THE HELLBOUND HEART - CLIVE BARKER

I had no idea that Foucault wrote a horror novella. The whole book, but especially the first chapter, certainly reads like a Foucaultian odyssey into human sexuality and novel sexual practices. Basically, a straight man who considers himself beyond depraved and at the end of the “normal” human sexual possibilities and novelties seeks out demons the help him get to a realm of unnatural pleasures and bliss. Unsurprisingly, the demons don’t quite give him what he wants. The Cenobites, are really on some next level shit, sexually. Frank Cotton, the guy who’s seeking out these demons, mentions that he was expecting nubile girls with big tits and fat asses ready and willing to do whatever he wants. Typical straight guy fantasy stuff. The Cenobites are beyond gender, the book mentions their androgyny and their lack of interest in genitals multiple times, their pleasures are indistinguishable from pain (at least to a mortal). The “sex” they have isn’t genital focused, I’m sure you’ve seen Hellraiser or the Todd McFarlan toys that really stick out in my childhood memories of the extremely high-level body-modification s/m torture they’re up to. This might be the most far-out Foucaultian thing that goes down, the lack of phallocentrism in the pleasures the Cenobites offer. Fank thinks he’s here to meet conventionally beautiful women who will do whatever he wants (the straight male fantasy) and he’ll be the one doing the fucking. Instead, he meets a bunch of super far out gender-queer demons who are going to fuck him in incredibly innovative and elaborate ways for eternity. A parable for our times. Honestly, the book could end there, or have just followed Frank up until the point he’s dragged to sex-hell. The book gets kinkier, we realize that Frank can have limited contact with his sister-in-law because he jerked off in a room right before he was dragged to hell and his brother later cut his hand in that room. Irregardless, we discover that, despite the fact that Frank raped Julia, the sister-in-law,she’s in love with him and he needs her to spill blood in that room so he can return to corporeal form. So then the book becomes a sort of kinky cuckold situation where Julia seduces men in the room while Frank-as-a-ghost-monster watches then kills them so Frank can get stronger. All very crazy and very sexy. It’s a novella technically, I believe it was originally included in a book of horror novellas edited by the big homie George R.R. Martin, and it’s just the right length. The book kinda switches around who the main character is, which is a little disorienting, but it leaves you wanting to know more about the Cenobites and their world. The books a bit overwritten at times, we get this sentence, “The storm made a ghost train of the house.” who’s meaning in beyond me, a well as a moment where a penis is described as a “boastful plum.” But overall, wonderful. A great horror book. Maybe I should see the movie? There isn’t a character named Pinhead, tho there is one with a grid of nails stuck into their head who speaks in a woman’s voice (again, the gender of the Cenobites is opaque). Very kinky and spooky. 666 demons from sex-hell