Love at First Sting: Sexy
Tales of Erotic Restraint
Edited by Alison Tyler
Cleis Press, 2007
If I had noticed Love
at First Sting on the shelf at a bookstore, I probably would not
have picked it up. The main title is awkward and derivative, the
subtitle makes the book sound like frothy porn, and the olive drab
cover, featuring a blurry, corset-clad torso, is hardly compelling.
If I hadn't been asked to review the book, I probably would not have
read it. This would have been a shame, because this collection is one
of the best erotic anthologies that I've encountered in a long time.
I read a lot of BDSM,
partly from personal interest and partly because as a reviewer I've
been pigeonholed (accurately, perhaps) into the "kinky"
category. Alison Tyler's volume is a refreshing contrast to some
recent anthologies that focus on the more recreational aspects of
spanking, bondage, and other perverse sports. The stories in this
collection (with a few exceptions like Lisette Ashton's frisky "Bound
to Kill" and "The '76 Revolution", a sweet tale by
Nikki Maggennis) concern themselves with the darker side of dominance
and submission. Temptation, obsession, guilt, fear, ecstasy and
revelation - these stories crackle with serious emotion. These are
not about "play parties".
In Teresa Lamai's
breathless "Small Windows", a man and a woman are drawn
together by mutual needs that neither can fully understand, or
control.
"I have one cell
phone just for his calls. When it vibrates, I drop everything. I
feign sickness if I have to. I once left court and ran twenty blocks
in the fog because there were no taxis. I thought my heart would
burst.
Each time he opens the
door the fugue starts again. I know once I see him I'll feel the
shock in the solar plexus, the painful flash of heat behind my pubic
bone that sears out all other questions, that cauterizes my mind
until it's closed and quiet. With Josh I'm a starfish, spread flat
and writhing gently, mindless and swollen and tingling."
James Walton Langolf's raw
and lyrical "Abraham" begins:
"She is his Isaac
laid out on the hood of his Ford - open, bared to his blade."
The tale continues, a
fierce conflagration of a fuck between a man who's lonely and a
woman who's desperate, but all the roughness ends in redemption -
"the rain is washing her clean."
In the quieter darkness of
Alison Tyler's "The Kiss", a master deliberately traps his
sub in an impossible situation by forcing her to disobey him, and
then makes her suffer the consequences.
Vida Bailey's "Torn"
features a severe older woman and the disobedient young man whom
she's tutoring. She tans his hide to improve his motivation, but the
focus here is not on this classic situation, but on the dominant
tutor's reactions and regrets:
"She watched his
back; his long legs walking down the lane, away. His stride was more
careful than the one he had come with. He was tender. Tears rose in
her eyes. If she could she would keep him tied, to her bed, to her
body, to move within the circle of his warmth and have him smile a
smile that was for her only, secret, teasing and possessive."
"Silence is Golden"
is perhaps the best story I've ever read by the prolific Rachel
Kramer Bussel. When she is bound and gagged, a talkative woman learns
to really pay attention:
"The silence rang
in my ears as I came, the absence of sound coaxing me over the edge
as saliva pooled in my mouth, my burning wrists took the imprints of
the rope, and I reveled in his fast, hard, hammering thrusts. When we
were done, there was no need to speak."
Two other tales that
deserve special note are Sommer Marsden's "She Looked Good in
Ribbons", and Brooke Stern's "The Art of the Suture".
The former is a beautiful, intense account of two strangers meeting
for the first time to fulfill their most cherished fantasies. The
latter is a highly original pseudo-historical tale which may be the
most perverse in the entire collection, even though it includes no
graphic sex.
My favorite piece in this
book is Donna George Storey's "Blinded". A woman and her
lover stumble together into an escalating series of games involving a
blindfold. Their physical communion masks the misunderstandings
between them, which climax when he seems to be threatening to kill
her. The story is an amazing roller coaster of emotions: lust,
terror, uncertainty, silence, anger, love. I was shaking when I
finished reading it.
Dominance and submission
have been claimed by popular culture, and tamed into bedroom games
played with fur-lined cuffs and whips made of feathers. Undiluted, in
its original form, though, BDSM is strong stuff. A few stories in
this collection were too rough, too cruel, for my personal tastes.
Overall, though, Love at First Sting recaptures the thrill and
the terror of genuine power exchange. Readers who have no experience
with BDSM may find it confusing and disturbing, or possibly
enlightening. Initiates are likely to recognize themselves in these
stories.
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