CW: Hot Filth!

(Jules Scheele, self-published, 2022)

The cover to this zine promises is that the content will be “18+ explicit”, and Tie Me Up, I’m Yours makes good on this promise again and again, with a series of erotic images depicting a crew of lush queers in what someone only slightly more emotionally repressed than me would probably call “a range of alluring configurations”. The viewpoint of the fantasy is multifaceted, with Scheele’s clean lines giving equal weight to the desires of the figures being fucked from behind and the one doing the fucking; it is clear from one glance at these drawings that the people on the end of the leash are every bit as into it as the ones on the bossy end of it.  Un-tethered from the considerations of narrative, these snapshots allow for a free-floating subjectivity. The mind’s eye is not tied to any one situation in the moment of viewing – instead, the perspective is generally that of a present, sympathetic and above all interested party rather than that of a distant voyeur or a specific partner.

All of this makes it good porn, but it’s the playful yearning not just for specific bonds and positions but for a sense of blissful oblivion that feels most intimate in the end.

This sense of yearning isn’t just narrated across these images – though it is, and vividly – it’s embedded into every aspect of Scheele’s illustrations. Even a face glimpsed at the left hand side of the page, almost swallowed up by the fold of the zine itself, conveys a sense of active excitement- surprise, sure, but Scheele conjures a sense of anticipation here out of a handful of lines.

Fit for purpose, it makes you want to join in.