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Dark Matter
San Francisco is a place of pure excess and liberation, where every flavour of sexuality is there for the tasting. Robin wants to be part of it, and by embracing extreme erotic experiences to escape her father's hypocrisy. Buddy is a rebel, a wild spirit. The moment they meet, sparks fly in a frenzy of desire unbound and darkness unleashed; and when Robin asks Buddy to kill her father, he knows he has found his destiny.
Dark Matter is a hypnotic tale of erotic cravings.
Dark Matter is a hypnotic tale of erotic cravings.
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First published January 1, 1996
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February 19, 2022
I have a long history with this book.
The story starts back in 1997, when I was 21. I saw this book's synopsis on the back flyleaf of another erotic novel I'd bought (Sue Lightfoot's Passengers).
The synopsis intrigued me. But this was South Africa in the mid-90s. Backward as hell, and difficult to order specific books you might have wanted. I suspect the only reason I'd even been able to get hold of 'Passengers' was because the bookstore had gotten hold of a gross of erotica offloaded by an American or European supplier.
So I couldn't get hold of Dark Matter at the time. But the title and author's name stayed in the back of my mind.
Fast-forward to 2003. I was visiting a hole-in-the-wall bookstore at a mall in Port Elizabeth, and I saw a single copy of this book at the back of the store. I flipped though it quickly to see if it had promise, then bought it, took it home, and read it.
And re-read it. And re-read it again. And as time went on, discussed it with a succession of sexually adventurous girlfriends. And read it aloud to them. And pondered what was offered by it.
To this day, my long-term partner and I still have an in-joke. Every time we see anything on TV or in movies that has to do with Christian evangelism, one of us turns to the other and says "Reverend Flood". Every time I hear Bruce Hornsby singing 'Jacob's Ladder', or Phil Collins singing 'Jesus He Knows Me', I think of this book.
At 21, I thought this was the best piece of erotic fiction I'd ever read.
Depending on whether you're an author or not, I'm either a terrible snob or particularly discerning when it comes to erotica. I'm 45 now, and over the years, I've discovered a sad truth: most authors - even mainstream, best-selling authors - couldn't write erotica if their lives depended on it. Pick up a book that was called 'Daring' in the 1970s or one that was called 'Racy' in the 80s, and you may be taken aback to see just how stiff and fearful and tentative the author sounds in 2022.
Maybe it's just that times have moved on. Maybe it's all about perspective. Maybe I've become jaded. I remember reading Eric Lustbader's The Ninja at technical college in 1996. At the time, I remember my head fizzing with possibility, and thinking 'I wish I had a woman to do all that with.'
I still have a copy, and looking at it now, Lustbader wrote those sex scenes as if he was trying to do a particularly tricky piece of open-heart surgery.
Every detail is perfect and crystal-clear. Utterly flawless.
It's also more-or-less completely dispassionate. Looking at it now, I frown in mild distaste, and think "Is that all?"
That's why, to my mind, Perkins is a great author. He doesn't just weave a story: he captures and vividly - even poetically - expresses the attributes that are A) what make sex worth reading about, and B) what make sex worth having in real life: spontenaiety, intensity, overwhelming attraction, mutual obsession.
If that ability eludes an erotic author, his or her work isn't worth reading. By itself, sex is simply a mechanical act. The author who writes about it is already starting off on the back foot: If they can't draw us into a tale vivid enough to make us feel it, their fight is lost before the book even reaches the publisher.
With Dark Matter under my belt, I went in search of more Michael Perkins. It was 2009. I was lucky enough to have a friend visiting the USA, and I asked her to track down and buy more for me. She came back with quite a haul: Dark Games, Dark Star, Burn (which superseded Dark Matter as my favourite Perkins), Evil Companions, and Ceremonies of the Flesh.
Dark Matter is the first instalment of what I've come to call the 'Buddy Tate trilogy' (which continues with Dark Games, and ends with Dark Star).
Buddy is basically a non-entity. An uneducated loser, a throwaway, a basket case from rural Colorado or thereabouts, who believes sex is his purpose in life - as he puts it, his 'calling'. Abandoned by his mother, neglected by his father, stumbling on sexual misfortune after sexual misfortune, he somehow makes his way to San Francisco around December 1999.
At a tattoo parlour, he encounters Robin Flood. Perhaps the ultimate belle dame sans merci. Damaged goods if ever there were; searching for an identity that isn't bestowed on her by someone else.
They team up, and what a crew: a not-particularly-bright sexual obsessive-compulsive, and a borderline personality case with an opportunistic, sociopathic streak. After a particularly wild threesome, Robin decides she has enough of a hold on Buddy to ask him to bump off her dad - a psycho television evangelist who raped and burned her as a teenager.
Buddy suddenly has a great deal to think about, especially after a native American shaman decides to prop up his luck. Robin disappears, and Robin's father wrestles with his own demons - literally.
