Warlock Masters: Ow, ow, ow!
by Madeline Iva
Here’s the short version: Warlock Masters by Domingo Rhodes is packed with amazing descriptive language, is big on hard core gay masochism and short on paranormal/fantasy. Buy it here.
Long version: Brace yourselves, ladies, because there is some really explicit stuff below. Super explicit. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
So, I have an acquaintance who is a straight guy DJ around town. He has a regular gig at this gay bar where with some frequency the drunken gay guys—thinking he too was gay–would hit on him.
What was that like? I asked, all agog and thinking here was some research I could maybe use one day.
“Aggressive. Guys slamming me against a wall. I mean, I’d almost have to fight a guy off. For real. Feel all jittery afterwards. I feel sorry for women now, having to put up with that kind of thing.”
And guys like this stuff? Well, I guess they do.
At least some do. Step into another world for a minute, as we explore WARLOCK MASTERS.
“They could hear him grunt, that mean grunt he likes to do that says I’m gonna hurt that hole, Bitch you gonna know I been in you,”
To which I say: Ow!
One time in college I asked my queer gal pal:
Why if you like girls do you like a girl dressed up as a cute boy? Why not just like cute boys? I’m confused…
And she said a girl dressing up as a guy was transgressive. What she was attracted to was a women who was transgressive, thus she was attracted to women dressed as a cute guy but not cute guys themselves.
Okay—so I’m thinking maybe this rape-y talk, you know, (my white liberal guilt is talking here) maybe this is being transgressive in ethnic-y gay world? Yes? Like they like guys to talk that way, but maybe not actually hurt their hole???????
(And for more evidence of our love of this transgressive submissive stuff– See Elizabeth Shore’s post on The Ultimate Down & Dirty Bromance–Why Ladies Love Gay Porn.)
So combine the aggressive sexual thing with the transgressive gay thing and put it in a book…and I’ll still say “Ow, ow, ow!”
I couldn’t help it. I mean, I’ve been thinking for awhile about writing a post on butt sex. Something with more butt positivity and a less waving of hands like they have had on Dear Author here here here here and here.
My understanding of anal sex in the real world is that some women do and some women Definitely Do Not. Guys seem much less wired up about the topic.
The erotic romance/romance world seems mostly full of women who are not up for back-door sex. In the way that once upon a time having sex before marriage signified something, and then giving bj’s signified something–there always seems to be this dividing line between ‘good’ girls and ‘dirty’ girls. Anal sex has perhaps become that dividing line in our modern age.
Good girls do not have anal intercourse. Nor do they really understand why anyone else would want to.
Which is interesting if you think about it, because:
A) Everyone knows that M/M romance is a strong seller in erotic romance. I assume, meanwhile, almost all m/m romances include at some point some anal intercourse.
B) Meanwhile, good girls (well, women) are often pro-gay. Gay men have anal intercourse—and they like having anal intercourse. So why do I almost never get the feeling that good girl women are like “Why-oh-why would my gay friend ever ever want to do THAT?”
Well, at any rate, Warlock Masters is never going to convert any butt-shy romance lovin’ ladies out there into trying a little back-door fun.
Yet certainly, the use of literary language is transgressive:
“…a bottom boy’s ass, promising succulence, melon ripeness, pungent odors trapped in a deep dark trench which beckons the passionate parting and the loving attention of a sedulous tongue.”
Wow! And it’s like that all the way through– that velvety language cushions the harsher thrusts to the narrator’s bum, which is even at one point called his ‘pussy’. These stories just don’t pull any punches. There is plenty of, um, porn-masochistic-ish action going on here:
“…and before I knew it Trajan had yanked his dick out hard, making my hole sigh and spasm up a ream of his cum, and he’d lifted himself up on his knees on the bed, said weight release allowing me to turn and raise my head just enough (despite exhaustion and the still reverberant echoes of intensely pleasurable pain from being so masterfully fucked down like the whore I am)”
—At this point my eyes are almost popping out of my head–
“…to espy a long, well-muscled and heavily hairy white torso beside me, and even furrier trunk legs with a half-hard left-leaning thicker-near-the- head baton of a pink uncut dick that—blink and it happened—let loose with a few hard sprizzles followed by a stream right at my face.
Yes: The bottom boy was me, and all that I really got to see was Andre Metzelder’s thighs, flat stomach and glorious forest of a treasure trail (being more or less hairless, you see, j’adore les poilus), though I wish I’d seen more. Trajan was right, though: I was a slave and he was fucking me just the way I liked it (hard/fast/hot load in my chute). Piss I wasn’t necessarily so into, not in and of itself at least; but nothing makes me happier than big handsome dicks on handsome men, and therefore I pretty much groove on whatever happens to be coming out of said dicks at a given time.
“Open up, bitch,” Karim sort of whispered, but with just enough meanness to give me an instant erection (not having been at all able to maintain one with Trajan’s monstrosity lodged in my rectum).
So began a lovely lovely summer, my own summer of love.”
Ow. Very ethnic guys talking about being slaves. Ow.
At the same time Rhodes is alternating phrases like ‘open up, bitch’ with j’adore les poilus. I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I’ve ever witnessed whimsical French phrases tossed off in erotica before. I gotta love it, even while I’m scratching my head.
The magic stuff is there in these stories, but it’s always thrown in as a bit of an afterthought. A few stingy chocolate sprinkles on one fu**** up cupcake. It’s not really paranormal the way you and I know paranormal. Just sayin’.
The last eye-crossing shock appeal in reading Warlock Masters is that it has a quote by Samuel R. Delany. If you’re not a total sci-fi geek (guilty) the name might only sound vaguely familiar to you. But having Samuel R. Delany review this book is like showing up at your hair salon to discover that Gisele Bundchen is the one who’s going to cut your hair. You feel kind of faint at the same time that you’re saying to yourself, “Wait a minute—what does Gisele know about cutting hair?”
I’m Samuel R. Delany, and I endorsed this guy-smut.
Here’s what Samuel (Chip to his friends) has to say about Warlock Masters:
“Four wonderful inventive tales, as only Domingo Rhodes could write them, that appeal to the darkness within us all.”
Okay, then. I say these stories are written by/for someone who’s gay, by/for someone who likes guys all the colors of a café au lait rainbow (really the descriptions of guys—their junk and their legs mostly–is the best part,) and by someone who can write like the dickens.
And this made me start thinking about Chip Delany who writes long amazing descriptions himself, using quite orgasmic language, who’s gay and black and doesn’t pull any punches in his speculative fiction series. (Let’s just say that if you relish the harsh world of Game of Thrones, you’d be happy reading his Return to Nevèrÿon series.) Does anyone want to start a conspiracy theory and say Domingo Rhodes is actually the pen name of a bearded famous author?
Chip if you’re out there reading this post, please think about following our blog. You too reader. Just push that little follow button to get yer ever lovin’ Lady Smut, seven days a week.
