I'm sometimes asked by people how I got the name, Uncle Abdul? It's really nothing mysterious. Let me tell you.

Back in the early 1980's, when I was first starting to explore the world of BDSM in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was looking for a scene persona and manner of dress. I didn't quite see myself as the leather biker type, but dungarees and and vests were becoming quite more accepted. Yet I still wanted some unique symbol in order to stand out. That's when I ran across a red, felt fez at a second hand store. It was probably a refugee of some Shriner's Convention. Nonetheless I bought it and wore it to a party. One of my friends saw me in it and said, "You look like my Uncle Abdul." So the name stuck.

Over the next year I didn't do much with it. Then I was an auctioneer for a Charity Master and Slave Auction for the Society of Janus. Needing to choose an appropriate name, I went with my friend's moniker of 'Uncle Abdul'. This proved to be quite popular, and so for every auction thereafter, I was:

of

It was all great fun.

In the mid 1990's when Greenery Press asked me to write the book, Juice¾ Electricity for Pleasure and Pain, I reasoned that I could use my old auctioneer's name since many people in the Bay Area knew me as such. But I also needed to expand it into a fuller nom de plume.

Since I was named after my father, I reasoned that I could use the Arabic 'ibn' (meaning son of ~). But I wanted to find a family name that would keep the Arabic theme. Then Webster's Dictionary came to my rescue.

I found that in the etymology of my given name, Frank, at one time it was Middle Frankish for freedom. I thought, "How appropriate." So using an Arabic-English Phrase Book, I translated freedom into the Arabic, Hureeya. Thus I became Abdul ibn Hureeya, or Abdul, Son of Freedom. The rest is history.