Hello everyone and welcome to Inside Leather History, a fireside chat. I'm Doug O'Keefe, the host and the producer of the chats, and the fireside chats are a program of the Leather Archives and Museum. Today, I'm interviewing Panda Pup in Boots, who is Alaska State Boot Black 2017. Hi Panda, how are you? How are you? How's Anchorage these days? It's finally warming up, but that of course makes everything a night skating rink. Warming up, it's December 30th. Well, we had our longest night, we had solstice, so now we're having more sun and the weather is starting to kind of warm up. So like yesterday it was in the 40s, so all the snow started to melt. Then it got below freezing at night, so now we have a night skating rink. Be careful, no driving. Oh yeah, I've already fallen dislocated shoulder and wrist this month, so. Let's start right at the beginning with a little bit about you. Where are you from? Tell us a little bit about your family. I'm originally from, I was born in Texas, but my family moved a lot. So I don't have really a home base from childhood. We were in Alaska, we were in Hawaii, we were in California, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, everywhere. So I'm kind of a mutt, I don't have really a place that I can identify as home until I moved here to Alaska, and this is home. What took your family all over? I don't know, my parents just moved a lot, and I just kind of followed. Okay, so why Alaska? I was following a guy who I'm no longer with, but I'm a very spur-of-the-moment adventurous type and my life at the time was not very good where I was. I was in Georgia and it wasn't good. And I met a guy, he lived in Alaska. I was like, okay, I'll move to Alaska. My gosh. Eight years ago. Yeah, it was a big step. My parents thought I was insane, but it's been the best thing ever for me. Had my best life up here. No one with that particular person, but Alaska was the best choice ever made. Why has it been your best life? I finally found who I was personally in my own self, and I have a very supportive network of people up here that I've met, like my husband, who I just got married to on July 31st, and my best friend and other people. And so I have a really strong support with network up here. And career-wise, I'm still figuring it out, but I've had some really good jobs and I have really good relationships with ex bosses. So just figuring things out. Tell us a little bit about your community in Alaska. I understand it's a very sort of a smaller group. It is. It is an extremely smaller group. And it's partly because of the way Alaska is laid out. We have lots of little tiny towns, but everything is so spread out because the state is so huge. Like we have a very decent number of people in the state of Alaska, a very decent number of kinky people in Alaska, but we're all just so spread out that there becomes these little tiny small groupings of people. And then of course within each grouping, there's subgroupings and Anchorage has a fairly decent size community. We have lots of really good community leaders who have munches and so everyone can find where they personally fit. Everyone has their place. Tell me more about your community. What sorts of things go on? So we have the biggest part group in our community would be the people that run the yearly convention that we have for kink education, which of course we haven't had the last year because of COVID. But they run a every year we have a convention, which is when the title competition is.  Usually we've had 150 out of state presenters come up over the last. I think they've been doing it for nine years, maybe 10. Got positive on that. And the conventions are great. Everybody comes from all the other little communities and all the communities kind of come together for that convention and for the little mini conventions. And then we have our rope group. We have a whole bunch of people who are really into rope and so they have their own little thing and they're really, really cool and they have some really good education groups, meetings that they do. And our community is very much we help each other. We're always looking out for each other and having each other's back. We'll have like if there's a community member who's sick, we'll all gather together to go and like clean that person's house for them before they come home from the hospital. We support our older community members. We have one community member. She's in her 80s, I believe, and she got really sick during the period of COVID when nobody could like see each other and we all came together, cleaned her entire apartment while she was in the hospital, took care of her cats and just made sure she was all set up with everything she needed. She's like the auntie of everybody. She's everybody's wicked auntie. She's the sweetest thing. So we always are looking out for each other. You mentioned a big convention. What's the name of it? It's called Northern Exposure. And there's a little mini convention that spur off of it are Northern Exposure Lights. And it's a weekend long convention, but it actually runs kind of a week if you include all the extra stuff. But it usually runs a Friday, Saturday, Saturday. We have two play parties, two night play parties. And then we have three days of classes and our community houses all the presenters. We don't stick them in hotels. We don't just have them off doing their own thing. We house them with community members. And then the community members are who drive them wherever they need to go. So it makes it so that the people who come up get to meet our community and our community gets to meet all these people on a more personal level than just they're standing in front of us teaching a class. And we feed everybody. Everything's included when you, and it's probably one of the cheaper conventions. Not counting of course, flying up here, but we pay for them to fly up here. We pay for everything. And we take them to little community things around like we take them to the wildlife refuge and we take them hunting and we take them fishing. And at the end of the weekend, the Monday after we have a survivor's brunch and then everyone goes out and has this huge barbecue at the presenter who hosts the whole thing, her house and have a big old barbecue out there and everybody has fun and hangs out and it's a really neat experience. And we meet them at the airport with big old sign saying that they're in Alaska and they're here for us and