A Fertile Book and the Urge to Improve

The month of love is just a day away, but love comes early at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association. The new columns have just been posted, and there are some exciting changes this month.

First, ERWA welcomes Vincent Diamond to the columnist roster. His new column, Serious About Smut, is full of practical advice about setting realistic goals about writing and publishing, and even though I might be considered a "veteran" by some, his advice was very helpful to me.

Next, although my "Shameless Self-Promotion" journey has ended, I'm continuing to "Cook Up a Storey," but at a new address. I'm now in the Authors' Resources section, which will allow me to discuss the experience of writing my second novel--just so my columns are in sync with my current focus. This month, however, in I Can Do Better: Fruitful Competition, Intelligent Vegetables, and the Erotica Revolution, I ease into the second novel discussion by talking about the foundations of our smut writing urge, how we might "elevate" the genre, and how to connect with readers. I also let off a little steam about society's dismissal of erotica and the way reviewers evaluate anthologies at Amazon. As I enter my third year as an ERWA columnist, I think I'm relaxing more deeply into the Japanese way of "following the pen." And since I just got a great massage at the spa a few hours ago, I feel especially relaxed right now.

Last but certainly not least, I've also posted a review of the delightfully amusing and inspiring book by Cecil Goran, Dictionary of Semenyms: 1, 383 synonyms for semen with examples of usage from erotic literature. This book is really an excellent resource for erotica writers and wordsmiths of all sorts, so head on over to ERWA and read the review. I guarantee, you will never see (hear, taste or smell) semen in the same way again!

Happy February to you all....

Why I Read: Apologies Forthcoming

I’m pretty picky when it comes to fiction—it seems to be one of the side effects of tackling the writer’s life myself. In my younger days, I used to finish every book I picked up. Perhaps this was a legacy of school assignments, but I did far more reading on my own than for classes. Now, however, I have no problem abandoning an uninspiring book with nothing more than a quick glance at the last few pages, which usually confirms the wisdom of my decision to bail early.

This might make me sound jaded, as if all the fun has gone out of reading, but actually the opposite is the case. Because when I find a work I really admire, the experience is electrifying. I recently finished a book that reminds me why I read fiction—a book that stretched my mind, charmed my sensibilities, and touched my heart.

I’m talking—or should I say raving?--about Xujun Eberlein's Apologies Forthcoming, winner of the 2007 Tartt Fiction Award. The eight stories in this collection, most previously published in prestigious literary journals, all deal with China’s Cultural Revolution and its legacy. This violent and tumultuous time in history has been an inspiration for many fine works of fiction and non-fiction, but Xujun Eberlein’s vision is distinctive in its emphasis on the common humanity of all the participants in this great drama—Red Guards as well as scholars, true believers as well as disillusioned intellectuals.

Eberlein’s low-key humor and eye for the perfect detail makes the book especially appealing and impressive. I was reminded of a comment Noah Lukeman made in The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying out the Rejection Pile (a great reference for writers ready to tackle the agent search or anyone looking for a good self-editing guide). I can’t seem to find the exact quote, but I remember Lukeman saying agents can actually determine the sensibility of a writer from the first five sentences! They know right away if this is a voice they want in their heads for a whole book. I feel the same way, and for me it was a pleasure to give myself up to the voices of these stories. The range of perspectives is especially satisfying in its complexity. In “Disciple of the Masses,” for example, when an idealistic young city woman is “inserted” in the countryside, we come to understand not only her plight, but those of her peasant hosts and her more cynical comrades and elders as well. These voices and images still linger—that to me is the ultimate sign of excellent writing.

I hesitate to say this—although only because we live in such an anti-intellectual society—but as I read this collection, I kept wishing I were reading if for a seminar so I could write a paper on it. There were so many fascinating themes, so many richly-layered passages to quote, the stories cried out for further discussion. I think this book would make a marvelous book group selection, perhaps accompanied by some historical reading about the Cultural Revolution.

