LORD OF VINYL just kind of happened, honest. I never set out to glorify the American Leather Queen. He gradually emerged, and it was becoming painfully obvious to me that I wanted to get in touch with my inner dungeon master. So here he is: both the body and the kinkwear are guaranteed 100 percent beef-free.
My conscious intention when I first conceived the outfit was to create a battle costume to show off the war paint on the arms and legs of the character who ended up as Captive Despot. I thought I'd use a combination of tire parts, old spark plugs and toilet hardware to create some body-revealing "found object armor." Then I found a couple of yards of vinyl on the bargain table at my local fabric store (smells like baby dolls, looks like leather). Deciding that this would be easy material to work with, I made some sketches of vinyl and hardware armor. They all looked suspiciously like fetish wear. It was clear where I wanted to go, so I decided to yield to my obvious desire to deck myself out leather drag.
Once the costume was made and attempted in combination with the war paint, I realized I wanted to really push leather-man imagery as far as I could. So I created a chalk white, goateed leather daddy figure.
I entered the guise as a kind of shadow self. Once inside, I was surprised to find him not so fierce. Once inside, I found that I liked him and that he had a kind of wise and tender side. Is he a punisher or a protector or both? Sometimes I think Lord of Vinyl goes to the extreme of the eroticism that I'm willing to attempt and to show people, but by "leather standards" he's probably laughably tame -- not to mention laughably unmuscular -- at least in comparison to erotic images that are just a few clicks away.
So does my desire to embody the Lord of Vinyl mean that I'm a closet Leather Queen? I've had little first hand experience with leather culture, but I do hold a kind of fantasy fascination for the ritualism of its erotic enactments, the cultishness of its backrooms and motorcycle clubs, and the body-exulting obsessiveness of its fetishism. It felt great to be Lord of Vinyl, and I do harbor a secret desire to one day attend a dungeon dance or Mr. Leather competition. But, unless I'm really repressing my nature, I think I'd always be on the outside looking in, playacting in vinyl rather than living in leather.
Images created August 26, 1998
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