yeah, we make a big show of it. It's a lot of fun. When do you host this? It's usually around Pride. So usually around July, June, July, depending on when Pride falls. So it's really cool because it's also happens I believe our producer's birthday that time period too. So it's kind of her big birthday celebration at the same time. What are some of the main classes that you'll generally teach at something like that? Well, so our community gets to pick the classes. So the producer will go around to all the different socials and munches and she'll have a binder of all these presenters who have either expressed interest or who she's recruited who would be interested in presenting and a list of their classes and the community gets to kind of pick what we would like to have. So it's really, we really get a lot of input into what's coming to our state. And so we've had whole conventions that were based around MS relationships. We've had it where it's been heavily tilted towards food blacking and usually it tends to be where the conventions are really varied but they'll be like a heavy influence of a particular thing because that's what people are into in that period. We try to have some 101 level classes mixed in there some higher level classes mixed in. Both of unusual stuff. We've had people come up who did consent non-consent classes. We've had ones who came up and were like, we're going to teach you how to have an MS household that's in the real world like people who were the subs may be an executive at a cost, how do you navigate that? And we've had some really amazing presenters come up. And we also highlight some local people too during the convention, at least one local person as well. Is this when you do the Mr. Alaska Leather Contest? I thought wasn't one of them in January. So that would be Artic Heat and that is done actually by the Last Frontier Men's Club. There, those titles are completely separate from us but we are all friendly community. Last Frontier Men's Club is a gay men's club and so they put on the Mr. Alaska Leather, Ms. Alaska Leather, Mr. Bear and Mr. Bear Cub. They host those titles. Our convention only hosts the Blue Black title. Oh, I see, I see. But we work together like we show up at their events and our Blue Blacks are there and we're there and usually a lot of our members are competing and we all are very integrated but it's their own, they've been doing their title a lot longer than the Blue Black titles. Ah, ah, ah, okay. Now, Blue Blacking. My part is all. Ha, ha, ha. I wanna know, take me way back to when you first even had an idea not only about Blue Blacking but about anything in sort of the kink leather scene. So my start in the kink community was way, way back when I was in my, I'd say early 20s, maybe 21, via virtual online at the time because I was living in LA and had not figured out that there was actually an in-person community for this and I was part of the Gorian community at that time. I'm so. The audience, please explain that. Huh? For the audience, please explain the Gorian community. So the Gorian community is based off a series of books written by John Norman and they are a sci-fi alternate Earth where these alien bugs decided that women were to be subservient to men and they also removed all weapons other than like, you know, medieval weapons. You had no guns or anything like that. Only the bug aliens had the weapons but there became a sort of a cult subculture of people who actually tried to live that type of lifestyle and it's very much like an MS lifestyle but it's much more strict and protocol-based, very, very protocol-based. But I have since evolved out of that and moved on to different things but that's where I started and I didn't really discover boot blacking until much, much later but I'd always had love for leather and for shiny shoes because my grandfather and my father were both military so I learned and my first husband was military so shiny shoes was a thing. Let's take a step back though. I want to know more about the Gorian community. What did that teach you? What sorts of things did you learn? So I learned a lot about how to be of service and how to be quiet in service, doing the things before the things were needed. If anyone knows the show MASH and remembers Radar from MASH you always knew the helicopter was coming before anyone else did and they really impressed on that same sort of behavior from their subs in the Gorian lifestyle. Do it before it's needed. There's a lot of similarities to service cultures of the English in the fact of how you serve Greeks, how you serve, if there's a whole group of people where you're not noticed, you're not supposed to be noticed. There was strong emphasis on learning how to walk where you wouldn't make bells jingle. A lot of the slaves wore bells on their ankles and on their bodies and you would have to learn how to walk without making those make noise and that was one of the ways they taught you how to be a silent servant. At least in the community I was in every group is different but that was the group I was in. Were you successful in doing that? Oh yes, I was very successful. I was in it for several years and I ended up at one point becoming a trainer doing it. The community I was in had a Gorian council. I got actually freed by my owner that I had at the time and was made a free woman which is the whole thing in of itself and was part of that particular community's Gorian council. That community I don't think around anymore I think is kind of dispersed but that was a long time ago. A lot of things have changed and but I loved it and I like know way too much about like actual facts from the books and I've read every book and I do love it. I still love it and I still find a lot of it plays into my current life because I have a very strict belief on how sub should act in certain environments and I tried to you know still carry through a lot of the same stuff I learned because I loved it and I found it graceful. It was it was amazing part of my life and my current partner husband is not Gorian but he does have very kind of 1950s old-school type of way of running things. He's in charge. You do what he wants. He wants things a certain way. You fold the clothes a certain way. You know and so the Gorian training has helped with that because it enables me to okay, I learned how he wants it done and then that's how it's done but we don't have an image. We are the DS not in us. So we don't have it constant. It's more organic and still have free will. Interestingly, you're the first person who's ever mentioned that to me. I've never previously heard of it. Oh, really? Is it is it very popular? Do many people use it? So Gor gets a lot of backlash and heat. There's Gore 10s. We have found Gore tends to attract some of the less positive elements in in the communities because there's that very strong.  