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Boots, Bondage, and Beatings
Masters and slaves, tops and bottoms revel in boot worship, erotic bondage, and dick-stiffening beatings with fists, belt, or whip. But as heavy as the action gets, it never lacks emotional depth. david stein's first collection of short fiction features the same realism, fetishistic detail, and romance that made his novel, Carried Away (Daedalus, 2002), so memorable. In fact, the stories include a sexy "outtake" from the novel as well as a new epilogue that fans won't want to miss.
- GenresM M RomanceBDSM
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
4 people are currently reading
39 people want to read
About the author
David Stein
9 books12 followersBorn in Pittsburgh in 1948, David Stein grew up in Western Pennsylvania. After high school, he went off to study philosophy at New York University in 1965 and later at Northwestern, where he earned an M.A. degree and met all requirements for a Ph.D. except the dissertation, which he was too perfectionist to finish. In 1975 he fell into publishing and in 1977 landed back in New York City, where he got a job as a magazine editor (from which he was laid off in 2006). He’s lived there ever since except for a year in San Francisco to produce his story collection, Boots Bondage and Beatings, and the nonfiction Ask the Man Who Owns Him for his new Perfectbound Press imprint. His romantic yet realistic novel about a gay Master/slave relationship, Carried Away, was started in the late 1980s and completed and published, by Daedalus, in 2002.
In 1980 David co-founded New York City’s Gay Male S/M Activists (GMSMA), once the world’s largest gay SM organization, and served it in many capacities, from president to newsletter editor and program chairman, for the next 11 years. In 1983, for that group’s statement of purpose, David coined “safe, sane, and consensual SM,” now a ubiquitous slogan he has mixed feelings about. Retired from GMSMA, he co-founded and helped lead New York’s gay chapter of Masters And slaves Together, from which he is also now retired.
For six years he wrote the “Bond+Aid” safety column for Bound&Gagged magazine, and in 1996 he guest-edited issue #14 of International Leatherman magazine, devoted entirely to real-world gay Masters and slaves. Over the years, his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Drummer, DungeonMaster, International Leatherman, Mach, Power Play, and other periodicals as well as the anthologies Leatherfolk, edited by Mark Thompson (Alyson); SM Classics, edited by Susan Wright (Masquerade); Horsemen, edited by Joseph W. Bean (Leyland); Men on the Edge, edited by Christopher Pierce (StarBooks); and The Academy, a “novelology” by Laura Antoniou (Circlet Press). Some of his other writing is available online at his personal website, as is a fuller biographical essay.
In 1980 David co-founded New York City’s Gay Male S/M Activists (GMSMA), once the world’s largest gay SM organization, and served it in many capacities, from president to newsletter editor and program chairman, for the next 11 years. In 1983, for that group’s statement of purpose, David coined “safe, sane, and consensual SM,” now a ubiquitous slogan he has mixed feelings about. Retired from GMSMA, he co-founded and helped lead New York’s gay chapter of Masters And slaves Together, from which he is also now retired.
For six years he wrote the “Bond+Aid” safety column for Bound&Gagged magazine, and in 1996 he guest-edited issue #14 of International Leatherman magazine, devoted entirely to real-world gay Masters and slaves. Over the years, his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Drummer, DungeonMaster, International Leatherman, Mach, Power Play, and other periodicals as well as the anthologies Leatherfolk, edited by Mark Thompson (Alyson); SM Classics, edited by Susan Wright (Masquerade); Horsemen, edited by Joseph W. Bean (Leyland); Men on the Edge, edited by Christopher Pierce (StarBooks); and The Academy, a “novelology” by Laura Antoniou (Circlet Press). Some of his other writing is available online at his personal website, as is a fuller biographical essay.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 30, 2013
This is a series of 8 short stories.
“Becoming Real” (71 pages): The story takes what could be seen as a fantasy scenario and explores how it might actually play out in real life. It’s a tour de force, beautifully constructed and artfully told.
