Jack Fritscher’s Leather Blues moves quickly. A warning: the beginning scene depicts the eighteen year old main character, Denny, enjoying watching his cousin masturbating. Denny goes on to explore his sexuality by playing with/having sex with men during his breaks from working at a gas station, and he discovers leather when he receives a leather jacket for a gift. Denny grows distant from family as his father becomes violent, beating he and his mom. Denny finds a way out, meeting the motorcyclist BDSM-er, Chuck, who’s visiting the next-door neighbor. On motorbikes, Denny and Chuck roar through town and camp at a farmhouse in the country where they hold a wild, very hard BDSM edge play scene with many leathermen.
A spoiler: there is a hanging acted out in this part and although no people of color are in the scene, I could still see the scene being triggering/activating. Also, I don’t think the book portrays women well. Denny’s mom is a very stereotypical innocent housewife and other women are just objects for straight men. With that said, in its descriptions of sex scenes, Leather Blues is vivid and focuses on the concrete details; a reader can see, touch, hear, taste, and smell what’s going on. Fritsher does what’s taught in so many creative writing classes: he shows; he doesn’t tell. Despite the book’s outdated-ness in how it treats people other than white men, people of color aren’t represented at all, I think it’s a read that pays off as an erotic novel, as a book that encourages folks to explore BDSM/leather culture, and as an example of good writing at the descriptive level. 7/10
Submitted by Todd Evans
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