From Publishers Weekly
A collection of first-person postcards from the outer edge of sexuality, these candid, insightful essays recount the author's journey into the covert, subterranean world of gay male fetishism. Sheppard, a sex advice columnist and co-editor of the erotic anthologies Rough Stuff and Roughed Up, offers an everyman approach to public sex, fisting, bondage, S&M parties and leather contests-all the usual, predictable suspects for this erotic subgenre. But it's the author's unapologetic moxie when confessing his preferences (on foot play: no athlete's foot, but feet ripe with a "natural tang doesn't hurt") and embarrassing first-times (on verbal abuse: be creative and steer clear of the "cliche-filled highway of homophobia") that makes this collection so winning (for adventurous readers, anyway). More anecdotal than advisory, Sheppard's dispatches are a vivid patchwork of keen observations on human sexuality; perhaps most notable is Sheppard's gentle warning to avoid letting fetishism "substitute the part for the whole." "What should be a broadening of sexual horizons can become a tightening shackle," he warns. Sheppard muses that kink is referred to as "playing" rather than "having sex" or "making love"; it's a reminder, he says, to "have fun with our bodies," and that unlike "mature sexuality," whose goal is to "make something," "play has no aim but itself." Sheppard mixes such cool observations with over-the-top anecdotes about foot fetishists and leather contests (one contestant plays "Peter Pan-sexual, flying with a transgendered Wendy to Leather-Leather Land") in a wild "travelogue" through "Kinkland."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"A highly readable travelogue--novices and seasoned perverts alike should gobble up this book like good little piggies." --
Kirk read, author of How I Learned to Snap."Simon Sheppard has something new and smart to say about being kinky, and I am only too glad to listen." --
Susie Bright
