Thongs

by Carmencita de Las Lunas (Pseud.), Alexander Trocchi

The transgressively erotic tale of Gertrude, a girl from the slums of Glasgow who remakes herself as Carmencita and becomes the Grand Painmistress of a secret sadomasochistic order structured along the lines of the Catholic Church, eventually going willingly to her own crucifixion. The preliminary chapter offers the pretense that the work is Gertrude's own memoir (early portions feature heavy Glasgow slang).

Genres: Fiction, Erotica, Novels

189 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1956

Reviews

[Tony Vacation · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Everybody's weird, fundamentally everybody is a snap. Sometimes it's a sexual thing and sometimes it's a different kind of weirdness, but one way or another everybody's nuts.” -In the Midst of Death

Not to be confused with (for murky, ethically-questionable legal reasons) GR reviewer Kemper’s A Life in Thongs—a six-volume tell-all memoir which recounts the author’s Krokodil-fueled formative years in the competitive world of G-string modeling—Alex Trocchi’s Thongs derives its meaning from the other kind of thong: those long strips of leather adorned (sometimes) with pieces of metal and wire that are so useful for whipping the shit out of a person. While only the 456-page volume III of Kemper’s memoir deals with his short-lived time as a S&M dominator in the late 70’s and early 80’s New York City punk-rock scene, Trocchi’s novel focuses entirely on the economics of gender roles in sadomasochistic relationships.

A surface reading of this book would get you a straight-forward, plot-driven smut novel with dirty sex scenes written in prose that does (with flair!) a balancing act between being sexy and disgusting. The story starts off with a razor-blade fight to the death in the slums of Glasgow in the 1950’s and ends with a torture/crucifixion in Spain, setting the grisly scene nicely for the (mostly) first-person account of a girl’s rise from the squalor of a poor neighborhood and an abusive family life to the secret lairs of the rich and kinky where our heroine, Gertrude—aka Carmencita of the Moons—becomes a powerful pornographic priestess of pain. So, yes, this is your typical YA Bildungsroman.

If the words cunninglingus, anal sex, flagellation, fellatio, fuck, and…cunt make you feel queasy or offended, then you should probably keep far and wide away from this book. But if you have the stomach for a gauntlet of well-written sordid sex scenes and depictions of voluntary physical abuse, then this slim and obscure book is worth a read. It’s not every day a writer can make a book about ghoulish characters fucking and whipping one another a creative means of questioning organized religions and their archaic hierarchies, as well as an uncomfortable peepshow of the deconstruction of “faith.”

"Inhibitions are always nice because they're so nice to overcome." -Klute

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel of sadomasochistic sex set in Glasgow and London should be titled The Grand Painmistress. Whatever convinced Alex Trocchi (writing as Frances Lengel) that Thongs was a suitable title for this novel (apart from some shruggish disregard for its strengths) escapes me. Gertrude is a teenager from the Gorbals (the Compton of Glasgow) whose father, the Razor King, is a feared psychopath and rapist who takes and brands whatever woman he likes, to the extent prestige is bestowed upon those who have the honour to be his love-slaves. Gertrude watches her father beat and debase his women and cultivates an appetite for sadomasochistic activity (in the form of lashings and whipping with thongs—not in the G-string sense, but leather whips) and enters into a secret society of upper-class toffs who love to be whipped and whip in return (think the Conservative Party in the 1980s). Due to her skill as a Painmistress, she ascends up the ranks until the cult takes her to London, where the final transgressive thrill awaits—the prospect of crucifixion at the hands of a Spanish maniac. Trocchi’s novel is told in a cool and detached narrative style, somewhat implausibly narrated by Gertrude (who speaks broad Scots and quickly learns to talk in crisp literary English), and explores the brutality of underground sex culture with a shocking lucidity, with an admirable control over the more intolerable moments of pain inflicted on the reader/characters. For a novel that purports to be something cheap and pornographic, Thongs is a far deeper and scarier work.

[Jerm · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book, despite the misleading (for some people) title. It's not about swimsuits. I'd recommed this book to anyone interested in sado-masochism from a deeply intellectual and spiritual perspective. Yes, the book is about sado-masochism and contains a lot of sexual references, but it's not for perverts. It's a great book with a dramatic ending. I wish I could find it somewhere so I can read it again.

[Tori · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am fascinated by books that can tell such a complete story in so few pages.

[Fatduke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly and obscenely plausible. Trocchi is one of a rare breed of artists that can go to extremes without ever going too far.

[Joanna Forde · Rating 5 out of 5]

rare is it to read a book written by a man from the female perspective and actually enjoy it.
not for the faint of heart.
for those who are appealed to pain as pleasure.