The poetic side of leather fetish in "Box Hill" by Adam Mars-Jones

I ended up with a copy of “Box Hill” by Adam Mars-Jones by accident when Aesop ran their Queer Library project in June (the full excellent book list can be found here) – someone at their Borough store just randomly gave it to me. 

"On the Sunday of his eighteenth birthday, in 1975, Colin takes a walk on Box Hill, a biker hang-out. There he accidentally trips over Ray, a biker napping under a tree – and that’s where it all starts," reads the description on the back. "Box Hill" is a gay love story of the dominant-submissive relationship of the narrator and the biker – told from his memories as he looks back into the 1970s from the present day. 

The book is beautifully-written, sexy and sad. But most importantly, it's very multi-dimentional – it's been called by various reviewers "intimate and stirring", "sensationally lewd", "shocking" and portraying "the wildest stretches of human behaviour".  But as a book about gay leather sex, it can certainly have multiple readings  – depending if the reader is gay or queer or straight, and at all familiar with concepts of BDSM and leather sex. 

There are a lot of things in this book which would be picked up by the community but no-one else: from the changing nature of how we talk about consent to the importance of queer archiving – and what happens to lives, possessions and memories of those whose love and sexuality are deemed non-normative. But also there is so much in this book for your inner fetishist: the poetry and tenderness in how the narrator talks about  the obsolescent British-made bikes, his lover's leather gloves or leather in the interior of his flat. 

The fragment below, dedicated to a zip on a one-piece leather suit, will be imprinted in my mind forever – and hopefully in yours too.