I’m not sure exactly how I’d approach my paper, though, because there are so many choices. I might go with the theme of love in a society that is hostile to all personal expression, especially the ultimate in lawless self-indulgence: eros. “Pivot Point” and “The Randomness of Love” both introduce intellectual women who are unmarriageable because men see them as “too outstanding” and “too high to reach.” Nonetheless, they do find lovers, but the obstacles they face all but crush the relationships. And yet, the rare times the couples can be together heighten the poignancy. For someone like me, so immersed in erotica’s focus on sexual abundance (which I see as a reflection of the hyper-sexualized ethos of America as a whole), a society where ascetic endurance is the norm brings up fascinating questions about the relationship between culture and desire.

I was also struck by the way the author treats the figure of the artist at a time when creative expression was limited to mouthing Chairman Mao’s slogans. The collection opens with “Snow Line,” which examines the fate of a gifted poet in an environment that is not especially supportive to the arts, a story that foreshadows dilemmas all of the characters will face. “Feathers” was a particularly moving piece about a young girl who writes letters to her grandmother in her dead sister’s name to save the old lady from grief. These letters are, of course, a kind of fiction writing, an attempt to transform tragedy into art. Here a lie (read: fiction-making) becomes a form of love and healing transcendence—something the young girl cannot quite understand, although her sister’s friend who comes to visit, a writer herself, clearly recognizes their common bond. Another artist makes an appearance in “Watch the Thrill,” one of the most haunting and powerful stories in the collection. Told from the viewpoint of an aimless, essentially orphaned city boy, the piece portrays the psychological and aesthetic poverty of the times. The narrator remembers the old days, when a youth who has now been “inserted” into the countryside to be worked to death would tell ghost stories to the neighborhood children in the courtyard at night. The cleverly crafted, very dramatic stories would literally thrill the audience, but the Cultural Revolution has silenced the magic of storytelling and leaves only mundane, but no less horrifying, reality: the black, bottomless holes of his grieving mother’s eyes. In “Watch the Thrill,” the author’s skill is no less “thrilling”—this is truly storytelling at its best.

I could go on and on, and I know with material this meaty, I’d be bound to get a good grade (and then no one would ask me to dance because I’m too smart like the narrator in “The Randomness of Love”—believe me, I can relate). But perhaps it’s best to conclude with a final point about the power of fiction. These stories did indeed take me on a journey to a far-away place and time, and made me feel as if I’d slipped into other lives for a little while. Yet, what struck me most was that the protagonists’ dreams and disappointments, and the compromises they made to survive, were profoundly familiar. This apparently improbable sense of connection is why I read fiction—and I’m very glad indeed I read Apologies Forthcoming.

A Sexy Threesome at ERWA

This month I am all over ERWA with lots of love and kisses. First there’s my August installment of Cooking up a Storey: I’m Easy, But I’m No Slut: Why I’m Hot for Passionate Plumbers, Vibrating Mixers, and Heirloom No-Fail Fudge. Do I have to say more?

Then I make an appearance in the charming Ashley Lister’s column, “Between the Sheets”…oops, I mean, "Between the Lines." I talk about getting past first base, passionate getaways at country inns, theft, adultery, secrets of novel-writing and other topics pertinent to the writing life.

Finally, I review a fascinating book about the notorious knife-wielding geisha, Abe Sada, made famous in the West by Nagisa Oshima’s art film, In the Realm of the Senses. Read my take on Geisha, Harlot, Strangler, Star: A Woman, Sex and Morality in Modern Japan by William Johnston right here.

A Happy—and Sizzling Hot—August to you all!

Book Review: Gwen Masters’ AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

Gwen Masters is one of erotica’s star writers—and deservedly so. My pulse always quickens when I see her name in a table of contents of a new Cleis book or in the latest weekly issue of Clean Sheets, because I know her story is going to be smart, well-written, and sizzling hot. Of her many stories I love, a sentimental favorite is “Fifteen Minutes” from Best American Erotica 2006. The “sentiment” comes from the fact my own story was also selected for the anthology, because there’s little sentimentality in Gwen’s story. In fact, it’s a clear-eyed look at groupies and musicians on the road, which provides more than just fodder for some edgy sexual fantasy. It also gets your mind racing with questions about the nature of power and sex and self-destructiveness and callousness and how we armor ourselves against pain.

