Red Robinson

Riya Lerner, Red Robinson at the Submit Dungeon, Park Slope, Brooklyn, 2020, Archival pigment print, 16 x 20 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Red Robinson is a kink personality, BDSM consultant and founder of Throb and SPAM parties as well as Submit (Brooklyn’s BDSM and sex party for women and trans Folks). Over the last twenty years, Red has taught BDSM and sex education classes both privately and professionally at Smith College, Black Rose, TES Fest, Lesbian Sex Mafia, IMSL, F.I.S.T. and Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival among others. For the past eight years she has been a coordinator for the International Ms. Leather conference, the world’s largest organization for leather women and their allies. Red is a pioneering activist, community leader and mentor. She has created and held space for safe sex and kink practices against many-an-obstacle. The following conversation was recorded on January 11, 2020 at 3pm in Red’s Apartment in Brooklyn, NY.

Gwen Shockey: Ok! So, first question for you Red: what was the first place you ever went that was occupied mostly by lesbians or queer women and what did it feel like to be there?

Red Robinson: (Chuckles) What’s funny is that’s the reason I started throwing parties. I was basically monogamous with two different people for twenty years. I got married to a dude when I was twenty-two. I was with him from eighteen to twenty-eight, met a woman and was with her from like twenty-eight to thirty-seven or thirty-eight and I was commuting from the Poconos into Manhattan every day and doing a whole lot of reading – a whole lot of SM [sadomasochism] reading – I read so many old gay male novels and my girlfriend was just not wanting to do any of that stuff so when we broke up the first thing that I did was go to Fire Island and I saw somebody with an LSM [Lesbian Sex Mafia] sticker on their jacket! This was before computers or anything so I almost tackled them yelling: WHERE ARE THESE PEOPLE?! (Laughing) Where can I find them? Oh my god!

GS: You knew what LSM stood for right away?

RR: Oh yeah! But you couldn’t find them! And even if you wanted to join you had to be like interrogated by five dykes that are all standing around you! I swear to god. (Laughing) You should look up their old histories. It’s fucking funny. So, they were like, “Oh yeah! You can come here, we have a meeting, we’ve got a party!” And so I was like, I want to go to the party and so I took their orientation because you had to join and take the orientation so I did all that, met some really cool people and then I went to my very first party which was at the Hellfire Club. It was probably on a Sunday afternoon or something…

GS: (Laughing)

RR: All of the women’s parties were always at some off hour because they didn’t want to give up the space for anybody else, you know? So, we go down there and there’s like someone getting flogged, someone getting caned and I just wanted to fuck! I was with this person I was seeing and I was like: Let’s go fuck somewhere! And then someone told me we weren’t allowed to! Because it was a bar we weren’t allowed to. You can’t have sex in a bar. To me it was just boring, I wanted to have sex! You know? And so, we did anyway! We went into a phone booth that was inside the bar and ended up fucking in there and basically almost got thrown out. And I thought: Well, I’m just going to start my own party then! (Laughing)

GS: The first time you were ever in a queer space was at that play party?

RR: Yep, yep! Well, aside from like a bar…

GS: Where did you grow up?

RR: Long Island.

GS: Did you always know you were queer?

RR: No! I was straight and married until I was twenty-seven. Tom was a great guy! I loved him. The story in my family is that I went to the gym, got muscles and became a lesbian. (Laughing) What’s kind of funny is that I’m a child of the ‘70s, you know? I just thought that all women were attracted to other women and you just married guys. I didn’t know any gay people and when everyone was listening to disco I was listening to southern rock. I still go to southern rock concerts. Now there are really cool southern rock guys that are out there, like young guys who are really progressive in their politics. I can’t go see those groups I used to listen to anymore because their politics are so terrible. Except Neil Young. I’ve been listening to Neil Young since I was really young. But anyway.

GS: So, you always knew internally or always felt attracted to women?

RR: I always hung out with guys. I had a best friend who is still one of my best friends – her daughter is my goddaughter – it just honestly didn’t occur to me. I think I had sex before I even jerked off. I was just kind of clueless! But once I realized that sex was fun, I fucked like so many guys and I actually left my husband before I even let this first woman I was attracted to kiss me. Well, actually no. That’s not true. She kissed me on the cheek and then I went home and Tom was like, “Oh you smell good!” And I was like: I can’t do this. (Laughing) Literally! But we had also really grown apart! Eighteen to fucking twenty-eight! No one should get married in their early twenties. You have kids and then suddenly you wake up wondering who am I and who is this person I’m living with? You know? 

GS: Totally! I feel like I’m just started to figure out what I want .

RR: I know! Thank fucking god I didn’t have kids! That I can’t even believe. I was married for ten years and I never had kids. I just never wanted kids.

GS: Did your family push you to get married?

RR: No, my father was an undercover narcotics agent in the ‘60s. He was a badass. I was a drug dealer all through high school, not through grammar school, mostly through high school. They tried to make me go to Catholic school but they weren’t going to church or anything so I felt like I was the golden child and they were going to hell. THAT’S WHAT YOU GET! (Laughing) You know what I mean? You can’t like send your kid to Catholic school and you don’t do any of that stuff! The funnier story is that because I was a completely unruly child and unsupervised most of the time… You have to realize, white flight from Brooklyn out to Long Island in 1965 – they basically took all of these Brooklyn people that were in their late twenties and threw them out into the middle of the woods. You know what I mean? They had nothing to do! And they were kids! They would have parties at my mom’s house, they’d always end up in a conga line at the end of the night and my dad never wanted to be a part of it because he was this badass detective in the city and he was not home and also at that time I was always trying to make money! I was making money working for my father on a clam boat for a while and then I had a paper route! Only boys did paper routes and so I was like: Well fuck that! So, Catherine my best friend and I did it together! Between the both of us we had like a hundred papers! We cornered the paper route market! We had the biggest paper route! We had people working for us, mostly her family… 

GS: You were a little kid then?

