DADDY DANGER WOLF YOUR 2024 CHICAGO LEATHER AMBASSADOR

This interview is part of a larger series dedicated to sharing the diverse stories of leather community members. Through these conversations, the series aims to celebrate unique journeys, inspire connection, and empower diversity within our community. By amplifying voices and experiences, it highlights the strength that comes from inclusion and collaboration.

MEET DADDY DANGER WOLF (BLUF #5323), YOUR 2024 CHICAGO LEATHER AMBASSADOR, A DEDICATED LEADER, MENTOR, AND CHAMPION OF INCLUSIVITY WITHIN THE LEATHER COMMUNITY.

From early days marked by an innate fascination with leather’s tactile allure to the moment he discovered a network of like-minded individuals through online forums, Daddy Danger Wolf has journeyed far—both personally and collectively. In Chicago, he found a chosen family that embraced him, guided him, and inspired him to create spaces where everyone can safely explore their desires. As a service top and Daddy figure, he has honed a leadership style centered on nurturing potential, fostering collaboration, and continuously learning from mentors and novices alike. Deeply committed to broadening the leather world’s horizons, he advocates for dismantling outdated traditions, welcoming women, trans, and BIPOC individuals, and envisioning leather as a global, diverse community bound by curiosity and respect. Whether helping a newcomer dip their toe into unknown pleasures or supporting a friend’s more profound fetish journey, Daddy Danger Wolf stands ready to welcome all who seek belonging.

1.WHAT INITIALLY INSPIRED YOU TO JOIN AND BECOME A PART OF THE LEATHER COMMUNITY?

I’ve been into leather as long as I can remember - there were lots of uncomfortable moments growing up watching westerns and seeing folks get roped up, stealing one of my dad’s leather gloves because the touch and smell of it made me feel something deep inside. I didn’t really know there was a community to join until college, when through Livejournal of all places I slowly met kinksters and leatherfolk from around the country. I remember connecting with someone who remains a friend to this day who talked about going to demos and classes at Jackhammer in Chicago, and then watching him through his title run for Mr. Chicago Leather and then his work with IML, and thinking “wait - there are places you can go to learn this stuff? To be around people who are into it, too? It’s not just this thing I see in porn and am too scared to try out on my own?”  When I moved to Chicago knowing exactly five people, it was him and the other kinksters I’d met through that forum who opened up their lives and their hearts to me, embraced me, and gave me a place to land and to grow. 

I went to my first MIR and my first CHC play party within the first month I moved here, and haven’t really looked back ever since. There’s something about a community of misfits among misfits, of outlaws among outlaws, that provides so much opportunity for love and care, and the minute I saw that, I knew that I was among my people.

2. HOW HAS YOUR JOURNEY WITHIN THE LEATHER COMMUNITY SHAPED YOUR PERSONAL IDENTITY OR LEADERSHIP STYLE?

I was just talking with a friend about this the other day - the way that our leather lives shape and inform our careers and vice versa.  I’ve spent a long time as a collaborator, a coordinator, someone whose job it has been is to find the right folks, set them up for success, and then help them along that path. In my professional life it means I’ve been a project manager and a coach and a theater director and a producer. In my leather life, it means I’ve been a Daddy and a service top. 

It’s also taught me, more than anything else in my life, that you never stop learning, and that teachers come from unexpected spaces. I’m constantly seeking out folks who do things I’m interested in to get tips and tricks to do it better, harder, safer, and the people I’ve learned from come from every walk of life.

Years ago, I created a personal statement for myself to guide me: I create spaces in which people can encounter the best version of themselves.  And my leather life has been all about that - making space for peoples’ fantasies to come to life. My personal and leadership style is all about going somewhere together, with me looking out for people and making sure they’re set up for success, whether it’s success professionally or success getting into the headspace they’ve been craving and need.

3. WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES YOU’VE FACED AS A LEADER IN THIS COMMUNITY, AND HOW HAVE YOU ADDRESSED THEM?

Balance is so, so hard when you want to be able to do it all, to be at events and spend time with people as friends and as playmates, to honor my most intimate relationships while allowing myself to explore and grow as a person myself. I think it’s important to address that the only expectations I have to meet, at the end of the day, are mine, and I don’t have to do it all. I’ve got good folks around me who remind me to take a breath, take a break, have a snack and a nap and come back at it when I’m rested enough to make the right kind of difference. 

It’s also been a challenge, and an opportunity, to use my voice when it’s most effective and to know when to elevate others and just listen, and even more so when it’s my job to raise my voice to then pass the mic to the person who should be heard. I’m someone who wants to jump in and join a conversation as soon as it happens, and learning to sit back on my heels a bit and join in when and how it’s most appropriate and useful.

4. WHAT GOALS OR CHANGES WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE IN THE LEATHER COMMUNITY IN THE COMING YEARS?

I think the leather community is coming to really understand its power, and power to affect change. We’re the vanguards, and we can lead to a better and more welcoming future. Our challenge is to make sure we’re preserving what makes leather, and kink more broadly, a special and unique and magical tribe while opening to the widest definitions of that community possible. We’ve got a long way to go in welcoming women and transfolx and people of color into a community far too many people (falsely) think of as one made for and by white, cisgender men. 

It’s important for each of us to really take a look at our assumptions and challenge them - “because it’s tradition” is only useful if that tradition has meaning, and isn’t just a useless and exclusive relic.

And I’d like to see the leather community really come to think of itself as part of a global umbrella of kink, that people may come from very different places but we’re all exploring the same journey in our own ways.

5. WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE JUST STARTING THEIR JOURNEY IN THE LEATHER COMMUNITY?

It’s your journey, to take at your own pace and along the path that calls to you. There’s no map here, no real guidebook left by mystical elders. Dip your toe into whatever interests you as much as you can - it’s as okay to try something and discover it doesn’t do that much for you as it is to go incredibly deep into a fetish that speaks to your soul. You’re a “real” leatherperson no matter how much leather you own, how many events you make it to, how often you throw on gear - being open to the journey is all that it requires. And judge folks based on their intentions and their heart and their knowledge - the people who will help you most along your journey may surprise you!

6. HOW CAN FOLX GET INTOUCH WITH YOU 

Insta: dangerinchi

Bluesky/Twitter (weaning myself from this one): headspacetex