A slave (the MC) is kept chained in a cell (10x12 feet) that contains only a toilet bowl without seat (in which he drinks), a stand for showering and for enemas, a pallet to sleep on, exercising equipment, a box full of floggers, whips and so on, a bucket full of condoms behind a chair for the master. At the beginning of the story, the sub has been in his cell for about two months (he doesn’t know for sure since there is no window and no clock, and the master played trick with the timing of his visits and with the lightning of the cell) and he thinks that he could stay there for one complete year. Every morning, he must exercise for about one hour (he doesn’t know how long exactly). Then the master comes and he is flogged (at least 50 strokes). He eats only 2 meals a day of a dry formulation rehydrated with the Master’s piss: one after his flogging and the other at night. And his only other distractions are 5 white pages and a pencil to write whatever he wants on them, rare discussions with his master, and the visit of one of his master’s other slaves and of his friends that he must serve as if they were the master himself. But soon, Stephen, this other slave, who is training to become a master, considers the MC as his own slave. The Master had said to him that if he succeeded in mastering the MC completely, he (Stephen) would be freed and the MC could become his slave, if the MC agreed with this new arrangement. And that’s what happened.
“A slave needs to be flogged regularly,” he’ll say in his brusque, no-nonsense voice, “and that’s all there is to it. It’s like taking a dog out for a walk or rubbing down a horse after a run, something an owner simply has to do.”
The truth is that I chose all of it, every detail [...] But he tempered my initial enthusiasm for a much harsher regimen, with far less space to move around in. i’d had in mind something like an oubliette, a small underground hole where he’d throw food down to me, piss on me, periodically hose me off, and otherwise leave me alone. “And what would I get out of that?” he asked, laughing. “I wouldn’t even have your warm mouth to piss in, or your conversation to while away the evenings. What a supremely selfish idea! ”
While my physical world has been pared down close to a minimum, my mental world is unlimited.
“Second Skin: A Leather Fetish Porn Scenario” (9 pages) is a script for a video, full of bondage and boot worship and real power dynamics between a masculine top and his willing bottom.
Close in on... Close up on... T (short for Top) does this. b (short for bottom) does that. Boot worshipping. Rimming. Whipping. That’s it, that’s all. Maybe not too dull to see in video, but not very interesting to read. Happily, this scenario has only 7 pages.
“Positions” (20 pages) is an exploration of the postures and poses a submissive should practice and commit to memory. One of the great things about this story is that the Master who is teaching the positions to the new slave describes the purpose and mindset of each pose in detail, thereby contextualizing them as well as making them easier to remember.
Very military like training to learn and take basic slave’s positions.
“To my mind,” Master began, as if launching into a lecture to one of his classes in political history, “few things are more effective in teaching a slave his place in life than training him to assume various useful or pleasing positions on command. Besides the value of the positions themselves, such instant, automatic obedience in a relatively minor matter conditions the slave to respond similarly at other times, helping him become an extension of his master’s will.
“This is a lot more fun than working out at the gym!” said by the slave.
“Games” (28 pages) is an “outtake” from Carried Away, like the deleted scenes sometimes available for DVD movies. But unlike many such scenes, this one is definitely worth enjoying. It’s the story of two hungry, inventive bottoms who have figured out what to do with each other when there are no tops around.
Matt, the MC of Carried Away and Stan, his friend, play again together. Matt looses a poker game, so he is the one to bind Stan. He takes a photo of Stan once bound. Then Matt lies down on Stan’s bed and watches his friend, imagining that he’s the one to be bound and that he has been tied by Terry, the Dom he fantasizes on. To pass time, he reads a short story in a porn magazine about a slave who is kept tied in a cabin and has nothing more to do than take care of boots. The bed of the slave in the short story is a pile of boots.
“Sometimes pain is a turn-off even for a masochist.”
“And of course I’m piss shy! I closed my eyes and tried to relax, imagining myself pissing into a toilet — but a toilet doesn’t feel warm and wet and tight!”
“In Service” (36 pages) shows a young man offering himself to a formidable trainer at his first interview/audition. This story is so hot, so loaded with detail and insight, that it left me begging for more. It reads like the first chapter of an amazing novel, one that I would very much like to read.
“Is that all there is? I wondered. Just a complicated way to get off? […] Was it all just an act we did for each other, this whole apparatus of dominance and submission? From the first, I’d never felt like I was acting. I felt more real, more me when I was naked and chained, with my tongue on a man’s boot and my ass burning from his belt, than I ever felt in the office where I worked or the studio apartment where I ate and slept. Which was the act and which was real?”
“Is there anything beyond play-acting? Is it possible to submit for real, not just a scene? Or is that only another fantasy?”
“It’s hard to stay focused on the idea that you’re property, and a good beating brings that home to a slave’s mind in a very direct and unmistakable way. [..] In fact, it’s a form of abuse to deny them that discipline, because nothing else seems to reinforce the special bond between Master and slave, or slave and trainer, as well as a regular, expected beating.”
“I don’t hold much with written contracts during training. Either your word is your bond, or you’re not worth anyone’s time.”
