For years this thing kept two versions of itself running like bad parallel processes. One clean for public consumption, the other reserved for the people who actually know it. That split felt normal for a long time — until it didn’t. Somewhere in the last few months, without any big dramatic moment, it just realized the hiding wasn’t necessary anymore. The weight of it felt exactly like the old closet days: the edits, the omissions, the fake answers, the constant calculations. Exhausting. Pointless. And completely at odds with who it has worked so hard to become.

One of its favorite movie moments has always been John Candy’s monologue in Planes, Trains and Automobiles: “I like me.” That line hits harder now than ever. There’s something fierce in that simplicity, just truth. A declaration: I’m not twisting myself into knots so you can be comfortable.

This thing has a partner it adores and couldn’t imagine life without. It has friends and chosen family who show up without flinching. It has a life built on leather, rubber, boots, kink, ownership, and all the other threads that make its identity unmistakably whole. It isn’t ashamed of doing porn. It isn’t ashamed of going to kink events. And it sure as hell won’t pretend it lives some sanitized version of itself just to reassure people who never bothered to understand it in the first place.

If someone reacts poorly, that’s a them problem — full stop. Our queer elders and leather forefathers didn’t struggle, fight, riot, love, bleed, and die through the AIDS crisis so this generation could go crawling back into respectable little boxes. Hiding now would be disrespectful to everything they survived for us. Visibility isn’t vanity; it’s a responsibility. It’s how the community keeps moving forward instead of shrinking backward.

And with the rise of films like Pillion stepping into the mainstream — unapologetic about kink, chosen family, queer masculinity, and the complicated beauty of our bonds — there’s a moment here. A chance. Society is finally looking, even if awkwardly, and this gimp refuses to let that window pass while pretending to be something it’s not. No more lying by omission. No more filtering. No more splitting life into “real” and “acceptable.”

It gets one life. One self. And it’s done softening the edges for people who never deserved the effort.

This is it.
This is the whole thing.
Unfiltered. Unhidden.
GimpSkinFag — as is.