Review: Bedroom tourist
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 18, 2011
I just finished reading this story, and I really don't know how to describe what I'm feeling. Disturbed, aroused, confused, excited, even somewhat sad, I'm feeling all of these emotions. I knew Cara McKenna could provoke these reactions from me, ever since readingWilling Victim. And while I don't love this story the way I did Victim, it still moved me, provoking me into all sorts of emotions, prodding me to examine my own deep desires and darker kinks. Just as Elliot Mabeuse pushes me as a reader, so does CM, really shoving me around, never allowing me to feel too comfortable, keeping it rough and edgy just the way I like it.This story has several things I go for- the submission and domination, the voyeurism and exhibitionism, menage, and, most of all, the controlling, possessive and domineering male. Rasul, I could soon have more time with him, with all his imperfections, from the control freak mentality to the obsessive-compulsive tendencies. His quirks, his needs, and his vulnerability are combined with his complete control, his perceived coldness, and studied detachment, creating such an erotic contradiction for me.Rasul is never one thing. He is everything all at once. And I want more of him. To me, he is this story. Even after having just finished it, he is the one I'm thinking about, the one I worry about, the one I care most about.Rasul is married to Emily. They have been married for about three years. He is darkly exotic and foreign, having come from the Middle East to the US to work for Homeland Security as an interrogator. He spends his days being tough, demanding, and aggressive. For all the ways that he is dark, Emily is just as dark. Although Rasul and Emily differ in appearance, with Emily being blonde and soft, they both have similar pasts, filled with pain and fear.With a past of childhood abuse, Emily sees in Rasul peace; he is her safety net. She trusts him, allowing herself to fall back into victim mode during sex, owning and controlling those same feelings of weakness and helplessness she felt in the past, when she was unable to control what happened to her. And Rasul also enjoys this power play, knowing that by accepting Emily's submission in the bedroon that he is also accepting his own need to be in charge.Emily tends bar, and this is where she meets Jeremy. Emily and Rasul invite him to be a third, part of Emily's fantasy of being shared by two men. Jeremy is an unlikely bedroom tourist, an invited voyuer and a controlled participant. He's nice and perfectly simple, a stranger to complement the sexual dynamic between this couple.Emily's kink is the domination, that feeling of being in control even as she relinquishes control. Rasul's turn-on is being in control of Emily's pleasure, granting her every wish, sexual or otherwise, and fulfilling her darker desires and fantasies. And if that means letting Jeremy onto the stage, that is what Rasul will do.Rasul is the puppeteer. Just as he is bossy and in control at work, he is just as commanding in the bedroom. If Jeremy is Emily's darkest desire, that kink of adding another man to the mix, then Jeremy is Rasul's to command, 'Rasul's to boss around for her pleasure.' And he does. Jeremy does not do anything in that bedroom without Rasul's explicit command and permission.Jeremy plays his part. He is just a bit actor, a willing puppet who serves his purpose. This I understood. I got what motivated him to join in, the adventure, the kink, the lust. What leaves me feeling sad and disturbed is Emily's motivation, which I believe is deeper and more complex than the apparent need to be bad, dirty and kinky, to not be an angel.I'm left wondering what else Emily will need in order to feel new and alive, what else will she need to add to her marriage in order to make it feel different. And this makes me feel excited but sad about her and Rasul. Even now when the story has been acted out and The End has flashed on the screen, I'm still thinking about them, wondering what Act Two will be.This story is deep and complicated and very erotic. I've finished it and now feel a bit roughed up for it. For me, it is disturbing in the best of ways. Like Jeremy, I'm willing to be a tourist again.m/f/m