In pondering the effect of Gwen Masters’ work, I realized that her pieces are so powerful because the sex always occurs in an intriguing, and often tragic, context. Perhaps this is an obvious point but most sex scenes in what I’d define as porn or sloppy mainstream popular literature seems to occur in a vacuum. The sex scene is set apart from the story—generic bodies indulge in a formulaic coupling and then we get back to the story, as if sex were the same insertion of Tab A into Slot B for everyone. With Masters, the dynamics of a sexual encounter are shaped and fueled by the characters’ specific desires and demons. A brilliant example of this is her story “Indiana Jones, with Camera” published in The Erotic Woman. The story is about a very erotic woman who gives herself body and soul to a photojournalist lover whose past is as complex as his tastes in lovemaking. Wounded by his work in Baghdad and Afghanistan and other grim places both literally and figuratively, the photographer transforms pain into beauty and pleasure through his muse—I recommend the story highly.

But on to the review at hand. Thanks to a MySpace bulletin, I learned about Masters’ recently published novella After All These Years. She mentioned it was a story she was especially proud of and I knew I’d have to read it. And as I started to read, I immediately sensed I was in the hands of a master storyteller.

“You are a gift,” the stranger murmured.

I didn’t feel like a gift. I was a forty-something mother of three children who hadn’t flown the nest so much as they had fallen from it. I had too much gray in my hair, an aching back and a minimum wage job at a fast food restaurant that always left me with a rabid distaste of anything fried. It was the dead of winter in Chicago, the snow was piled up in high drifts everywhere, and my train was more than fashionably late.

The novella starts in just the right place with just the right line because those words mark a radical change in the narrator’s life past, present and future. The mysterious stranger will give the narrator a precious gift as well: a new sense of connection to her husband who was one of the victims of a suicide bomber’s attack on a US Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983.

Now I face a challenge in talking more about After All These Years. Masters takes the reader on a carefully orchestrated emotional journey and I don’t want to give too much away. I can say that she offers a rare glimpse at the human story behind the TV reports and the politicians’ rhetoric. She shows us the true cost to a family who has lost a husband and father. It’s a serious and moving piece of fiction—and it’s incredibly sexy, too. That’s because Masters gives us a sexual encounter that is so rich with context and history, it takes your breath away.

When Marilyn makes love to the mysterious stranger, she must confront the history of the war in his body. It’s sex as healing on a level that puts Marvin Gaye’s famous song to shame.

In the light of day, the scars weren’t nearly as bad as they had seemed in last night’s shadows. But they were everywhere, evidence of the hellish time he had gone through on the other side of the world. I reached up to touch his chest and he sucked in a breath as my hand started to explore. Once I started touching him, all my fear disappeared. I was more curious than anything else.

“Can you feel that?” I asked.

William let out a shaky breath. “Yes, but not like you would. It’s more like pressure. Almost a tickle in some places.

“What about here?” I asked and pressed my hand flat against his throat. The pulse there raced under my palm.

“That feels the same,” he whispered.

“What about here?” My hand slipped down and pressed against the tattoo on his arm.

William’s eyes closed. “Yes.”

I trailed my fingertips down his arm and touched each finger. He didn’t move as my fingers explored their way back up, followed the line of his shoulder, then ran both hands down his chest. He sucked in his stomach as I touched it. He lay back on the bed as my hands went lower. I stopped at the buttons of his jeans. He was hard behind them. The pulse in his throat jumped with his heartbeat.

“Does this feel the same?” I asked as I ran my fingertips along the waistline of his jeans. The denim was hot, warmed by his skin.

Beyond words, William nodded.

There’s more…and it’s hot, but again I don’t want to give too much away, except to say much more than body parts are involved here. Profound questions about the betrayal of a memory, forgiveness and self-forgiveness will haunt you long after you finish the novella.

After All These Years is the perfect illustration of my contention that the most powerful literary erotica involves sex that matters. Gwen Masters is not afraid to explore intense and often troubling situations but, like her Indiana Jones photographer, she has the artist’s knack of transforming the darker side of human nature into erotic and aesthetic pleasure. I was sorry when the novella ended, but it certainly lingered in my thoughts for a long time afterwards. Fortunately, I know Gwen has a story in the forthcoming anthology Dirty Girls, so I’m looking forward to enjoying some Masterful magic again very soon!