Through a blood ritual, some soul-searching and a sincere warning not to let passion possess her, Robin gets over a case of indecision about Buddy - but too late, as courtesy of her father's bodyguard and a really bad personal choice, Buddy is now short of an eye.
Two epiphanies later - Buddys' as a homeless person on the streets of SF, Robins' in the dank and scary depths of her own head - Buddy and Robin are married. And with Robin as bait and Buddy as the assassin, the Reverend Thomas Flood gets his just deserts, strapped to a crucifix with his penis bitten off and the back of his head blown out by a .38 Special slug. Buddy and Robin drive away into an uncertain future.
Whew. What a way to celebrate the millenium.
So, what then for our anti-hero and anti-heroine? Happily ever after?
Um, no. Not really. If you want the answer to that, read Dark Games and Dark Star. Suffice to say that Buddy's talent for finding trouble in pursuit of sex is as voluminous as his sexual imagination.
Speaking of that, I've also left out most of the sex, which (like in most of Perkins' other books) is wild, prolific, imaginative, and endlessly varied.
The trouble with this book is, there's so much of it that it tends to get in the way of what is an unusually well-written story. Even as talented as he is, Perkins runs into the same realisation as every other fiction writer: you can only take an erotic story so far without bumping against commonness and crudity and vulgarity; without the sex becoming a spectacle of sameness and repetition. Buddy takes his first-person account seriously enough to tell it seriously. Who does that while nicknaming their penis 'Chester the Molester'?
As strong as the story is, I think the sex - enjoyable as it is - is its greatest weakness.
Not for me - I am staunchly pro-sex. This book was a treasure for me when I bought it, and I still take a certain pleasure in it and its sequels today.
However, most other readers seem not to be able to get past the concept of polar opposites. I suspect that's why there have been no reviews written for this book, despite it being in circulation this long.
I think the problem is that people's hangups and prejudices have a tighter grip on them than they realise.
"Is it serious fiction, or is it erotica?"
Why can't it be both? Who says this book can't give sexual and intellectual stimulation?
"Serious fiction doesn't have room for sex. And no one can take erotica seriously."
If you believe that, I think that says more about you than about this book.
As a healthy, heterosexual male, could I go for Robin Flood?
If I were still 21, I'd probably pursue her single-mindedly. And get chewed up and spat out.
At 45, having lived a full life, the only sensible reaction could be "Fuck no". I've been in relationships with girls like her, and let me tell you: they can't be repaired. I know; I've tried. Several times. Try to fix a girl like that, and she'll end up breaking you.
As Ian Fleming might say: It reads better than it lives.
I hope people can enjoy Dark Matter on its own merits without needing to categorise it.
One of the great evils denounced in this book is Hypocrisy - particularly religious hypocrisy - and I suspect most readers could benefit from taking Perkins' words on the subject on board as a valuable lesson.
The story starts back in 1997, when I was 21. I saw this book's synopsis on the back flyleaf of another erotic novel I'd bought (Sue Lightfoot's Passengers).
The synopsis intrigued me. But this was South Africa in the mid-90s. Backward as hell, and difficult to order specific books you might have wanted. I suspect the only reason I'd even been able to get hold of 'Passengers' was because the bookstore had gotten hold of a gross of erotica offloaded by an American or European supplier.
So I couldn't get hold of Dark Matter at the time. But the title and author's name stayed in the back of my mind.
Fast-forward to 2003. I was visiting a hole-in-the-wall bookstore at a mall in Port Elizabeth, and I saw a single copy of this book at the back of the store. I flipped though it quickly to see if it had promise, then bought it, took it home, and read it.
And re-read it. And re-read it again. And as time went on, discussed it with a succession of sexually adventurous girlfriends. And read it aloud to them. And pondered what was offered by it.
To this day, my long-term partner and I still have an in-joke. Every time we see anything on TV or in movies that has to do with Christian evangelism, one of us turns to the other and says "Reverend Flood". Every time I hear Bruce Hornsby singing 'Jacob's Ladder', or Phil Collins singing 'Jesus He Knows Me', I think of this book.
At 21, I thought this was the best piece of erotic fiction I'd ever read.
Depending on whether you're an author or not, I'm either a terrible snob or particularly discerning when it comes to erotica. I'm 45 now, and over the years, I've discovered a sad truth: most authors - even mainstream, best-selling authors - couldn't write erotica if their lives depended on it. Pick up a book that was called 'Daring' in the 1970s or one that was called 'Racy' in the 80s, and you may be taken aback to see just how stiff and fearful and tentative the author sounds in 2022.
Maybe it's just that times have moved on. Maybe it's all about perspective. Maybe I've become jaded. I remember reading Eric Lustbader's The Ninja at technical college in 1996. At the time, I remember my head fizzing with possibility, and thinking 'I wish I had a woman to do all that with.'
I still have a copy, and looking at it now, Lustbader wrote those sex scenes as if he was trying to do a particularly tricky piece of open-heart surgery.
Every detail is perfect and crystal-clear. Utterly flawless.
