Diosa, the erotic purity of depravation
Apr 8th, 2010 by apartmentblogger
There are books so marvellous that once read become a part of your soul… “Diosa” (Spanish word for “Goddess”) is one of those books: an erotic short story by the Cuban author Juan Abreu that explores the lustful world of sadomasochism.
“Diosa” is narrated in the first person by Laura Valero, a smart and beautiful woman that becomes interested in bondage and submission after accidentally seeing some BDSM pictures, and starts exploring a whole new world of erotic pleasures with her husband, who playfully becomes her Master. At some point, they look for the help of an experienced “Master of Masters”, an old Japanese man called Yuko who lives retired in Barcelona. The book compiles the e-mails and messages exchanged between Master Yuko and his newly chosen apprentice Laura. They don’t talk only about bondage and submission, but also about Japanese culture and traditions like ink paintings, samisen music or the haiku poems of Matsuo Basho.
One of the most prominent Barcelona site depicted in the book is a little shop called “Mercat del Fruits del Bosc” de Patràs inside the huge Boqueria market. Until it closed two years ago, this original market shop specialized in selling a wide variety of edible insects and exotic ingredients, impossible to find anywhere else in the city. Amongst the delicacies that could be found there were boiled maggots, dried ants, cooked scorpions or stir-fried crickets… One of the first tasks that Master Yuko imposes to his apprentice Laura in the initial chapters of “Diosa” is to buy a special kind of crickets from this Boqueria store and devour them both in a special dinner with her Master and again as an afternoon snack, within sight of some of her co-workers. Laura manages to overcome her initial fears and performs the task with ease and dedication.
Other locations of the city are mentioned with less specificity, because of the secretive and discreet nature of the BDSM activities depicted in the book. But in any case, you can identify references to the Ramblas, or to spots in the Eixample quarter and, of course, to the general atmosphere of freedom and independence that impregnates the city. So if you want to retrace the steps of Master Yuko and submissive Laura throughout the city, you can do it easily: just rent apartments in Barcelona and start exploring!
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