Leather, Lace and Lust
Edited by M. Christian and Sage Vivant

Book Review by Lisabet Sarai

When I was child, my family had a box full of costumes, which we could access any time we wanted to "play dress-ups". The dress-up box (first a cardboard carton, later an old pasteboard suitcase, and now, a battered footlocker that I carried halfway across the world with me, when I had jettisoned almost all my other worldly possessions) held all sorts of treasures: my mother's discarded pink lame cocktail dress (1960's); my grandmother's black velvet, jet-beaded flapper gown (1920's); pirate-striped teeshirts and verdant tunics suitable for Robin Hood or the Jolly Green Giant; tight silver jumpsuits and hobo-patched jeans; alienish antennae and turbans and cat-faced masks; feathers and lace mantillas and gypsy beads and slave chains.

The overwhelming excitement I would feel, donning a costume to become someone else, has never left me. As I grew older, I came to understand that this thrill was not totally innocent. The someone else I chose to become would often be someone more daring, more sluttish, more elegant, more seductive, than I was in my "real" life. Someone more perverse. Someone less inhibited. Perhaps someone who was not even a woman.

In LEATHER, LACE AND LUST, M.Christian and Sage Vivant have assembled a wonderfully entertaining collection of erotic short stories that explore the ways in which clothing and costume refine and enrich our sexual lives. Some of the tales explicitly (and I choose that word deliberately) describe the intricacies of costume-based role playing.

In Christine Morgan's "I Am...", a sexually-repressed young woman discovers her recently-deceased, supposedly straightlaced aunt's secret fantasy life.  Bryn Colvin's "Bethany's Game" and M.Christian's "Dress Pinks" take different but equally appealing approaches to cross-dressing, pulling the reader into the excitement of becoming not just another person, but a person of another gender.  Jason Rubis' elegant and psychologically precise tale, "A Novel of Manners, Set Vaguely in the Heian Era" is actually set at a costume party, where a lonely young woman finally becomes the heroine of her own novel.

The title and the cover of this volume (showing the latex-clad torso of a dominatrix) might lead you to expect a string of stories about fetishes and fetish-wear: spike-heeled shoes and nylon stockings, leather harnesses and latex panties, corsets and tattoos. Some of the tales in the collection fall into this category: Elizabeth Caldwell's "Underneath Your Clothes", Molly Laster's "Killing the Marabou Slippers", Tulsa Brown's "Debt of Honor", Tara Alton's "Urban Noir". However, each of these authors provides a new twist on the familiar fetish theme.

Meanwhile, other contributors look at the sexuality of clothing and adornment in unexpected and novel ways. In "A Little Bit Like a Slut", Thomas S. Roche builds a ferociously arousing story around a simple glimpse of thong underwear revealed by hip-hugging jeans. Stacy Reed's remarkable "Pret-a-Porter" lets us into the closet of a New Orleans socialite with surprising tastes in clothes—and lovers. Karen Taylor's "Nacht Ruck" is a lovingly detailed sexual coming-of-age tale, set among the Amish. Tom Piccirilli's hilarious and naughty "When Calls Ed Wood" proves that under the right circumstances, any costume might make you horny.

A bit of truth in advertising here. As you might have guessed from my introduction, I also have a story in LEATHER, LACE AND LUST. However, even if I didn't, I would recommend this collection highly for its diversity and overall level of eroticism. I enjoyed this book more than any other anthology I've read in quite a while.

It made me want to go rummage in that trunk of treasures, and count the days until Halloween.

© 2006 Lisabet Sarai. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.

Leather, Lace and Lust
(Berkley Trade, ISBN 0425205401)
Available at:  Amazon.com / Amazon UK / Amazon CA

About the Author: Lisabet Sarai has been writing ever since she learned how to hold a pencil. She is the author of three erotic novels, Raw Silk, Incognito, and Ruby's Rules, and the co-editor, with S.F. Mayfair, of the anthology Sacred Exchange  (Blue Moon), which explores the spiritual aspects of BDSM relationships. Read Lisabet Sarai's bio on the Erotica Readers & Writers Association.
Visit her website, Lisabet Sarai's Fantasy Factory for more information and samples of her writing.

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