It wasn’t long ago that kink was so forbidden as to go largely unmentioned. We hope our book will help in the work of destigmatizing kink by making it more visible
It started in the fall of 2017. I was staying at an artists’ residency in New Hampshire, and I was thinking about what it can mean to be afraid of one’s own desires, to feel ashamed of what the body wants.
I had just published a story in Playboy, Safeword, about a couple arranging a first-time session with a professional dominatrix. By then, I’d published short fiction for almost a decade, but the story was by far the most sexually explicit piece of fiction I’d written, and I’d tried to brace myself for the odd, hostile notes I would surely receive from titillated strangers. As it turned out, I did hear from a lot of readers, but the notes weren’t hostile – instead, for the most part, people thanked me. The story had helped them feel less alone, they said.
