M:  Really isn’t something like letting something like that go out. 

I:  You can do it wherever you’re in the habit of doing it. 

Mumbling

M:  I used to keep a whole mess of pens just for doing this, you know. 

I:  Really!  I always have ….

M:  I used to sit and sign 500 books a year.  (Mumbling) It’s amazing how that film…

I:  Was body clay your own invention? 

M:  That was my work, yes. 

I:  I mean, and the book too?

M:  Oh yes.

I: I mean that wasn’t something, something….

M:  I wanted to do this, and the person who really inspired me to get moving was Annie Sprinkle in New York.

I:  Really?! a wonderful thing.