ROB of the ROB GALLERY, at the Weteringschans 273 in Amsterdam, has been making leather gear and S&M accessories for eleven years now. Furthermore, he has a gallery in which he regularly exhibits new S&M-art. His shop-windows are built up subtly and of much interest to the public which often stops in front of them. We talk with him about business, the S&M-scene and about Aids. In his tastefully decorated store he receives us to talk frankly about sadomasochism and related issues. What is S&M and what isn’t? He doesn’t give rounded answers. Speaking here is a man who claims to be non-commercial and to be driven by his love and preference for the leather fabric.
Rob Meijer portrayed in his gallery on the first floor of his shop at the Weteringschans 237. (c) Tony Newitt.
Who is Rob actually?
Someone who is a bit arrogant and knows what he wants. Because I know what I’m doing I have the feeling that I can afford to be arrogant. Most of the time I rise above the average.
So, a self-confident man…
Yes. Self-confident, you can say that again…
What is the average to you?
Amongst the average I count those who are not interviewed, for example.
Apparently you compare yourself with others?
Of course. I compare myself with the people I see around me. There are certainly not a lot of people who have the same type of little shop. If I myself have the feeling that I have reached the top, then I think I have risen above the average.
The normal sex life of people is generally such that it doesn’t comes out into the open.
I believe that the way I deal with my sex life and sex in general is more extrovert. It brings a greater openness with it so that, as a result, one automatically rises above the average.
You call your business ‘a little shop’?
Yes, but I think it is just a little shop. The actual ‘sex shop experience’ – even though I don’t like my business to be called a sex shop – is rather limited.
How would you name one another?
Once, when I wanted to be registered in the Yellow Pages, I asked those people:”Where would you go search for me?” and they all said:”In the leather shop section”. Nobody came up with ‘sex’. So I am not a sex shop.
Not that it would bother me, though! People come here to buy all sorts of ‘sexual’ things, but eventually they don’t seem to think of this place as a sex shop. I believe that’s because I don’t use those sweet pink colours. Those typical sex-like products that have to be cheap and can only be used once or twice. You won’t find thòse kind of things at my shop. At my shop it’s all neat, decent and black and it often lasts for years.
What kind of shop do you have then?
I have a shop in which everything has to do with leather. That may be soft leather, but also very heavy gear leather. We try to make everything ourselves. I’ve always thought that leather clothing was very important to me, but to be really honest, I don’t really know what’s most important, the toy department, as I tend to call it, or the leather clothing. I believe both are evenly matched now.
I sell cockrings of 3,50 guilders to a mummification suit of 2000 guilders. Even a leather bench-bed which costs 4000 guilders.
How did you start this?
I was a designer for women’s ready-to-wear clothing in big sizes. That was clothing in which you had to apply variations in a very small field. It was for those women you sometimes see in the street: they always look the same.
The flowery dresses?
Yes. But when they buy a flowery dress, it has to have a different little pleat or something. That’s what I did for fifteen years.
Then I got a boyfriend – who was an artist – he wanted me home. He was a foreigner and he felt unhappy on his own. He said: “Why don’t you start a little leather shop?” And after fifteen years I must admit I’d seen enough of those beautiful big women.
I just tried it. First I made some trousers. In the evening hours. Then I thought I could live from it and I resigned from my job.
However, now it’s again a matter of trying to vary in the small field. You’ve got a cock and two balls and you turn around them endlessly. Pinching off one ball, pinching off two balls and so on…
I’ve got the idea I’m good at that. I think I’m good at small variations through which people, time and time again, think it looks new.
A number of people is very critical and has high demands. They always expect that I can implicitly meet those demands you know.
My shop used to be very much ‘gay oriented’, but I see this slowly shifting. I get more straight couples. Because women have a little hole it is a much more difficult task to make something exciting for them. With a man you can tie all sorts of things around it. With a woman there is not much to tie, huh? At the most the breasts, you could tie and lift those up…
But didn’t you work in the women’s ready-to-wear business for fifteen years?
Ha-ha, but those dresses always hung over them loosely.
