First, take a medium-ripe cantaloupe.

The finest fetishes, I think you will agree, are the ones that haven't yet been fetishized; that is, the ones that still live and breathe and develop with their practitioners' needs, as opposed to those that have become so much a part of the language that even your parrot could recite the rules. Fetishes, in other words, that have become so fetishized that they could as easily be described as cliches. Ritual is one thing; the slavish (pun intended) adhesion to somebody else's idea of a good time, in the belief that that is the "correct" way of doing things, is something else.

Case in point - Shades Of Grey, and all who flail in her.

Best Fetish Erotica avoids those traps. Well, mostly. The opening tale of a (very) young man's introduction to fat ladies' corsetry, Jerry Stahl's "Girdle Boy," is original only in its brevity, and there's a few other stories among the twenty-one where you simply sigh and say "oh, that old thing again." Or, alternately, "I can think of a lot better things to do with a lit cigarette than any of that" (Thomas Roche's overlong, and tiresomely over-wrought "Smoking").

But Alison Tyler, who so rarely disappoints, is positively enthralling with "Blades," the tale of a woman who gets off on both shoplifting and knife play, especially when the knife is what she has just shoplifted, and her partner is an employee of the store. Now that's a combination that guarantees some serious day-dreaming.

Myriam Gurbes' "Dolores" is deliciously steeped in Catholic guilt, to the point where the ritual and religion absolutely overwhelm whatever depraved deprecations that are sought out in darkened alleyways - and that includes the liberal use of chilli sauce to salve a recently whipped pussy.

Raven Kaldera's "Machine" plows similar ground in latex, allowing the over-riding impressions and over-arching need of the material itself to take the center stage, as opposed to anything else. The opening scene, in a Boston police department, with the latex so tight that she can't even talk, and has to communicate via post-its, is a joy on its own; the rest of "Machine" simply reinforces the stifling sensations of the story. And Greg Wharton's "That Grin" explores the joys of being tickled, and none of your featherlight fingers in the ribs for him. This is a serious tickle from a lover who may have no mercy, but who does pack "that grin."

Elsewhere, clothing, pain, race, cash, shaving, food, dolls and a big red chair all take center stage in one or other author's libido, and then there is Santa Claus, the object of Jenesi Ash's fascinations in a story that has a few laugh-out-loud moments, too. And from there, it's simply a matter of deciding in your own mind whether the author treats his or her fetish as a craving in its own right? Or if it's simply a means to a predictable end, and a sudden wet clean-up in aisle seventeen?

Because I've not forgotten that cantaloupe we started with, and I know precisely what I'd like to do with it.

Wanna play?