The Seduction of Words: Don Capone’s Into the Sunset

Don Capone’s Into the Sunset is entertaining comedy at its best. Even the madcap premise makes you laugh. Thirty-year-old Wayne Benson is tired of his stressed-out New York City life, so he ages himself with a wig and theatrical make-up and moves into a retirement community in Westchester to enjoy the easy life. Of course, he still has to commute into the city to work as a journalist at Silver Citizen magazine, but his new living situation only serves as a valuable source of stories for his work—at first. Soon enough the complications set in: a romantic relationship with a lovely widow, the suspicious glances of the security guards and administrators, a growing realization that adding forty years from a jar is a lot more work than he bargained for. Hey, I’m not going to give the plot away, but although it’s a bumpy ride for Wayne, the pages seemed to glide right by as I followed him on his adventure into premature maturity.

Reading as a writer—and I always do—I admired Capone’s plot, which is Chekhovian in its design. Each puzzle piece fits together perfectly by the novel’s end and I know that’s almost as hard to pull off as pretending to be old! I was even more impressed--or perhaps I should say, beguiled?--by the narrator. Wayne is, from an objective standpoint, a bit of a Peter Pan, not to mention a man who’s comfortable with living a rather significant lie. Ironically, his voice is refreshingly honest. I felt I was getting a glimpse into a real man’s view of sex, relationships, and the meaning of life. No doubt the humor and down-to-earth quality of the voice made for this immediate intimacy. I was reminded just a bit of the most compelling section of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity where the protagonist relates his sexual and romantic history (fortunately Capone spares us Hornby’s name-dropping and relentless pursuit of faux “cool”) which also gave me a fascinating glimpse into the minds of those unfathomable creatures called guys.

A clever plot and a likeable narrator make Into the Sunset a perfect subject for the “writing” part of my blog. But the novel has plenty of food and sex, too. For Wayne one of the big draws of The Sunset are the three delicious meals a day, lovingly prepared by a “Dutch gentleman named Jan” and served either in dining room or delivered to one’s apartment. I came to anticipate the daily menus as much as he did—how I’d love to try a piece of the carrot cake and maybe just a taste of Lemon Zinger cake, too! There’s a sweet romantic scene involving ice cream cones which was so vivid, it took me right back to the days when I used to visit my college boyfriend in his hometown of Katonah. He was an awful boyfriend, but there was a nice ice cream parlor he’d take me to now and then that sounded just like the one in the novel…but I digress.

It’s time to move on to the sex. Wayne’s sexual desires play a big part in the story, which probably has a lot to do with why I liked it. The flashbacks to bedroom scenes with his ex-girlfriend Cindy are especially entertaining. My favorite is when Cindy wakes up mad because she had a dream that Wayne was flirting with someone else. Wayne’s efforts to sweet-talk her into a good mood—he of course has woken up with a boner he’d like to use—had me laughing. There’s also a flirtation with a hot number named Kim and a fling with Cindy’s roommate, all spicy enough to put you in the mood if you’re so inclined, but not explicit enough to be erotica per se.

But there is a controversial love interest at the heart of the story—Wayne’s involvement with sixty-four year old Eleanor, another resident at The Sunset. I’ll admit when I first read about the much-older-woman-younger-man relationship on the cover blurb, I thought of Harold and Maude—who wouldn’t? But there’s really no comparison at all. Eleanor is presented as youthful, genuinely attractive, and very comfortable with her sexuality. I know from my own mother, that women in their sixties can be lovely, radiantly sexual and happily involved with younger men (her boyfriend was only four years younger, but still). Rather than being a turn-off or a joke, the relationship with Eleanor is ultimately moving and thought-provoking for the reader as well as the narrator. I found myself thinking a lot about aging and sex and the real meaning of maturity. When you’re older, sex is more than hormones and smooth flesh (except of course for old geezers like Rupert Murdoch who marry babes half their age). It’s about connecting with another human being for who they are inside, which didn’t strike me as the main motivation for most people back when I was on the dating scene. By the novel’s end, I get the feeling Wayne would definitely agree with me.

