October 21, by donnadiawana. A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of attending a masters capping ceremony of one of our communities outstanding citizens.
It was a real eye opener for me organizing it from start to finish and I was very pleased as to how it turned out. A bit of background first. A masters capping ceremony in the leather community is a very serious affair. It is the communities way of recognizing the achievements, contributions and commitment of an individual in their journey. This individual must demonstrate the core principle values of honour, integrity, humility and respect and have demonstrated these over a sustained period of time.
It can be viewed as a coming of age or a right of passage that one receives from your community peers and elders. Warlock, to those who know him in our community, is more than deserving of this honour. We were honoured to have an outstanding leatherman such as Don Bastian come out to present this award to his protege. The fact we managed to keep this as a total surprise to Warlock made it all the more enjoyable for all I think and the look on his face when it sunk in what was going on was priceless.
It was a wonderful ceremony that was serious and touching and had its good humoured moments too and some socializing at the end. I will be more than pleased to address him as Sir Warlock in future. A title well deserved. This experience is part of my own personal journey in this community. I still consider myself a pretty junior leatherperson. I was pleased with the support I had in trying to organize this long overdue honour and it was a very educational and humbling experience for myself.
Over time this has evolved. For good or for bad who is to say? You can probably go to any decent size city and with a 10 minute session in an Internet cafe attend your first munch within a week. Now anybody can go into an adult store, kit themselves out with the latest leather gear and toys and call themselves whatever name appeals to them Sir SupderDom To the Known Universe to YOU pal! But I digress, this is another topic for another post at some other time…. I think times are changing and Leather culture has certainly evolved from how it was in the 70s or even the 80s.
