My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up

The real question in Stephen Elliott's short story collection My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up is not whether these tales are autobiographical or not (though Elliott admits that many are true, or mostly true, in his introduction), but whether Elliott, as narrator, consents to, and likes or does not like, the kinky acts described herein. In powerful, waste-no-words prose, Elliott takes readers on a guided tour through the underbelly of San Francisco and into his narrator's sex life, mental state, and troubled childhood. The city of the book's title plays a major role in these stories, but Elliott is clear to distinguish his version of BDSM from the "safe, sane and consensual" model best embodied by the City by the Bay's kinksters. This distinction is explicitly stated several times throughout My Girlfriend Comes... and the power dynamics behind his interest in kink are what make this an emotionally compelling, disturbing and vital read. Each tenet of "safe, sane and consensual" is revisited again and again until it's anyone's guess which side the stories fall on. During the scenes Elliott describes, he often asks questions for which there is no answer. In the title story, his girlfriend comes to visit and duly beats him up, but it;s her words that leave the harshest blows. When she says "I'm not your mother reincarnate," his immediate reaction is: "And I'm thinking why would she say that? Who would say such a god-awful thing," then later, "I didn't check the box that says 24/7. I didn't sign up for this kind of lifestyle. I didn't want this. But I don't know what I want, I never have. And she's always been honest with me, and I've done nothing but lie to her. Then I'm crying more, and soon I can't stop crying." He pushes himself into unfamiliar situations, constantly questioning them and what he wants from these scenes. Through outthe book, it's clear that BDSM is both a physical act and a pathway to some emotional salve. He looks to strong, dominant women to steer him toward where he should go. In the opening story, "First Things First," set in Amsterdam, he writes, "She didn't ask what I liked, which was good because I had no idea what I liked or what I was into or what I wanted to do or wanted done to me." This theme reappears even as he gains knowledge about why he craves submission and what he prefers, much of which involves offering himself to women to take, test, and hurt him. Elliott throws traditional erotica to the wind and complicates matters, mixing emotional pain and physical pleasure, and vice versa, until it's often unclear where one ends and the other begins. He doesn't seek to separate sex and kink from Real Life, so in the middle of a story about wearing a gas mask, he jumbles together his suffocation wth what's happening beyond their limited play space: "We don't know that her husband has been leaving messages on my phone. Her mother is OK. Her mother doesn't have cancer. It's just scar tissue. The phone is tu

Stephen Elliott has written another intelligent, enjoyable book. He writes about unusual, sometimes uncomfortable, subjects with style and grace.

I love this book. It traces part of the author's growth from an abusive childhood to a happier adulthood. He allows us to see how his painful upbringing was reflected in series of painful and unhappy periods of sexual experimentation. The earlier chapters can be depressing, but hang on, because there is a trajectory toward a better present. I love this book for its honesty and authenticity. The last chapter is especially beautiful because it rings with a truth I have also seen: that bdsm can be healing. It makes sense that some people find bdsm within themselves not as something that needs to be cured but as a means of coping with and possibly resolving old wounds. Some of those experiences may be inaccessible to recall. The "healing" is counterintuitive and cathartic. In this context, bdsm can extend beyond bedroom kinks and thrills into the territory of personal growth and redemption. Mr. Elliott paints a spare and elegant portrait of such a process taken from his own life. Highly recommended.

Stephen Elliot's My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up is a collection of ten highly autobiographical stories, mostly set in the S & M scene in San Francisco. Elliott writes in a compressed, minimalistic style that is simultaneously aggressive and inviting (not to mention erotic and thought-provoking), all the while weaving his stories into a loose narrative thread which moves from his earliest and most dangerously confused encounters through a decade of singles websites, dominating housewives, and relationships that often satisfy only temporarily if at all. The title story is one of the strongest in the collection, describing an afternoon spent with a girlfriend he met on an online dating service. As the girlfriend slaps him and blackens his eyes, she's forced to generate her anger by berating him over things that never happened, eventually saddening Elliot instead of turning him on: "She was straddling me in her blue jeans when she said, "I'm not your father." She was still angry about something I had suggested, or that I had hurried her out of the bar and she hadn't finished her drink. It was all made up. A game. But I started to feel sad when she mentioned my father. I have such an awful relationship with my father. Aren't you supposed to forgive and forget stuff? I was thirteen when I left home. It's been seventeen years since he caught me and beat me and shaved my head and the state took custody and I became a ward of the court. We try to mend things but I get these letters from him and it's just too much. He thinks he's the victim. Like I have victimized him by making him out to be such a horrible father. But he was a horrible father and I spent a year, a full year, sleeping on rooftops and in hallways and eating out of garbage cans and all he remembers are the times I came home to shower, proof that I didn't have it so bad. I was only thirteen, then fourteen..." Many of Elliott's stories revolve around this same basic relationship: a man and a woman who don't have sex (at least in the traditional sense) but instead reenact cycles of hurting and being hurt, or as Elliott puts it, "The idea of two people finding each other. A person who wants to be hurt and another who wants to hurt someone." At the same time, there is a progression throughout the book as he moves from the random dangers of his early, uninformed experiences through the highly ritualistic S & M scene found online and finally to his healthiest relationships, which are still different from social norms but also contains elements of love and happiness not found in his earlier experiences. There's a great sadness to many of these stories, but there's also a sexy swagger and a hopeful soul that stylishly carries the reader through those darkest moments. Equal parts erotica, memoir, and fiction, My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up is easily one of the finest collections I've read this year.

Stephen Elliott's girlfriend (using a rather loose definition of the term) does, in fact, come to the city and beat him up. The cover of this slim collection of stories conveys the contents quite effectively. It features pin-up sexy red-head in slick black vinyl with her high heel pointed menacingly at the reader. As a reviewer, I am faced with the challenge of communicating how powerful Elliott's narrative is, without just cutting and pasting an entire short story right here. My personal proclivities do not include the S & M lifestyle, but Elliott was able take me inside the mind of a lost, painfully confused, desperate man seeking sexual release and affirmation via domination by beautiful, powerful women. The sexual escapades, Elliott has stated in interviews, are all true, and they are recounted in intense, fervent detail. Elliott seeks sex in Amsterdam, Berlin, and ultimately San Francisco. He strips for money, exchanges sex for money and drugs, engages in long-term relationships with a woman who has a husband and a slave on the side in addition to our author, has weekly appointments for domination, and again, and again, desperately seeks submission to the next level of pain and helplessness. Along the way, he gives the reader a glimpse of the sexual and emotional abuse from his childhood, but always in a straightforward manner with nary a trace of pity. Elliott is not writing for shock value, but for truth and beauty in his quest for pleasure and love. Beauty, in this case, is bittersweet, but still poetic and sincerely moving. Trust me--the best introduction to Elliot is to dive in to the first chapter. You won't be able to put this story collection down, though, so buy his book before you try out the first chapter. I finished it in one evening. I was reviewing an advance copy, and I usually pass those along to friends or the library, but in the case of this book, it is becoming a treasured part of my library. I'll also be purchasing a few copies for friends. Looking forward to the next collection, Mr. Elliott!