This weekend was my turn to go out on a date with a friend of a friend. As with you, it was a guy I’d met a few times before but never really got to know, and who I liked a lot once we got to know each other a little bit. Fun, smart, and good-looking, but I was also feeling a little bit of frustration about getting back into the same old routine of meeting a nice guy and crossing my fingers hoping that if he was even interested in me that he’d also share any of my leather fetish. Nice, attractive guys who really capture my interest are rare enough. Ones that like me back narrow the pack down a little further. The additional factor of finding someone who actually responds to leather like I do is usually the one I’ve had to compromise on. Lately, though, as I’ve thought more and more about wanting to stop shoving parts of who I am away into storage, I get more frustrated about having to give up this thing that’s such a potent part of my sexual make-up.
You and I have been in the same spot for a while, John: it’s really important to us to find guys who appeal to us both sexually and mentally. We’ve always gone the traditional route: hoping to meet nice guys through regular channels, and then just secretly hoping they share some of our more unconventional interests. It’s not a bad approach, but it hasn’t been very successful.
As much as I know I like to play around with different guys who share only a small part of the things that make up who I am, one of the lessons I’ve learned in my years of whoring around and getting to know myself better sexually and emotionally is that at heart I’m the marrying kind. Not a prude, and not fixated on the idea of monogamy just for the sake of it. I just know I like to focus the bulk of my attention on one guy who excites me on many levels.
I’ve always been so self-conscious about owning up to how much the leather thing actually means to me, and the result has been that I’ve always treated it like a dirty secret. I’m trying to approach it differently now: this time I don’t want to just cruise for guys into leather who just want to fuck and run. I’m sure I can continue to have plenty of fun and discovery along the way with those guys, but now I may as well just admit that what I want is to get really involved with someone who’s into leather like I am, who appreciates ideas and life like I do. Maybe I’ve just been looking for the total package — that best friend plus — from the wrong angle.
I’ve been underestimating the leathermen and hoping there’d be another nice guy with a fetish of his own. Now, I think it’s time to look at the leathermen as a pool of candidates who’d be just as likely to have a life beyond their fetish that would rock my world. Yes, me, I’m open to wooing.