Pat Bond, born Walter Allen Campbell (24 May 1926 – 13 February 2021), was an American BDSM pioneer who co-founded The Eulenspiegel Society (TES), widely recognized as the first BDSM organization in the United States. He is the New York music teacher who turned a lonely masochist’s classified ad into lasting community structure.
The Screw Ad and TES Founding
In December 1970, at age 44, Bond advertised in Screw magazine:
“Masochist? Happy? Is it curable? Does psychiatry help? Is a satisfactory life-style possible? There’s women’s lib, black lib, gay lib, etc. Isn’t it time we put something together?”
The ad also ran in the East Village Other. First responder was Fran Nowve (scene name Terry Kolb). In 1971 Bond and Nowve founded TES in New York City as an informal support group for masochists; sadists joined the same year. Nowve named the society. Mutual aid for people pathologized by psychiatry became a U.S. SM organizing template: meetings, education, and the claim that a satisfactory lifestyle was possible without a “cure.”
Awards and Death
In 1992 Bond received the Steve Maidhof Award for National or International Work from National Leather Association International. In 2015 Bond and Nowve entered the Leather Hall of Fame together. Bond died 13 February 2021 at age 94. For BDSM history the spine remains: 1970 ad, 1971 TES founding with Kolb/Nowve, sadists in year one, NLA-I 1992, Hall of Fame 2015. His question—“Isn’t it time we put something together?”—still names the start of organized U.S. SM mutual aid. TES outlived its founders as a New York institution; Bond’s classified honesty about psychiatry, happiness, and masochist community remains the origin myth of American BDSM organizing.
