No. 1 way I can tell that the holiday season has arrived? The No. 1 search term for visitors to Xark is "SANTA SEX," and yes, there should be a 2008 "Santa Sex & Elf Panties" graphic in your online stockings very soon, boys and girls.
But the "SS&EP" series is really just a running joke here -- it's only about sex in the way that Snakes on a Plane was about herpetology and transportation safety. Today's topic is actually about sex -- sex in the "turn-you-on-omigawd" sense -- and it begins with the banner at the top of this page. As a "thank-you" (and a smart piece of marketing) for including her in the collage, sex essayist Susie Bright sent me a copy of her latest publishing endeavor: X: The Erotic Treasury. She's the editor (and the author of one of the pieces).
Schwag like that (it's a beautifully made $35 collector's book) deserves a review. But herein lies the rub: What kind of qualifications do I have for reviewing a collection of erotic short stories? And more importantly: How do I manage the line between the socially acceptable sex-in-the-abstract tone of Xark (I mean, my MOTHER reads this blog) and cover the sex-is-sexy reality of a book that's intended to turn people on?
And it occurred to me: My dilemma illustrates both the appeal and paradox of modern erotica: It's simultaneously taboo and mainstream, meaning we're both titilated and bored by it at the same time.
So anyway, I'm gonna talk about sex after the jump. If you don't want to read about sex -- or, more likely, you REALLY don't want to read ME talking about sex, just don't click the link (of course, if you're one of our RSS subscribers, you're just on your own).
First, the book. It's a thing of beauty as an object (like Susie, I'm a book fetishist): It's a red fabric hardcover with gold lettering and patterns sheathed in a case that's smokey and dark and red and pretty much the book-cover equivalent of the world's most alluring bordello.. My case was dinged during shipping, and it should tell you something that I was instantly upset by that. This is the most luxurious and sensual book that I've touched since I got my copy of The Summer Isles from Aio Publishing.
The 40 stories are all over the place within the general subject of sex, so there isn't one thing I can say about the group beyond this: The people who wrote them are all good writers, in the sense of language and form and storytelling ability, which isn't universal in mainstream fiction and likely isn't true in the field of erotica. I don't know how many of the names are real names, but judging by the names alone the majority of the stories are by women. Which is generally a good thing.
Here's why: the two poles of the sex entertainment business are "Erotica" on the acceptable side and "Nasty Smut" on the not-acceptable side, and that continuum would tend to apply to gender as well. Nasty smut is traditionally the male genre, where the sex is rough and humiliating and anatomical and stupid, while Erotica is supposedly the high-brow stuff that delicate flowers of womanhood read to get them in the mood. Like the "couples" category in video porn, Erotica has the image of being safe and non-threatening stuff that you can use to get your wife excited without making her feel tacky.
So when you've got women writing about what turns them on, the good news is that they're more likely to be creative and imaginative, and the bad news is that this could be really bland.That's what I halfway expected, anyway.
Well, this is not like that. The women's sexual fantasies in this book aren't acceptable romance-fantasy swoons. They're about women who make dangerous choices, women who push envelopes of comfort and trust. In fact, if there's a common theme, it's that most of the protagonists are women, regardless of the gender of the author, and many of them seem to be on a private erotic quest that's at least as much about a need for experience and adventure as it is anything else.
But just when you think that this collection is going to turn out to be the dressed-up version of the smutty paperbacks that used to circulate around my high school circa 1981 (only remember one title: "Virgin Territory," and my girlfriend and her friends reading it as a joke... I considered this a highly promising development at the time), it throws you a curve. Bright's story in the collection, for instance, doesn't actually contain sex: It's two non-monagmous lovers sitting on the beach talking about the man's new partner, an uptight thirtysomething Blow Job Queen, and what that portends for the new woman's future relationships.
The couple gets turned on talking about the topic and goes back to the house, presumbably to fuck, but the only explict act that gets described is the man pulling the woman's nipple out of her suit there on the beach and sucking on it briefly "like a caramel." That's it. That's all. So it's a sexy story in which the sex is secondary.
Is that boring? Absolutely not. It's a couple talking about sex, and if you think about it, a good sex-talk with your partner can be one of life's hottest moments. You wouldn't want the entire collection to be couples talking about sex and then not having it, but as a change-up, it's excellent.
I'd describe the collection like going out to a fancy-ass restaurant. Not every story in the collection is meant to be an entree -- you've got appetizers, maybe an amuse bouche, even a dessert or two. All together, they're varied and surprising and often exciting.
I haven't read much erotica, so I don't have the context to give you, but if you're a heterosexual (not too much in here for gays, which surprised me, too) looking for a Christmas present to give someone you're fucking and would like to continue fucking, then yeah, this would probably be a smart choice.Certainly better than another absurd piece of lingerie from Victoria's Secret.
ACCEPTABLE NAUGHTINESS
Of course, this is the paradox: For centuries, sex was something tabboo, and for many people, the sense that one is breaking a tabboo is really the secret that literally gets their juices flowing. Why do the Taliban go so apeshit if a woman walks down the street and you can glimpse her bare elbow or ankle? Because they've made everything so tabboo that practically EVERYTHING is both offensive and mind-boggling exciting. Which is why making porn for the Kabul market would be the easiest job on the planet.
In a sense, eroticism as entertainment is a duel between our desire for the forbidden and our need to feel safe and accepted, and I don't know that it's possible to resolve that tension without destroying the sense of excitement. It's why we both need and test boundaries. It's why we're so often turned on by the thought of things we "shouldn't" be thinking about. It's why it's so easy to get our signals crossed in freindships, etc.
It's why people who tell us that sex "is good and natural" can be a real buzz-kill. Sure it is.
I became a fan of Susie Bright's Sexual State of the Union because she wrote about sex in a way that was political and philosophical and matter-of-fact, and yet I swear to gawd I was illuminated and turned-on by the time I finished it. She wrote about sex without making it unsexy, and let me tell you: That's a trick.
So I'm not going to close by telling you that sex is good or that sex is bad. Instead, I'll just report that reading this collection not only gave me a jolt, it reminded me how important it is to stay on speaking terms with one's dark side. We are not who we really are until we accept it..
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