Does it tune you up and turn you on? The scent of sweat; the grit of sawdust, dirt, or oil in the crease of a palm; the look of a man focused solely on how he will solve a problem, or bring something new into being... Few things get my heart beating like a man in a hard hat---a man who knows what he's doing.

The Hard Hats anthology from Cleis Press offers a whole lot of know-how, and a whole lot of men. Twenty-one well-written, ~10 page apiece stories of men who are masters of their trade, and masters of their sexuality are sure to please lovers of craftsmanship---electrical, erectional, installational, sexual.

In "Sooty," T. Hitman tells a semi-autobiographical tale of a man restoring a crumbling home who seduces and is seduced by his chimney builder. "Fuck," I moaned, lowering to one knee on the aforementioned wide pine floorboards, not the most comfortable position, but perfect for our present needs. "You handsome fucker..." I pulled Wyatt's pants down to the tops of his sooty boots. Showing the same ease with which he'd disposed of his clipboard, he unlaced them and kicked them off. I caught sight of a big toe poking playfully through a hole in one white sock before pressing my face into the warmth of his underwear. I inhaled the musty smell of a real man's crotch and almost ejaculated without even touching my dick. The intoxicating scent of balls; hard, sweaty cock; and lush patch spoke to me...

G. Russel Overton's "Live Wire Delta" features a master electrician, a mechanical journeyman, and a painter working as a team in every sense of the word on a summer roof project. Our lips smashed together for a three-way kiss. I could taste Johnny's salty-sweet cum on Gary's lips. I said that I would like a turn at Johnny's dick on the next round. I put my boxers back on and strapped my toolbelt around my waist. I spent the rest of the afternoon running conduit. I had two more compressors to hook up over the next two days. Their casual, matter-of-fact inclusion of sex as part of a hard day's work is fantastically hot.

Perhaps my favorite story in Hard Hats is A. Steele's "Vertigo," in which a confident contractor confronts a businessman whose office he's building about his fear of heights. Just as Conrad felt the first telltale clench in his stomach, Rafe clamped down tight on the base of his dick. "Fuck. Please!" Conrad gasped. "I told you---fuckin' comes later. Listen to my story." His lips ghosted over Conrad's mouth. "I licked..." Rafe licked. "And sucked..." As he sucked Conrad's lower lip into his mouth, Rafe's hand resumed its up and down motion, but now the pace was much too slow. "And fucked him into submission." He unwound one of Conrad's hands from his neck and pressed it to the front of his jeans.

Conrad moaned at the feel of Rafe's hard, hard cock pushing against his palm. "You see," Rafe said, picking up his pace incrementally, "I wouldn't let him come, 'til he'd put on a safety harness and hung his head out over the side of that big, nasty building."

Hard Hats editor Neil Placky promises "Gay Erotic Stories" in his subtitle, and he delivers. While bisexual histories are alluded to for a small handful of characters, the only folks getting sweaty together in Hard Hats are men. Most of the stories feature one-on-one couplings, though there are threesomes to be found, and even one story where the whole crew goes to work!

Placky packs 21 hot stories into the 240 pages of Hard Hats, and I'm so glad each one is there. The nicely glued, sultry-covered (but his gloves are too clean!) anthology holds mainly vanilla sex---there was one foot fetish story, a couple involving exhibitionism, and "Vertigo"'s hero did a wonderful job with a dominant/submissive dynamic. On the whole, the sex in Hard Hats is sweaty, raw, fast, and arousing, but not too outside-the-box. (Builders need right angles, I suppose.) The most variety that's given is whether the partners are construction workers with other construction workers, construction workers with live-at-home writers, or construction workers with high-rise execs. Each of these social constructs casts an interesting light on the sexual relationships described. Also, a very good job is done of incorporating condoms into chance encounters, and warming bottoms up prior to penetration---to me, the safer the sex, the hotter. And Hard Hats is making me sweat!

The Naked Reader Book Club, of which I'm a very contented member, had "Lesbian Vampires" as a theme for October. I've grown to really love picking up a new book of erotica each month (the published stuff is so much better than what you find online for free, and Cleis does a great job with their anthologies), but I thought that Girls Who Bite would leave someone like me craving a little ... penetration. So I diverged from the club path and chose a book that suited my own tastes: Lots of penetration, lots of rimming, skilled men confident in their mechanical prowess, lots of sex-upon-first-meeting, and a whole lot of tools (wink). I'm so glad I did---while Hard Hats doesn't have a lot of variety, it has a lot of exactly what turns me on. There wasn't a single story in this book I wanted to skip, and I'll probably want to read them all a few more times. This is the first erotica book I'm giving a five-star review to, and I'm sure to replay lots of these stories in my mind, along with rereading them.

I think my favorite part of Hard Hats---and perhaps why I've got a tool fetish in the first place---is the perfect naturalness of how sex spills from this good strong hard work. To me, building is a natural extension of a human's mind and muscles. And almost the only human outcome more natural than problem solving is fucking. The stories in Hard Hats do such an excellent job of showing the libidinal energy of these skillful men applied in both natural, virile realms at the same time.

There's nothing like a man who takes care of his tools. And I'm so glad to have a book full of 'em.