  urlLink International Mr. Leather has come and gone in Chicago, and I'm exhausted. For those of you who aren't 1) gay 2) a leather pig and/or 3) happy to show your ass in public, IML is 26-year-old Memorial Day weekend tradition in Chicago, and it's purportedly the second biggest grossing convention in the city. So what happens at IML? First off, a bajillion gay leather enthusiasts converge on the host hotel (and surrounding hotels) and wander the downtown streets in their boots and vests and collars and other leather accoutrements. They also turn the hotel into a giant pick-up joint and no doubt leave many of the rooms rather sticky and disgusting. (And they invariably leave random hotel guests from Des Moines and Boise looking positively ashen as they survey the goings-on in the lobby. ) Overheard between two women in the lobby who didn't quite grasp the concept of a uniform fetish: "Let's ask that policeman over there. " A big part of IML is the leather mart, which takes place in the hotel's convention hall just like any other convention would -- except here you have to be 21 to enter and you have to sign something saying you won't be offended by what you may encounter there.
And you can encounter just about anything -- from purveyors of leather vests and chaps and armbands to vulgar T-shirts to porn stars with advanced cases of HIV to videos featuring people who poop on each other. Best IML T-shirt: It's not gonna suck itself. Second best IML T-shirt: So many Christians. Not enough lions.
Oh -- there's also the competition. The International Mr. Leather competition. I've never been to watch any of it, but it's frequently compared to a demented, highly sexualized, hairy-man version of the Miss America pageant. And while it's the ostensible focus of the weekend, not a lot of people go to it. I spent a good deal of the weekend hanging out with friends at the hotel, going to the dance events, checking out the leather mart, and just watching the endless lobby parade of gay men in buttless chaps, leather dog costumes and/or random military/police garb. Some highlights: People • New York couple urlLink Kurt and George and their adorable friend Matt, on whom I developed an instant crush. The four of us spent most of Friday night hanging out, eating and watching the IML spectacle unfold. Matt and I spent a lot of that time flirting -- and when everyone started asking us if we were brothers, I got a weird, strangely exiting narcissistic rush.
(Whenever the brother question came up, we'd make out for our answer. I really wish more people had asked. ) • Cute-as-a-button junior porn star urlLink Tag Adams , who turned every head wherever he walked -- and who left an effluvium of poppers in his wake everywhere he went. Either he's a clumsy sniffer or he wears the shit like eau de toilette . • Jim and Jim, a sexy little muscle couple from somewhere in the south. They were the first two guys I met when I got to IML on Friday after work, and they were the last two I saw -- drunk off their buttless-chapped asses -- when I finally gave up the ghost and headed home early this morning.
• Jon, a sweet, adorable man with the sexy high-and-tight and unfailing politeness you'd expect from a military careerist. • Patrick, a smokin'-hot firefighter with a killer bod and a big red tattoo on the front of his hip, framed by a distractingly sexy Speedo tan line. Woof. • A local guy named Jeff. I'd been warned he was a scabby little butthole, but I didn't believe it because -- though he was definitely cute -- he wasn't nearly hot enough to pull off attitude and still have any friends. I walked up and said hi and he was really friendly at first. Then he abruptly ran off and talked to someone else.
Then he came back, and as we were talking again he grabbed some random stranger in the crowd and started making out with him in front of me. I quickly agreed he was NOT good people and I moved on. • urlLink Matthew , the handsome gymnast who successfully sued Cirque du Soleil for firing him for being HIV-positive. The man is stunning in person, but I was soooooo not on his radar. Even after we had a 5-minute conversation.
Experiences • Getting boned in the ass by The Man. No, not like that -- The Man here is whoever set the drink prices at the hotel and all the IML parties. I paid anywhere from $4 to $6 for bottled water. Goodness only knows what they were charging for alcohol. The bitches. • The tea dance and victory party after the IML competition on Sunday. I'd never been to any of the IML events, but Dan and I and a group of friends got tickets to these back-to-back dances, and I had a great time.
We arrived at different times (some of us -- ahem -- had last-minute conflicts), and I never did see Dan at either place. But the venues for the dances -- the minimalist, and brand-new, urlLink Sound-Bar and the always funky urlLink House of Blues -- were very cool. And the crowds -- especially at Sound-Bar -- were VERY hot. • My dance-floor romance with Chris at Sound-Bar. I saw him as soon as I walked in -- he was muscular in a wrestler sort of way, blond in a Jake-loves-blonds sort of way, and graced with beautiful blue eyes and a sexy, shit-eating grin. I walked right up and started dancing with him -- and we never lost physical contact until three hours later when he had to leave with his friends. What little I learned from him in our conversations told me there's no romance in our future, but we did exchange numbers. And he told me to call him today, which I did. Guess who hasn't called back? I never urlLink learn .
• Dancing for almost five hours straight. I hadn't gotten a lot of sleep this weekend, I've pretty much sworn off soda (and the accompanying caffeine) and I'm not stupid enough to do the party drugs that enable gay men to dance like ADHD kids at an earthquake -- so I was going on fumes there toward the end. But there's something cathartic about bouncing around in your own little zone to an endless dance beat. Throw in a dance floor PACKED with hot, sweaty muscleguys and you pretty much have nothing to complain about. • Speaking of muscleguys, your self-esteem can plummet when you find yourself invisible in a roomful of them. But I've either made some huge strides pumping up in the gym (and ripping up my abs with all this marathon training) or I've built up enough of the requisite emotional walls that gay men need to survive in the world, because those pesky old I'm-not-good-enough feelings never surfaced this entire weekend. Actually, there wasn't enough of me to go around. Which makes this the most magical IML ever . 
