Alison Tyler

The first time I ever met a hardcore devotee of BDSM I was 23. It is not like today when people proudly display their Disneyfied version of BDSM with their furlined cuffs and magnetic tongue "piercings" and occasionally read self-help books by real doms to spice things up in the marital bed. Back then, in the late 80's, BDSM was underground and very real and whether practiced at home or in dungeons it was supposed to hurt. Anyway ... the person I met was a friend-of-a-friend who turned out to be semi-famous-for-a-minute for writing what was the first mainstream book about BDSM. Her name is Gloria Brame and the book was Different Loving. I have no idea if it is still in print, and I have not seen Gloria since she married her sub and they moved to live in kink heaven is some remote part of Georgia sometime in the later 80's. Though we were never more than acquaintances, I will always remember Gloria for introducing me to true kink through the eyes and words of a Columbia MFA student who had once been married to a dentist and lived on Long Island (which is to say someone I found relatable in a way that the latex dipped women in the downtown clubs where punks and freaks converged were not.) I became fascinated with BDSM, especially full-time power exchange, at that time, and for a bit I immersed myself in that community in a Margaret Mead way. I met some incredible people, a few of whom are still friends, but the idea of your sexuality defining your every waking moment was not appealing to me so I stopped hanging with them. (I will also always remember Gloria for taking me to a party where Allen Ginsburg sat in a corner with a very very very young British boy on a leash and told tawdry stories and railed about the decline of America, but that is not relevant to this review.) The reason I started going down this road was to draw distinctions between real BDSM, and the 50 Shades variety. That is not a slam at 50 Shades, the writing is shit but I thought it was pretty hot, but it has nothing to do with real submission. S&M is supposed to hurt, real masochists need it to hurt. So Dark Secret Love is a real bit of erotica written by a masochist and there is a lot of pain and a lot of degradation. It feels completely authentic to me. I won't say what I found erotic and what I found appalling, nor how much intersection there was in that Venn diagram. Everyone will have different responses to the material, so my reactions are not important. I will say that this book is very well written. Tyler has a unique and compelling voice, and I was rapt even when the things she did were IMO heartbreaking and indicative of the need for serious mental health intervention. And I was not Margaret Mead-ing while reading this, I was not detached. As with my bit of time with Gloria Brame I found Samantha (the main character's name, though this feels very autobiographical) really relatable. If you are interested in erotica that depicts the real life of a submissive and does so with spare and evocative prose, no hearts and flowers, I cannot recommend this enough.… (más)

We're all filthy minded, some of us more than we'd like to admit. Given some freedom, our kinks might know no limits. I think that's what drives erotic writers - as in writers of erotica, not writers with erotic appear; although... - as they clack-clack away on their keyboards, bringing our dirty deeds and fornication fantasies to life.

In the past, I came (no pun intended) across Alison Tyler's (Alison's Wonderland, On Finding Jon's Porn) works and became an instant fan - all the while, unwittingly owning a novel she wrote. So when Smart Ass appeared across my Amazon recommendation page, there was little thought when I decided to get myself a little something.

Now I'm a little behind (again, no pun intended) with this. It appears that Smart Ass is part of an annual anal anthology - say that five times fast! - that also includes Bad Ass and Kiss My Ass. It's compiled with the help of fellow writers Kristina Lloyd (Split, Asking For Trouble), Sommer Marsden (Learning to Drown Drunk and Disorderly), Sophia Valenti (Stocking Up: an erotic collection for the fishnet fetishist, Indecent Desires), and Jax Baynard (Torn: Erotica Ripped from the Seams, Eat Me: Succulent Stories of Edible Erotica), with Thomas S. Roche (The Panama Laugh, Like A Wisp of Steam: Steampunk Erotica) stepping in for Smart Ass.

Kristina Lloyd's "My Ass is Your Ass is My Ass" starts the anthology off with its mixture of poetry and porn. It sets the stage - not to mention, the mood - with is raunchy first sentence - "So, there he is with his cock in my ass, and I'm biting the pillow, making all sorts of groans" - to narrator's poetic description of the deed - "On the inside, I'm floating in a space nebula, and star clusters of silver are pulsing bright and dark." How can someone go from describing a pornographic threesome to describing the trio post coital as "Tokyo in the rain at night [...] Tokyo mad flesh?" It's just not something you expect in erotica, especially that dealing with anal sex. Yet, it's there. And it's beautiful and naughty. Sensual and...well, it's just sensual, okay?

In "Tahoe Tease," Thomas S. Roche introduces us to a character dying to get a piece of his girlfriend's ass, which has been promised to him if he can go two months without an orgasm. But she's not going to make it easy for him. And things worth having rarely go without a little bit of sacrifice.

Where as in "Plucked," Alison Tyler changes the tables with the anal play by giving a womanizer a taste of his own medicine.

I think Alison Tyler says it best in the introduction; this anthology is "a type of nontraditional sweet porn that's kinky and filthy and leaves everyone with a smile at the end." Of course, she was talking about her story.… (más)