For a long time I thought I also needed female customers in my shop. But that production process turns out to be very much labour-intensive. I predominantly made jeans and jackets. Suddenly then, there is a bra that needs to be sculpted, but to do that takes the same amount of time as to make a jacket. The bra becomes too expensive then. We have taken a step forward though, because there is a Swiss firm which came up with a few ideas in this field, leather things for women.
When such a pattern has been worked out, it isn’t so difficult to make more examples of it. Then my people also have time to get a little routine in it when they have to make the same product fifty times..
Do you discover different wishes and preferences between what straight men want and what gay men want? After all, a cock is still a cock…?
I believe indeed that they cherish different desires in this field. To me, the relationship pattern seems different between men and women than between gay men. Often a woman is more vicious, or sharper and softer, while men among themselves hug each other in a different way, for example. There are of course women who can tie up a man correctly, but it is still different…
A straight man doesn’t buy something for himself that quickly. It’s rather the woman who decides for him.
I believe I am man-focussed to a large extent, but yesterday I was called by a girl who wanted something for her girlfriend. I like that and I enjoy it. She bought a pair of nipple clamps. I find that equally enjoyable as when a man comes to buy a pair of leather jeans.
What did you find the most complicated you’ve ever made?
That was a complete mummification suit of immensely heavy leather. It had 200 D-rings on it. Everything, arms and legs, could be laced up.
Rob Meijer portrayed in his gallery. (c) Tony Newitt.
What do you yourself love most to make ? At a certain point you must get bored of those cockrings…
No, never. I still think cockrings are one of the nicest things to wear.
When I thought about you coming to interview me, I was hoping your first question was going to be: “How did you end up in the S&M-world?” And then I would have had my answer ready: “What is S&M?” Because I do not know. To a lot of people a cockring is already S&M and if you sniff a hint of poppers with it, they tend to call you ‘heavy’ into S&M. Other people just can’t get enough of being tied up. When they are tied in six times, they also have to be put away in a bag…
When I started with leather I thought that leather was the most wonderful thing I could do at that moment. Now my shop has existed for eleven years and I have become a little older, but now I think ‘people’ is the most beautiful thing there is.
I will never meddle with my quality, but the shop only has its importance to me because of the people I see and meet. To see how nervous someone is, how someone runs away really fast, because he has never seen these kind of things. The most beautiful thing is to see people and to handle them. I do think I am a little dominant. I find it a lot of fun to send a customer downstairs: “Go to the cellar and just wait until I come.”, then they are allowed to buy something and they have to be grateful to me. Of course, I also have customers to whom I say in a very friendly way: “Would you perhaps like to go downstairs for a moment?”
Isn’t that just a ‘beautiful’ story, you are, after all, trying to sell something?
I am not a commercial-minded person, even though everybody thinks that, because I have a name to be ‘expensive’. I am not commercial.
But you aren’t exactly getting poor from it?
I’m not getting very rich from it either…
Everybody who is in this kind of business says one doesn’t get rich from it. Is that really true?
I fight against an old sore. Things one uses for sex should be cheap, that’s typically Dutch. If someone wants to buy some leather jeans just for chique, he will go to town and buy a pair of leather jeans for seven hundred guilders and then there is a crosswise seam on it. At my shop a pair of leather jeans will cost five hundred guilders and it is made out of one single piece of leather. My profit percentage is low. Those other jeans in town are usually purchased in other countries, at my place such a pair is made at Dutch wages. The idea that I’m getting rich from it, no… I have a good life and becoming rich isn’t necessary. I want my glass of wine, my cosy life, all that has to be possible and if I don’t save anything, well I’ll see about that later on.
With how many people do you work here?
With four or five people. We produce everything in a home-like atmosphere. I live at the company and I sleep at the company.
You often have a very attractive shop-window…
I never make that myself. I’ve got people around me to whom I give directions about how I want to have it. It’s indeed a successful shop-window, I agree . While sitting behind my desk I can look outside and see the reactions of people, but they can’t look inside… That’s absolutely not on purpose, though.
In general you see people laughing or giggling a lot, especially women do. Others are totally serious and try to point out with their finger that they know what it’s for. Yes, that’s a daily pleasure. When I stop working I am only going to keep a shop-window and watch all day.
Everybody in the neighbourhood knows what kind of shop I have and there has never been anyone who was offended by it. Everybody thinks it’s fun and comes to have a look too.
