I don’t often read porn. Yeah, I could be all PC and call it “Erotica,” but frankly, this review is over a week late, and I hate being PC (mostly. Sometimes.) I do not often read porn because a) personally, I prefer visual stimuli and b) most of it is total crap. Generally, I find it to be either too hokey and sentimental (porn aimed specifically at women is often guilty of this) or just a mess of trying-to-be-edgy variants of Tab A into Slot B, and sometimes Slot C. It’s boring, it’s repetitive, and if I don’t want boring and repetitive in my actual real-life sex life, I sure as shit don’t want it in my sexy fantasy life. Shouldn’t that be the point of fantasizing?
YES, says Greta Christina, it should. Enter her latest publication, Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More.
Bottom line? I loved reading this, and I think you should go buy it, or borrow the e-reader of a friend who has and go read it. A quick word, though: I am someone who genuinely enjoyed reading Anaïs Nin, and I own a very well-loved copy of Story of O. That’s my disclaimer. If any kind of BDSM or transgressiveness* do not spin your drill bit, then perhaps Bending is not the porn for you. No worries. –Although you might want to skim a friend’s copy anyway, because it might turn out to be the genre fiction for you.
I think what I like best about this collection is that while Christina might well have been typing one-handed at times, her characters do not suffer for it. The reader is not made to feel like she or he is just being pulled along for the ride, watching meat puppets boink for the author’s jollies. Christina has managed to give real personhood to each and every character. I can name authors on the New York Times bestseller list who don’t do that. There’s an asshole jock who is realistically an asshole jock, not a caricature. There are men and women wracked with guilt so badly my heart broke for them. The ending of one story, The Rest Stop, made me cheer out loud. There is a story that is, no shit, about a unicorn hooking up with a rainbow. I think it’s brilliant and it’s poignant, and while I didn’t wank to it, I’m sure it’ll make somebody horny (I would love to tell you why and how, but I can’t think of a way to do that without spoiling the story.)
There are themes within this collection, or rather, favored topics of exploration and favored acts. Only once, however, did I think to myself “Spanking again, Greta?” and then she did something totally new with it. Ditto humiliation and consent. I wasn’t always titillated, but I was never, ever bored.
Give Bending a shot. And, whether alone or with others, have good sex.
*Fuck you, Spell Check, it’s totally a word.
Shouts & Murmurs 