One of my favorite erotic scenes in the book is when Wayne and Eleanor get into his “new” car, a clunker with broken air-conditioning, for their first real date outside of the retirement community:

“She swept her long hair up into a bun on top of her head and pinned it tight. One long strand escaped, and my eyes followed it down the nape of her neck to her bare shoulder. Her neck was soft and white and vulnerable. Her ear looked delicious. I wanted to put whip cream on it and lick it off. I considered inviting her to try out the backseat like a couple of randy teenagers. I’d get on top and slide her dress up and remove her panties with my teeth. Or she could be on top and I would cup her breasts after freeing them from the cotton and lycra that imprisoned them. Between the hot vinyl seats, the blaring August sun, and the heat generated by our naked thrusting bodies, the Corolla would be as hot and humid as a Costa Rican rain forest. We would create our own little green-house effect. Mushrooms would sprout from the carpet. The windows would fog as the car rocked back and forth, straining its old suspension system. Afterward, a sudden thunderstorm within the interior of the car would cool our steaming naked bodies, as we lay there spent.”

Does it get any steamier than that?

Now that I’m a published novelist myself, my idea of what constitutes high praise for a book has changed radically. Back in my college days, the compliment I hoped to earn for my yet-to-be-written novel would have been something like: “this is a timeless classic comparable to Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf.” Now, with my busy grown-up’s life, I know better. I’d much rather have someone tell me my novel is a “page-turner,” “witty,” “a story that made me think and touched my heart.” I found Into the Sunset to be all of these things. It’s also a novel I’m glad I read—and that’s the highest praise of all.

The Creamiest Chocolate Body Paint for Valentine's Day

My February column is up at the Erotic Readers and Writers Association--The Smut-Writer’s Holiday: In Praise of Sexier Valentines, Custom-made Customs, and the Creamiest Chocolate Body Paint in the World. As you might guess, this month I discuss Valentine’s Day customs here and in Japan, plus I share my fabulous chocolate sauce recipe that is thick and smooth and perfect for painting on body parts when lukewarm or pouring on ice cream or cake when it’s hot and slippery. I also review the wonderful anthology Best Lesbian Erotica 2008, which has some seductively strong stories by strong, sexy women writers and not a single mango-sucking scene! I like mangos a lot, especially with sticky Thai rice and coconut milk, but read my review and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Happy February, everyone!

The Seduction of Words: Rusty Barnes' Breaking It Down

There’s no doubt Rusty Barnes’ short-short story collection, Breaking It Down, belongs in the literary section of the bookstore. It has all the qualities we expect in literary fiction: fresh, often stunning images, an unflinching look at the truth of human character, spare and elegant prose. Add to that the author’s mastery of the short-short or flash form and his ability to evoke a lifetime of yearning or regret in a few brief pages and it’s no wonder it got rave blurbs from the likes of Ploughshares’ DeWitt Henry and Edward Falco. But before you’re thinking my review will be labeled as an all “writing” entry, I have to let you know there’s plenty of sex in Breaking It Down—after all, Steve Almond liked it, too.

Don’t go moving the book to the erotica section quite yet! Let me assure you I’m talking about literary sex. Yes, I suppose it’s time for me to lay my definitions out on the table, bare naked, for all to see. There’s been a long, sometimes heated, debate about the differences between porn, erotica and the serious treatment of sexuality that might even get you on a college syllabus, like D.H. Lawrence. Many claim it’s all in the eye of the beholder—what I like is literary, what you like is erotica, what a person neither of us like likes is porn. However, I believe there is a somewhat more objective way to analyze the difference.

Porn is bodies having sex, no complications, no questions asked, no real plot necessary. The intent is to arouse with descriptions or photographs of sex acts and the copious use of “obscene” words. This is reptile brain stuff, not that it can’t be highly effective and often enjoyable when the mood is right.

Erotica adds brains and hearts to the bodies. Its pages are populated by complex human beings, with dreams, desires and even disappointments in their lives. These people need reasons to have sex and they usually need a specific reason to have sex with the partner or partners of the moment. Often assumed to be aimed at women, erotica offers plot, character, motivation, poetic language and even humor. However, for the most part it does aim to arouse the libido as well as the mind. (That’s what I try to do in my work anyway).

