-- Come As You Are
Reviews
From the Ottawa Citizen, Saturday, December 18, 2004. Section I, page 7, at the bottom
Citylights by Jenny Jackson
Of human BONDAGE
A handyman's guide to sex equipment reveals a strange tenderness
Doug's grandmother told him that he is a good, worthwhile person, so any project he had put five years into was likely to be worthwhile too.
His mother, though, was a little taken aback that Doug was using his engineering experience to research and write a 398-page opus called The Better Built Bondage Book, a handyman's guide to the world of BDSM - bondage and sadomasochism.
Doug is in his mid-30s, a little shy, and very clean cut, almost squeaky clean.
But above all, he is a frugal and practical man.
Unable to find much besides shoddy sex equipment at exorbitant prices, he decided he could do better himself.
The $50 book covers leashes, chains, spanking benches, floggers, paddles, and other astonishing toys such as vibrating remote controls that would lend themselves to all manner of private fun in public places.
Yet it looks and reads like something you would see at Home Depot.
There are pointers on how to upholster furniture, weave leather, and tie a proper knot that will neither come undone nor restrict blood flow.
There are tasteful, if specific, photographs, but there are far more technical illustrations showing how to wire something, or use a sander.
The prose is by turns playful and comforting.
"Projects for starters" includes easy projects for people new to bondage or new to handiwork, or both.
"Vanilla projects" are for people unfamiliar with bondage but who might be willing to try a blindfold, a fur glove for stroking, "or a great flogger."
Doug says sales have been good yet he is very tentative about the book.
The cover is the size of letter paper, yet the author name, Douglas Kent, is only about a centimetre high [actually, it is half a centimetre high - DK]
It is not even his real name (which he did not divulge).
He was worried that this column would present him as a freak and when we arranged an interview, we decided against meeting in a public place in case passersby took exception to the book.
Credit card companies would not allow him to set up a mail order system, so he has had to promote the book by advertising on his website where it is available: After Stonewall on Bank Street, Venus Envy at 110 Parent St. and astonishingly, Chapters at the Pinecrest Mall.
His trepidation made me wonder if I had chosen wisely inviting him to my house. Would he be a freak?
He wasn't.
In fact, as he spoke about bondage, he said, "you know, it takes a tremendous amount of trust."
Looking at the book again, I saw, tied up in all those ropes and grommets and manacles, a strange tenderness.
Love is always inexplicable and often painful, wrote British author Somerset Maugham. The book? Of Human Bondage.
Jenny Jackson's Citylights column appears regularly in Style.
"I'm predicting that this book will become one of the must-have volumes for many people who like BDSM and its toys."
-- Observer31, from bondage.com
