Origins of APEX

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The Origins of APEX: Perspective vs. Clarity and Reality
By Nancy Ava Miller, M.Ed., CHt
Copyright 2007, Nancy Ava Miller


On one of my rare returns to APEX (I’ve visited the group only twice since its inception in 1988), I noticed three photographs in a front room there. A caption indicates that the people in the photos are the founders of APEX. In fact, those three people—Bert Cutler, his wife Nadine, and the late Mistress Catrina—did not start the S&M/Fetish support group today called APEX, Arizona Power Exchange. And I am relieved that Bert Cutler’s article “Beginnings: A Perspective” (APEX News, October 2007) provides a springboard for me to clarify how APEX was born, or, more to the point, how I and I alone founded the group. The following is my response to my old and dear friend Bert’s memoir concerning his early years in S&M and the early moments of PEP—People Exchanging Power S&M Support Group in Phoenix, Arizona (now APEX).

Although, as Bert recalls, he and Mistress Catrina may have pondered for years the possibility of an S&M/Fetish network in Phoenix, the reality remains that I founded the group now labeled APEX. Yes, prior to my relocating to Phoenix in order to start the group, I did schmooze with Bert and Catrina by phone (and with many other Phoenicians, I might add!). Yes, Bert and Catrina—along with many others—did help me with the group once I arrived in Arizona from New Mexico. Yet, long before I met eyeball-to-eyeball with Bert and Catrina, I had already advertised the group and paid healthy sums to do so. Remember: there was no World Wide Web in 1988. I also collected several “V.I.P. membership fees” for my proposed PEP-AZ venture. These $99.00 memberships were purchased early-on by 10-14 gentlemen who were then promised free entry to all PEP-AZ functions during my “reign.” I’d set up in advance many meetings and parties, too.

To my knowledge, Bert and Catrina produced no cash outlay toward the founding of what is now called APEX. To my knowledge, they did not work, as I did, 70 hours a week, seven days a week for months in order to establish and lead the group now called APEX. To my knowledge, they did not invest a few thousand dollars toward acquisition of apartments, one in Phoenix and one in Tucson, in which to house not only the group leader (me, in this case), but also to serve as conference and social spaces for Arizona’s kinky people who theretofore possessed no method to explore their sexual obsessions, to find acceptance and love. Please note: during this time I still claimed a house with a mortgage in New Mexico! To my knowledge, Bert and Catrina never uprooted themselves and traveled 500 miles to camp out by a McDonald’s in desert summer heat on a mattress in a minivan while searching for said apartments. They did not pay a few hundred dollars to install telephones in an era before the ubiquitous cell phone, nor did they buy the land-based phones themselves. Voice mail was rare then; to my knowledge, Bert and Catrina did not purchase the necessary answering telephone mechanisms required to run a support group. They did not write, place, and pay for local advertisements. Despite the fact that Bert and Catrina may have fantasized for years about creating an S&M enclave in Phoenix, they never provided the hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to do so. I, however, did.

In his article, Bert worries that I never accounted for monies collected at the PEP/APEX meetings. “We had no idea,” he writes, “if Nancy made, or lost, money during her stay.”

In response to Bert’s words, let me repeat an oft stated truism of mine—i.e., that starting and running an S&M support group is worse than non-profit; it costs money!

Bert also insists that my expectations for the group were never met. In fact, APEX today is exactly what I created and what I envisioned for the future—an open, loving, intelligent, educational, and ultimately autonomous-from-me B&D/S&M/Fetish support network—helping, caring, and sharing. Indeed, much of the verbiage in APEX’s mission statements and literature springs from my own PEP documents and philosophy. It was I, for instance, who conjured up the catchy phrase which has appeared for nineteen years at the top of each APEX News: “Treating the B&D, S&M Experience with Acceptance, Dignity, and Caring.”

