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Serving the Fetish World |
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Fakir Musafar (Date Unknown)
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…. |
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.