RR: Yeah! Like, little! So, because I had the paper route we also got to meet everybody in the neighborhood, which you wouldn’t normally. Like you’d know the kids on your block or you’d have your little group here or there but we got to know the parents! We knew everybody! And so Catherine and I then, as we got rid of the paper route and got a little older, started babysitting for everybody as a team. We babysat for prostitutes, for an entire motorcycle gang, and the Weinbergs from the Abscam! I watched American Hustle and Catherine called me up and was like, “That’s the fucking Weinbergs!”

GS: Wow! You must have seen a lot!

RR: Yeah! Because we were the only kids who could come home at five in the morning. I mean, I babysat during a party with the motorcycle gang while it was going on. We were hired to be at the party and watch the baby while the thing was going on so nothing would happen to the baby.

GS: So, you got an early education in debauchery.

RR: Well, yes! When I got out of the fucking Poconos and came to Brooklyn again after that LSM party I decided to run my own party. So, I hooked up with my friend Val and we started a party called Sanctuary at some pro-dom[inatrix] space in the city… wherever all those pro-dom spaces are. Then Lisa Cannistraci, who owns Henrietta Hudson and who used to manage Crazy Nanny’s, had a bar in park slope called Sanctuary Lounge. She let me throw a night in her bar which I called “Spanktuary” on like a Wednesday night. Basically, if you got handcuffed to the bar you could drink for free and I convinced some of my friends to come in there and we’d do shit on the pool table. I would collect emails and then we would get them to come to our party Carnality.

GS: Good name.

RR: I know. I have a cutting board downstairs with the name on it! (Laughing) So, I’d get emails at that event and go to Staples at like two in the morning and fucking print flyers out and we’d cut them ourselves and go to every woman’s dance party around and physically talk to each person, hand them a flyer, and make them come to my party. I’ve been using the same line to make people come to my party as I said yesterday to a trans barber who hasn’t been dating and who has never been to a sex party before and who told me they’re terrified. I said: What are you terrified of? Are you afraid women are going to jump on you? I’ve been trying to get women to fuck each other for twenty years! (Laughing) Not happening! I said: What you’re afraid of is that you’ve never been in a sexual environment without cis-gendered men there. It’s not threatening, it’s fun, you don’t feel weird, you can watch and on top of that I have a wrist band system, which I created to make people talk to each other. Because I found out that the one thing women would always ask is whether or not someone else had a girlfriend and I’m like: Why the fuck do you care! You’re at a sex party! But it’s not about that, they don’t want to be rejected! You know what I mean? The reason someone rejects you sexually eighty percent of the time has nothing to do with you. Especially with women. Etiquette at a men’s sex party is to walk up to someone and grab their cock and then they push your hand away. Women are shocked when they hear that! That is what men do regularly! So, to mix men and women together at a party is fucking crazy because gay men are going to come up and feel like if there are two people fucking it’s ok to just go up and join in or touch the person who’s fucking! Like, that’s normal behavior at a men’s party!

GS: How did you start observing these tendencies? At the first party you threw?

RR: Yeah! After Val and I parted ways following Carnality, Felice Shays – who is a performance artist and is amazing – and I did Throb party at El Mirage. When we had Throb party we would always have games or something to try to make people talk somehow. This is why I still do demos now at Submit. It’s the hardest part of throwing the fucking party every month. Sometimes I just make shit up.

GS: What’s the craziest demo you’ve ever done?

RR: Alright. The funniest thing: my partner has studied Medieval history, that was her thing, and one month we didn’t have a demo and I kept going to all the people in coat check asking what that holiday was with the maypole and they were like, “Beltane?” And I was like: Yes! Beltane! So, the demo was on cocooning. People were like, “What’s cocooning?” I completely fucking made it up on the spot. I made someone stand against the stripper pole but beforehand I told the crowd this story that I made up about how on Beltane, which is the celebration for fertilization and Spring coming, the people who don’t get fertilized or pregnant get cocooned to the maypole and then the villagers have their way with them. I thought it was hysterical! When I told the story I thought people would laugh but they were completely serious! So, I just went with it and we wrapped this person up against the pole and people were stuffing fruit and stuff into the wrapping and then we smashed it all up and people fucked him through the thing. When I got home Greta was like, “You didn’t really say that did you?” So, now I have it on my website that I’m an expert at cocooning! (Laughing)

GS: (Laughing) That’s really hysterical. How did you find out about kink practices initially? Was it through the books you were reading?

RR: Reading! Just reading. I was commuting two and a half hours on a bus every day each way to Manhattan to work downtown. This was before phones so I started reading a lot. Like every other pervert I know who had sex games as a kid, I had a game where I’d make these girls run around and leap over a log or something and then pull their shirts up. Somehow I still was straight after that for a period. (Laughing) I don’t remember what exactly sparked the interest in kink but I just thought reading about it was so hot.  

GS: Was there any reading material on kink for women then? Or mostly all oriented towards gay men?

RR: Oh, there’s a whole lot of kink for women! Coming to Power edited by Samois and all the Cleis press stuff was out then and I still have them all downstairs here. Anything that was out around Coming to Power, Pat Califia – Patrick now – but really it was gay men’s novels. I read all of John Preston. John Preston was just so hot. He gave me a fucking underwear fetish. The gay men’s novels were just hotter. The women’s novels always had more of a story.

GS: When you started Submit and you started throwing parties what were you looking to create that you felt like didn’t already exist?

