$16.95
ISBN 0971084653
available through Amazon

Reviewed by William S. Dean
(01/19/05)

Clinically speaking, satyriasis is defined as "excessive, abnormal, or uncontrollable sexual/romantic behavior, desire, and excitement in the male." But more opportunely, it is also the title of a new erotic romp by the irrepressible award-winning author Ian Philips. Of course the title also refers to those delightful lusty little horny beings called by the ancient Greeks "satyrs," who are part man/part goat, and who call Pan their leader.

Bleating, rutting, pulling playful pranks, and acting "satirically," is -- readers suspect -- second if not first nature to the ever-irreverent Philips, as demonstrated by the sixteen tales included in Satyriasis. "Through a Glory Hole Darkly," "Love in the Time of Cold Cuts," "Stripping Towards Gomorrah," and "Just Another Lesbian Potluck" tip the reader off that this is not your average lit erotica.

Philips loves words, word play, puns, and randy goings-on, with his tongue firmly in cheek, as he shows, for example, in "While Visions of Plumber's Crack Danced in Their Heads:"

You're probably thinking a room full of dockhands would have noticed a seven-inch dick on a 5'3" man. They sure did in high school and it was pure hell. Hey, look at the miniature pony with the horsedick! Nice hose, Rumplestiltskin. But put on a hundred pounds, let ol' Rumpleforeskin lie in the shade beneath your gut, wear loose-fitting jeans, and you really have to want to look down there to see it swimming below the denim's surface.

As in his first collected tales, See Dick Deconstruct, Philips' risibility spares no sacred cows, and is more prone to upend them and tickle their udders until they spew. How can you not see the punctured balloony egos of thousands of "just like hims" in this excerpt from "Cyber Interruptus:"

I found Brad to be "hot" as would say, perhaps, thirty percent of my "rainbow-hued" queer brethren and seventy-five percent of the soi-disant "cream of the queer crop," the Great Gay Whites. But to have had a hundred percent of my undiminished erection, Brad would have to have been a true Ursa Major, a big ol' Daddy Bear. (Yes, that's right; BJ and the Bear. Go ahead; your patient perusal has earned you a laugh at my expense.) And by "Bear," mind you, I mean only to evoke the ursine aesthetic of the hulking and hirsute rather than conjure up an actual flannel-clad and cuddle-mad member of the Bear Movement. To twit the latter further, these well-meaning boys I prefer to call "Dogs" -- not because they're more randy than the next guy, for they are not, but for the facts that they always seem to hunt in packs and love to say "woof" while they slobber over your face and sniff at your crotch.

Social and/or sexual satire marks out the common stroke-story from such high-falutin' (as Philips might say) literotica, but Satyriasis is not all pinch and giggle. There is meat here as well, and plenty for the salacious-minded to gnaw down to the bad bone. As in "Just Another Lesbian Potluck:"

She pushed Alice's nightie up with the back of her lubed fingers, tracing teasingly along her skin with her blunted nails, until she'd left four silvery snail trails along her stomach that ended as a wall of fabric just below her breasts. Then she lifted her hand, righted it, keeping palm upward, and drew her fingers tightly together until she could feel each one warm against the other. She lowered her hand down into the valley of Alice's upper thighs. She began to push forward, spreading Alice's legs to either side, until her fingers pressed against the lips of Alice's cunt.

Over all the stories looms Philips’ eloquent, prodding narrative voice, sparkling here with a bon mot, there with a deft probing from his own satyr’s horns. The best way to read his Satyriasis is not in one huge Dionysian quaff, but in sips from story to story, each a rowdy and raucous orgy on its own. Enjoy it while keeping in mind Michelle Tea’s cover blurb and summation: "Ian Philips is a very well-read, very blasphemous, dirty little piggy."

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