You do as you're told. Period. So it can have a little bit higher propensity for predators. And plus a lot of people are like you're following the belief system of a set of fictional books. You know, and so it's a little bit of people are like the Gorians are over there. You know, so it doesn't get as much view as some of the others. Interesting. And I found some pretty toxic people in the Gorian community when I tried to like return to it to at least just like socializing people that know the same things I do. I have found a lot of toxicity and lots of male chauvinism. How does the community manage those elements? I'm not sure. I haven't been a part of that community for a long time. I don't know really of any local people who have subscribed to it. So I don't know how anybody's handling it now. Back when I was in, we did have the Gorian Council people if they showed themselves to be predatory in our particular community, we did push them out. We did notify people, hey, this person's not safe. But that was a long time ago and I really can't speak to what's happening in it now. I just know it's not a hugely popular thing here. Okay. But you mentioned boot blocking and taking care of your grandfathers and your father's boots and your ex-husband's shoes and boots. Where did that germinate for you? So I've always been the person who helps out in every aspect of my life. Even when I was a little child, I was members of orchestras and when they'd have like an auction or a dinner party, I was one who's like, I'll volunteer, I'll volunteer. I'm a happy little volunteer that does all the things. I'm a service beast. I can't help it. And, you know, my dad was busy. My grandfather was busy. My grandfather was getting older and his hands weren't as strong anymore and they would teach me. And if it was something that someone important to me wanted or wanted a certain way, it became, sorry, my cat. It became something that I really wanted to do for that person as a service. And for me, I'm really kind of geeky and nerdy and the more challenging something was, the more I wanted to figure it out. So for me, it was making it the best it could be. I would take the dirtiest, muckiest, nastiest boots from them working out in the yard or whatever and I'd make them shine in that and their praise and their saying, oh, wow, I didn't even think that food could look like that again, became kind of like, okay, this is something cool. And so that just carried on. And then when I came up here to Alaska and became part of the Alaska King community, I met the person who was to become the first Alaska State boot black, Eric Joseph, who then became Mr. An Emotional Boot Black. He fed that love for service and he fed that love for boots and I'm kind of a shy, quiet person who stays in the corner and boot blacking was my way of, I could still stay in my little safe corner but I could still be a part of the group and I could still interact and it then became a way for me to help other wallflowers like myself feel comfortable if it was their first time in the club or whatever because I'd like see them sitting over in the corner like I used to do and I'd be like, hey, let me look at work on your shoes and then that would kind of open people up and make them feel a little safer because that's that safe place to get introduced. And that for me just is something that's very dear to my heart and hearing people's stories when they sit in the stand and hearing people's histories and that's boot blacking for me. But how did you learn the skills necessary to do that? So I learned the military way of doing it which is a little bit not as accepted way to do it anymore for some people when I was a kid with my grandfather, my dad and then Eric Joseph taught me what he had learned and then I then furthered by every time a boot black would come into town for a convention I would sit at their feet and learn whatever their tricks and techniques were and I went to boot black roundup up there in Chicago and interned under Leslie Anderson for the time I was up there for the roundup and that was amazing. Learned all kinds of tricks and loved it. And how was it amazing? Oh, it was amazing because they showed me how to work with old leather or leather that had been soaked in cigarettes smoke and are sweat and how to preserve that person's history while still preserving the leather because everything that we do to leather can damage it or age it or wear it out like, you know all the pins we put on our vests they put little holes and they do damage and then the metal and leather doesn't always get along so they get this really gross gooey green stuff on them and that would eat at the leather and how to preserve the person's history of you know, they were a smoker and they, you know like certain things and you don't want to remove that from their leather but you still want to protect the leather from any damage from that stuff and it was really fascinating to see Leslie's process how to do that and I learned some tricks to help make my leather last longer and because of Leslie I'd never put pins on my vest I actually attached snacks so I have little blacks that I put my pins on so there's no pin holes and that way I can also take it off when I'm scoring the vest so there's no weight dragging in the seams but yeah I picked up little tricks and things from different boot blacks over the years and it's pretty much been the main thing I focus on in the King community is boot blacking so I jumped out boot blacks and I asked them what their little tricks are and what little things they figured out because everyone figures out a different thing and then there's also you know this person in Chicago has different technique because of the weather that they encounter in the rocks off the road salt they deal with people in Alaska completely different way of doing things people in Texas completely different way of doing things different products and you learn that certain products work better in certain areas than others and so you learn what you need