RR: For one, you couldn’t have sex at LSM parties because they were at bars. I wanted to be able to have sex there. It was so hard for me to find LSM and now of course it’s easier but back then it was just so hard. If you didn’t know somebody or you didn’t know what to do it was hard and it was kind of cliquey I thought – not through any fault of their own, it’s just how I felt – and so I really wanted to create a space that any woman could go to and be sexual or make out with her girlfriend in the corner. I convinced so many vanilla people to come to my parties because I was like: You don’t even know what you’re talking about. That’s why it’s always been called a sex and SM and play party cause I wanted it to just be a sex party. Women having sex means you’re going to talk, they need to know things, they need to know if you’re available and it’s just fucking different! I also wanted a space where trans women could come because there was none at that point. No women’s parties allowed trans women. There was the whole Michigan thing, which I had been to a few times. 

GS: Did you get backlash for being inclusive?

RR: It’s my party! Who cares! In all honesty I get backlash all the time! So many rants have been written about my gender policies but I’ve changed them all over the years.

GS: I’m sure the party has changed a lot over the years. Have you noticed big changes in terms of who is attending now versus when it first started?

RR: The gender policy as it stands now has been a touchy subject. I should tell you that my gender policy has progressed over the years depending on who my audience is and who is marginalized within that audience and who needs to be a part of that community as well. I love LSM but they had a pretty bad trans policy at that time.

GS: LSM started in the early ‘80s right? And the porn wars were happening within the feminist movement around that time too? LSM was probably one of the most sex-positive groups to come out of that time?

RR: Absolutely! But there was still this issue of trans women not being allowed and I think they should absolutely be allowed. There weren’t many trans men at the time who were coming to the party or who wanted to. That was a thing though and I’m not sure how LSM dealt with that. But for me personally, I had a lot of backlash at that point for letting men into the party. I would fight back against that, saying: From my personal experience trans men and cis men energetically have a completely different feel in a sex space. I can tell a cis man walking down into a sex space within five minutes even if they’re presenting in a feminine way. If a trans man walked down there and a cis man walked down there and they both have beards and look the same it’s not the way that they look, it’s the way that they look at everybody else and I can see it a mile away. So, I had to tell the lesbians of the ‘90s that energetically it’s not the same and so our gender policy at that point was that if you’re trans and feel that you have a place in the women’s community you’re welcome! But if you’re a trans guy who identifies as a guy and you want to identify as a straight man then don’t come and it’s up to you to say who you are! So, if you see someone at the party that looks like a dude with a beard you should assume he’s a trans guy who feels he has a place in the women’s community and don’t worry about it! That was challenging but not for me, I had no problem with it. I’ve changed my gender policy like four times in the last two years.

GS: I feel like that’s so indicative of so many things – having to change it so often!

RR: So, just to go back to the first part of the policy that I had to change was the trans policy at Throb which said that if you’re a trans woman – because there weren’t trans men who were there – and you had a penis you weren’t allowed to take it out. It was kind of a no penis rule because it was a women’s space and a trans women’s space and generally if you were a trans woman you weren’t going to take your penis out anyway but what would happen is a few sissy maids would come who were not trans women or crossdressers. I also had to say that crossdressers weren’t allowed because most of them were basically cis, straight men who just dressed as women. I went to a crossdresser convention at one point and it was basically all straight men and their wives. I also went to a sissy maid convention – all straight men! 

GS: Can you explain what a sissy maid is? I’m not familiar with that term.

RR: Usually really large men – and I’m not sure why most of them aren’t little petite guys – but huge guys that dress like little girls or maids with crinolines and they would have little girl competitions. I’d see a few of them drinking at the bar which I thought was odd – they shouldn’t be allowed to be drinking. It was the craziest thing, but I was like: You go! Good for you! Who the fuck cares. As anyone in my community knows if you start making fun of someone’s kink I guarantee it’s the thing you’ll be doing next year! (Laughing)

GS: I remember reading in your gender policy as it is now that if you’re a cis man living your life as a cis man the majority of the time, this is not the party for you.

RR: Right. That’s the new thing. That was actually a policy I had three parties ago and I had to come back to it – I should look at my computer, you’d probably laugh.

GS: It seems like running a party like this also means playing diplomat in this weird way where you have to kind of work out issues between people. Has that happened?

RR: Oh my god! Absolutely! Once this drunk gay guy came in, put a wig on and said he was trans even though I knew that he wasn’t and he was downstairs causing fucking trouble. He pushed me up against the wall, which sent all my staff up in arms and I had to like hold back all the testosterone that was ready to bash him and the only way we could get him out after he was causing so much trouble was to lore him out the door with his cell phone out on 5th avenue.

GS: Jesus.

RR: We had to throw him out into the street. But basically that is the only trouble I’ve had – with men coming in. I can have one hundred and sixty women down there and the only trouble that is going to occur is someone losing something. 

GS: It doesn’t take much to offset that feeling of safety and it’s fucking vulnerable to be hooking up in a crowd of people as a woman so if one guy comes in – like you said, you feel that energy shift.

RR: For years I was throwing another party called SPAM which was great because I could say: If you can’t come to Submit go to SPAM! It provided an alternate queer sex party where anybody could go if they said they’re queer. The same fucking ten guys ruined that party. The same ten guys and one of them would grab or touch somebody and women were just like, “Fuck this!” And I’d be like: They aren’t supposed to! We have signs up that say: Ask permission before touching! But it got too creepy and nobody would go anymore. I get at least five emails a month from people asking to bring back SPAM. It was one of the most fun parties because it had the craziest, weirdest people there. There was this couple that came every month who were in their seventies and they looked like little ol’ grandma and grandpa but she would fuck every guy down there and he would blow every guy down there!

GS: Oh my god that’s amazing!

