Rick Castro.
The Bondage Book # 1-4. (Complete)
Los Angeles: The Bondage Book, 1993-1997.
Staple-bound softcover.
62-66 pages.
English.
Very good.
Issue 1 has minor wear, soiling and creasing to covers.
Issues 2-4 have light wear to covers.
A complete set of these scarce early zines by seminal gay bondage photographer Rick Castro. A homemade alternative to slick gay pornography made in the context of a Queer Los Angeles that included Vaginal Davis and pre-internet street hustle culture.
High contrast photographs of naked tied-up young men, comics, letters from prison, ads for the Fertile La Toyah Jackson video magazine and Bruce La Bruce movies, interviews with such figures as performance and bondage artist Ron Athey and bondage comics artist Malex + Tony Ward and more, furry porn drawings by Mr. Drake, Dante's drawings and written fantasies of extreme bondage and subjugation including castration, etc.
"Mimeographed trash! Thats how this zine was described to me by this leather clone at the Folsom Street fair in San Francisco, unaware that I was the person responsible for it. He then preceded to tell me he had both issues and couldn't wait until the next. My response to this. You can't always have it the way you want boys! Either you get a magazine that's very slick and boring. Or you stick with me and my mimeographed trash! I love Xerox! Almost as much as I love bondage. There's something so cheap and impersonal about it. Just like your favorite sex club. The whole point of this zine is to revitalize porn, because lets face it! Its in a slump! Not financially of course Porn does and always will sell. Porn makes the world go round! I'm talking about the visually pleasing! The exciting! The New! It's all here in this modest 66 page mimeographed nightmare. And it's yours to do what you want with. Will you make it prosper? Will you force it to fold? Will you make it mainstream? Maybe it already is mainstream! Do you care? Probably not. But I think you do judging from the response I've received. Maybe it will die. Then it will become a collectors item. A part of homosexual history. Great! Anyway for those of you who are hung up with glossy quality in porn (I won't name names. You know who you are) and have an aversion to Xerox. Please stick to the advocate men and genre. In the words of the late great Bob Mizer of A.M.G.
'KEEP THE READER FEELING SUPERIOR'."
- from issue 3 of the Bondage Book.
