Hot Reads: The Leather Daddy And The Femme by Carol Queen

When Dr. Carol Queen's first publisher released The Leather Daddy and the Femme in the early 90s, her editors restricted her to produce "just a fuckbook." But, in its kinky, genderbending, proto-polyamorous style, what a fuckbook it was. After its re-release through Down There Press, Queen was able to offer her devout readers "the author's cut," including previously-purged chapters that clarify the headspace behind the hot sexplay that readers are escorted through.

This is important because Leather Daddy and the Femme is a sociosexually groundbreaking work, especially for sex-positive people to whom genderfuckery, kink, or alternative relationships might be new. Those already familiar with queer theory and gender politics may celebrate the work for its raw hotness and literary value, but the average reader of Hustler, say, might (happily) get more than he bargained for. With an open mind, that could be a liberating thing. What the Hustler reader might mistake for what could appear to be straight sex is really Queen's multi-layered demonstration in sex-consciousness, context, nuance, and paradigm shifting. For the uninitiated, this book offers insight into how the most powerful sexual organ is the brain.

Miranda is a San Francisco lesbian whose secret kink is to dress in boy drag and have sex with gay men. For fear of being discovered as a woman, she usually contents herself to cruising for anonymous blowjobs, getting soaked in her tight pants over the mindfuck that she's a 'boy' sucking thick, manly cock in the park. Her world becomes completely shaken (and for the better) when "Randy" encounters Jack, a hog-riding leather Daddy of the first calibre. The opening scenes of her tryst with Jack, and his response to the discovery that Randy lacks his favourite anatomy is itself worth the modest cover price.

It's a sexual debauch from there, with readers introduced to a sex-positive, queer-friendly, scandalously-imaginative, fearlessly-expressive San Francisco underworld tableau of bathhouses, dungeons, and upscale condominium palaces housing an exclusive bdsm elite. The visionary behind the Center For Sex And Culture, Queen straps one on and effortlessly fucks us into bliss with scenes featuring Daddy play, pegging, orgies, servitude, protocol, crossdressing, interracial fun, and places where distinctions and labels become a blur of human passion and ecstacy. Every character we encounter offers us a new element of powerful sexplay, opening the critical reader to possibilities within her- or himself that far surpass staid missionary positions after the Thursday sitcoms. Sculpted, BBC-wielding Demetrius... courageous, crossdressing Ariel... effiminate, obedient Peaches... orderly, commanding Sir Sebastian... and the imperious, high society dominatrix Georgia Strong are among the sexual avatars we meet who reveal to us the underlying consciousness that made them the sexually powerful people they are. Like lubricated fingers in a blackroom, The Leather Daddy and The Femme opens us up.

My lover Shayne introduced me to this book. Between sessions of her jilling herself to its searing pages, she would tell me how "transformative" it was for her. It's easy to understand why: in a straightforward "fuckbook" way, Queen breaks cultural barriers to show us nuances of sexual play and awareness, and in doing so, opens many of us toward broad new vistas of hot.