This slim volume of twenty sexual scenarios is not quite a collection of full-bodied stories, but it has its own charm. The author explains that she is the “collector” of the title, and that she collects other people’s stories about sexual adventures:

Hungrily, I listen to the erotic acrobatics of total strangers and commit them to paper, usually whilst in a café or coffee house.

The author (whose pen name looks like three initials) suggests that she blends in with the middle-class “shopping population” of an English town, and that her interest in other people’s sex lives is matched by their willingness to tell her about them.

The author claims that she also does hands-on research by picking up strangers for experimental encounters. She explains her method:

This usually entails a trip away from my residence in Oxford to London, where I take a short lease on a flat, adopt a more suitable persona (I should have been on the stage), and explore areas of potential inspiration.

The combination of pseudonymous coyness and scavenger-hunt references to specific routes and locations (“the bus from Five Mile Drive to St. Giles in Oxford,” “a small conservatory attached to a coffee shop near Carfax,” “the oriental coffee shop at Waterloo Station”) will look familiar to anyone who reads the “true confessions” stories in certain sex magazines. Who is Kay Jaybee (or K.J.B.) really? If one looks for a glamorous yet chameleon-like woman holding a notebook and a pen in any of the places mentioned, could one be written into her next book?

Aside from a few rough-trade characters such as Kit the bleached-blonde American whore, the stars of these anecdotes seem likely to be as inconspicuous in public as the author. Their stories reveal a range of appetites. In her epilogue, the author claims:

The gambit [gamut?] of sexual experience within the bounds of this small country, indeed, within the bounds of the English Home Counties alone, is wide indeed.

Unfortunately, these sketches don’t capture a range of different voices, and the vocabulary drips with cliché. Here a young woman, “Jay,” is described being led into a lesbian scene in a nightclub:

Pressed against the mirrored wall, arms placed high behind her spiky red hair, a fantastically curvaceous girl had her eyes tightly closed. Kneeling before her, an eager petite woman was licking between her spread legs, soft fingers teasing the skin above sheer silk hold-ups. Jay took in the round exposed globes squeezed out seductively above the willing captive’s startlingly bright green basque. She didn’t need telling what to do. Jay’s tongue was quickly lapping at the right nipple like a hungry cat, while her escort greedily attacked the left.

It would be interesting to learn more about “Jay” and the woman who lured her into this scene. It would also be interesting to read about sex in a relationship which has existed for longer than a few hours, but the purpose of these vignettes is to turn the reader on, and the author does not deviate from her purpose. She explains that in some cases, her interview subjects only consented to reveal the details of their sex lives after she promised them strict anonymity. To keep her promise, the author supposedly had to eliminate all information which could identify them.

The stories in this collection cover a spectrum of situations, genders and activities. The relatively vanilla scenes are not separated from those based on popular fetishes (especially voyeurism and exhibitionism, which seem inherent in this collection) or percussion scenes involving various implements (a belt, a cane, a riding crop, a whip). Males and females mix and mate and impersonate each other in adjoining stories. This kind of promiscuity looks particularly English to me, and it suggests an upper-class tradition of specialized tastes under a façade of heterosexual respectability.

Objects used in the scenes include “sweets” (a lollypop used as a dildo, licorice boot laces for bondage, tingling powder licked onto skin). Then there is the lady who advertises her services in the back of a car magazine, and who is described stretched over the bonnet of an upscale vehicle, getting beaten and fucked while pressed into its smooth metal surface. In one notable experiment (called “Treasures”), the author introduces a male friend to her collection of sex toys, and he shows his submissive side.

Most of the Dominant/submissive stories are male-dominant. In a scene in an actual castle, a young man responds to his female friend’s request by playing the role of a torturer:

Paul, keeping the flame as close as possible to her cunt, began to blow softly against her vulnerable flesh. Heather leapt within her bonds as, for a fraction of a second, his soft breath brushed the flame onto her skin.

In another story, a young man in a nightclub picks up a bit of “rough trade,” a laborer whose van is parked outside:

He undid the back doors of the box van and almost threw me in. He really was as massively strong as I had fantasized. Not fat, but big and hard and toned. My mouth almost watered at what was about to happen.

The van-driver takes over:

He roughly pulled me closer and dragged my t-shirt over my head, leaving my bare chest to shiver against the van’s dank atmosphere. Then, forcing me to my knees, he offered his shaft to my mouth. I took it without hesitation. It almost filled my throat, forcing me to choke a little as I accommodated its width and length.

Without words, the van-driver does various other things to his willing victim until he is sore. Then the Alpha Male gently offers to “sort out” his playmate, and gives him relief.

This book can be read in short segments of time, and the sexual descriptions are playful and clear. The cover art is discreet. The author concludes:

I shall leave you now, and head off to continue my search. The fantasies of the British public are just waiting for me to find them. I’ll head to Scotland first I think, then maybe Devon and Cornwall, possibly Wales. . . I’ll see you there. . .