NOW AND THEN a lot of people get tied up. No, not at work or in traffic. People are tied to bed posts, each other or, sometimes, anything that’s nailed down. People get handcuffed, knotted up with ties and placed in restraints. For those leather fans out there, getting bound takes on all kinds of meanings and involves all sorts of props.

This year’s theme for the Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend, “Bound in Brotherhood,” encompasses meanings from kinky to spiritual. From Friday, Jan. 13, through Sunday, Jan. 15, when the country’s second largest leather convention takes over Washington, D.C., leather aficionados, admirers and the curious can delve into the practice of bondage. 

Leather folk will descend on the Washington Plaza hotel for the weekend, transforming the lobby into a de facto gay bar. The famed Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather competition, the highlight of the weekend, takes place Sunday afternoon.

Frank Nowicki, 49, won the title in 1993, and he’s been emceeing the event for more than 10 years. According to this leather veteran, this year’s theme is about much more than tying up your significant other.

“It’s about camaraderie, the friendships, the different components of the leather community,” he says. “[The weekend] is to touch base with each other and reaffirm our feelings about leather.”

Each year’s topic is chosen by an organizing committee, and themes have ranged from men in uniform to a leather spoof of HBO’s “Sex and the City.”

“We want to emphasize the importance of leather and motorcycle clubs in the leather community,” says Larry Barat, 45, co-chair of the weekend party and the current vice president of the Centaur Motorcycle club, which stages the event. “That notion of brotherhood is linked very strongly to the idea of how leather clubs work together.”

The event’s website and postcard image reflects the community’s thematic ideals. A group of men in leather vests, emblazoned with the various leather clubs’ images, are being lassoed together by a cowhide-clad stud. The picture is a representation of the D.C. area’s leather organizations’ ability to come together despite their different identities.

“We have lots of labels within the leather community, but we seem to all get along fairly well,” says Mike Dembski, the event’s publicity chair.

While the title of the weekend might seem to exclude women, Schelli Dittman, manager of the D.C. Eagle, says that “brotherhood” transcends gender.

“I’m a member of the [local leather club] Highwaymen, which is a brotherhood fraternity, but we have women members,” Dittman says. “We use ‘brotherhood’ meaning a bond.”

SOME MAY THINK the party line about the weekend’s call for unity and a gathering of the tribes might be a hollow cover for a weekend of Bacchanalian pleasures. While bondage seems to be a fairly common practice in the leather community, many people view the experience as deeply spiritual, and there are other leather devotees who aren’t interested at all.

“[Bondage] ranges from people who just like to wear leather and are quite vanilla in bed to serious SM [sado-masochism] players,” says Barat. “With some people, this is very spiritual for them. There are others that it’s more about power exchange.”

Bondage can take many forms, from light to heavy, with or without adding the S/M components to it.

“Bondage is immobilizing another person physically,” says Justin Sox, Colonel of D.C.’s Men of Discipline, a BDSM leather alternative club. The group dubs its leader a “colonel” even though its members — who presumably ask and tell — don’t necessarily have any military affiliation.

Bondage includes tying someone up with plain old rope and “mummification,” wrapping someone in cloth, or that handy kitchen staple, Saran Wrap. Sox has become a fan of Japanese rope bondage.

“It’s a very specific manner of tying a rope on another person,” says Sox. “[It has] sensuality as well as physical beauty.”

Sox came to the practice of BDSM through a personal study in Buddhism and its central teachings about life and the inherent nature of suffering. In a way, the Buddhist mindset of simply noticing the sensations and mental patterns of anger, misery and love became synonymous with Sox’s understanding of this particular sexual practice.

“It’s sensation, but it’s not painful,” he says. “What is the physical suffering and mental suffering in our daily lives? How can we reconcile all those things with the gay and leather community? The questions are somewhat intertwined.”

THE SEDUCTIVE INTOXICATION of control is also part of bondage’s erotic appeal.

“A lot of it has to do with the idea of being able to trust someone else enough to make yourself vulnerable,” says Barat. “At the same time, for the person who’s doing the tying, [he or she] has the responsibility of taking someone as far as they can go — but no further.”

Dittman, who’s 37 and identifies as queer, jokes about the differences in intensity between the gay male and lesbian bondage scenes.

“We scare the shit out of the men,” she laughs. “We play pretty hard and rough.” Among the leather lesbians, Dittman says, they joke that the gay man’s version of SM is “standing and modeling.”

Leather Cocktails takes place on the Saturday night of the weekend and features attendees dressed in their formal leather finest. (Photo by Mike Dempski)

WHILE THE SUBGROUPS of women, bears, BDSM folks and others tend to get along, the leather community as a whole can have a tenuous relationship with other gays. The celebratory nature of the leather culture’s sensuality and overt veneration of masculinity doesn’t always gel with the projected image of gay Tupperware-toting friends and dog-walking neighbors.

Leather-loving gays and lesbians cite their contributions to civil rights and to fighting the AIDS epidemic as proof of their having an equal place at the gay table.

“The leather community is in some ways a foundation of the gay and lesbian community,” says Barat. “If you look back 20 years ago to the time of Stonewall and the early AIDS epidemic, the leather community was one of the parts of the gay and lesbian community that actually stepped up and took leadership.”

Barat acknowledges that the weekend’s sexual experiences don’t get swept under the rug, but people are cognizant of the nature of their personal practices. He says the weekend is more about creating a space for people to socialize together. Afterwards they can return to their hotel rooms, play spaces or dungeons for whatever they like.

“We don’t advertise our big parties as sex parties,” Sox says. “There might be some legal aspect to advertising a sex party. There seems to be some reticence in the leather community to tie together BDSM and sex as in any way synonymous.”

Dempski is quick to point out, however, that the sexual aspects of the leather scene are only part and parcel of the larger package.

“[The sex] does define us just like being gay and having sex with men defines yourself,” says Dempski. “By the same token, if you walk around the Eagle on a Friday night, you’d be amazed about how people are not talking about sex, but about decorating their homes or going for a drive somewhere to the beach.”

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