Interview with Gear Up Weekend Founders

We're always looking for are people who think outside the norm, who look at the status quo and imagine a different way to get their kink on.  

I recently found out about a new event in Northern California called Gear Up Weekend.  The guys who founded it wanted an event for, and about men.  They wanted to play.  And they wanted to play their way.

Event founder and producer Stephen Charles is very intense about the need for this kind of weekend but he also realized that he needed to tap in to the experience that surrounded him.  Enter Mario Torrigino, founder of Leather Levi Weekend, who, after years of involvement with an increasingly pan-sexual event, wanted to recapture intense male energy.

These guys tell their story way better than I can.  They're on the cusp or launching their baby on to the world on July 22nd and I predict we're gonna see some very special stuff come of out it.

Check out the 3-part interview after the jump

Comments

[Mario Torrigino]

I can see merit in some of these comments, especially Leland's. LLW is an open and accepting queer kink event. I am proud of that. Sorry about using the term pansexual, I did not understand that the term had come to mean mostly straight. Many of us queer folk feel comfortable playing together. I invited the first women to serve on the organizing committee and to attend LLW, queer women, hot Dom and hot sub queer women, my friends. My boy Rizo still glows when he talks about a scene he had at LLW - a couple of mean dyke Doms did some nasty piercing and beating on him - it made me laugh then and it still does. There is a lot of good energy at LLW. I am looking forward to it again this year.

[OaklandRio]

Rather than "thinking outside the norm," I think Gear Up is more of a step backward. There are many options for men to play with men, but LLW is the only mixed-gender queer play space I know of. And if they didn't want to compete with LLW, why hold Gear Up in the same location, within a month of the LLW date? I'm totally respect separate spaces, but think they could have done more to make Gear Up unique, not just a copy of LLW without the pesky women.

[West]

Kudos to Mario and Stephen for their efforts!

[Reese Cohen]

i totally get it...at my first LLW i played with queer men and queer transmen, both for the first time. i felt safe and with my family. my queer family, which includes all genders. the vibe was just right. i have no desire to play in a space that is "hetero" or pan-hetero or whatever you call it these days..as a queer woman playing around hetero men does not feel safe to me, and frankly they just dont turn me on like gay leathermen :)

[Sailor]

In my opinion, at this point, pansexual and het basically means the same thing. "Pansexual" is perhaps just a better sounding, hipper, more PC way of saying it (although I'm not sure about "better sounding" anymore). You know how you hear a song you really love on the radio, and you're super jazzed about hearing it until it's playing on every station about once an hour and soon the song goes from being special to being bone-jarringly annoying? That's how I feel at this point about the word "pansexual". Events that are open to all folks should consider just calling themselves "open" events. It will be a refreshing change in lingo, and in my opinion, it'll be a better description of what the event of who the event's open to.

[Mo]

Wow. After watching just a few minutes of the first part of the interview, I have some comments to make.

And as someone who has attended LLW for two years in a row, all I can say is that if these guys "couldn't get turned on" because it's no longer a "male event" then they really weren't trying hard enough. The event is full of HOT PEOPLE (of all genders) who have some seriously HOT SEX. Even if the pairing isn't your thing, it's not like everyone's having straight missionary sex on fluffy mattresses. There are some fucked up, hard players at this event who have a good time- and I feel like it's the PLAY, not the gender make up, that set's the mood for the event.

There is a LOT OF SPACE AND TIME at this event- if you can't get it hard because there's a vagina in the room, then find another space to play in.

I guess I'm really flabbergasted that there are still guys out there that are gynephobic and transphobic enough to have to leave a hot, well-run, well-attended event because they can't handle it not being 100% dick.

[Mo]

I'd argue that "pansexual" events are usually cis gender people (aka "non-trans" people) who usually engage in heterosexual play but who may ID as bisexual (and usually that's just the women). I have also had negative experiences at "pansexual" parties- mainly being perceived as female with a female partner..and having a bunch of guys gawk at us.

Queer all-gender spaces (like LLW) are a bunch of queer people of all genders (trans included) who probably don't have a "heterosexual" bone in their body- even if they're playing with someone of the opposite gender, there's probably nothing "straight" about it.

So I guess to boil it all down, pansexual parties aren't usually that queer. But queer parties are :)

[lelandcarina@gmail.com]

I'd love to. I want to start by qualifying my response: I'm only speaking of my own personal experience...

I don't feel comfortable being playful or sexual in a space with an obvious heterosexual vibe. For me, the pan-sexual spaces I have been to have had too much heterosexual energy.

Queer spaces, however, even when shared between men, women, and trans people do not feel uncomfortable to me. I find that play between two queer people, even if it's a man and a woman, feels inherently different than heterosexual energy.

What exactly that difference is, I have a hard time pin-pointing. All I know is that I can't get turned on if a play space feels too hetero. This is how I can relate to what Mario and Stephen are saying in their interview about the need for men's only space. (Though I have to say, I often wish I was a gay man. So f*cking hot!)

[Editor]

You bring up an excellent question. What is the definition of a "Queer" event versus a "Pan" event. I think on the surface the two look very similar to most people but I would agree that the energy can be quite different. Can you quantify the differences for us?

[lelandcarina@gmail.com]

Thank you for this interview, it answered some questions that I had about Gear Up weekend. One thing that I would say, as someone who has attended LLW for a few years... I don't think that LLW is pan-sexual, I think it is queer. For me, as a queer woman, I find it super hot that there are queer men, queer women, and queer trans people all in one space. To me, that is a *very* different energy than pan-sexual events that I have been to (and have not enjoyed.)

Thank you again for this interview. But please, don't call LLW pan-sexual!