Pat Bond & Terry Kolb
Masochist? Happy? Is it curable? Does psychiatry help? ls a satisfactory life-style possible? There's women’s lib., black lib, gay lib., etc. Isn‘t it time we put something together? Write PO box 2783, Grand Central Station, NV, NV, 10017.
Pat Bond, 1970
In the eyes of the public, a sado-masochistic scene is a very sordid affair with a “sex fiend" brutalizing an equally weird victim. It is seen as a scene without sensitivity or any aesthetic feeling. The exact opposite is the case. The s/m relationship is the most democratic that exists. Yes, democratic! The two consenting partners must work very hard to achieve a compatible relationship because so much depends on relating the fantasies of each partner to the other.
Terry Kolb, 1971
When I declared in my ad that it is time for us to 'put something together,’ I meant that it was time for us, those with masochistic needs, to get together instead of remaining isolated, repressed and utterly frustrated.
We have truly been an oppressed minority. We couldn't speak except in whispers to a shrink or limited partners. We have had no voice except that of the high priest, the psychiatrist, who may have a vested interest in the persistence of our problem; who may treat us by getting us to conform without really understanding the crucial experience that goes on within us. Also, whereas many other so-called deviations of behavior have become increasingly tolerated, if not accepted, by society, our sexual orientation has remained taboo. We may have been damaged, but we can
still love. I say, better a love that is somewhat ’strange’ and exotic than no love at all. We just need to be loved in a special way, and to love strongly in return. What we put together is up to you.
Pat Bond, 1971.
By creating The Eulenspiegel Society (TES) in New Vork City in the early 19705, Pat Bond and Terry Kolb initiated very profound and durable changes in the landscape of SM in the United States. While early TES members (including Pat and Terry) often used pseudonyms (notably out of concern for their professional situations), TES was arguably one of the first SM organizations whose members were not screened and whose meetings were free of charge.
While for most of the 20th century, the different SM populations were largely insulated from one another, TES was the first organization to provide a venue where SM folks could meet and collaborate across boundaries of genders and sexual orientations. Additionally, Eulenspiegel was also the first SM organization that combined educational, social, and political activities. Eulenspiegel opened the way and provided models for many subsequent SM organizations, including The Society of Janus, Samois, GMSMA, LSM and the NLA.
Pat Bond was born in May 1926 in Saint Petersburg, Florida, the youngest of three children. He moved to New York City at the end of World War Il to study Music: he got his degree from Albany State Teachers College.
Pat had had masochist fantasies for as long as he can remember, but he had never acted upon them. In 1970, age 44, he was teaching Music in New York when he took a break to go on a tour throughout the United States as a singer with the Don Cossack Choir, a famous Russian chorus. While on the tour he had lots of heavy SM fantasy and decided to make the fantasy into reality.
Upon his return to New York City, he started looking for a dominant woman and published a personal ad in the local underground press. But this was also the moment when the women’s movement and the gay and lesbian movements were starting: this gave him the idea of
using the models those movements provided and apply them to SM. That is why, together with his personal ad, he published a second, classified ad calling on masochists to form an organization for masochist liberation. The ad came out in Screw Magazine on December 28, 1970, and in the East Village Other. And the first person to answer and show up at Pat’s apartment was a twenty-seven year old, then-heterosexual woman named Terry Kolb.
Terry Kolb was born in May 1943, and grew up in New York City. She’d had her first sexual encounter when still a high school student, around 1960, with a man named Jim Kolb. The experience involved heavy SM. When she had to find a pseudonym for SM activism, Terry took this man's last name. Before meeting Bond, Terry studied Sociology at New York University and got involved in radical and feminist activism.
Pat and Terry got together to form an organization for masochists of any gender and sexual orientation. The organization was meant to provide a venue for social and educational activities as well as political activism and consciousness-raising. In the early months of 1971, Terry came up with the name.
"Eulenspiegel," a character in German folklore who was a symbol of masochism in Theodor Reik's 1941 book Masochism in Modern Man. A few months later, in August 1971, the members of Eulenspiegel voted to include sadists in their organization.
The initial meetings were held in Pat’s or Terry’s apartment until the attendance got too big and they needed to find a more accommodating place to host their meetings. Later on, when they started a newsletter in 1973, Bond suggested to call it Pra-Me-Thee-Us, the name he had
at first envisioned for the organization. The newsletter's name was a reference to the Greek mythological hero who had been bound to a mountain rock by Zeus and tortured there as a punishment for bringing fire to mankind.
During the winter of 1971, they tried to run another ad in The Village Voice. However, they got turned down, and were told that the magazine would not advertise SM. Terry, a radical activist at heart, took this as a civil rights issue and she started organizing, agitating, and protesting. This resulted in one of the newspaper’s columnists writing about his conversations with Terry in March.
On May 18, 1971 the magazine finally printed a text by Terry. It was called “Masochist's Lib." It functioned as a position statement for the early Eulenspiegel. It also attracted considerable attention to the new organization and drew new members to it. Kolb’s paper, together with Eulenspiegel‘s Creed, largely written by Pat Bond around 1973, formed the political platform of Eulenspiegel.
These documents shaped the agendas for many subsequent organizations.
In the mid-19705, Terry moved out West, first to San Francisco, and then to Los Angeles where she formed a short-lived TES chapter. After a while, she came back to New Vork for about two years, went back to being active in TES, before moving permanently to the Bay Area. In
San Francisco, she came out as bisexual, became a member of several SM organizations, including Cardea, The Society of Janus, Samois, The Outcasts, and The Exiles. That is when
she started using her real name, Fran Nowve, rather than her pseudonym. At Samois, in 1979, she met her Dom, Mistress Victoria, with whom she still lives today.
Pat Bond remained in New York City and was a pillar of The Eulenspiegel Society for many years, and was a regular contributor to Pro-Me-Thee-Us. He also worked with others to
develop bar nights for heterosexually-oriented SM practitioners.
At one of those nights, at the Spike Bar, in 1973, he met the Mistress with whom he had his first real SM relationship. They became involved a couple of years later and he still serves Her today.
In addition to his many contributions to TES, Pat continued his professional activities. He retired from TES in the mid-19805 after 15 years of leadership in the organization in order to dedicate more time to his book group and his Mistress. After many years of part-time teaching, for the last 16 years of his professional life, he did secretarial work at the Episcopal Church Center from which he retired in 1993. He has lived since the late 19705 with his friend, Brother Leo, also an important early member of TES. For many years, Brother Leo contributed to Pro—Me-Thee-Us an ongoing column known as "S/M Through the Ages.” This recorded the broad sweep of BDSM lore throughout history. Together, Leo and Pat had kept a number of important historical documents from TES. Unfortunately, in 2012, their house was deeply affected by Hurricane Sandy and many of them were permanently damaged.
The importance of Pat and Terry’s contribution to the SM world can hardly be overstated. They helped form a public voice for SM people. After founding TES, they met with other liberationist a organizations, talked to various media, opposed the frequent stereotyping of SM sex and SM folks, and they helped make the voices of SM people publicly heard. Today, after 44 years of existence, TES is the oldest surviving SM organization in the US. TES itself could not retain its original pansexual balance, and has now long been a predominantly heterosexual organization. The Eulenspiegel Society did pave the way for the collaboration among SM folks that today happens in many other places.
Most importantly, Pat and Terry have been pioneers in helping build a sense of SM Pride. That unapologetic enthusiasm for SM is exemplified in a song Pat wrote many years ago:
Whips and chains and leather and steel
The more you do it the better you feel
The love you get’s unbelievably real
Vour machine is built to be mobile
With canes and chains and leather and whips
You’ll have your love at your finger tips
It’s so exciting, it‘s really ideal
With whips and chains and leather and steel
Just take a belt
And take some boots
And take a cat’o nine,
Then take one or two
Bull pizzles and you
Can lay it on the line
With the right one!
Whips and strips of leather and chains
A love that lasts is one that remains
The more you do it the better you feel
With whips and chains and leather and steel.
Just get some cuffs
And get some clamps
And get a riding crop
And whether you are
Above or below
You’ll always be on top
With the right one!
whips and strips of leather and chains
A love that lasts is one that remains
The more you do it the better you feel
With whips and chains and leather
We’ve got to get it together
With whips and chains and leather." and steel.
[The Leather Hall of Fame thanks Rostom Meshi, Brother Leo, Pat Bond, and Terry Kalb
for their help in the preparation of this biographic information].