I’m back//review of RKB’s He’s on Top
May 4th, 2025 by Jessica Gold Haralson
Friends, fellow bloggers, countrymen: lend me your eyes.
For after writing over forty pages worth of material this week, I’ve renounced my junior year and am now free as a jaybird to blog away! I’m finished like Britney Spears’ career, Don Imus’ reputation, and Katie Holmes’ sanity. It’s good to be back to blogs.
But first, some unfinished business. You see, in the midst of paper writing and hand wringing, I had scheduled myself a stop on the fabulous Rachel Kramer Bussel’s kinky book tour for her new releases, the erotica story compilations He’s On Top: Erotic Stories of Male Dominance and Female Submission. (This coincides with the release of She’s On Top: Erotic Stories of Female Dominance and Male Submission).
Um, oops.
April is far behind us, it’s true, but I think this He’s On Top review will serve as a deliciously erotic mea culpa.
“Dominant men get a bad rap in our society,” begins RKB in He’s On Top, and boy, is Kramer Bussel ever spot on! Although hot sex abounds between male tops and female bottoms, there is nary a good story out there that doesn’t equate male dominance with some antiquated spaghetti Western version of masculinity, or female submission with the Stepford-esque compliance of a brainless bimbo.
Thankfully, the artful stories in this compilation dispel any fears that He’s On Top will be some sort of misogyny fest before you can say “nipple clamps.” Consider this passage from “On The Twelfth Day,” a story in the compilation from Andrea Dale:
“For twelve days, I promised you gifts,” he said. “And for twelve days, you promised to accept them.”She put her hand to her throat. “Have I not…?”
“No,” he said quickly, taking both her hands in his. “You’ve been amazing. Perfect.”
He took a deep breath. “Our agreement was twelve days. On this, the twelfth day, this is the gift I give you: me. Everything I’ve shown you, everywhere I’ve tried to take you. Understand this — I will always love you, always be with you, no matter what you decide, no matter if you decide that what we’ve explored isn’t how you want to be.” …
“Her answer was simple. A sweet dazzling smile, before she bowed her head and held out her collar to him.”
Awww. Isn’t that sweet? Nora Ephron herself probably couldn’t make it sweeter.
Yet lest you think that Bussel’s put together some kind of Harlequin cheese fest, the depictions of loving, tender sex between considerate male tops and their female submissive is deeply intertwined with good ol’ raw sadomasochistic fucking. I particularly reveled at this cocksucking scene, which throws PC and propriety out the window:
“Your chest swells with the possibility of it, because you can do anything together. You can push her over the edge and catch her at the bottom, soft and safe in your arms. You can watch her dance and be inside her all at the same time, because you are the music she’s dancing to now, faster, and faster.
She cries out a response, but you know it’s the answer to another question, the one that matters more than anything. Because it’s the sweetest sound a man can hear, a woman you love coming around your cock, moaning, sobbing, sighing, and whispering that one magic word.
Yes.”
In a societal landscape which fears making too much out of the male top, this literary foray into his mind is an all-too-sparse treat in the world of erotica. With her thoughtful selections and clear enthusiasm for the subject matter, Bussel’s paean to the man on the “D” side of the D/s divide delivers.