COMING SOON … ON THE EDGE …
“Go now, and sin some more!”
Ask Larry: The Collected “Leather Notebook” Columns
by Larry Townsend
Dear Abby in boots and a harness.
From 1979 to 1992, Larry Townsend wrote an advice column in Drummer and Honcho covering topics from “how do I find a Master?” to “how can I get my balls to hang lower?” to “can I get AIDS from fisting?” His responses were direct and clear, and still resonate today.
People asked him why he took the letters so seriously. “After all, they ask, some of these things are so silly that it’s hard to imagine why someone would actually be concerned about them.” His response:
But that’s the whole point of a column like this. It provides a forum for a guy to ask question(s) with whatever degree of anonymity (and naïveté) he wishes and have it answered without his having to expose himself to the jaundiced eye of a more sophisticated or less sympathetic adviser.
Ever had questions about Leather?
Here are some answers from the guy who literally wrote the handbook.
Special cover art by bara artist Jo Ji!
“Of all Larry Townsend’s works, Ask Larry—the collected Q&A from Drummer magazine—is, in my opinion, his true handbook.”
—Vince Andrews
CUM GET IT, BOY
The Leatherman’s Handbook
Golden Anniversary Edition
by Larry Townsend
The wait is over.
New editions of Larry Townsend’s underground classic The Leatherman’s Handbook have been difficult to lay your hands on for over two decades. Especially if you wanted to pay less than $100.
The world has changed since the Millennium Edition was released in 2000 and the Leather community was fully in the grips of “the catastrophe”—HIV and AIDS. At that point, Townsend wrote in his introduction:
As for myself, I suppose I should look forward to the Golden Jubilee, by which time I hope the health crisis will be long gone and we will have been able to revert back to some of the behavior I so blithely described twenty-five years ago.
Well, here we are, Larry.
You know what to do, boys.
Special cover art by Ego Rodriguez!
From the Introductions to the Millennium Edition (2000):
As I said, Larry Townsend changed my life, and I am grateful. I am certain he has changed the lives of many other people, too. This new edition of The Leatherman's Handbook will undoubtedly change even more lives, open more windows, unlock more closets.
—Victor Terry
Larry Townsend's Leatherman's Handbook was combination etiquette book and Boy Scout Handbook for the Mineshaft's epic nights of beautiful people . . . .
—Jack Fritscher
Larry Townsend's Leatherman's Handbook was an immediate cult classic when it first came out in 1972. Its publication was the first step in bringing leathersex into the open in the gay world. Its instant popularity proved just how interested men were in the previously taboo subject.
—John Preston
Looking on Amazon?
Expect to pay this much:
Want some filthy fiction?
Run, Little Leather Boy
by Larry Townsend
“It’s a game,” I suggested.
“For many, unfortunately, it is,” sighed Bert.
After being caught with a man, Wayne Hoffsteder—spoiled and handsome, lusty and insightful—is sent by his parents to live with his Uncle Bert in a stately London townhome.
Through Uncle Bert, Wayne learns the meaning of SM and seeks his own place within the Leather hierarchy. From the dark formal London leather clubs to the cold stone torture chamber of a Bavarian castle, Wayne follows his obsessive lust to learn—and experience—more. And in the end, he learns to master the most difficult submissive of all—himself.
“There really is no game. For us it is life, and the opportunity to activate the most profound potentials within our living minds and bodies.”