Wes & Tom's 1999

 

Nineteen ninety nine -- the whole year -- has been about relationships:  dave, boy tim, Troy.

But wait, we're getting ahead of ourselves.

And before we start we should give you a gentle warning:  We candidly talk about our fidelity-based yet polyamorous leather lives in this recap.  Not graphically, but openly.  If you might be alarmed at an unintended education, go no further.  If not, welcome to "Wes & Tom's 1999"!

Where we left off from last year...

We had decided to add a leather boy as a third to our relationship late in 1997.  By April 1998 we realized that particular relationship was better as friends.  In May, a longtime pen pal asked if Wes would consider him as his leather submissive.  

Enter dave from San Francisco.

dave and Wes managed to see each other every two weeks -- except for twice when it stretched to three weeks. Primarily that was by routing dave's business trips through Houston. But he also made leisure trips to serve, and Wes made some trips out to California.

We both flew out to San Francisco to see dave for Christmas in December 1998. During that trip, dave asked if we would mind if he spent May-June (1999) -- when his seasonal allergies were bad in San Francisco -- in Houston. We said we'd love to have him with us.

January -- bright hopes, big projects

On some previous trips, dave had mentioned that he felt "apart from" when he was upstairs in the garage apartment. We wanted dave's May-June stay to be as comfortable as possible, so we began The Project to swap the "guest" bedroom in the garage apartment with a hobby room in the main body of the house.  Sounds simple, but it was a big undertaking.

February -- a realization

Here's how Wes wrote a friend about what happened next:

dave arrived in town late Friday 2/19 for a leathery weekend called "LUEY" - Let Us Entertain You. It's basically a big post-Mardi Gras bar crawl. The drinking part holds little interest for those of us who don't drink, but LUEY does bring out 700+ men and makes for good camaraderie.

I slept with dave on Friday night (his arrival night, a tradition) and Saturday night (after we'd gone out to a leather bar + dancing together) in the new dave bedroom in the main house. Sunday night I slept in the Master bedroom with Tom.

The above sequence of events led to dave having a realization Monday morning: dave's loneliness was not caused by the dave bedroom being up in the garage apartment where it was previously located. The sense of being "apart from" was not due to the dave bedroom's location. dave's loneliness was due to not being at my side. his concurrent realization was that he would continue to feel lonely given the constraints of our triad relationship, where he can not serve me as both leather submissive and primary partner. he was realizing that he wanted his Leather Top to also be his lover.

dave acted with High Honor by promptly bringing his new realizations to my attention.  This is exactly what I would have wanted him to do: be honest. 

dave suggested withdrawing himself for two reasons:

  1. to support my relationship with Tom -- because he wanted to be in Tom's place, and
  2. because it hurt too much to be around me now that he realized what he wanted and that it wasn't available.

It was bittersweet.  Thankfully the coming months kept Wes busy.

March-May -- Wes' leathery Spring

Wes had a really nice time March 18-22 at the seminars during the "International Master/slave Weekend & Contest 1999" in Atlanta. It was a good weekend of fellowship with others interested in Dominance & submission, and the seminars had good topics like "EFFECTIVE CORRECTION: BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION THAT WORKS."

On April 18th, Wes was one of the judges for The Mr. Texas Drummer contest at Pacific Street.

Ten days after that, Wes went to Dallas to visit family. The following weekend, May 1-2, he was teaching at The Leather submissive boy class in Dallas so he combined the two tasks into one trip. The boy class was great.  It was a day-and-a-half of leather instruction by 12 faculty from across the southeast. There were 23 boy-identified students, two of them female-to-male  people and about half of them biological females.

A week later Wes presented his 6th annual "Erotic Uses of Electricity" symposium for NLA:Houston.

Then our friend Alan Chiras visited.  Alan is a former Drummer columnist who for years ran a safe-sex education organization for leatherfolk called "LeatherForce 2000."  Alan's nickname is "Squirrel," and he has a love for furry friends.

A few days later Wes went to Austin for NLA:Austin's annual Texas Leather Pride Weekend.  It also gave Wes a chance to visit his mother.  (She moved to Austin about two years ago.)  And to chat with an Austin-based leatherman named "boy tim" whom he'd met at the boy class.

June-present -- boy tim

Wes and boy tim began corresponding.  They had an interest in each other, but Wes said he was looking for a "leather slave" and boy tim took that to mean Wes wanted an object.  Wes tried articulating just what "leather slave" meant to him.  It boiled down to he wanted someone who:

is honest and trustworthy

is his leather submissive

wants to form a committed relationship with a special bond

has the capacity to trust him entirely, and

has the capacity to open his entire life to his control

boy tim said that described him.

They continued corresponding and Wes invited boy tim to visit over the 4th of July weekend.  It would be the first time for Tom to meet boy tim.  Would they like each other?  Wes thought so.

The 4th came with much anticipation.  boy tim arrived at the door with tribute for Wes and flowers for Tom.

The weekend was delightful.

The three of us continued seeing each other, primarily by boy tim driving the 150 miles between Austin-Houston, at least biweekly for the remainder of the year.

October -- a leather jaunt and a folk art masterpiece

In October the three of us rendezvoused in Fort Lauderdale for Leather University/Dungeon 401.  We also got to drive a red Volkswagen Beetle to see the Police Museum in nearby Miami.  Click here for pictures from our Ft. Lauderdale trip. 

October also saw the completion of a very large quilt project that Tom had been working on periodically for three years.  The finished queen-bed quilt is below:  It's made from about 1,200 pieces with about 72,000 hand-done quilting stitches.

 

The "bondage" quilt
(Gray is the hanky color for people who like bondage.)

 

What else?

Health-wise, Wes noticed early in the year that his brain slows down quite a bit whenever his neuropathy was strong.  Finally we were able to measure that phenomenon.  (Take a look at the eerie brain darkness in the pictures at the very bottom.  Wes' doctor says she normally sees yellows and reds, but "whole areas of your brain are asleep!")

Friends-wise, Tom connected with a guy named Troy at the gym.  Troy has become Tom's best buddy.  Wes also finally got to meet long-time e-pal Kristina -- coming through Houston for the Tanqueray AIDS Ride -- with whom he started corresponding after she left a note in our guestbook in August of 1997.

Family-wise, now that we've got half a year as a triad under our belt, we're looking at combining households.  Since Wes and Tom don't have jobs to consider, we're going to do a two-month trial of Austin from January 15 to March 15 to see if it would be better overall if we moved there or if we moved boy tim to Houston.  Time will tell.  Regardless, there's an adventure ahead!

 

We hope this note finds you in good health and good spirits.

Our love to you all.

Wes & Tom + boy tim

 

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