Bert also claims I coveted “a profit-centered chain of groups reporting to Nancy.” Now, Bert: did I ever insinuate, either while leading PEP/APEX or once I left Arizona, that I desired a “profit” from the group now called APEX? Did I not leave you with a large chunk of money, enough to keep the group rolling till you could collect your own “door fees”? Did I not refuse the new APEX Board’s generous offer to pay my way home from Arizona? Did I ever ask you or Catrina or the group for money once I left Arizona, or for the Board to “report” to me? In all my years founding S&M organizations nationwide (not only in Arizona and my home state of New Mexico but also in Washington DC, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Denver, and St. Louis) never once did I interfere with the groups once I left them, nor did I ever ask for or expect remuneration from the groups, either while leading them or afterward. In fact, for the sake of their own survival, all my PEP support organizations were set up from Day One to run sans Nancy, since I always knew my presence at them was temporary.

By the bye, I did not enter the realm of professional S&M until 1990, two years after departing Arizona, so I don’t understand why during November 1988, Bert and Catrina fretted over some, as he describes it, “blending of our community with business.” Bert goes on to state that, “Catrina voiced concern that we needed to be fully separate from any business that has connections with the sex work industry.” In 1988 and 1989, I myself was not connected with “sex work.”

In his article, Bert furthermore describes his and Catrina’s backgrounds in “personal growth work and interpersonal communications. The values,” he continues, “were important to us and we intended those values to be part of the fabric of APEX.”

It is good, I suppose, to hear of Bert and Catrina’s professionalism and values. I, too, emerge from the realm of “personal growth and interpersonal communications” [Master’s Degree in English Education, secondary school teacher, published poet, Toastmaster, Transcendental Meditation (TM) instructor. Hell! I even endured an est extravaganza (a.k.a..: erhard seminar training) and marched against the Vietnam War chanting Peace now! Peace now!]. In part because of my own devotion toward “personal growth and interpersonal communications,” I gave up a world and a life of my own in New Mexico to sojourn to Arizona during Summer 1988, to start and pay for the group today known as APEX. Bert and Catrina, and many others in Arizona, had for many years dreamed of such a group, and desired such a group, and felt the need and desperation for such a group. Yet no one in Arizona was willing to sacrifice in order to create the group—to work more hours than what one spends on one’s job for the group, to risk money and reputation and potential legal battles and maybe suffer divorce (as I did) in order to stand up for the group. During Summer 1988, I extracted almost two months from my New Mexico life to travel back and forth between Phoenix and Tucson, creating PEP S&M support clubs in both cities—two groups then collectively known as PEP-AZ. (As Bert notes in “Beginnings: A Perspective,” the Tucson group did not survive long once I left Arizona.) Before I came to Phoenix, no popular, large scale, pansexual S&M organization existed anywhere in Arizona. Actually, few such groups existed anywhere in 1988!

Bert implies, by way of his statements regarding values of personal growth and communication, that his and Catrina’s values are “better” or “more esteemed” than my own. Actually, Bert, I believe our values are quite similar, since PEP/APEX, before and following my departure in 1988 and via your own dedicated contributions over the years, has remained the incredible, altruistic phenomenon I set it up to be—a hub of love and caring and sharing for kinky men and women seeking solace, knowledge, Passion, and human connection, human communion. Was this not your vision for the group, too, Bert: A “home [as you state] where we can socialize, learn, play, and be our authentic selves”?

If APEX lays claim to some link to authenticity, therefore, and if you, Bert, profess expertise in “interpersonal communications,” isn’t it time—in deference to communication, to historical record, and to honesty—that the facts be told about the origins of APEX? Let it be known that the group today called APEX was not founded nor funded by my old friends, Bert and his wife Nadine, nor the late Mistress Catrina. In the beginning, APEX was my plan, my dream, my child, and, solely, my creation.

I have never courted recognition nor accolades for my long-standing commitment to our cherished S&M/Fetish community or for the many S&M organizations I established throughout the country over the years. Groups like Arizona Power Exchange, however, which are based on honesty, integrity, respect, and trust, should not permit their members and other participants to be subjected to a lie when attending APEX functions. In deference to history and to truth, APEX may wish to reconsider the photographs entitled “Founders” displayed prominently in a front room of the club’s meeting hall.

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Sex educator/ hypnotherapist/ author Nancy Ava Miller may be reached for comment, any hour, at (505) 281-6262 or via email: nam2020@peplove.com. Two of her free Web sites are http://www.peplove.com and http://www.nancyavamiller.com. Nancy’s book, Notes from the Sexual Underground: Portraits of Perversion, is scheduled for publication in early 2008.

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