RR: It was amazing. I have about two hours of SPAM performances on tape because we had shows at the SPAM party and oh my god they were so funny. But it got creepy! So, we had to stop it! I’m thinking over this winter to re-do SPAM at least for one night. I mean here’s the thing though, people get on me about my gender policy, that I’m not letting certain people in, there are other parties where anybody can go, but they’re full of shit! They vet everybody ahead of time and sell tickets and if they don’t want to let you in they don’t let you in they just don’t do it to your face. You know what I mean? I never wanted to do that. For me it has always been: Here’s the party, you read the rules, you come if you feel it’s ok! If you think you should be there you should come. If I do that party again though I’m going to make it so that those ten fucking guys don’t come and ruin it because that party was just a riot. My gay boyfriends down the block came and it was the first time they’d ever seen women have sex! They were like, “I’ve never seen anyone have sex like that before! Oh my god!”

GS: I’ve been out for like fifteen years as a lesbian and I can’t help but think about how few examples we have of empowering sex. It’s such a gift and such a political thing to throw a party like Submit.

RR: I get so many emails. People really are happy that it’s there. I saw that when I was with Tristan. Tristan and I went to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival and everyone worked at Babeland then and we knew Claire Cavanah and Rachel Venning and Tristan was doing a little bit of porn then I think producing it and so she was booked to do the first sex workshops at Michigan Womyn’s Festival. We led a workshop on finding your G-spot and there were all of these women who had never orgasmed so they lined up and I put a glove on a guided their hand! After the workshop we had an ejaculation contest! I swear to god there were like five hundred people there and we had judges and categories for best: There was speed, distance, quantity and best hookup - like you just found someone there to fuck you and make you come that night – and best one-handed job. We had a stage! We had bed pans! It was a fucking riot. The person that won for quantity ejaculated like I’ve never seen in my life before. We did like six workshops that were supposed to have twenty people but ended up having like three-hundred people in them. It was insane. We had a huge blood-fest play party against the rules in the food tent on the food tables. We did bad things there. After we left Tristan got a call from the owner, Lisa Vogel, and she said, “For thirty years we’ve been off the radar until you two got here and now we’re being investigated by the Michigan District Attorney’s Office.” Some fucking Christian right-wing group went on the Michigan Womyn’s Festival website and singled out things from the boards like the ejaculation contest and basically sued them saying that there was underage sex happening. The festival closed not long after that but basically there were no more sex workshops. Tristan and I ruined it. Single-handedly. (Laughing)

GS: Were you banned from the festival? I can’t imagine how many women’s lives were changed after that. Finally learning how to get themselves off! Or get each other off?

RR: Well, actually, this right-wing group had taken a picture of me and Tristan – I wish I could find this fucking newspaper somewhere – and they had it on the front page of their Christian website with me in my jockstrap and cowboy hat and the title was something like “Women naked in the woods having sex with children there…” There was no age restriction, you know? I think they had some workshops after that but we were trying to figure out how to do it – like, do you have to show ID now? There were no IDs! It was all women! It didn’t matter! You know what I mean? It was just women ejaculating. That was the beginning of the downfall of Michigan Womyn’s Festival. Then the trans thing happened right after that year. The year after I think Tristan ran an On Our Backs table there or something and that was right after the porn wars and women were like, “No, no, no.” It was controversial. But I was like fuck them! I’m wearing my cock! The fact that it is closed down… I mean I never got into an argument with them but oh my god they wouldn’t even let trans women in who were post-opt. I’m like, are you kidding? You’re going to cut your cocks off, you should be able to come to a fucking women’s festival.

GS: Yeah… that always seemed insanely problematic to me.

RR: I mean how are you going to vet ten thousand people? And then you’re talking about ten thousand women in the woods. In my opinion it probably couldn’t exist anymore. It would have to be vetted in a way that no one who runs events like this even has the capacity to do. I remember I couldn’t fucking stand wearing the fucking wristband so I took it off and went to buy beer and I had to come back and if you don’t have a wristband on they don’t let you in again. They were like, “Where’s your wristband?” I was like: I was fisting my girlfriend and maybe you need to ask her. And I made them bring her over. (Laughing) It was kind of fun. I had such great stories from Michigan. We like snuck people in in our Winnebago. I don’t camp – I’m a fucking Brooklyner – I don’t camp. I mean, I wouldn’t mind camping but I don’t have the stuff and if you don’t have the stuff camping sucks!

GS: You’re a “glamper”!

RR: Exactly. So, I went to Michigan and rented a twenty-eight-foot Winnebago and drove it five miles to the festival! The company asked me where I went after and I was like: Right down the block! (Laughing) I had air-conditioning, a microwave! Oh yeah! I got there early and this dyke on a tractor with a walkie talkie comes up and is like, “Just pull it in the woods!” I was like: What? And she was like, “Just pull it in the woods!” And there’s literally no path, just trees! I was like: Are you kidding? I’m going to knock the trees down! She was like, “It’s ok! They’ll grow back! This is the RV area!” Because I said I wanted to be as close to the SM twilight zone as possible and the RV area is really big. So, I start literally driving this fucking Winnebago into the woods and I read something about how if you’re not level, sleeping everything really sucks, so I kept driving a little more and driving a little more and there was a pencil on the table so when the pencil stopped moving I was like: Ok! I’m good! No one was even there yet and I think Greta was crafting at this point. The next day all of these people start showing up and I like open the shades on the windshield and I’m literally twenty feet from the outside showers of the SM area. Every morning we would get up and I’d sit there and have coffee and watch naked, bruised women! I laughed about it and I was telling this story in the festival like getting food or something and someone came up to me and was like, “That’s your Winnebago? You fucking pig!” I was like: I DIDN’T KNOW THE SHOWERS WERE THERE! I’m sure everyone thinks I’m the biggest fucking pig! And I am! But oh my god! I had no idea! But yeah, it was the showers and my Winnebago and everybody else is like far back! (Laughing) AND all I wore the entire weekend when we got there was a jockstrap, a cock, a leather vest and a cowboy hat and boots, which wasn’t ok there – to be walking around all weekend with a cock on – but I was like: Fuck you guys.

