Macho Sluts
- by Pat Califia
$15.95
ISBN 155583115X
available through
Amazon
Reviewed by Gwydion McCarthy
(10/25/00)
I love this book. I'm not going to make you wait until the end of the
review to find out. I am going to risk that you'll just blink and stop
reading because you haven't yet been convinced to read the sucker -- and
people hate to be told what to read. Usually I have to be more seductive
than this, but fuck it. I'm saying it out front: I love Macho Sluts.
And that's exactly how Pat Califia is. She writes what makes her wet. She
writes what she wants, and if you like it too, great. If not,
oh well. Fortunately for me, I do. This is a good thing, because I'm not
what you'd call her target audience: I'm a Kinsey 4 (i.e. sorta bi) white
guy, and Pat is so sapphic she could make a desert flower give up her nectar.
It is rather miraculous that I even know about this book. I sometimes worry
that some radical lesbian feminist ninja is going to infiltrate my house,
take my copy, and offer to perform an on-site penis amputation. But, I
digress. It is also somewhat astounding that I approve of the book, based
on my first impression of it.
I first read Macho Sluts prior to growing into the full flower of my own
practice as a BDSM dominant, and frankly, it disturbed me. This is not a
book for the faint of heart. This is a book for people who don't mind a bit
of realism with their naughty stories. And these stories are naughty -- they
are transgressive, they are wildly taboo. This is one you gotta lock up so
the kids don't see it too soon. It's pretty out there.
Like this quip from "The Surprise Party":
Don was watching them from the doorway. He had retrieved and relit his
cigar. "I don't know. Hey, bitch-dog. You. Dyke. Ever had a fist up your
ass?"
"Never!"
"Not yet, anyway. How about a cock?"
There was a long silence.
"Well, well, well. I guess I'm never going to get to fuck a virgin."
Pretty intense stuff. Once I was through my initiation as a dominant,
however, everything seemed to fall into place. I read (and re-read, and
re-read...) "The Vampire" with relish. Take this clip:
Now or never. It was the moment that would decide the outcome of the hunt.
Iduna stared into Kerry's eyes, covered with the reflecting aviators, and
used the tiny portrait in them to guide her hand while she made two slashes
at the place where her breasts came together, a little "v" that fit into
her cleavage. The blood immediately started to rill, and she cupped her
hands under her breasts to help her corset push them close enough together
to gather it and keep it in a pool.
Whew. I mean, damn. Pat writes totally unprotected, unabashed, and she's not
afraid to take you places you've never been before and turn you on in ways
you never knew you could be turned on. I have nothing but respect for her
as a writer because, no matter what you may say about her style or her
grammar or anything else, she is writing true, kinky, pure erotica.
She has a sense of place, of scene, of characters that instantly become
whoever you are. If you've ever been there, you will be there again the
moment you read. Like this:
We enacted a vital ritual here, a ceremony essential to us
both. She asked me to kneel. I complied, blinking in the hot sun that
streamed through the window.
Jessie stood between me and the glass, shading me. She fished a pocket
knife out of her Levis and unfolded its longest blade. I don't know what I
expected. The crazy thought flashed through my head that she was going to
carve her initials on me, like a tree. I didn't dream of protesting.
She ran her thumb along the edge of the blade. "You are wearing the tokens
of another woman," she said. Her words were carefully measured out. "I find
that...distracting. May I?"
She lifted one wrist and cut the band of leather.
"I don't need anything as crude and obvious as this to set my mark on you.
Do I?"
She cut my other wrist free.
She paused before severing my collar, her thumb holding it to the knife, to
look into my face. "If I call you, you'll come to me, won't you?" she
demanded.
"Yes," I whispered.
The kind of arousal Macho Sluts generates isn't the same as, say, looking
at naked redheaded girls. It is more an internal arousal, a feeling of cool
ice and white hot fire that shimmers down my spine. It makes me want to
take my favorite flogger in hand, curl the tails through my fingers, light
candles, and lay my sweet slave girl out on clean white sheets for an
evening's ritual worship. It makes my inner lesbian chuckle wickedly like a
succubus and start looking around for pointy things. It gives me ideas.
How many people get laid as a result of a particular work of erotica is my
personal success guide. Using that lens, I can tell you that Macho Sluts is
perhaps one of the best collections of transgressive erotica you can
possibly lay hands on. Every single story in it is a page-turner -- there's
not a single piece in the collection I'd leave out if I were the editor on
a re-print. I encourage you to read it before it becomes banned and you can
only get it over the Internet. I won't, however, be responsible for any
radical lesbian feminist ninjas that show up for you.
©2000 by Gwydion McCarthy
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Gwydion McCarthy is a Reviews Editor at Clean Sheets.
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