Mistress Talia: a sadistic domme

Macho Sluts, by Pat Califia^*, is simply the hottest thing I have ever, ever read.

I have often said that this book is hot enough to get you off if you have a pulse at all, and maybe even if you don't. ;)

This is another collection of lesbian-oriented stories like Melting Point, though I find this collection even hotter.

Basically, take the most perverted fantasies a group of hardcore leatherdykes could come up with and have them described by a pornographer who writes so powerfully that a description of walking across the room makes you wet and what you get is downright explosive.

This is the book I have gotten off on more often than any other. It's just flat-out incredible.

I don't think you have to be a leatherdyke yourself to get off on these stories, but if you're at all interested in lesbian BDSM, this book will arouse you.

And it will make you think. This is food for both the brain and the cunt. From the introduction:

"The things that seem beautiful, inspiring, and life-affirming to me seem ugly, hateful and ludicrous to most other people. This may be the most painful part of being a sadomasochist: this experience of radical difference, separation at the root of perception. Our culture insists on sexual uniformity and does not acknowledge any neutral differences - only crimes, sins, diseases, and mistakes. This smug erotic totalitarianism does hidden violence to dissidents and perverts. It distorts our self-images, ambitions and dreams. We think we are alone, or crazy, or ridiculous. Our desire learns to curb itself, and we come to depend on the strength of self-repression for our safety. We live in fear of being known, and such fear stifles the nascent erotic wish before the image of what is wished for can be fully formed. We know we are ugly before we have even seen ourselves, and the injustice of this, the falsehood, chokes me.

"What then, are my choices, as a writer and a sadomasochist? I could keep my sexuality private, write about other issues, other sorts of people, and tell myself that these are more important themes, more universal characters, more valid as literature. That involves telling a lie of omission - becoming invisible as a pervert, assuming an undeserved mantle of normalcy and legitimacy. Or I could become an apologist and seek to persuade the tyrannical majority that sadomasochism is not violent or self-destructive. But that would require telling many little, white lies - watering down the descriptions of frightening acts, softening the dialogue, emphasizing what S/M has in common with vanilla rather than where they part company, and appending endless, didactic justifications. This kind of fiction makes the non-S/M reader feel condescended to and lied to: it bores the well-disciplined reader and confirms a suspicion that our lives and visions are too trivial and base for explication."

Califia does not water down the activities in these stories at all, this is hardcore sadomasochism lovingly described at it's finest. The stories are well-plotted, arousing your interest in the characters even aside from arousing your libido. Most of them have unusual plot twists that kind of freak you out on your first read.

Enough taboos are broken that almost everyone will find something a bit distasteful or shocking in one or more of these stories.

An example would be "The Surprise Party" in which three gay cops abduct and molest a butch lesbian, surprising material to find in women-oriented erotica. This is why I call what Pat writes "pornography, rather than "erotica," the writing is not concerned with being feminist-oriented, but cunt-oriented. Califia's attitude can be summed up by, "to hell with PC, let's get off!"

Another surprising entry is the Victorian propriety of "The Finishing School", a story about a submissive girl being sent off for further training, written in a manner entirely different from the typical BDSM community and with the twist that most shocked me personally (don't want to give it away for those of you who haven't read it yet!)

The masterpiece of the book is "The Calyx of Isis", a story about a woman bottoming to a whole slew of femdomme tops, each of whom tops her in their own manner in sort of a BDSM gangbang, I know many leatherdykes who count this among their favorite stories.

This book is not educational, it's not for learning about BDSM or the leatherdyke community. Rather, Macho Sluts is radical pornography intended to get you wet.

It succeeds brilliantly.

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^*The author formerly known as Pat Califia is now Patrick Califia-Rice, a FTM transgendered man whose journey is summarized on Wikipedia. I have always connected to the author's work from the perspective of a leatherdyke. I simply cannot wrap my mind around the idea that a man wrote them and thus find myself uncomfortable using male pronouns in reviews of these writings; however, I also feel that it would be both inappropriate and offensive to refer to the author by female pronouns. Thus I've postponed writing reviews of the author's works, although they are some of the best and most profound writings within the leatherdyke community, over my discomfort with figuring out how to address this issue; however, these writings are important enough to me personally, and my own journey, that I really wish to discuss them. I compromised by avoiding using pronouns entirely in reviews of the author's works.