Customer Reviews

Leather Blues : A Novel

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If you're remotely interested in what gay leather is about, this is a great place to start. It takes you from questioning teenager to confident adult in quick but appropriate time. It's a little out of date with AIDS protections (because it was written before that time), but it tantalizes while it illustrates where (leather) brotherhood comes from.

This book is a classic -- though fiction, it is one of the seminal texts of butch homosexual masculinism and a definite "must" for any serious leatherman's library. It is a riveting and well-written tale of one young man's self-discovery of machismo and brotherhood through the dark, primal, intense underground of leather, the cult of the motorcycle and BDSM lived out in Old Guard leatherman subculture. For those into this expression and exercise of unrepentant manliness, this book is a guaranteed good read and re-read for years to come.

Dennis (Denny) lives with his timid mother and aggressive father, and until the age of sixteen he is the ideal boy next door, good looking and well built, except he secretly prefers guys to girls. But things really begin to change when his neighbour's motorbike riding nephew Sam pays a visit. Sam takes the kid Denny off for a hair-raising ride through the town and off into the country; Denny says "yes" to everything Sam proposes. Having thoroughly explored and enjoyed his young companion, Sam returns the now shirtless Denny home, no longer a kid but a man.

Two years later at eighteen years, and now knowing what he wants and on is way to get it, he meets twenty five year old Chuck, a like minded top. After an evening of passion together, his new companion later introduces him to a night extreme S&M.

Leather Blues is an engaging yet brief story about a young guy who, when he realises what he wants, finally takes the steps to achieve it. Well written, it contains graphic S&M action.

I've been reading bits of this novel in serial in magazines since I first saw it published in "Drummer" magazine in the early 1970s, and in "Stroke" mag and in "Man2Man" and in "Honcho" mag. Something in it caught my fancy and has held it. I was surprised to find out recently that "Leather Blues" was written in 1969 and first published as "I Am Curious (Leather)" which is the title used way back in "Drummer". Maybe I just like rough leather sex written before the rise of commercialized corporate culture. God knows the twit lit that's around. This novel is fearless. It lets the whole scene hang out. It's short in page lenth, but if you read slow you can make the whole damn thing's fantasies last real long.

A long-time fan of gay erotica, I have kept this novel on my shelf of faves. Periodically, more stories from the author remind how good erotic writing can be, intelligent, sexy, edging over the edge. I keep coming back to certain passages because they always get to me. Leather Blues is a story of young man's initiation into a world of guys, but I remember it in my head like it's my history. That's how familiar and personal I find it.