Well, IML was this weekend, and this was the first time I've ever had a chance to go. Here's a rundown of how things went. (pictures should be up soon)

It was a 5 hour drive for us, but I brought my laptop, so we passed the time watching all sorts of nasty leather porn, to get us in the mood.

Once we got there, the parties were already starting. Texas's party had the best spread (free food, and 1 free beer), as well as the hottest eye candy. Mr. Leather Texas was there, and looked great for being 51. The Bootblack party was a lot of fun too. For some reason, they had some "doggie" people at their party. They were down on all fours acting like puppies. Then 2 of the girl puppies started getting in a fight, which attracted the guy puppy, who then tackled both of them. It was quite surreal. And of course, there was some serious bootlicking going on at this party.

Saturday we headed over to Steamworks, Chicago's three story bathhouse. This place was amazing. It was still early in the afternoon, so there weren't a ton of people there, but we did get to watch all sorts of guys going at it.

After a few hours at the bathhouse, we headed over to some gay bar called Sidetracks. The bartenders there must have really liked us, since we ended up each getting 2 shots and 1 drink free. By the time we got back to the hotel, we were all pretty toasted, but there were still more parties going on, so party we did.

Sunday morning I went to the leather market again ( I was there briefly Saturday, but it was dead). There were a bunch of friendly porn stars there this time, including Ray Dragon (who has got to be the sexiest guy in the whole world), Michael Brandon (who let me stroke his Monster), Tag Adams, Dick Wolf, Kent Larson, Carlos Morales, and a bunch of other Hot House guys I didn't recognize. I have to say, some of the things for sale there surpised even me. Someone actually was selling beastiality porn! Some porn star from the bootblack party promised me a free DVD if I came to his booth, but he was never there when I was. Argh!

One thing that I found very interesting about the whole weekend: The Hanky code. I thought the hanky code was some old barbaric thing no one really used anymore. But at IML, I'd say at least 60% of the guys there had some kind of hanky in their pocket. Most popular were red (fisting) and yellow (pissing). I didn't know so many people were into that, but I guess they are. Speaking of pissing, one of my friends said there was a guy in the bathroom sitting next to the urinals, begging for people to feed him piss!

Anyway, Sunday night we went to the big IML show. Man what a mistake. They had maybe an hours worth or decent programming sprawled out over a 5 hour show. It was maddening. And the previous Mr. Leather's "giving up the title" speech went on for 30 minutes! It ended up being way too political. Just show us the guys in their little leather jocks! And when it finally ended, none of the guys I liked made it into the top 3. Here's a shot of Mr IML (in the middle) and the runner's up:

Something cool I noticed... the offical IML site has a bunch of photographs from this weekend's events. I noticed one of those pictures has me in it! I'm immortalized forever on the IML website!

You can see more pictures of the actual show (including shots from the physique portion!) here.