From Issue 2.6 - June/July 1996
A magazine of lesbian erotic fiction with a strong SM bent, Bad Attitude earned some notoriety a couple of years ago when it became the centerpiece of a Canadian anti-porn border seizure trial. Stories in volume 9 # 4 include "My Own Hand," "Bad Mommy," and "Night Lover." Cuir Underground columnist Lady Green contributes a primer on anal play. Bad Attitude is known for its attractive and challenging photo spreads. $7. P.O. Box 390110, Cambridge, MA 02139.
Subtitled "leather on the cutting edge for people of color and their friends," Black Leather in Color is the only magazine I know targeted to people of color. Issue #5 includes a feature on bloodsports, an interview with 1993 International Mr. Drummer Graylin Thornton, a pictorial on "Mistress Lisette and Her Dogs," and a feature on gay artist Mark Durham. Dr. DeSade's informative medical column focuses on diabetes, hypertension, and epilepsy. The magazine includes a feature on "Leather on a Shoestring," and sells for the very reasonable price of $4.95. Black Leather in Color is published in New York City and includes a Los Angeles scene report. The content is pansexual and African-American focused rather than pan-ethnic; this is not an ethnicity-fetish rag. DP/GOP Box 1035, New York, NY 10116.
Edited by Bill Brent, publisher of The Black Book resource guide, Black Sheets is a fun, light-hearted romp through the realms of alternative sexuality; the magazine is pansexual with a strong queer sensibility. Each issue has a different theme (e.g., bisexuality, sex work). While always kink-positive, Black Sheets is not an SM magazine per se. The Spring "Dead Cow" issue (#8), however, focuses on leathersex, fetish, and SM, and features several hot stories, poetry, articles, photos, and lots of reviews (Bill must love writing reviews!). Carol Queen contributes a piece about being a female submissive. Reasonably priced at $6. P.O. Box 31155, SF, CA 94131.
Body Play and Modern Primitives Quarterly, published locally by Fakir Musafar, is a pansexual magazine combining information about technique with the spiritual and ethnographic aspects of body modification "Fetish fashion diva" Midori graces the cover of issue #12 (also confusingly labeled Volume 4 #3). Topics include FakirÕs report on the Thaipusan Festival in Penang, breast pumping, branding, and a shoe fetish pictorial. Issue #13 includes part one of an extensive article on flesh hooks and a feature on "Remarkable Women," profiling Idexa, Erica Skadsen, and Sunny Cover. A bit steep at $10, but one of the best sources of this kind of information. P.O. Box 2575, Menlo Park, CA 94026-2575.
Boudoir Noir is a magazine focused on leather, fetish, and consensual SM out of Toronto, Canada. The most recent issue includes an article on piercing from an Old Guard perspective, how to start your own fetish group, a pair of articles on SM and pregnancy and SM and parenting, and a report on college SM support groups. The Spring 1995 issue (#11) features a kinky guide to San Francisco. Boudoir Noir is pansexual, perhaps with a heterosexual slant; it includes the only transgender column I know of in an SM magazine. The publishers are SM activists, and the magazine features community news and coverage of important issues -- #11 includes coverage of the Spanner case, and Boudoir Noir is currently active in the Houghton child custody case. Includes an extensive worldwide resource listing. $6.95 Canadian. Box 5, Stn. F, Toronto, Ontario M4Y 2L4.
Checkmate incorporates the former Dungeon Master magazine. Issue #14 includes articles on dungeon design, SM on the Internet, and tattooing, and a historical tale of SM in the 1950s. Quite cheap at $4.95, but it's a thin magazine. P.O. Box 354, Wyoming, PA 18644-0354.
Often confused with Cuir Underground, CUIR magazine is a slick glossy "by leathermen for leathermen." Each issue includes photos, video reviews, articles, and lots of kinky fiction. Issue #17 has a feature on the Mr. S/Fetters collection. $5.95. 7985 Santa Monica Blvd. #109-368, West Hollywood, CA 90046.
Diversity is a new small-format magazine from the Vancouver area that bills itself as an adult fetish/fantasy and contact magazine. Diversity is pansexual with, as it says on the cover, "something for everybody." Issue #3 includes fiction, verse, several creative and high-quality photo spreads, and a primer on flogging and selecting a flogger by Mistress Madelaine Bates. Editor Elaine Miller is not afraid to break magazine conventions and try something new. The magazine is emphatically pro-freedom, anti-censorship, and sex-positive. Diversity also includes an extensive personal ads section, a Vancouver area club and venue listing, and many professional dominant ads; the magazine strives to be an accessible resource for the local fetsih community. $7 Canadian. P.O. Box 47588, #1-1020 Austin Ave., Coquitlam, B.C., Canada V3K 6T3.
The theme of Drummer issue #193 is Jock Sex, and includes a feature on "Sex Boxing and Body Punching," an article on safe cruising, and a reprint of Pat Califia's anti-censorship treatise "Dangerous Tongues." Issue #194 has the theme Masters and Slaves, and includes a piece on kinky London. Drummer also includes columns, media reviews, many photos, book excerpts, and calendar information. $6.95. Drummer is published locally by Desmodus, 24 Shotwell, SF, CA 94103.
This is a relatively new title from Brush Creek Media, the San Francisco publishing venture of Bear Dog Hoffman. The magazine includes news, pictorials, fiction, reviews, and classified ads. Issue #6 (Winter 1996) includes a feature on "Shaving Boys in Thailand" and part 3 of the fiction serial "The Auction Block." Despite its name, International Leatherman seems to feature largely U.S. content Ñ and most of the cocks are cut. $6.95. Brush Creek Media, 367 Ninth Str., SF, CA 94103.