Wouldn’t you rather be in the city centre, in the Kalverstraat, for example?
I believe I would overshoot my mark then. From a colleague who lives over there I have heard whispers that his greatest concern is: the huge load of people coming in but not buying anything.
I’m not in a shopping street, people kinda bump into my shop. Then they have to take the step to enter, but for some obscure reason this seems to cause problems. I’ve never found out about that. People have a certain kind of initial reluctance and I however blond I dye my hair, it doesn’t make any difference…
Maybe you should wear a three-piece grey suit…
Never in my life. I’m not making any concessions, but I do regret that there is an initial resistance. If I were very commercial, then I’d probably have to go to the Kalverstraat. Now everything is based on my own pleasure and that is the most important thing to me. I don’t need buses full of customers..
It’s bad enough that there is a tram conductor on line 10 who says at the Weteringschans: “On the one side you see the ‘Alhambra’, on the other side ‘Rrrrob’.
Last time a boy who had been on the tram said to me that people on the tram had said about my shop: ‘Look, sometimes people come out of that store who are almost unable to walk anymore’.
Naturally, that’s not really the right image to get people in.
Of course, I would like people to keep coming, also people of the VSSM. Even if they only come to look, that’s fine. I would say:
“Come with your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife and taste the atmosphere”. I’ve got the idea that there are still a great lot of people who don’t exactly know what happens in my little shop.
Do you think there is an S&M-scene in Amsterdam, when you look at it from an international point of view?
I often get that question, especially from foreigners. Unfortunately, I have to shrug my shoulders, I DO NOT KNOW. I have been thinking that I should found a fine S&M-club in Amsterdam. After all, it is rather pathetic for a city like Amsterdam, with so much sexual freedom, that it doesn’t harbour any S&M-life. When a foreign customer asks me where to go in the evenings, I just can’t give him an address. Gay men can go to S&M-bars, but there is nothing for straight folks. Amsterdam lacks a well-equipped S&M-business where people can have fun, if only two or three times a week.
If my home had been a little bigger, I’d really have liked to set that up myself.
Seventy percent of my customers are foreigners. I am better known abroad than over here. They always say you don’t get it from your own people. A Dutchman doesn’t like a Dutchman and I think it has something to do with this. When I go to Paris, people stand in line to shake hands with me. That sounds a little exaggerated and it isn’t really a line with hundreds of people, but people do stand and wait to be introduced to me. Afterwards they are proud to have met me. Here in Amsterdam I never get that feeling.
Has S&M been heightened to a culture, abroad?
I daren’t say. In America, there are a lot of groups who do a great deal. Once I went to a Hellfire Weekend in Chicago myself. Outdoors. Unbelievable what you see there. Two hundred men in the open air, the whole day everybody is being tied up, whipped and beaten. I saw how someone was buried with only his head above ground. The most bizarre things. I don’t see that happen over here in the Netherlands. Maybe in Baarle-Nassau where gay men organize weekends. But I wonder if they have all the equipment for that.
Do you think the S&M-scene in the Netherlands is ‘narrow-minded’?
I don’t know where snugness begins and where it ends. When somebody is hugely excited by a cockring, he will not see himself as snug. No, I don’t believe you can speak of snugness.
In America I once saw someone in an electro-torture seance. Indescribable how that boy screamed. Also, the way that boy was made to laugh, the way they played with him. I found that beautiful to watch. I was greatly disappointed when they undid his cuffs and just let that boy walk away. To my feeling, it did not have a proper ending. I am a ‘cummer’. I want somebody to cum at the end of a scene. If that doesn’t happen, I miss the satisfaction. With me everything has to end with satisfaction.
Switzerland too, has a certain S&M-culture, but to my feeling more within the comfort of one’s home. It’s acceptable over there, but they don’t talk a lot about it.
In the warmer countries there are definitely S&M-like affairs going on. There it happens in a much more natural way; getting rid of one’s aggression in a more natural way. Over here, we are so cultivated that we are only able to tie someone up with beautifully-crafted handcuffs.
That’s not the case over there, they just use a piece of rope.
Do you think S&M is a fashion?
My impression is that they are trying to make it one. I find that very annoying.