“Every rule was a link in a chain of obedience, and the longer the chain, the safer and more secure I felt.”
“Bondage Recruit” (41 pages) is fantasy with a realistic grounding, a dream come true for a man who always wanted a Master but didn’t know how to make it work in real life. The Master is a dream himself: young, hot, strong, just out of the military, with a taste for tying up and using other men. When the slave finally gives up worrying about how to make their life together work, he finds that his Master has everything planned already. All he needs to do is submit and be the best slaveboy he can be.
This story combines all Stein’s main fantasies in one.
“Political/Personal” (44 pages) is a slice of life, a perfect record of a specific time and place and all its joys and frustrations.
“Seriously, sir, if I have to worry about when to use a safeword, how can I give up control? And isn’t that the point?”
After a long whipping by two tops working on him together, Matt says: “[…] it was a fucking religious experience!”
“Still Carried Away” (71 pages)
This epilogue to the novel Carried Away takes place in New York City in mid-December 1992, a couple of months after the end of the novel. Terry and Matt are Master and slave in an intense new relationship, but they don’t live together.
It was a delight to revisit the characters of David’s novel in “Still Carried Away”. This epilogue is so exciting and satisfying, it begs to be included in future printings of Carried Away.
Speaking of passive submissive, Terry says: “I don’t like bottoms who fight me or give me a hard time, that’s not what I mean, but without some spirit [fuck], some independence [fuck], some spine [fuck], what’s the [fuck] point?”
The “[fuck]” are there to point out (or in) whenever Terry fucks Matt while speaking (or when he speaks while fucking).
“’A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds’,” he quoted.”
The story finished with a permanent collaring for Matt and a bracelet for Terry. But those who hope that Matt and Terry will live together are doomed to be disappointed. Personally, I find it more realistic this way.
I give this series of short stories 4 stars.
“Becoming Real” (71 pages): The story takes what could be seen as a fantasy scenario and explores how it might actually play out in real life. It’s a tour de force, beautifully constructed and artfully told.
A slave (the MC) is kept chained in a cell (10x12 feet) that contains only a toilet bowl without seat (in which he drinks), a stand for showering and for enemas, a pallet to sleep on, exercising equipment, a box full of floggers, whips and so on, a bucket full of condoms behind a chair for the master. At the beginning of the story, the sub has been in his cell for about two months (he doesn’t know for sure since there is no window and no clock, and the master played trick with the timing of his visits and with the lightning of the cell) and he thinks that he could stay there for one complete year. Every morning, he must exercise for about one hour (he doesn’t know how long exactly). Then the master comes and he is flogged (at least 50 strokes). He eats only 2 meals a day of a dry formulation rehydrated with the Master’s piss: one after his flogging and the other at night. And his only other distractions are 5 white pages and a pencil to write whatever he wants on them, rare discussions with his master, and the visit of one of his master’s other slaves and of his friends that he must serve as if they were the master himself. But soon, Stephen, this other slave, who is training to become a master, considers the MC as his own slave. The Master had said to him that if he succeeded in mastering the MC completely, he (Stephen) would be freed and the MC could become his slave, if the MC agreed with this new arrangement. And that’s what happened.
“A slave needs to be flogged regularly,” he’ll say in his brusque, no-nonsense voice, “and that’s all there is to it. It’s like taking a dog out for a walk or rubbing down a horse after a run, something an owner simply has to do.”
The truth is that I chose all of it, every detail [...] But he tempered my initial enthusiasm for a much harsher regimen, with far less space to move around in. i’d had in mind something like an oubliette, a small underground hole where he’d throw food down to me, piss on me, periodically hose me off, and otherwise leave me alone. “And what would I get out of that?” he asked, laughing. “I wouldn’t even have your warm mouth to piss in, or your conversation to while away the evenings. What a supremely selfish idea! ”
While my physical world has been pared down close to a minimum, my mental world is unlimited.
“Second Skin: A Leather Fetish Porn Scenario” (9 pages) is a script for a video, full of bondage and boot worship and real power dynamics between a masculine top and his willing bottom.
Close in on... Close up on... T (short for Top) does this. b (short for bottom) does that. Boot worshipping. Rimming. Whipping. That’s it, that’s all. Maybe not too dull to see in video, but not very interesting to read. Happily, this scenario has only 7 pages.
“Positions” (20 pages) is an exploration of the postures and poses a submissive should practice and commit to memory. One of the great things about this story is that the Master who is teaching the positions to the new slave describes the purpose and mindset of each pose in detail, thereby contextualizing them as well as making them easier to remember.
