I have quite the collection of leather and leather gear still stashed away in, what we would call back in the day, a ‘leather closet.’ It was decades in the making as I built it up, jackets and chaps, hats, toys… and stuff… I can confidently say the wide collection does still get used. About once a year I will haul it out, dust it, vacuum the crevasses then return it to cold storage. On the occasion it gets boxed up moved to a new house.
This Halloween I had he urge to just pull it all out.The chaps and the vest, the jacket, and my favorite item, the leather masters hat. Damn I love that thing, but really where does one wear a masters hat? Without the eagle, mind you. The thinking was I could dress up as a “biker” or a Village Persons, before they went insane. I built up the momentum to break open the closet.
“come on! You can still fit into it, you’re still hot, you’re cool. You’re so cool you’re hot” over and over. As Saturday wore on and The tricker-treaters were wandering the street in front of our building, I became more and more aware of the comfortable feeling my gym shorts were giving me. Ah, do I really need to though? to place on a masters hat to be cool?
My mind wandered to Folsom in 2014. I had attended the event with a small group. All of which spent most the early afternoon binding, clipping, and buckling themselves into very expense coverings. I had a tee shirt and jeans. Several times they offered to help me into some leathers, to which I declined. I the way I saw it, back then I did not need an outer shell to be my role. No hat was-or-is needed to help me in my passions. Also, I had always done some nasty, hedonistic things in my comfortable gym shorts. So it really isn’t the gear that makes the man, it’s the simple desire to be what he is.
We waited until night fall and made our way around Cheesman park. I sported gym shorts. But, I also sported massive… ring. It was fun, there were ooky spooky spirits, and a ton of suburbanites who spent $50 each to follow tour guides around telling inaccurate histories of the graveyard turned park. We really need to open a tour company that only does tours around Cheesman Park. Now that would give me an excuse to wear my hat.