GS: Even a strap-on?

RR: No penises! No men’s voices! You weren’t allowed to listen to music with a man’s voice in it! When the men had to come to empty the latrines and stuff a bell would ring and people would scream, “Man on the land! Man on the land!” I have to say that there was an aspect of that that I fucking loved. To come full circle, it’s kind of why I tell people who are afraid to go to Submit that they’ve never experienced a space without men present. I went for the music. Even though we were doing sex parties and stuff, I love folk music! There were three stages and I always planned who I was going to see and you’re in the woods with ten thousand people there and the old people camping I over here, the SM people there, non-perfume people over here, loud and rowdy jocks over there – seriously! (Laughing) Each camp area was a good fifteen minutes through the woods on a little path and you’d go to whatever little area you were camping in and at night if you didn’t have a flashlight or a headlight you aren’t finding your way anywhere. There are no lights, no nothing. So, I remember going to one of the big concerts at night and I’m sitting on a blanket, waiting for it to start and there are these two little girls sitting on a blanket in front of me by themselves and they’ve got their flashlight and they’re talking together and plotting when they should get back to their campsite and I was just like: Oh my god! I mean, I grew up in the woods myself but where else on earth would two little girls be ok sitting on a blanket in the dark woods with ten-thousand people around knowing that nothing is going to happen to them. That scene right there made me be like: Oh my god! I’ve never experienced this! I’ve never experienced what it feels like not to have men around! I love men! They’re fine! It’s not that, it was just like: Oh my god!

GS: Is it a similar feeling at Submit?

RR: Yeah! That’s what I’m saying! I wanted to create the same kind of space in a sexual arena because women don’t know what that is! It’s not predatory and it allows freedom to do things or not to do things. It allows you to explore things or watch things if you want to. Women are way different sexually. Here’s a funny thing: at a men’s party or a mixed party or a party where there are cis-gendered men there if they can, if they’re allowed to, men will just walk around and jerk off over everything. One of the rules we had at SPAM party was that if you’re watching a scene and jerking off you had to be at least two feet away. We actually had a ruler, a stick, and Pickles (Michael) would go down with the stick and if you were too close he’d beat them! “Get back! Get back!” At the first SPAM we had a “women only” room because women needed to get the fuck away from these creepos, like, oh my god! So, in the middle of the maze the “women only” room was maybe as big as the kitchen and I came down and there were twenty guys in there standing on benches looking over the tops of the partitions at the women! I swear to god! If they could men would just walk around and jerk off.

GS: I have no doubt about that!

RR: In twenty years of running women’s parties, not once have I seen a woman walk around and jerk off. Maybe in twenty years I’ve seen two women actually just jerk off by themselves and one was when we did a demo. But basically for a woman to sit there and jerk off by herself with no one else around? Have I ever seen that? Never. That to me is amazing. And men just wanna walk around! 

GS: It’s like feeling entitled to having their sex and sexuality be all over everything.

RR: Literally. (Laughing)

GS: What went into creating the space where you host Submit now?

RR: Well, Michael Wakefield manages that space and his friend Danny owns the building and Michael has been throwing men’s parties since the ‘70s or ‘80s maybe and I would always hear about this men’s dungeon in Brooklyn and I wondered where the fuck it was! Like where is this dungeon in Brooklyn? Before computers if you weren’t on a men’s sex mailing list you had no clue and I couldn’t find a women’s sex mailing list let alone the men’s! There was no way to find out where anything was. I met Michael because he threw two parties at El Mirage when I threw my women’s party and then El Mirage got closed down. So, he said, “If you want to throw your party here you can.” So, it was also the first women’s sex party at a completely male sex club and now I’ve done that like four times which is kind of cool. It’s such a fucking nightmare in that basement. Michael let me throw my party there and then we threw SPAM together. 

GS: If you were to create your own space for a women’s sex party would it look different from the dungeon that hosts Submit now?

RR: Yeah. Since I share the space with other promoters having my own space would be way easier!

GS: If you were to envision and create a dungeon for a women’s sex party would the layout look a lot different?

RR: Yeah. Basically it takes me six hours to set up for the party. I get there at eight the night of the party and I usually get home at seven in the morning. But then I have to clean up after because there’s another party that night and the men put all the equipment away and they just fuck. So, I would definitely have more equipment. I have so much equipment! I have a cross in my basement that I could put out and use but they put it all away! Even when they have leather parties they put it all away.

GS: Do you think women gravitate more towards using toys and tools and equipment?

RR: Well, it depends on what you want to do! I love the maze part, that’s really hot! I love the private room part, that’s hot. I love the big open fuck room but I would definitely like to have more areas to do other things in! I made everything down there pretty much. I even made things so they’d fold up against the wall so I don’t have to put it away! I made everything in here, I just like making things. I made this, I made that and that! (Laughing)

Pointing to furniture around the apartment 

I actually renovated this entire apartment. I made those bookshelves… when Greta [Red’s partner] met me and she came here I was like: Isn’t this space great? It was in complete shambles with no kitchen! She was like, “Are you kidding me?” I put the floor down, made the bathroom… I made everything in here. Literally. (Laughing) I like using Brooklyn water tower wood.

GS: Do you have a wood shop?

RR: My basement! (Laughing) I never did anything until I moved into this apartment. But anyway…

GS: That’s so amazing! So, hmmm. What else do I want to ask you! Oh I know! Do you think women are fucking differently now that dating app culture is so big?

