$13.95
ISBN 1-57344-255-0
available through
Amazon
Reviewed by Nola Summers
(10/18/06)
In this society where there is an insistence on knowing what goes on behind everyone else's closed doors -- indeed -- an overall insistence that we all have the right to know, this work may serve to unnerve some. Is it fact, fiction, or does it veer back and forth between the two? More importantly, does it matter? The author, Stephen Elliott describes his work: "This is not a memoir, but it's damn close. And I'm OK with that. And I'm OK with you knowing that." It is a collection in which the author draws us in emotionally to the inner workings of his soul and we bare ourselves as readers as we make our way with him and his epiphanies become ours:
"This was the first time I knew for sure she wasn't really angry, or not angry about something specific, just a general rage. It was a moment of insight; she was faking it."
We are forced to admit to ourselves that everyone we come in contact with is playing a role -- has chosen the role and this book illuminates that the need for us to make our own choices is fundamental. The scenes are raw -- and hot. The real possibility that they are described exactly as they occurred makes them hotter. From humiliation to strap-on, bondage to sensory deprivation, anonymous to anal -- Stephen covers it all in detail and whatever image you have of the D/S and SM worlds will have shifted a degree by the time you finish this book:
"When Eden comes over, when she spends the night, it usually takes a day to get over it anyway. She covers me with bites, bruises, cuts. Her name is carved in my back. She's with me all the time or I'm longing for her. She leaves a velvet bag of rope next to my bed. Sometimes I think it's unfair. She's with me when she isn't."
Stephen Elliott suggests that this lifestyle is him, but that it might be you; might be the person in front of you in line or at the desk next to you at work. And if it is you, that it's OK. We go through life at every age and juncture trying things because we've learned, seen, read about it somewhere. Here, in My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up, you will find the voice that says it is OK.
Stephen Elliott on writing My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up:
"I didn't have a vision going into this book. The book is a product of a long journey and though it's very short it took five years to write. I didn't even know I had written a book until I started putting together all the things I had written over the last five years about sex and sexuality. Then I realized I had been taking a direction, peeling back layers of an onion, and I arrived in a different place. It's not a place I imagined. I don't think I ever imagined I could be open about having masochistic desires, that I could date someone with equal and opposite desires and that being open would allow me to engage in sustainable, loving relationships. What I would want to say to other people is that they shouldn't be ashamed of their desires. People should explore their sexuality as early as possible. The sooner you start the further you can go. I wish I had been truly active in the leather community in my late teens and early twenties. Now I'm making up for lost time."
(this review was previously published in Pulp Magazine)
