There are only 11 recognized masters of the leather community in Central Florida. These are leaders within the community who have been properly covered and earned all of their pieces of leather. Master Stephen is one of them.
“In 1972 in a leather bar in New York, I met my mentor,” Stephen says. “He was first generation Old Guard. I spent nine years with him earning every piece of leather and learning what it was to be a leatherman. That was mostly about integrity and not just about learning to throw a flog.”
Today he runs the men’s night at The Woodshed and owns Integrity House, a local leather house. During the day, he is a clinical therapist and he uses his profession when it comes to how he plays and does scenes at The Woodshed.
“I’m a total dom,” says Stephen. “I don’t consider myself a sadist, all though I do have sadistic tendencies—every dom does. Because I’m a clinical therapist I tend to do very cathartic scenes which are more of an emotional release of things.”
Master Stephen says because of the type of player he is he likes like to see somebody laugh as much as he wants to hear them scream. With a long dedication to the community, he has seen it change from the ways of the Old Guard to where it is today.
“I think we’ve reached a point in the leather community where we are majorly diversified more so than I think I’ve seen in my 40 years,” he says.
He remembers during the early 1970s when the leather scene in New York was exploding along with the sexual freedom that the LGBT rights movement brought with it. There were leather bars, men used the hanky code and the lifestyle was set around a code of protocols that created an everlasting brotherhood. Master Stephen says the community has come a long way since then with all the newer trends and subsets, which is good and bad.
“I have a line that I use called ‘Insta-Doms.’ It’s Fifty Shades of Grey, the internet, add water and half bake,” Stephen says.
Master Stephen stresses the need for education. He finds mentoring the newer generation is crucial to not only keep the community thriving, but to remind everyone why the community began and how to stay safe.
“For me, a true leather person is a person of self-value, integrity, a dominant in the leather community,” Stephen says. “They never takes on a submissive without the intent of making them better when they leave us then when they joined us.”
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