Title: L is for Leather Author: Alison Tyler, editor Publisher: Cleis Press Publish Date: 2008 Pages: 140 Genres:: Compilation, Fantasy, Fetishes, Fiction Reviewer: SexHerald Staff

Rating:

Ironic that the flesh compared to living flesh is actually dead flesh.

Who would deny that clothing can be a powerful aphrodisiac? Certainly not the characters depicted in the anthology L Is For Leather. Here, where there’s leather, there’s lust. Allison Tyler’s foreword reads more like foreplay wherein she confides her own affinity  for leather’s as a personal sexual pleasure enhancer. In these 13 different experiences of desire’s flames fanned by fabric, the passion exploding from these pages proves you sure as hell don’t have to be ordained to be a man or woman of the cloth.
It can be said that throughout this compilation, clothes not only make the man, they make the man (and woman) come.

Churchgoing lovers, one dominant and one submissive, find and grind each other with the literal input of a leather belt in “Sunday Service” (by Kate Pearce). In “Truman Capote Was Wrong” (by Lissette Ashton), a woman picking up a coat at her tailor’s has an experience you might not expect given the venue but may fully appreciate. Lesbian weather worship comes to the fore in “Venus in Uniform” (by Thomas Roche). In “Cleanup on Aisle Ten” (by Sheri Gilmore), an employee is mesmerized by one tough customer, and her need for agony leads to her ultimate ecstasy while sporting a leather collar. The joy of boot licking in a shoe store gets its passionate due in “Those Boots” (by Jude Mason).  “How He Likes Me” tells the tale of a couple enhancing their passion with the hands-on use of black leather gloves and a second male party during their lovemaking. Masochism with a mission is found in “Little Black Dress” (by Madeline Moore). I think you know what material the dress is made of.  In “Dangerous Comfort” (by Shane Allison), a trip to the movies becomes a trip to mutual masturbation with a pretty stranger in a fragrant leather jacket.

Continuing on, a professor finds herself on the reverse side of the learning curve when she meets her leather-clad female former student at a nightclub in “Tempted” (by Michelle Houston). “Other Bonds than Leather” (by Mike Kimera) explores dominant and submissive relationships as electrified by leather’s presence be it in apparel or weaponry. Leather headgear makes an appearance in “Love Is Long” (by Tsaurah Litzky). In “Skinflick Sex” (by Radcliffe), leather helps two lusty souls get off backstage while an adult film is shot. L is for Leather closes with “Hide” by Allison Tyler where a leather store employee gets to know a customer intimately when she tries on a motorcycle dress.

The double whammy of the allure of flesh in flesh is not lost on any writer or character here. They draw the soul of the animal the leather covered into them and express it back out.