Rituals of Love: Sexual Experiments, Erotic Possibilities

Published by Picador, 1994, softcover, illustrated, 210 pages, condition: very good.

"Straight" sex has let its practitioners down. Not only is there often a gap between erotic expectations and sexual realities (as the popularity of "agony aunts" and sex therapists indicates), but now, with the advent of AIDS, what used to be termed normal, healthy sex is fast be g positively dangerous, if not deadly. For many people sexual activity has a much broader definition than it used to: it could be dressing up, bondage, S/M, piercing, any kind of exhibitionism or fetishism. This illustrated book (80 black and white duotone photographs) is an exploration of "the Scene": the social forum in which all these pursuits and many others flourish. Each of Ted Polhemus's chapters examines a different aspect of "the Scene": The New Sexuality (or Beyond Promiscuity), Kinky Gear (Fetishism and Fashion), Sex and Power (sub/dom), Pleasure and Pain (S & M), Gender (cross-dressing and transexuality) and Sexual Healing (sexual addiction and the positive, "spiritual" possibilities of erotic ritual). Each chapter is interleaved with case histories: the stories, and photographs, of couples whose sexuality illustrates and elucidates the themes under discussion. Housk Randall's photographs of these couples: gay and straight, young and old, black and white, are powerful, explicit and intimate portraits of sex with love, sex with imagination, and sex with a sense of humour.