Review by Wrath James White

RAZOR WIRE PUBIC HAIR By Carlton Mellick III Eraserhead Press ISBN 0-9729598

Vaginas, Vaginas, Everywhere!

As you may have guessed from the title, this is a bizarre little book. Eighty-two pages of surreal mindfuck. I know because I counted them. There are no page numbers. Who needs them. You won't put the book down. Like it or loathe it the thing is engrossing.

Imagine a world without men where the only way a woman can reproduce is with the help of a giant computerized incubator and a genetically engineered sex toy. Now imagine that this sex toy is intelligent. It has emotions and a soul. It hopes and dreams and it falls in love. This is the premise of Carlton Mellick III's RAZOR WIRE PUBIC HAIR.

Not weird enough for ya? Add to that the most bizarre collection of oddities this side of the looking glass.

One of the main characters "The Sister" is a nymphomaniac who is covered from head to toe in vaginas. Celsia is an Amazon warrior with pubic hair made of razor wire, which in this world seems to be an adornment as common as pierced nipples and clitorises are in mine (don't ask) The main character is a genetically engineered hermaphrodite sex toy named Celsia 2 who longs to be loved by his/her owner. Oh, but wait, there's more … there's sex starved zombies, hordes of marauding rapists, twat frogs, a hoota beasts that is basically just a big hairy vagina with legs, and still another giant talking and apparently quite wise vagina built into the wall of the mansion in which many of these creatures reside.

What's most bizarre is that none of this seems to be there for pure shock value. In fact, this perverse menagerie of beings are presented in such a matter of fact manner that it is as if the last thing the author wants is for you to be shocked by them. He wants you to just accept them so that he can just get on with his story. And what a story it is!

RAZOR WIRE PUBIC HAIR is the touching tale of a living, breathing, thinking, sex toy that is hopelessly in love with its owner who views it as little more than an object. This book could be a metaphor for so many sexual relationships where one partner is dominant and the other is submissive, struggling to be seen as more than merely an object of lust but as a potential true love.

The most disturbing thing about this book is how much heart it contains. "Your purpose in life is to fuck as much as your body will allow before your death. You are a dildo." Celsia 2 is told and you can almost hear his/her heart break. Take away all the surreal sexual accoutrements and this could almost be a tragic romance novel about lost and unrequited love.

Am I projecting here? Is this really just a raunchy little tale told merely to tittilate and amuse and perhaps, after all, to shock? Maybe. But I don't think so. This book could have easily been some vapid exercise in shock value but it isn't at all. Yeah, Carlton seems to be unusually fixated on vaginas (hey, aren't we all?) but for him it seems to be more than a fetish but rather he sees them as some type of religious icons. But don't get me wrong, there's definitely a fetish there too.

Each time the female sex organ appears in this tale it seems loaded with power. As well it should. From the hoota beast who assaults our little sex toy as he lay bound in the middle of a street in which warrior women relax watching their sex toys compete for their attention, the hyper-vaginal Sister who repeatedly forces herself on Celsia 2, and of course Celsia herself with her brutal mons of glittering surgically sharp wire surrounding her coveted sex, there is no escaping the punani. It is everywhere and it owns you.

I have to say I enjoyed this book. It was not at all what I expected. Surreal and perverse yes but so much more. At times it was easy to forget that a man wrote this. It's almost feminist propaganda. There are no men anywhere. They are extinct in Carlton's world. Even the rapists are female. The only thing close to being male are the genetically engineered sex toys created by the women who dominate the society for the purpose of reproduction. In RAZOR WIRE PUBIC HAIR vaginas even stand above God (who also makes an appearance or two in this novella) as the dominant force in the universe. I can dig that. It sounds very much like my own life.

Three book wyrms.

This review copyright 2003 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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