A literary sex scene adds one more layer--a higher artistic purpose. It can arouse, but it doesn’t have to, the only “must” is that it serve to reveal character. Therefore here’s where you find an honest and often darkly complex view of human sexuality. Now we’re back to Breaking It Down. Barnes’ stories are often brutally honest. Sex has consequences, it’s an urge that ruins lives. It can also be a way for inarticulate characters to assert some power or seek a fragile moment of connection in a lonely life. Adultery, spouse-swapping, disappointed housewives taking out their frustration in the arms of visiting handymen--Barnes pierces through the clichés to touch the tender, wounded heart of erotic desire. Frankly, I found it all wonderfully refreshing. I enjoyed every one of the eighteen stories, but I’ll talk about a few favorites (yes, they have more sex) to illustrate my “definition.”

“What Needs to Be Done,” the first story in the collection, grabbed me right away with its sensual, resonant images--green beans in a silver bowl, tobacco juice spattered over the mums. Many of Barnes’ stories are clearly set in Appalachia and in this case issues of class are highlighted with a city-girl narrator, Derry, who is trapped in a disappointing marriage to an alcoholic country boy. One of the ways she endures is to have literal rolls in the hay with her nineteen-year-old brother-in-law. This passage is one of my favorites in the book:

“Purl had laid the blanket out already, wisps of hay stuck to his hairless chest. As I loosened his jeans, it wagged at me like a finger, an accusation I could never answer to anyone’s satisfaction but my own.”

An erection as a finger of blame—it’s funny, it’s indelibly memorable and it’s a classic example of sex-reveals-character. Plus, literature changes the way you look at the world and truth be told, I will probably never look at hard-ons in the same way again.

“Certitude” shows us a family in turmoil. A father facing his own mid-life crisis throws his teenage daughter out of the house for smoking marijuana and hanging out with boys. The mother, Mathilde, understands that the violence of his reaction is a reflection of his own desires and thus her reason for seducing her husband on the sofa in the TV room is very different from Derry’s need for some small way to indulge herself. Here we have sex as salvation and yet the connection is still fragile and momentary, rather like a work of flash fiction itself.

“Pretty” made me laugh out loud. Kathleen gamely agrees to a BDSM scene with her partner, Brady, but resents his perverse choice of a safeword—Pretty. Definitely literary irony at its best. I happen to know that BDSM-themed anthologies are selling briskly at one of my regular publishers, Cleis, and I often wondered who’s fueling this best-seller phenomenon—people who do it? People who want to do it and are afraid to mention it to their partners? But “Pretty” shows us the not-so-pretty reality of BDSM in an average American bedroom, where power play can’t gloss over the real emotions that course through a relationship. I must confess the ending was very satisfying.

“Mister Fixit” takes on a dumb porn movie cliché and makes it touching and wise. A sexually frustrated wife has a “hole that needs fixing” and she turns to a visiting handyman for sympathy. The two actually do end up in each other’s arms, but again the connection is not what we might expect. At the risk of giving it away, I’d like to quote this lovely passage, another of my favorites:

“He puts the tool down and opens his arms, and I go to him as the script directs. As he holds me in his smell of body odor and gas, putty and rank man, I can feel myself begin to disappear—it’s good. He squeezes tighter, a comfort hug, tighter and tighter. I am smaller and smaller in his arms. I am a wet spot on the shoulder of his grubby shirt, and then I am gone.”

Mmmm, nice, huh? I love the last story, “The Way It Is Scripted, the Way It Goes.” It’s about partner-swapping at an “adult party”, two couples getting naked in a shower. Standard fare for porn and even erotica, but here, for the male narrator, “the sight of Sarita’s bouncing breasts and brown nipples, her frizz of hair hung over into my golf buddy Paul’s face is raw and immutable fact, one I didn’t prepare for.” It’s sad, but it’s also sexy, too, in the way real bodies and real people arouse us, for example, when the narrator and a neighbor “[rub] Jasper’s thighs and behind with our wondrous, wonder-bound hands.” Literary sex is the reality, even when you follow the script, and Barnes’ collection ends with another penis, wagging its accusation and the epiphanous plip-plop of water on porcelain drowning out a woman’s cries of release.