when wherever you go and it's really cool can you depict what that might be for somebody watching this video what would be a difference between what you might do in Alaska versus in Chicago versus Texas or wherever else so places like Chicago and Alaska they have snow and cold and ice and then as a result have the lovely products and put out in the environment to combat combat snow these things can damage your leather really badly and you know so you have to learn how to remove that stuff and they're not easy to remove rock salt is horrible that sounds so hard to remove so you have to figure out what products work for that and what work for your area so we have really extreme colds here in Alaska so most polishes are going to crack and break and so they'll not stick stick to the boot well so you have to tend to use a lot a lot harder polishes because they'll they'll storm a little bit better whereas in Chicago I could use softer polishes because it's a little bit warmer there Texas way warmer you want something that's very very easy to manipulate but it's not going to melt away also with Texas you have sand and that red played dirt and you have to use different products to combat that because something that would work in Alaska for cleaning off dirt and picking sand and stuff off is not going to work in Texas because the clay in Texas is a lot thicker and gummier so you just have to figure out what works for the area you're in and also you have to learn what the people wear there so in Alaska we wear a lot of hard-duty leather because you deal with a lot of rough conditions whereas you know people who are in California who may mostly wear their leather let's say for conventions they're going to have the softer more comfortable leathers can't use the same conditioners on that they'll just weigh it down and actually when I went to San Diego for M's Bubba they I didn't even take hardly any polishes because most of the stuff I was dealing with down there was oil pan words so I didn't have a need for a lot of polishes I was able to do mostly everything with just conditioners and I make my own conditioners and it's super lightweight and it pretty much has been I've found been pretty universal wherever I go to be useful how do you how did you come across that how do you make that so again nerdy geeky person I wanted to know it was in these things that I'm putting on people's leathers and also because I wanted I was worried about allergens and what might be alert people of the alerted to because like for me staff far gives me a headache that far polished the smell of it so I just kind of contacted the makers of different conditioners and polishes and whatnot that's what they put in it some told me some of them didn't and then I sort of formulated my own and I was looking for things that were shelf stable that are not going to rot they're not going to go rancid and but also would be beneficial to the leather but not hurt the leather and so I formulated my own I did learn a bunch of stuff from the rebels because they were also producing their own soaps and conditions around the same time as I was starting to formulate mine and so I did learn a lot more the rebels Mickey rebel and I'm drawing a blank on first name here they've been at my house but I feel so bad but they're the rebels they're from Portland right now I can't think of his name but I know his wife's name was Mickey rebel they came to our house they stayed in our house during the conventions pretty much every time they come up they stayed at our house but they're they're an amazing couple one of our community members actually moved and lives with them but yeah I learned a lot from them they are amazing blue blacks and I just I figured out what worked for me and what I liked and mine's coconut oil based and beeswax and I fluctuate the mix when I make it depending on the season so if it's summertime I'm going to use a little bit more beeswax it's wintertime little less beeswax kind of thing so never know which mixture getting depending on the season but I am working on formulating my own tolerances too but that's a long process to figure out the right dynase to use that's very fascinating I wouldn't even know where to begin trying to do some of that what kind of right what kind of research though are you able to do to learn like the chemistries of some of this so a lot so pretty much every company that produces a product has to have documentation what chemicals they use in their products they don't necessarily have to put them on the products if it's not a food product which polishes and conditioners and subs for leather are not food products so they basically kind of put a general outline of what's on there but they don't like to tell you what it is but if you contact them you can get the actual list of what they put in their product because they have to have that information readily available for people due to allergen issues and things like that and so you can get the list from them and then it's just you know experimentation figuring out what ratios because they're not going to tell you their exact recipe they'll tell you okay we have this items in it we're not going to tell you exactly how we get it so then you just you know sit in your kitchen and tinker put a little bit of this put a little bit of that and see what happens my gosh my gosh are there particular products that you prefer to use I know most blacks are very particular oh yeah I I am pretty picky I my preference products is Angelus for polishes I will use Safer a little bit if I'm like in a high speed situation and Safer does pop a shine a lot quicker than most products because a higher quality product but it's sell gives me a headache so I don't use it that often and I use pretty much exclusively my own conditioner and my own soap but I have no problems with any of the other soaps and conditioners out there they're all good everyone has a good one but for me it's mostly Angelus products I have used Kiwi have absolutely zero issues with Kiwi some blue blacks hate Kiwi some love Kiwi but you know Kiwi is a perfectly fine product you can get it anywhere anybody can walk into a Walmart and find Kiwi you know and so it's readily available and but it's a it's not as good for Alaska in my opinion but it's a perfectly good product but for me Angelus works best up here why why is the difference it's it's just soft enough but just hard enough to work with our weather no matter which