Partners is mostly about a group of six friends in New York, all of them leathermen (ie into serious S/M as a hobby) who meet regularly to 'play' in each other's dungeons (equipped torture chambers.) The details and background are meticulously researched leading some of us to suspect the artist of being a real gay man. (Others of us think the artist is one of the office ladies who went on a famous tour of New York's leather bars and stores a few years ago. Twenty young Japanese women descended on Soho, taking copious notes and buying in quantity and leaving the store owners just a little confused. 'What was THAT?') Oddly, given its premise, Partners manages to be both subtle and romantic in its depiction of the various relationships within the group, especially that of Marlon and Doug, the main pair. Marlon is an executive in the big firm where Doug is a maintenance man, but in the leather world Doug is the top and Marlon the bottom. "We're lucky," Doug says. "We've got our respectable public lives and our satisfying private ones." Marlon agrees. "Back in high school I wanted to kill myself. I'm glad I didn't- I'd never have known this happiness." Thus ends the happy evening of Marlon's first fist-fuck....