Love at First Sting: Sexy Tales of Erotic Restraint
Edited by Alison Tyler
Cleis Press, 2007
ISBN 978-1-57344-281-7
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 new 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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