Very military like training to learn and take basic slave’s positions.
“To my mind,” Master began, as if launching into a lecture to one of his classes in political history, “few things are more effective in teaching a slave his place in life than training him to assume various useful or pleasing positions on command. Besides the value of the positions themselves, such instant, automatic obedience in a relatively minor matter conditions the slave to respond similarly at other times, helping him become an extension of his master’s will.
“This is a lot more fun than working out at the gym!” said by the slave.
“Games” (28 pages) is an “outtake” from Carried Away, like the deleted scenes sometimes available for DVD movies. But unlike many such scenes, this one is definitely worth enjoying. It’s the story of two hungry, inventive bottoms who have figured out what to do with each other when there are no tops around.
Matt, the MC of Carried Away and Stan, his friend, play again together. Matt looses a poker game, so he is the one to bind Stan. He takes a photo of Stan once bound. Then Matt lies down on Stan’s bed and watches his friend, imagining that he’s the one to be bound and that he has been tied by Terry, the Dom he fantasizes on. To pass time, he reads a short story in a porn magazine about a slave who is kept tied in a cabin and has nothing more to do than take care of boots. The bed of the slave in the short story is a pile of boots.
“Sometimes pain is a turn-off even for a masochist.”
“And of course I’m piss shy! I closed my eyes and tried to relax, imagining myself pissing into a toilet — but a toilet doesn’t feel warm and wet and tight!”
“In Service” (36 pages) shows a young man offering himself to a formidable trainer at his first interview/audition. This story is so hot, so loaded with detail and insight, that it left me begging for more. It reads like the first chapter of an amazing novel, one that I would very much like to read.
“Is that all there is? I wondered. Just a complicated way to get off? […] Was it all just an act we did for each other, this whole apparatus of dominance and submission? From the first, I’d never felt like I was acting. I felt more real, more me when I was naked and chained, with my tongue on a man’s boot and my ass burning from his belt, than I ever felt in the office where I worked or the studio apartment where I ate and slept. Which was the act and which was real?”
“Is there anything beyond play-acting? Is it possible to submit for real, not just a scene? Or is that only another fantasy?”
“It’s hard to stay focused on the idea that you’re property, and a good beating brings that home to a slave’s mind in a very direct and unmistakable way. [..] In fact, it’s a form of abuse to deny them that discipline, because nothing else seems to reinforce the special bond between Master and slave, or slave and trainer, as well as a regular, expected beating.”
“I don’t hold much with written contracts during training. Either your word is your bond, or you’re not worth anyone’s time.”
“Every rule was a link in a chain of obedience, and the longer the chain, the safer and more secure I felt.”
“Bondage Recruit” (41 pages) is fantasy with a realistic grounding, a dream come true for a man who always wanted a Master but didn’t know how to make it work in real life. The Master is a dream himself: young, hot, strong, just out of the military, with a taste for tying up and using other men. When the slave finally gives up worrying about how to make their life together work, he finds that his Master has everything planned already. All he needs to do is submit and be the best slaveboy he can be.
This story combines all Stein’s main fantasies in one.
“Political/Personal” (44 pages) is a slice of life, a perfect record of a specific time and place and all its joys and frustrations.
“Seriously, sir, if I have to worry about when to use a safeword, how can I give up control? And isn’t that the point?”
After a long whipping by two tops working on him together, Matt says: “[…] it was a fucking religious experience!”
“Still Carried Away” (71 pages)
This epilogue to the novel Carried Away takes place in New York City in mid-December 1992, a couple of months after the end of the novel. Terry and Matt are Master and slave in an intense new relationship, but they don’t live together.
It was a delight to revisit the characters of David’s novel in “Still Carried Away”. This epilogue is so exciting and satisfying, it begs to be included in future printings of Carried Away.
Speaking of passive submissive, Terry says: “I don’t like bottoms who fight me or give me a hard time, that’s not what I mean, but without some spirit [fuck], some independence [fuck], some spine [fuck], what’s the [fuck] point?”
The “[fuck]” are there to point out (or in) whenever Terry fucks Matt while speaking (or when he speaks while fucking).
“’A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds’,” he quoted.”
The story finished with a permanent collaring for Matt and a bracelet for Terry. But those who hope that Matt and Terry will live together are doomed to be disappointed. Personally, I find it more realistic this way.
I give this series of short stories 4 stars.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
dnf
March 17, 2017M/M. DNF. Out of my comfort zone of BDSM.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews