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“It’s not just about sex,” J.R. Ramos tells me. J.R. is a bald male with a full, black beard. His bare, tanned potbelly protrudes from under his black leather vest, which matches his chaps and boots. Most of the other patrons here at 168 York Lane Café on the evening of September 5 give Ramos’s affinity toward leather outfits that expose a lot of skin. In fact, their common dress code has brought them all together for a weekend-long convention for homosexual men who have a penchant for leather and BDSM. They’re known as “leathermen,” and they hold come from around the Northeast to attend brunches, mixers, a cigar social, and seminars on leather culture. The main event is the Mr. Connecticut Leather contest, an annual pageant begun in the 1970s to select the ambassador for Connecticut’s leather community.

Ramos is one of the judges of the contest, and he’s trying to explain to me that the leather group is not solely faithful to satisfying its participants’ unorthodox desires: “Ninety percent of the time we’re vanilla. Vanilla’s fine, but during the other ten percent we add other things to it.” The leather community selects an ambassador partly to aid dispel the s