Porn? Erotica? Literary sex? The boundaries are not always clear, even by my definition, but I’d say in general the more “literary” end of the spectrum involves care and insight on the part of the author and complexity of thought and emotion for the reader. As I read Rusty Barnes’ collection of flash fiction—or more accurately, devoured it, because it’s actually a real page-turner—I couldn’t help thinking of an exquisite Japanese Buddhist meal with its a tray of tiny dishes, each serving up a austere, perfectly-crafted tidbit. The fare is not especially sweet, and never rich, but it is ultimately satisfying and enlightening. Treat yourself to Breaking It Down for a taste of the same. Besides which, there’s an added bonus—by the end, you’ll realize that erections have a whole language of their own.

Naughty Stories for a Very Nice XXXmas

I just got an early Winter Solstice present—my contributor’s copies of Alison Tyler’s newest anthology Naughty or Nice: Christmas Erotica. Alison always puts together a great anthology, but this one really rings my bells. It may be because I’ve always been enchanted by the year-end festivals of light (all of them, Diwali, Chanukah, Solstice…), or it may be that the stories are such a yummy winter buffet of sexy, smart, and funny with a dash of the bittersweet to add a satisfying complexity of flavors.

The book starts off with a champagne popping bang with Andrea Dale’s “The Queen of Christmas.” I ADORE this story! It’s so hilarious, I was laughing the whole way through, except when I was lusting after that very sexy, Christmas-loving electrical engineer across the street. And then I was kind of smacking my lips and making plans to attack my own electrical engineer husband later.

I’m next with “Fezziwig’s Balls.” When I review an anthology with my own story, I don’t pretend I can comment on its quality, but I do like to mention one or two of my favorite lines. In this case, the title is my favorite line! If you like corsets and dress up and fallen women and the electric thrill of waltzing with a stranger who dances divinely, you might like the story, too. I hope you do!

Get ready for a very sweet peppermint treat with Shanna Germain’s “A Good Little Girl.” Sparkling humor and glittering prose—it’s as magical as a Christmas tree. Really. I was grinning at the clever story and the awesome writing the whole way through. Sitting on Santa’s lap has never been so much fun, and I can’t seem to get that that Christmas tree dildo out of my mind. Someone has GOT to make one of those and give Shanna a cut of the profits.

Lisette Ashton gives us a witty, X-rated reinterpretation of Charles Dickens’ classic in “Carol’s Christmas.” Lisette knows her stuff, of course, as she hails from Merrie Olde England. The strong and silent Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come gives the heroine a chance to change her ways, posing the question dearest to the hearts of men--will she or won’t she? Come, that is. Read it and find out for yourself ;-)

Two of my other favorites are Joel A. Nichols’ “Nog” and Michael Hemmingson’s “Two Gifts.” Both have a bittersweet realism that strips away the fantasy of Christmas. What lies beneath is surprisingly and profoundly arousing. Kudos to Alison for giving us some savory stories as well as sweet ones to feast on in this book. Oh, and at that next Christmas party, remember to ask college kids in the house exactly what’s in the eggnog!

I’ve been a huge fan of Sharon Wachsler since I read her “Sappenschwester” in M. Christian and Sage Vivant’s Garden of the Perverse. “Tagged” fulfilled my yearning for more of her funny and very sexy stories. Thomas S. Roche’s “Hollywood Christmas” combines the delights of smart social satire with a steamy and very La-La Land interplay of voyeurism and exhibitionism. Of course at this time of year, interesting things happen when the lights are low. Saskia Walker’s “Caught Watching” is a perfect ambisexual cocktail of seeing and doing. You can always count on a red-hot story from Saskia and it’s always a thrill to be in her company in a toc.

Alison gives us a wham-bam finish with “Naughty or Nice?” It’s everything you ever wanted for Christmas—since you turned eighteen, that is. I could go on and on, but to keep it short—we all have shopping to do, right?--I highly recommend this anthology. I was told at the Cleis reception earlier this month that the major bookstore chains were stocking the book, so you can toodle down to Barnes and Noble and check it out. It’s a good gift for any naughty friend you want to be especially nice to this year!