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Leather

A Reflection on the Leather Lifestyle

By Nikki CollinsPublished 7 years ago 3 min read
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Scuse me while I wax poetic for a few minutes, will you?

Today, I took a moment to take off all the pins on my vest and clean it. A moment of posterity struck me as I tended my hide and I’d like to share it with those that might like to read it.

About a year ago I started wearing a leather vest. It’s a Northbound Leather bar-style vest, interior pockets, cut narrow in the lapels and away from the chest. It’s made of a beautiful full grain hide in about 4oz leather, good and heavy but not unbearably so.

Wearing a vest is a feeling, to me, that’s indescribable. It’s empowering and vulnerable and raw and real, all at the same time. I’m wearing something that makes me feel sexy and powerful and confident. It’s my literal armor against the world sometimes. It holds me up and says ‘I’m here’. It marks me as an outsider and an insider simultaneously. When I am in a space with other Leather folk, it’s like coming home. I’m wrapped in the warm embrace of my hide and my people, my tribe.

As I started to clean my vest, I removed all the pins. Each one marks a different point in my journey; I only have two pins on my vest that were not gifts - my CUNT pin and my Safe Space Pin. Each pin, as I removed it, I reflected where it came from. I feel overwhelmed with gratitude when I see them all surrounding me, reminders of dear friends, lovers, family…I’m blessed to know so many amazing humans who’ve found me worth giving such an intimate gift.

Soaping my vest, I know I’ll have to break in the smell again from scratch. There’s, of course, that scent of leather and Huberd’s, but under that - cigars, first, and cigarettes. Beer and whiskey. My cum, and sweat, and I know, when it gets warm, it smells faintly like piss. Each note reminds me of a time when I fucked in it, when Sir pushed me down in the bathtub and pissed down my back, that time I went to the bar in it and danced the night away with my Sisters. That time we blew smoke into the lapels so it’d smell like that excellent Arturo Fuente. As the soap lathers, it comes up pinkish-brown in some spots. Blood. My blood. His blood. Our blood. That time I gave him his own vest and we rolled bloody and sweaty down the side of breathtaking orgasms…

The things this vest has seen. As my hands work the Huberds over it, I feel those memories as truly as I feel the pebble grain slide under my fingertips. That time we were fighting and fucking and I threw it off, sweaty and hot, and you chastised me for treating the vest so poorly. When I stopped wearing it for a month because I didn’t know if I could, or should. When I wore it every day for a month because I needed it in order to face the world. Those times I wore it in Pride, proudly and confidently queer, with my chin up and my shoulders back. When I wore it softly, draping over my shoulders, my skirt moving around my knees and my silly socks. All the times I wore it and not much else, and how I felt every time I fucked someone in it.

My fingers trace the letters on the back last. ‘BOSS’. I was the boss of something bigger than me once. My vest makes me easy to spot in a crowd, and when I’m wearing it, I know I have the strength to look back when a hundred eyes are looking at me. I’m the boss of me.

My vest. My Leather. My people. My journey. Mine, and no one else’s. This...that - that, my friends, is fucking Leather.

fetishesnsfw
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