SPEED READING: Heavy Petting / Heather Hite
Heavy Petting
Heather Hite
With an X Books
Review by
Lauren Parker
Welcome to Speed Reading, our fast, occasionally flippant, review column where we attempt to spread the love of a recent new release in a very short amount of time. We’ll take the time to find some incredible books, you spend your time reading some incredible books.
So, what’s Heavy Petting about?
Heavy Petting is a collection of erotic photography focused on the healing powers of smut.
And, who’s the author?
Heather Hite is a boudoir photographer based out of Ohio
What’s their deal?
Hite’s mission in their erotic work is to document the power and sex appeal that people (specifically women) experience at every age.
What’s a single reason to read Heavy Petting?
Because if there is anything more important than feeling sexy, it’s supporting and appreciating the eroticism of others.
What are a couple more reasons to read Heather Hite?
It’s sexy, it’s steamy, it’s smutty, and it’s a coffee table book so it’s the perfect way to piss off your grandpa.
If you’re a fan of these books, you should give Four Crescents a chance:
The Full Body Project / Leonard Nimoy
Robert Mapplethorpe - the Archive / Frances Terpak
Opera Nude / Keith Carter
A little more from Lauren Parker:
I rose out of the sea because it limited me. I need to sit on a barren stretch of rocks and sand and pry off every barnacle that had collected in my joints. The myth about them is that they eat you, but the truth is tediously worse. They limit your movements. They are drawn to erosion. They insist on always touching you. I took a shard of shale and scraped them off the heft of my breasts, off the crease of my hip, under the bottoms of my toes. There is no appeasing them. If you walk nice, they spread so your arches raise. They bring their friends. I got so tired of them whispering to me from the curl of my neck “slut slut slut slut.”
There is nothing I can take off that allows me freedom; parasites wait. I am never fully bare. They say they are harmless. “It could be worse,” they say. “We could eat you. Be grateful.”
They layer onto me like a shell; I am collapsing inside of it. I am tired of being held together by something that needs me so desperately.
I left their screaming powdered carcasses on the beach in a pile of rocks, puckered mouths gasping and writhing. The ocean felt cool and bright now that I could let every part of it touch me. Maybe we can be gentle to each other again. I believed in the eroticism of removing all the pieces of me that others tried to claim and colonize.
Hite made me feel that.