RR: I remember the first time I used a Craigslist ad to hook-up with somebody! The first two people I tried to hook-up with anonymously were like, “Oh Red! I know you!” I was like: Oh fuck, man! (Laughing) Women don’t really hook up like that! I mean, I do because I’m kinky! You know what I mean? Maybe they are here and there! Like, I might find some twenty-year-old girl to be my boy because I lean towards being a nasty older man and I get young boys to do things for me. All my boys have been like half my age. It’s hot and fun! That would be the way I would hook-up but I don’t know! I don’t think women are doing it! I could be wrong! Being kinky you have this whole repertoire of things. I feel like what I do for the community is act in service! I’m a service person! I’m head of my leather family but I’m a service person. I take care of all the trees on the block. I’m a volunteer tree pruner. I don’t want anyone to know about it though!

GS: You get pleasure from being behind the scenes?

RR: Yes, yes. That’s why acting for a time was hard. I didn’t even want to read the fucking script. Like, no way.

GS: Do you feel like the leather community has changed from the ‘90s to now? I’ve noticed more publicly facing kink events and aesthetics lately but it seems to have a different vibe… maybe a little more polished, or just about the aesthetic and the clothing or jewelry and not about the practices?

RR: Yeah! It’s more mainstream now. Basically women’s leather and sex was based on men’s leather and sex way back when. It was very cliquey, very clubby, very leather, and now there’s a fucking super hero contest. I’m the hospitality coordinator for the International Little Miss Leather Contest every year running sixteen parties in four days. This year will be my last year doing it. I haven’t told the people who run it yet.

GS: Where does that take place?

RR: San Jose in April. But basically when people ask me what a leather contest is, I say: Well, all these small bars have contests and they pick their person and then all those people go to International Miss Leather and compete for the title and they have a platform and take whatever their platform is throughout the country. It’s based off of men’s motorcycle groups and men’s leather contests and stuff and most people I know have no idea what it is. Within our group it’s important. It’s important to me! I have a leather family of people who are really fucking close to me and some of them I don’t even see anymore. We inducted someone into our leather family a couple years ago and we had like four people in the room and like three people on Skype and she broke down sobbing! It’s just like… I try to keep this. There are just more communities now within the kink community and the leather community. The leather community, in my opinion, is still very much into their old ways of doing things but then there’s the rubber community and the puppy community… there’s just more and more specified which is, you know, fine! One of my arguments towards having a women-only party in New York City is like, there are fucking nine-million people here and it’s ok to have one place where everybody can’t come! Men have so much! There’s a party at our Submit space that happens where unless you’re under thirty-five and muscular you’re not allowed to come.

GS: This is a question I ask myself so often! How come men have all these spaces and parties that are so specifically for gay men of certain types or ages whereas women can barely hold one space and are called out way more for exclusionary behavior? Do you think it’s just sexism?

RR: Yes! Men wanna come! Men want to be there. “What do you mean I can’t come in? What do you mean?” Part of me gets so pissed off! Like, why do you even want to do that?

GS: When people come into Submit are there patterns of engagement that happen consistently that you’ve noticed?

RR: The wrist bands help for sure. People who come in and fuck right away are people who already know. Like, I’m going to LSM’s party tomorrow night, I will stake a place out immediately and play as soon as I get there. But basically, if there are a hundred people there, they’re all in the lounge until about one-thirty-in-the morning or so after the demo. I always have a demo because they all like need to do something. There are always like four or five people that are players and wanna fuck and do stuff and they do and I always say: It’s ok that we watch! That’s why there are chairs in there! Go sit down and watch! It’s all good! Because you’re not going to go over and jerk off all over them like the men do! (Laughing) Can you imagine? Can you even imagine a circle of women jerking off like that? But THAT is the difference! That is why most mixed parties don’t work unless they have ALL these rules! Whatever the reason is men and women just generally don’t act the same way at a party. 

GS: Do you think less people are getting off?

RR: At the women’s parties? Absolutely! Men just get off one their own! They’ll just stand there and jerk off to someone else jerking off! (Laughing) It’s kinda crazy! Do you watch Black Mirror? Have you seen the Striking Vipers episode? It’s in the new season. Oh my god you have to watch it. It is so good.

GS: I went down such a dark hole with that show where I binged like episode after episode and got so depressed! (Laughing) I had to stop!

RR: Oh I know! I know! I haven’t watched all of them but my friends were like, “You have to watch this one!” I won’t say anything about it but there’s a part where someone is describing the difference between a male orgasm and a female orgasm because they were able to experience both. She’s like, “The male orgasm is to the point, boom and you’re there!” Or, she said something like, “It’s a note in a song…” “But a female orgasm is an orchestra!” It’s just physiologically different! Unless you’re doing energy work. Men can have fucking crazy orgasms too if they work on it energetically. I’ve taught workshops and done energy work too. I made up a class and then went to Alaska and taught it to people! (Chuckles) It was “Flogging with Intention.” (Laughing) I didn’t wanna fucking go to Alaska, I don’t travel much, but I got convinced to go so I went and I had so many funny things happen! One amazing thing happened: I’ve been meditating since I was eighteen. I used to do transcendental meditation but now I do a whole other thing, which was part of the class that I taught. I talked about how to do this meditation thing and how to move energy around and then I showed everyone how to do this while you’re flogging someone. They were like: Oh my god! Alaska is basically like New York City in the ‘70s. Especially the kinky people. And there’s two-hundred of them. All two-hundred were at this event. Alaska is a crazy fucking place.

GS: When you say it’s like the ‘70s what do you mean?