season we're in and I found that I can pretty much universally use it anywhere I go I found that Lincoln was a little too hard for here and I haven't really try pretty any other polishes per se other than those that I can remember other than like borrowing someone's at a convention that I when I didn't have a color I needed and Angelus has a really good mix of colors they have pretty much every color you can imagine plus they also make the leather paints and the leather dies so you can keep it imagine us across the board I like to try to keep the same product on every stage of the process if I can when you start mixing different products you can sometimes have some fun little results where things won't polish fried or something will get tacky and then collect every dust particle in the room so if you can keep to the same product that results I see you mentioned that the contest the Alaska state boot black contest is held during your I'm sorry was it northern exposure yes in the summertime tell us about your journey down that road so my journey started actually in 2016 I ran for the first time in 2016 I did not win I was very sad when home and cried but I came back I convinced my partner that I had at the time that I wanted to try again and they were very reluctant because they had seen how broken hearted I was the first time but they said okay you can run again and I ran and I won this day of my life and our convention is a really really fun competition we have our we our competition has evolved when first year that we had it there really was only one contestant which was Eric Joseph and he was the starter he was the granddaddy of the whole count you know thing second year it was me and two other community members one from Fairbanks and another the one who won and then the third year it was me and another girl competing the second year it we had out of state people come up to be the judges so it wasn't a community judge event the second year and based on the paperwork because we were given our scoring cards at the end so we could review them and figure out what we needed adjust for if we want to do run again most of the critiques for myself were I didn't seem to fit the part because the first year I ran I was very time I didn't have a whole lot of leather I think I had one pair of leather boots and that was it and they weren't even like quality leather boots they were you know Walmart leather boots and you know I I don't think I was quite able to put myself out there enough that year because you know first year figuring it out scared to death and so I think that that was a little bit different if they've been a community running I think the competition would have been completely different this third year was community led competition so every single person who attended northern exposure could vote on who they wanted to be the state boot black so everyone got a ballad and they would come sit in the stands they'd dropped about in whichever boot blacks it was competing they wanted okay me and another girl Megan and all the people who volunteered they had an extra vote so he volunteered to the venture gun extra vote and you could vote on the fantasy portion I think we're one of the few competitions that actually has a fantasy component blacks which was terrifying for me because I am not a stand-up on stage person doing the speech was hard enough but now I had to perform it at act tell us about that what did that entail for you so for me my partner at the time picked the song China doll would to be the background track for my piece and are different things that we could use like piercing beating and be some bad dragon toys and luckily the people I had who participated in the fantasy with me were people I was very very very comfortable with my current husband was one of the people who participated he pierced my chest like just jammed needle into my chest as part of the competition fantasy another friend flogged me with this really cool flogger that I liked and then my at that time partner who had picked the music he let me dress him up like a China doll with like makeup and a wig and a corset and we like mess with him with um that bad dragon dildo and so I basically kind of subspace to an out and during that fantasy so I don't remember it at all wow in the moment with the flogging and the needles and the wax and the things and we didn't actually have any chance to rehearse it which was really sad because so ours was completely just off the cuff we do what we do um the other person who competed she did a really cool uh not Madi dental hygienists scene so there was toothpaste on everything that we were using too because there was residual toothpaste left over because I went after her and she had practiced hers and practiced hers and hers was really really good but everything was very minty much mint and then so the volunteers got to vote on that and then everyone got to vote on our tech boot we each got to do a tech boot um and our producers she loves to mess up the tech boot she gets them all kinds of dirty and she'll grind them against a brick wall she'll just make you just want to cry when you see your tech boot because it's like oh my god so bad um and so everyone got to vote on the tech boot which was really cool they would put their no one knew whose tech boot was which they said I'm on table have out boxes in from you put your ballot in and I won that year I was completely shocked that I won I uh almost passed down on stage when they dropped the the stole over my shoulders because I was just like and there was the best year I had so much fun had such community support it was great I find interesting that your fantasy was not uh boot blacking related no our fantasies could be anything we wanted oh and um and that's character she's we still do the fantasy component in our contest even currently because um I was the third boot black we've had two more contest and then COVID and every year now fantasy component and I love my producer she's hilarious she did not tell us that we had a fantasy component for our contest until after we had committed and turned in our application that said okay we are running then she's like okay by the way you have fantasy because she knew that I would like run scared so she's like I can tell you guys it's until the last minute so that was that's that's how she does things it's great you said you had amazing fun community support for example tell me more about that