You can’t turn around these days without seeing Christian Grey, kinky hero of E.L. James’ worldwide best-seller Fifty Shades of Grey, or his on-screen counterpart, Jamie Dornan. But the book and film have left many BDSM practitioners nonplussed, with writer Stephen Elliott calling for a boycott after Dornan told Elle UK that after visiting a sex dungeon he “had a long shower” before touching his wife and baby, implying that kink is somehow tainted. Read the rest of “Meet a sexier, smarter Dom than Christian Grey” on CityPaper.net.
Why Christian Grey’s got nothing on this much smarter and sexier Dom
Universal Pictures
Part of the problem is a dearth of truly knowledgeable kinky fiction, especially from a heterosexual male perspective. Enter Ernest Greene, longtime pornography director, husband of porn star Nina Hartley and someone who’s “been the dominant partner in BDSM relationships virtually exclusively for over 40 years,” as he writes in his must-read novel, Master of O. The book is modeled on Pauline Réage’s Story of O, but set in glitzy, modern L.A.
Why a “must-read?” Because rather than BDSM being used as an angst-ridden plot device where a troubling reason is given for a character’s interest in punishment and power play, Greene’s characters are unapologetically kinky. At one point, while being caned, Greene writes of O, the submissive heroine, “This was quality pain. She’d had little enough of it to know how rare it was.”
