SAN FRANCISCO SOUTH OF MARKET, 1994
by William Cracraft
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A short, tough-looking woman wearing a California Highway Patrol uniform, including holstered automatic and boot-knife, strode across the dance floor of The Pit, a subterranean South of Market bar, and disappeared through a curtained doorway. San Francisco Dyke Daddy Jo Leroux was about to begin her latest fund-raising event.
Out front, her audience of mostly gay men and women, dressed in leather, booted and leashed, festooned with chains and piercings, waited.
Leather community is a euphemism for sado-masochism community. The fine art of giving pain starts with as little as a threat, extends to bloodshed and stops when anyone participating says stop.
Extra curricular activities took place as the audiance waited for the show to start. One woman in her late 20s sat at a table and rolled her right sleeve up past her elbow. Opposite, a strongly built woman wearing black leather shorts and bodice grasped her forearm and turned it, soft side up, to catch the light. A brightly polished Fairbairn-Sykes fighting dagger flashed in her hand.
The woman in leather laid the razor-sharp blade across her companion's forearm and delicately shaved away the nerveless, translucent top layer of skin, which curled back like exotic parchment. Both women were deeply intent on the slowly moving blade.
The main event began. Leroux, standing on a small portable stage, plugged the raffle and in a gravely voice yelled at the crowd to pay attention.
The opening act was Hava, a dark-haired belly-dancer, who for the first time, was dancing bare -breasted. Like the fund-raiser, Hava's dance and costume were part traditional, part south-of-market.
A late group of people from the community arrived after having modelled at an earlier function. The group included a young man with a six-inch nail thicker than a pencil through a permanent hole in his tongue. Other mutilations were more artistic.
Another of the models, a woman, wearing a black one-piece outfit with a low-cut back had 45 blue-feathered needles running horizontally up her back in two rows to her shoulders. Each passed through a pinch of skin tinged with blood. The feathers hung down in pattern and danced as she walked.
The woman looked pretty high. “They hurt at first, that's the point,” she said. “Then, as they have been in for a while they hurt more, then start to itch, then it feels good when they pull them out. It's very pleasurable and you get a big rush from the endorphins," she added.
In a curtained tattooing booth a man wearing latex gloves was extracting needles from his lovers’ arm, dipping his rubber-covered finger in the blood and letting his lover lick it off. The main event was yet to come.
A haunting melody, “Only Women Bleed,” by Alice Cooper, pulsed through the dark, watching room. The woman with the gleaming dagger took the stage accompanied by a very hefty woman smoking a large, smelly cigar.
The large woman sat backwards on a chair, back to the audience and smoked her stogie. Her partner’s dagger flashed in the spotlight. With a deft motion the dominatrix sliced her partner’s tee-shirt, which fell away, exposing a broad expanse of pale flesh. The cutter sheathed her dagger, picked up a cup full of alcohol, tossed it on the seated woman's back and snapped on a pair of latex gloves. She spread the alcohol around and pulled out a scalpel still in its sterile package. The crowd was spellbound.
For ten seconds, as the Cooper song reached a crescendo, the woman passed the scalpel up and down across her partner’s back. At first, nothing. Then blood began to seep from the incisions. First pink, then red, the words, "only women bleed," emerged, and trickles of blood began running down. The O in "woman" had a cross depending from it.
The dominatrix took the cigar from her partner’s mouth, tapped cooled ash onto the lacerated back and rubbed it in to the cuts, leaving a faint tattoo. The mutilated woman shrugged on a plaid shirt as tears of blood began to run down her back. The crowd heaved a collected sigh and the show moved on.
"This is how we play, there is control and pain involved--'violence'--working through that makes you more centered," said Daddy's Boy Craig Neeley, another of the titled fund raisers in the Leather Community.
"It is therapy for women, " Leroux said of the sometimes bloody acts. " It’s a real trust issue. You take them through it, it kicks back to when they are kids."
Leroux and Neeley agreed those who allow themselves to be hurt people would likely inflict their own wounds in the absence of controlled punishment. "It pulls it into a safer healthy atmosphere," added Neeley, “it's about respect and trust, mutual and internal."
A semi-public event like this is held for a good reason. At the Pit that night Leroux raised more than $600 for the Lyon-Martin Women's Health Service's HIV program. Door charges, donated tattooing fees, a raffle and tips donated by dancers and the bartender all went into the kitty.
Leroux got involved in fund raising the hard way, through a loved one. Her tough look melted for a moment. "I held her in my arms until she died," she said. Leroux’ brown eyes grew hard again, "she is still a driving force for me."
Leroux, 43, a Canadian, ran a recovery house for women before coming to San Francisco two years ago. She lives in Potrero Hill, tends bar, rides her two motorcycles and raises money for sick people.
The leather community likes the shows because, "it's an outlet where they can drop that character, but when it's over they're back to deadpan, slaves, eyes down. They let go for three or four minutes and are not disciplined," said Leroux.