It's also more-or-less completely dispassionate. Looking at it now, I frown in mild distaste, and think "Is that all?"
That's why, to my mind, Perkins is a great author. He doesn't just weave a story: he captures and vividly - even poetically - expresses the attributes that are A) what make sex worth reading about, and B) what make sex worth having in real life: spontenaiety, intensity, overwhelming attraction, mutual obsession.
If that ability eludes an erotic author, his or her work isn't worth reading. By itself, sex is simply a mechanical act. The author who writes about it is already starting off on the back foot: If they can't draw us into a tale vivid enough to make us feel it, their fight is lost before the book even reaches the publisher.
With Dark Matter under my belt, I went in search of more Michael Perkins. It was 2009. I was lucky enough to have a friend visiting the USA, and I asked her to track down and buy more for me. She came back with quite a haul: Dark Games, Dark Star, Burn (which superseded Dark Matter as my favourite Perkins), Evil Companions, and Ceremonies of the Flesh.
Dark Matter is the first instalment of what I've come to call the 'Buddy Tate trilogy' (which continues with Dark Games, and ends with Dark Star).
Buddy is basically a non-entity. An uneducated loser, a throwaway, a basket case from rural Colorado or thereabouts, who believes sex is his purpose in life - as he puts it, his 'calling'. Abandoned by his mother, neglected by his father, stumbling on sexual misfortune after sexual misfortune, he somehow makes his way to San Francisco around December 1999.
At a tattoo parlour, he encounters Robin Flood. Perhaps the ultimate belle dame sans merci. Damaged goods if ever there were; searching for an identity that isn't bestowed on her by someone else.
They team up, and what a crew: a not-particularly-bright sexual obsessive-compulsive, and a borderline personality case with an opportunistic, sociopathic streak. After a particularly wild threesome, Robin decides she has enough of a hold on Buddy to ask him to bump off her dad - a psycho television evangelist who raped and burned her as a teenager.
Buddy suddenly has a great deal to think about, especially after a native American shaman decides to prop up his luck. Robin disappears, and Robin's father wrestles with his own demons - literally.
Through a blood ritual, some soul-searching and a sincere warning not to let passion possess her, Robin gets over a case of indecision about Buddy - but too late, as courtesy of her father's bodyguard and a really bad personal choice, Buddy is now short of an eye.
Two epiphanies later - Buddys' as a homeless person on the streets of SF, Robins' in the dank and scary depths of her own head - Buddy and Robin are married. And with Robin as bait and Buddy as the assassin, the Reverend Thomas Flood gets his just deserts, strapped to a crucifix with his penis bitten off and the back of his head blown out by a .38 Special slug. Buddy and Robin drive away into an uncertain future.
Whew. What a way to celebrate the millenium.
So, what then for our anti-hero and anti-heroine? Happily ever after?
Um, no. Not really. If you want the answer to that, read Dark Games and Dark Star. Suffice to say that Buddy's talent for finding trouble in pursuit of sex is as voluminous as his sexual imagination.
Speaking of that, I've also left out most of the sex, which (like in most of Perkins' other books) is wild, prolific, imaginative, and endlessly varied.
The trouble with this book is, there's so much of it that it tends to get in the way of what is an unusually well-written story. Even as talented as he is, Perkins runs into the same realisation as every other fiction writer: you can only take an erotic story so far without bumping against commonness and crudity and vulgarity; without the sex becoming a spectacle of sameness and repetition. Buddy takes his first-person account seriously enough to tell it seriously. Who does that while nicknaming their penis 'Chester the Molester'?
As strong as the story is, I think the sex - enjoyable as it is - is its greatest weakness.
Not for me - I am staunchly pro-sex. This book was a treasure for me when I bought it, and I still take a certain pleasure in it and its sequels today.
However, most other readers seem not to be able to get past the concept of polar opposites. I suspect that's why there have been no reviews written for this book, despite it being in circulation this long.
I think the problem is that people's hangups and prejudices have a tighter grip on them than they realise.
"Is it serious fiction, or is it erotica?"
Why can't it be both? Who says this book can't give sexual and intellectual stimulation?
"Serious fiction doesn't have room for sex. And no one can take erotica seriously."
If you believe that, I think that says more about you than about this book.
As a healthy, heterosexual male, could I go for Robin Flood?
If I were still 21, I'd probably pursue her single-mindedly. And get chewed up and spat out.
At 45, having lived a full life, the only sensible reaction could be "Fuck no". I've been in relationships with girls like her, and let me tell you: they can't be repaired. I know; I've tried. Several times. Try to fix a girl like that, and she'll end up breaking you.
As Ian Fleming might say: It reads better than it lives.
I hope people can enjoy Dark Matter on its own merits without needing to categorise it.
One of the great evils denounced in this book is Hypocrisy - particularly religious hypocrisy - and I suspect most readers could benefit from taking Perkins' words on the subject on board as a valuable lesson.
Displaying 1 of 1 review