RR: I mean that there’s only one gay bar and everyone is in there! It just felt old! I can’t explain it! They’re like twenty years behind everything or more. Of course the guy running it was from New York who I of course met within ten minutes of being there. I left the workshop to go to this bar down the block but anyway I couldn’t figure out why I was going to Alaska and I had a fucking panic attack while I was there because there was just too much meat and blood and I couldn’t stand it… Anyhow, after the workshop this guy came up to me and he was like, “I’ve got to tell you. I did that meditation and I realized I was holding all of this stuff in my heart from my divorce!” And he said, “I burst out crying! I couldn’t stop crying for hours and hours!” But then he said, “I went to the dungeon that night and I did that other thing and I was flogging my new partner and she ejaculated for the first time all over the dungeon!” I was like: You’re the reason I’m here! There was one person I was here for and it was you! It made it worth it because I kind of spent the whole weekend wondering what I was doing there. I’m not a meditation teacher.

GS: That is such a brilliant idea for a workshop though – to find self-acceptance, openness and your center and then to unleash power in a different way.

RR: Yeah! And in a way it comes from martial arts training! Not that I’ve done martial arts, but they’ll teach you that you can punch somebody but if you punch somebody while envisioning your fist going through their chest they’ll fall back with the same force. So, if I’m flogging somebody I’m not just flogging them I’m flogging everything around them. The partner who I have now who I’m a boy to… like, I don’t date femme girls and I kind of play with boys and I have a femme partner, it would just get too complicated like, whatever. She was kind of chasing me around a little bit. Well, she didn’t chase me around, she came up to me at my friend Topher’s Miss Trans Man contest and she said, “What does someone have to do to get a date with you?” I said: I don’t do dates. She said, “What?” She’s like really hot. I said: Are you on Fetlife? She said, “No.” I said: Ok, well here’s my thing on Fetlife go on there see what I’m into and proposition me from there. I already have a partner, you know what I mean? If I’m going to fuck somebody or play with somebody it’s going to be in the realm of what I want to do and not going to go on some random date with some girl. I mean come on!

GS: That’s an interested way to practice non-monogamy. I like that!

RR: Right! So, she waited two weeks, joined Fetlife, created a profile, propositioned me and my partner read it and was like, “Oh you better write her back.” (Laughing) And I was like: Alright…

GS: How long have you and your partner been together?

RR: Greta and I have been together for almost twenty years and Gayle and I are almost at eight years now.

GS: Does Greta identify as femme?

RR: Yeah she does! Can’t you see all these things around here? All these little girl things? (Laughing) 

GS: Tell me about your leather family? When did you become a part of a leather family? 

RR: I started it myself! (Laughing)

GS: (Laughing) Of course you did!

RR: It’s true! My next venture is going to be the senior citizen community!

GS: (Laughing) Nice!

RR: I’m serious! I have a whole idea! Wanna hear my idea? In my phone, by the way, I have a list of very good ideas. So far four of them have already been invented and are making a lot of money by someone else. Wanna hear the one that was in the tech show last year that everyone laughed at me about?

GS: Yeah!

RR: The senior citizen air bag! I mean it’s funny. Someone asked me if I could picture senior citizens popping up all over the place! (Laughing) I can though! Every person I know that’s over 70, the start of their downfall is their first fall! 

GS: Aw! Oh my god. Wait, so are you telling me this has been invented?

RR: Well, these two lesbians in Sweden invented an invisible bike helmet. Did you ever see that? You wear it as a scarf and as you propel forward it pops out and covers your head like an air bag. As soon as I saw that I was like: Oh my god! A BELT! If a person starts to fall their air belt starts to inflate and pops you back up again! It was a big seller at a tech show last year.

GS: You’ve got to start making this shit happen faster Red!

RR: (Chuckles) My friend Sean is an actor and said he wanted to do a performance of my very good ideas. (Laughing) If we’re going to start talking about bionic cocks then we’re going somewhere else. I mean! You can make a hand and a wrist but you’re telling me you can’t make a bionic cock? I mean come on! It has to go in and out, get hot, soft and hard…

GS: Well, you know they can do it they’re just not going to because then men would be truly useless.

RR: Of course. But you know it’s bound to happen.

GS: did you hear about that robotic dildo called the Ose? The more you use it the more it adapts to your needs and your orgasms and your internal movements!

RR: That’s hot.

GS: It apparently won a huge tech award and then they retracted the award for really stupid sexist reasons. They didn’t want to give the award to a sex toy. Meanwhile there was another VR program with like intense violent sexual situations that wasn’t removed… I think they gave the award back in the end after the CEO and a bunch of other women called them out.

RR: Gayle got some video games and I haven’t played video games since fucking Spaceman… I mean Pacman. I came up with this whole video game called Hospital that I wanted to invent where you have to staff the hospital, take a little test and learn how to do a surgery and you have to do the whole insurance thing… Gayle was like, “Why, because you want to perform surgery?” And I was like: YEAH! That would be so fucking cool! Like operation! Right? Like, oh my god! So, what if you could be a surgeon and you learn how to do a few operations and you might get called on if there’s an emergency to go in there and do your operation. There’s nothing like it too! I already looked it up and the only games you can play to learn how to actually operate on somebody is if you’re already actually in medical school and learning how to be a surgeon! Now that I’m thinking about it I guess it’s dangerous. It would have be like fake operations! Like, to take a lung out you’d push a certain button. You’re not actually doing it. I thought that was a great idea. It’s on my very good ideas list.

GS: I loved operation as a kid. I would so play that game if you make it1 So, your leather community…

RR: (Laughing) Yeah! So, it was just me, you know, and I had a few people and I was just like, let’s have a leather family.

GS: How do you become the daddy of a family?

RR: I started it! Same way I started my parties! (Laughing) I had a few people around me who were eighteen or so and so I was like: Ok! We’ll have a structure! 

GS: What are the responsibilities that come along with being the daddy of a leather family?

