IML2025 Buck Harder 🔜 Dublin / Boot Dad * BLM

❤️❤️❤️

😍😍😍

😲

Social gathering to lead into the Dublin Leather Weeknd festivities last night. 🥰

January 2025:

The judges have been announced. I’ve finally met some of my brothers that I’ll get to experience IML alongside, some of whom I’ve been chatting with online since winning Mr Palm Springs Leather the previous October.

Well that looks fucking amazing

Made it to Dublin, and luggage made it alongside me. Just a bit of a snack waiting for my ride that’s currently in traffic.

Really excited for the weekend ahead of me 🥰

You’ve taken a step into being a part of something great, writing your own chapters in this incredibly history.

And I can’t wait to read them.

Only one of you will leave that weekend with the sash, it’s true. But I am not exaggerating when I say that taking part in the legacy of that weekend is so much more than a title.

I can’t wait to meet each and every one of you, hear your stories, and hear about how IML weekend was special for all of you. This can be a monumentally life-changing event if you allow it to be.

And so, to the class of IML 2026:

I am so, so excited for all of you. As you prepare, plan and rehearse as you approach May, please remember to take in every moment as best you can. This will be the experience of a lifetime, if you allow it to be.

…and that they get to step foot into and add their own chapters to that ongoing history.

I know big portions of what’s awaiting them. Just like I know that there will be so many elements that will be unique to their class, to this moment in time that will set this year apart from the 47 years of IML legacy that came before them…

And I see echoes of my own feelings, uncertainties and insecurities from just a year ago, echoed all-too-clearly on their faces just like I’m sure they were on mine.

And with all of the emotions I’m feeling right now, personally, as I reflect over the last eight months and what I have ahead of me as I approach step-aside…

I look to the new class. I see about 35 of the IML 2026 hopefuls over the course of the weekend.

Did I mention I was nervous?

January 2026:

MAL just happened. Here I am a year later. The judges have been announced and I find myself with that familiar sensation of “Here we go… it’s real now”.

Did I belong here, with so many people I’ve already come to respect and admire? Feeling like “the new kid” is a feeling I’ve come accustomed to. I’d started making friends… and started getting a taste for that elusive feeling of “brotherhood” I’m told comes as part of the IML contestant package.

I remember writing the names of the judges down. I remember being worried because I only really recognized what… two names? Three? Did everyone else know all of these people? Surely they did.

I’m told to start planning. Start really considering what my life might look like and how I might move forward if I don’t make top 20? If I DO make top 20. If I make podium. If, somehow, I win (yeah, right).

Nervous, excited, nervous, optimistic, nervous… and nervous. Whatever I’m feeling, it’s all now “real”. We’re there. IML is only four months away and time is short, while simultaneously feeling like it may as well still be years from now.

January 2025:

The judges have been announced. I’ve finally met some of my brothers that I’ll get to experience IML alongside, some of whom I’ve been chatting with online since winning Mr Palm Springs Leather the previous October.

*🎶Defying Gravity*
“Someone has peed within me
My guts are not the same
I’m thru with drinking by the rulessss of someone else’s game
Too late for second guessing
I hope that I’m still clean…
It’s time to tryyyyyy absorbing someone’s pee!”
- @buckharder.bsky.social feat @scottygrefseng.bsky.social

The booties are bootying

Interviews are done. Good group of contestants vying for Mr MAL! See ya later at Leather Cocktails!

Very yes

🥰🥰🥰

On my way to MAL! See you there?

😈

…pika… 😳

Visiting London for the first time. Actually, visiting EUROPE for the first time!