so our community we don't expect our title holders to do any sort of fundraising for their year Wow our producer guarantees they will that a title winner will have three trips out of state one of their choice one of her choice and one random okay you discuss it together and pick where you're going to go so you're guaranteed three trips that you you know have a plane ticket money and you have the hotel money she doesn't she does not want us to fundraise at all incredible we're not we're actually not even permitted to fund raise in incredible if we are going for an international title which the girl after me did did run for international and Eric ran for international around his year those we did fundraise for because you have to have the big get fast for international and all that kind of stuff but or our trips no fundraising we could do as little as much in our years we wanted she did expect us to contribute to the community like be at socials and at least teach one class but we could do pretty much as little as we wanted we wanted to run for a competition after that she would support us she would do everything she could to make that happen if we didn't that's totally okay too so art I did was I will other weekend which was my first trip out of state as a move black I was super scared because I was going to an event that is geared mainly to men and here I am this you know kind of Eekie girl and still kind of discovering myself and I'd just kind of fallen into the puppy universe at that point as well and this is my first trip away from all my support and I had a lot of boot black shifts at that and my producer me they may not like you your girl they may not come to your stand your girl and I did great I had so much fun I made so many friends I participated in my first ever puppy mosh which was amazing and I was so scared they the puppies made me come participate they like drag me out there it was great and I'm the only girl and everyone's you know changing there's a girl in the room and they're like oh wait and the person who was rooming with me had we had a lot of conversations and I was just kind of figuring out that I was non-binary and he was like no they're non-binary it's fine and then the guys were like okay they come right back to it like there wasn't a female in the room and it was great and I watched them play in the puppy mosh pit but I was too scared to interact by standing on the sidelines and this one puppy was like not like it you can get out and I went down there and everyone was super sweet to me and super kind to me and it was great and I was partying and having fun with everybody and going everywhere my producer I don't think saw me more more than like two minutes the entire trip because I was lost having fun with all the people in socializing and it was an amazing trip for the first trip out why did you not choose to go to a further title after yours so I chose not to go for further title because I had too much going on in my personal life okay the relationship the primary relationship that I was in when I started the title year ended during my title year in a very kind of dramatic way we're still friends though and so I lost my home I lost my partner I lost my job I lost everything and so I really could not to see running for another title being feasible I need to figure out my house I actually didn't take my third trip until the year after my title ended Oh wow wow um I went I actually went to Imzel as my second trip and my primary partner had left me three days before I was supposed to leave for that trip oh so that was super rough um my producer was kind of like are you sure you really need to go on this trip and I'm like yeah I need to go I cannot be home and she was concerned that I wasn't going to be able to separate my personal life situation and do what I needed to do as a title holder at a convention um and even my partner that had left me was like no let her go she can separate it she will enter title holder mode and personal life won't be even in her hand and that's pretty much happened um was it in a polyamorous lifestyle at that time so I had my secondary partner who is now my husband um he's been supportive to everything whatever you want you make it happen you can do this um but he was also I'm not captain save a hope so you need to figure it out for yourself he wasn't going to rescue me I didn't move in with him I actually got my very first apartment by myself well by myself that was terrifying but never lived alone I've always either been with parents or friends or a partner never lived by myself so that was a interesting year a lot of things to learn and went to Imzel had a great time I actually when I arrived at Imzel I had zero money in my pocket I've managed to uh get a boot black shift and that shift made me able to do everything I needed to do an Imzel and have a great time and have way too much money to spend wow that's great yeah that's one of the amazing things about boot blacking is if you are a boot black no matter where you go if it's a convention or an event you can make money and be able to support yourself you don't have to go there with the kind of the money in your pocket you get a shift you can make enough money to eat and you know have fun wow and not be just like sitting on the sidelines broke and that's one of the amazing things about being a boot black is it's a working title yeah you got to do something and then yeah tell us about your your puppy journey because you are a collared pup yes I am I am a collared pup I am actually kind of an odd pup because I'm a mixed pup I'm actually a red panda that's my primary side of my identity but I'm also a bulldog I'm my partner's bulldog but I'm real kind of called panda and it's not the black and white pandas it's a really cute fluffy red and gold pandas they look like raccoons um that's the type of panda I am but uh I uh found puppy hood through uh another community member who no longer lives here and they kind of introduced me to the puppy thing during my journey to becoming a title holder and I started kind of exploring it online because we really don't have a very large puppy community here or puppy presence there is a uh pups and handlers group here Alaska pups and handlers which I'm the president even though nothing happens in it even no matter how hard I try I try to get things going um but we don't nobody's interested why isn't it happening? that something happened in the community