RR: Well, sometimes we have nice outfits! We photograph well together! (Laughing) Basically like my friend Hooker – Hooker and the boys – he’s got a leather family and they raise money and do stuff but for me I really feel like my leather family is Submit party. You make a commitment! You know? The hard part of that is I take it seriously and there have been a lot of people in our leather family who have not and have kind of taken advantage of it and it’s so hurtful! Recently I had to remove somebody and I was kind of devastated by it. It really fucking sucked.

GS: I imagine it’s like a mentorship?

RR: Yes! Yes. That is it. If you’re having someone hang around you who is eighteen, nineteen or twenty and you’re sixty they think you want them there all the time, you know what I’m saying? A lot of it is like, “let me help you do this thing! Let me help you build that thing!” It’s really just kinky friends who want to be bonded together and say they’re in a family. But there are leather families who actually raise money and do stuff and I kind of thought that we would be that but we’re not and that’s fine. It just feels good that we’re in a family. I want us to make a patch. It’s all about fashion.

GS: Aw! What would the patch look like?

RR: Well, I don’t know! I mean Greta’s an artist… I don’t know what the patch would look like! Everyone’s got patches. My new favorite leather family in Portland has a really cute patch. It’s a tree but it’s also sarcastic. 

GS: I’ve only known you for a couple hours now but I feel like your patch should be a little snarky!

RR: Well, I’m Irish! Come on now! (Laughing)

GS: (Laughing) Ok, so last question: If you were to think of like sex practices that you hope younger generations will take away from the communities and parties that you’ve created  - like the ethics you’ve created around Submit for example – what do you hope they would be?

RR: Sex practices?

GS: Like lessons learned from your years creating safe, kinky spaces…

RR: That women’s spaces are ok! I think that’s the thing right now that I think is going to be lost. Separate spaces can be ok, you know? It doesn’t mean you’re excluding anyone. That’s why I don’t look at people ahead of time to determine who can come and who can’t. I’m like here’s what I want at this party, are you a part of that community to do that? One time this guy came to submit party, he was homeless and smelled like he was homeless and he said to me, “I know I don’t look like a woman but I feel like a woman I just don’t have the money to transition.” I said: Alright. Take a shower, we have a shower here and you need to take a shower. Because it was like, whoa… So he took a shower and in my head I’m going: Oh my god this guy is like never going to get laid. Like Jesus Christ he’s just a cis guy. A homeless cis guy on top of that. But I’m not going to tell him he can’t come to my party. So, he took a shower and went around and nothing really happened and then he said to me, “I thought this would be a good space for me but I don’t really think it’s my space.” I said: Ok, fine. Five years go by and I oddly thought about this guy again because I did let him in but then he left and sure enough he fucking shows up at my party that Friday night. Then I was like: Well, you already told me it wasn’t your place but he was like, “Hi Red!” And I was like: Oh my god! Hi! Thinking he maybe had a change of heart. He still had to take a shower because he’s still homeless. I just kind of let him be and then I had like three people come up to me and say, “Red, there’s some cis guy in the back just laying on the bed naked!” So, I went: Oh my god! (Laughing) So, I go back there and he’s just laying on the bed naked! I was like: Hi! And he was like, “Hi!” I said: I have to tell you something. I said: One, you did tell me this wasn’t your party the last time you were here and two, you can’t be laying here all man naked like this. It’s really making everyone else uncomfortable. As I’m saying it he’s looking at me and tears are welling up in his eyes and he goes, “Are you telling me I have to leave?” And I said: Yeah! And he said, “Well, I have nowhere else to go and if I leave here I might just kill myself.” I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone killing themselves but nobody was happy with that guy there. Anyhow, I had to go around and tell everybody that he could stay.

GS: That brings up another issue… if something like really bad happened you can’t really call the cops… 

RR: Oh, bad things have happened!

GS: What do you do? You can’t really call the cops.

RR: We just try and deescalate situations as best as we can. But at the end of that night – with that suicidal guy – I’m thinking there’s no way he got laid. At two in the morning I was walking through the maze and there he is on all fours and this big fucking butch is fucking the shit out of him from behind! I was like: I GIVE UP! I GIVE UP! I FUCKING GIVE UP! I’m not going to judge what I think anyone wants or needs anymore because every time I do I am proved wrong!

GS: That is the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard.

RR: I haven’t seen him since! It was amazing. It was just so… (Laughing) Once the cops came when I had the party on Houston street because someone complained. Basically if you throw someone out they get bitchy and complain about noise or whatever. The cops came and this club was like so beautiful, like high ceilings, they changed the decorations every couple of months, it was spotless… it was like gorgeous. It had like a jungle gym, crosses, swings, a wet room, it was beautiful. The cops came and were like, “We have to go check the space.” So, I was like: Just give me two minutes and I’ll let you in there. So, I turned the lights on and I said: EXCUSE ME! Women! Or Ladies! The police are here! They just want to come in and take a look around, would you please just welcome them. (Laughing) And sure enough everyone kind of just turned around, the cops came in and they were like, “Ok! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” And they left! Police just don’t look at women fucking other women as sex. The only party I’ve ever had shut down was a straight party.

GS: That’s insane!

RR: Gay men’s parties get shut down usually because the health department shuts them down and its only because somebody’s complained about something else. Never the police! The police know that our parties go on there. They absolutely know. There’s one indictment that I’m waiting to see and it’s fucking Giuliani. Giuliani is the reason that so many parties got closed down. I am waiting for that motherfucker to get indicted. Giuliani was the last protest that I went on. If there’s any story that I’ll tell at a storytelling thing it would be my Giuliani protest fairy story where I almost got gay bashed.

GS: Was that in the ‘90s?

RR: Mhm! Fucking asshole. He wrecked everything. 

GS: Well that seems to be as good a moment to end as any! Fuck Giuliani and thank you so much Red!