Kinky People, Places and Things is published by DM International, which also bring you Taste of Latex and Bitches With Whips. Volume 5 #5 includes features on group blood play, paddling, and body wrapping, as well as photos by Efrain Gonzalez. Although the content is pansexual, KPPT's free contact ads section is heterosexually focused; the magazine also includes many ads for professional Mistresses. $7.99. P.O. Box 16188, Seattle, WA 98116. NEW ADDRESS?
This began as a newsletter promoting Masquerade books, and has evolved into an interesting erotic magazine in its own right. Volume 5 #2 (March-April 1996) features former SF scenestress J.D. Vargas on the cover. Contents include photos by Richard Kern and Charles Gatewood, a fiction excerpt entitled "Pumping Mistress Full of Dick," an interview with "Glam Dom" Petra (reprinted, I believe, from Spectator), and an array of book reviews. Also included is "The Dyke Writer as Sex Worker" by Masquerade author Red Jordan Arobateau, and an essay on Arobateau's recent run-in with the Lesbian Review of Books, which claimed that based on her writing -- gritty tales of 1950s working-class dyke culture -- she could not possibly be a lesbian, and was in fact probably a man. $5. 801 Second Ave., New York, NY 10017.
Paramour describes itself as a magazine of "literary and artistic erotica," and it is indeed both literarily pleasing and visually attractive (it's published in Cambridge, MA after all!). While it's not an SM magazine per se, the stories and especially the photographs and illustrations often have a strong fetish or SM bent. This magazine admirably fills the niche between hardcore kink and the unrelenting vanilla of erotica magazines such as Yellow Silk. In addition to fiction -- including the story "My Professor" -- Volume 3 issue 2 also includes an interview with Tantric sex expert Margo Anand, book and video reviews, and a sex advice column. Paramour is an example of that rare breed, a truly pansexual magazine that includes a balance of content -- in articles, illustrations, and ads -- with something to appeal to all genders and orientations. $4.95. P.O. Box 949, Cambridge, MA 02140-0008.
The TES 25th anniversary issue of Prometheus (#24, Winter 1996) informs us that the magazine started out as Pro-Me-Thee-Us in 1973, languished for several years, and evolved into it's current incarnation -- incorporating The Eulenspiegel Society newsletter -- in 1994. Prometheus is always interesting and educational; it includes how-to articles, fiction, and a large number of columns. The anniversary issue is a somewhat special format, and features pieces on SM throughout the ages and the history of TES. It also reprints several classic articles and stories from early issues of the magazine (mostly from the early 1970s), including "Safewords -- Pro" and "Safewords -- Con," an article on how to make cheap restraints, and a review of Venus in Furs. This one may well become a collectors item. Note that the numbering scheme was changed with this issue, so #24 follows #16. $5.95. TES, P.O. Box 2783, New York, NY 10163-2783. Congratulations, TES, and best wishes for the next 25!
This well-known magazine -- whose name no one seems to known how to pronounce -- has long been a prime source of SM how-to information, and this has not changed with its move to New York City under new publishers Mitch Kessler and Gerrie Blum. Issue #19 features an article on contracts by Mary Malmros, how to find what you're looking for through the personal ads, and secrets of throwing a bullwhip by Kessler. Issue #20 includes a feature on the pagan Lupercal festival, how to make stocks, full-time SM, and suffocation and strangulation. Issue #21 focuses on news related to civil rights and legal issues, and also contains articles on coming out into SM, the Samauri tradition (by Laura Antoniou), ritual flagellation, and "A Gentle Introduction to Watersports." I like the new "East Coast feel" of the revamped Guardian. $6.95. The Utopian Network, P.O. Box 1146, New York, NY 10156.
Skin Two is a classic slick European fetish magazine. Featuring gorgeous photography, outrageous fetish clothing, and an attractive layout, Skin Two also includes fine articles. Issue #18 includes "The Politics of Spanking," a pro-sex feminist analysis by Carol Queen. The centerpiece of this issue is a 34-page Guide to Kinky California, featuring the results of editor Tim Woodward's "research" here last fall (some faces and places you might recognize: Bondage-a-Go-Go, Pat Califia, Sarah Lashes, Fakir Musafar, and Midori) -- it's interesting to see our local scene through British eyes. Yes, Skin Two is notoriously expensive at $25, but you can't get what it's got anywhere else. 23 Grand Union Centre, Kensal Rd., London W10 5AX
Taste of Latex has been through big changes in the past couple of years, having been purchased from Lily Burana by DM International and moved from San Francisco to Seattle. Subtitled "a magazine for those who test the limits," Taste of Latex features photos, columns, fiction, media reviews, and scene reports. Issue #13 includes photos by Charles Gatewood and Conrad Hechter. SF sexpert Carol Queen's "The Practicing Pervert" column discusses sexual personae. Cecilia Tan brings us Part IV of the futuristic fiction serial "Velderet 3000 AD." Scene reports include recaps of SF's Hooker's Ball, the C.U.R.V.E.S. corset gala, and Cuir Underground's fall birthday bash, as well as a Seattle tattoo tour. Although publishing isn't cheap and I'm glad to see someone making money putting out kinky content, $8.99 is quite expensive compared to similar publications. P.O. Box 16188, Seattle, WA 98116.
TLJ bills itself as the world leather community news magazine, and it
focuses on civil rights news and reports of community events,
especially leather contests. Issue #81 features an interview with
International Mr. Leather Larry Everett. Issue #82 includes coverage
of the Washington State Mr. Leather contest and the San Diego
Leatherfest. Pansexual and mostly US-focused. $5.95. 7985 Santa Monica
Blvd. #212, West Hollywood, CA 90046.