But that must do wonders for your business?
It doesn’t have to, I’m already busy enough. I think that people should be able to do everything in a totally relaxed way. Whether that is S&M or something else, it doesn’t matter. People just have to live straightforwardly.
How do you see your colleagues?
I don’t have any colleagues.
Does this have to do with that ‘average’?
That’s a very mean question. Probably it does have to do with that. Most people who start a sex business do it, because they think they can get rich from it. But I started it because I found it horny, because I found leather a beautiful material and it had my interest. That’s a totally different approach. That is why I am more free and also more creative than others. Sometimes I ‘waste’ my expensive time because I want to make something which I find horny. I really like to live from it, but not at the cost of that horniness. I want to get ánd also stay excited by my own products. When I am in my shop and I have something in my hands which I don’t find horny, I call the boy downstairs and say ‘This just doesn’t have it’ and then it is directed into the waste bin, while nine out of ten customers wouldn’t notice any difference.
Aids and S&M?
Yes, then I become silent for a moment. One of the things I also do, is piercings. Occasionally this involves a little drop of blood. I try to approach Aids without panic. It is my opinion that people should pursue a sex life which involves as little risk as possible of getting Aids. If we want to be safer, then my shop offers the excellent possibility to build up an exciting tension in a totally different way than the ways we’ve had up till now.
I wanted to place an advertisement in which someone was portrayed with a complex cockring and his hand beneath his erection. The text was: ‘Playing with yourself is exciting’.
That was the only way in which I wanted to get involved in what’s going on around safe-sex.
Playing with yourself is really exciting. You can include watching a porn video for example. If you learn to play with yourself and you are a little creative at it, you can be busy with that for hours.
But does everyone have to go and play with themselves then? Isn’t it also possible to take preventions to avoid getting Aids?
If you want to prevent it without having contact with others, you’ll probably end up rather frustrated. Of course there are always risks involved, but you have to try to keep them as small as possible.
The advice from the Aids-team sounds different, for example, always use condoms when having sex and…
…but I have not said that you have to have sex without a condom. I don’t say ‘just fool around’. In fact it’s better to not fuck at all, but if you want to, use a condom. But how do we know how safe these condoms are? However small it may be, there is always a certain risk. We have to learn to live with the idea of ‘limiting’. Think about what we do. On the other hand, I could go outside and get run over by a car today. You can never exclude risks…
Do you see S&M as a reasonable alternative?
I still don’t know at what point you may call things S&M. I do know that. For example, I find it very fascinating to see what happens with someone when he gets a mask over his face for the first time. It gives a feeling that you can’t control the things around you anymore. Also, when you tie something around someone’s cock which he has never done before, that gives new and weird experiences. Working with nipples: ditto.
New worlds can open up. With a partner I know, I like to pretend we are meeting for the first time. That might seem ridiculous, but it really works. You stop the conversation and look at each other. You put your hand in the pocket of your jeans. It’s a new way of approaching sex. It all evolves around getting your partner horny enough to make him come.
It is also fun to tie someone’s hands in such a way that he is unable to touch himself and that this will make him, god only knows how, horny. That, too, is safe-sex for me.
You also have a gallery.
Yes. It’s a hobby of mine. Downstairs I have the leather shop, dark, gloomy, slightly mysterious. On the ground floor the things that people want to buy when they want to be seen. On the first floor also art.
At the end of the year we will probably have the big Tom of Finland exhibition; he sees it as the closure of his career in drawing.
Whether I’ll sell a lot or a little of that art doesn’t matter to me. What I do find important is that when a foreigner comes to the Netherlands and doesn’t know how to spend his days – often enough he knows how to spend the nights, he can walk around at my place. :People don’t have to buy, but they can have fun. They don’t have to be bored for one single minute.
there is no shop-atmosphere in this house.
Credits: The interview ‘Steek boven de middelmaat uit’ was first published in the 1987 July/August issue of ‘Kerfstok’ (p4-11), periodical for VSSM (www.vssm.nl).
Adri Bleeker interviewed Rob, photographs were made by Tony Newitt (www.newitt.nl).
All content used with permission of the copyright holders. Translation by LTHR.NL.
Last update: 19th of August 2009
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