Macho Sluts

This was my BDSM "coming out" book. No, MACHO SLUTS, isn't for the faint of heart. I first read it many years ago and was both shaken and thrilled to have my ideas about what constitutes normality,pleasure,pain and love so thoroughly brought into question. It was a riveting read. I had trouble putting it down even when I was finished. To this day I will pick up my ragged copy and re-read it. Again, it's NOT for the faint of heart -- or for those who are dyed-in-the-wool vanilla. If your mind is closed and your world is small, this book will scare the s--- out of you. Personally, I loved it. It's one of my all-time favorites.

Pat Califia's intense collection of lesbian erotica starts with a bang and does not slow down until the end of the final story. These are stories of possible realities, not fantasy or science fiction which I usually prefer and yet the characters and plots were so wonderfully interwoven with passioniate SM and sex that I found myself enjoying most of the stories. Definately a collection I return to every now and then.

The trouble with what literary people like to call erotica and what the rest of us know as porn is that either it's terribly hifalutin and trails off into a row of dots just before it gets good, or else it's dismally badly written. The great virtue of Macho Sluts is that Pat Califia is, apart from anything else, a damn good writer who doesn't smear Vaseline on the lens, as it were. I'm not the only person to testify that you don't have to be into S & M, or a lesbian, or even a woman, to enjoy this book. (Though if you can't imagine what it might like to be one or all of the above, then you won't find it very rewarding - like the person below who claimed that it was all sex scenes. Well, duhh.) The Calyx of Isis is one of the most extraordinarily arousing things ever written; truly, the hormones have reason, of which the stated sex on your birth certificate knows nothing. I wouldn't want to advise anybody not to read this book - but please, with a title like Macho Sluts, you should at least have some idea of what you're getting into.

This is such a classic. If you like BDSM, lesbians, Pat Califia or well-written AND hot erotica, then you'll love Macho Sluts. All of the stories in this collection are excellent, and most of them are surprising in some way. The best story in this collection is "The Hustler" which will make you cream your panties while you worry about the direction feminism and our government are headed. Yes, I'm serious. And anyone in the life, especially anyone who has lost a Mistress or a mentor to the streets, will identify with the characters and their motivations.

It's a classic, it always was a classic, it opened up a genre. When first I saw Macho Sluts just the title appalled me. I'm a control freak and I get very formal behind my glasses. I could not put those two words together. You can be a butch. You can be a fem. You can think you are both. But MACHO AND SLUT, it was tough, tough in 1990. But when I picked up Macho Sluts, I didn't stopped reading it for days. {And I believe, off the record I orgasmed 3 times} Damn good book. It was the first ever, S AND M compilation of stories by one woman, and breaking taboos. (not a female writer pretending to be a man in order to be published) Pat Califia is a sincere believer that we can cross all gender and sexual lines, when it's done well. There is no need to stick within our boundaries Submissives can be dominant, gays can act like heterosexuals, women can be fucked like men. Life is good. Books don't get much better than Macho Sluts. It covers so many topics. When I talk to my friends, there's always one that they just couldn't take and it's always a different one. For everyone there's one story that's too much and one that is perfect. If you're like me, you're going to buy copies and send them to your friends. Stephanie Locke