before I became the president that caused a bunch of the puppies to go underground um and so once you once we're underground it's kind of hard to like drag us out because you got to be people got to be brave enough to go to that first expose social or whatever I mean the puppies do show up at the convention they do pop out at the convention but we haven't really had any puppy moshes or anything like that and then of course right as I was starting to get things rolling hope it happened on me yeah um but like I started communicating with the puppies and talking to them and I ended up taking over the AK pups and handlers when previous president left the state um and I have uh I have a couple of groups on social media that I'm a part of where I hang out with puppies and talk to other puppies and whenever I travel out of state I pop out because out of state the puppies are out um and it's very much a way for me to shut off my brain that my brain's always going and I have a very active brain and my current partner is not into uh littles very much and I'm also little so it's another way for me to have the same kind of um disconnect from reality that I would get with the little space stuff with the puppyhood please explain littles okay so littles are people who age-regress and there's there's a lot of different littles so there's the age-regressors who do it just as a therapy not kink in any way not sexual in any way age-regressors they're in the more vanilla side then you have the kinky age-players where there's dark age-play which is people who have sexual age-play um and then you have the non-sexual littles which I'm a non-sexual little and uh there's different age-groups so littles are usually anywhere from three to about 12 where they age-regress okay um ABDLs adult baby diaper levels usually are the three and below got it um middles are the the some are right between 11 and 12 and you start getting into those teenage years and then you have the teens so there's all these different levels of littles I fall between in the three to 11 a range depending on my mood um baby for me it's a way to disconnect and then the puppy is a lot like the little and the way things interact is of course kids littles love to be pet I mean how many children do we know has pretend to be a puppy dog when they were a kid yes or a kitten or whatever so the age plan the the pet plane really go hand in hand um for a lot of people and but the pup play allows me to be a little bit more sexual in that headspace then the little does um so for me pup plays a lot more sexual than my little play my little plays absolutely no suck not sex okay um I'm a little bit of a slutty puppy uh that's my good body um but it's the same sort of disconnect and just not being aware of you know this bill is do or that bill is do or I got to go do these dishes or you can just shut off and I love being a puppy I love having fun with pups pups are so much fun to play with um they're also very very friendly group of people that puppy personality really players in their regular life like I have don't think I've ever met a rude puppy hmm I don't think I've ever met one who was not welcoming um I mean that may be just your luck but I've always met amazing pups um and like they're very good about boundaries too because like if you're not wanting them to pump your leg or whatever they'll back off and even though a lot of people say pups will fuck shit up they do because they'll you know they have their squeakers in the dungeon and they squeaky toys and they're running around being puppies so you have to kind of some people have a hard time separating okay I'm a puppy but I'm in a dungeon people don't want a squeaky toy going on every five seconds yeah um but uh so sometimes people have a little bit of aversion to puppies being in the dungeons but our puppies are really good in the dungeon they don't get in the hand they they will squeak up squeaker every once in a while but most of us are pretty well-mannered pups so I'm a very well-mannered pup because my my handler would very mad if I wasn't now is is your uh puppy named panda or what puppy name do you use too? my my name panda goes through every aspect I it's a name I use in real life I don't actually use my legal name anywhere except in legal situations got it simply because everyone knows me I've had people use my real name and I'm like are you talking to me? because I don't ever use it wow but yeah I'm a puppy that's named panda I'm panda that's named panda and I'm me that's named panda it's all panda what advice can you offer someone looking to get into looking to get into boot blacking puppy play or the little's what can you say to someone watching this who may want to do that? um so it's there's one universal piece of advice that pretty much goes for all three of them is figure out a way to find your local community whether that's you go online and go on to God forbid bet life um if that life is such a sensible now um go on bet life find the local munch listings on there because pretty much every community will have munches listed on bet life if it is pretty much the main way to get the word out there um find someone in your local area who's that you feel comfortable with and have them help you find your way um but be careful don't just you know meet some random person off of bet life or Facebook or whatever without making sure they're a safe person vet who you're going to meet with but it's hard when you're new you don't know anybody to use to vet people but there are ways you can see how they interact with people online you can see what their social media says stuff like that always get people's real names before you meet them have a safe call but um find your local community whatever that is whether it's through meetups bet life there's so many ways to find your local community of mine and then go to a munch munches are scary because you know you're meeting a bunch of people in person for the first time they don't know you you don't know them just bite the bullet they bray they're not going to bite unless you like that and you ask for it you know the munches are there for people to meet so the people that are there are going to be open and friendly because that's what the munch is a force to meet people um and they're generally munches are in very safe places they're in the back room of Denny's they're at the local coffee shop um they're the coffee shop in Starbucks you know like they're usually very public spaces and if you need to go the first time and maybe not interact just watch from another table and see if that group feels comfortable to you um step in there introduce yourself to someone in the group and then it's all over from there because you're going to fall down the rabbit hole real quick and get to know people but that is a thing you just have to do it just have to do it and that's a hard thing for this introverted shy people like me was getting out there and doing it um my first jump into the real world community was actually here in Alaska with the Northern Exposure convention we got tickets to Northern Exposure went to Northern Exposure and it was over from there you could get me out of it because at the time I lived in a really little tiny town that did not have any cheap community it's a town you know during the winter and off-season not first season maybe 1500 people okay first season and booms to about 20 but yeah so you had to come to Anchorage to get any community and it was a two-hour drive so the first interaction was Northern Exposure how did you learn about that? Fet life I was looking for community I was looking for connections I found discover Fet life and I found a an event listing for Northern Exposure and it looked really really cool and my husband my partner at the time and I said okay let's go do it let's get tickets let's go and that was the first time he and I kind of branched out in our poly because I wanted to do some things that he really wasn't into but I was very much into he's he's more of a gentle dom he's more of a little stom I'm much more of an edgy player I the gentle stuff I'm like okay I'm bored I'm getting something something hard for and so my first things I did I did a cutting with Phoenix B and that's how I met my current partner and he did a corset piercing on my back and I talked to him for three years after that until I got him but that was my idea but that was my introduction and that's you know the this community had never seen me before I didn't know who I was and here I am coming in hard with cuttings and pierce corset piercings and they're like okay you know wow and so it's really this community is really great we're very welcoming of newbies and we're all about education up here we want people to play safe yeah you know and safe as you can be with me again thank you thank you thank you Jason now what are your thoughts on mentoring in all three of these cases? well mentoring is an amazing thing if you can find the right combination of people um and I affirmably believe that mentors should not be someone's partner that they're you know in a sexual or romantic relationship with mentors should be this is an educational relationship or a growth relationship um particularly for newbies it really should be separated um in my opinion my personal opinion but may mean nothing but if any mix relationship insects and there are things get a little complicated you get a whole different fogging but always seek out mentors there's mentors and everything we have great community leaders and mentors here for rope and for um blood play and for blogging and for wax play we have really strong leaders with wax play here and cupping um fire cupping which is really cool fire um so find figure out what you like find someone to teach you how to do that learn it from both sides don't just oh I'm a sub I only need to know how to take it no you need to learn how to give it to because in that way if you decide to go to an out of state and go play with someone around a person you can know if they're doing something completely incorrect it's going to hurt you yes learn it from both sides get a sub mentor get a top mentor experience if you're on a slide and I think that's true for both tops and bottoms tops should learn how to take it as much as they can give it because yes and they know how that feels to the bottom and you know mentoring mentorship is extremely critical to growth in the King community and we need more mentors and we need more people who are willing to be mentors don't think just because you're a bottoms you can't be a mentor correct it's critical that there's mentors out there and everyone can mentor in some way whether it's making someone more comfortable with talking to other people mentorship doesn't have to just keep it can be how to navigate social interactions because I know you know some people have a great social skills maybe they need someone to help them learn how to navigate that so then they can learn how to navigate King environment yes I agree he and ship is King we have some great mentors out there both locally and internationally and that's amazing international mentors what's the biggest misconception about you um sure uh I think some people underestimate what I'm able and willing to do um I think some people think that I am you know just this girl that latches on some hate person and then I take over or that I talk from the bottom I don't I have very balanced relationships there was some misconceptions that came about during break up of the last relationship with some community members of me they felt it was my fault and that I was the problem in the relationship I think it was kind of a balance of both of us both of us had gotten to a point where we weren't beneficial but I'm a lot stronger than people think and I'm a lot more willing to be there for people than people think because I'm it's quiet shy person in the corner and so some people think that I'm standoffish maybe I'm not come to me I'm a firm believer I follow like you know people like Tibbers who is you can come to me if you're feeling believe if you're feeling attacked if you're feeling lucked out or excluded I am there for you I will back you up I'm part of no pups left behind we don't leave anyone behind we are here for everybody and I am a safe place no matter what I will believe you if you if you're a victim I will back you up I will find out the facts and I will defend you and I'm always there for my community whatever my community needs I will find a way to help in whatever way I can I may not be able to help financially for some things but I'll be there to you know clean the kitchen after you're done cooking or serve the food or whatever needs to be done I that's what we do I want stronger than I look well Panda Puppin boots thank you for an amazing interview from Inside Leather History a fireside chat I'm glad I was able to be a part of it