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ISBN 1560257725
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Reviewed by Jean Roberta
(02/01/06)
The first thing you need to know about this wide-ranging collection of articles is that it is not related to any of the annual "best" anthologies of erotic fiction: Best American Erotica, Best New Erotica, Best Women's Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, etc.
The non-fiction pieces in The World's Best Sex Writing (all previously published) are "best" in the sense of being arguably the most groundbreaking essays on sexual subjects that appeared between spring 2004 and spring 2005. They are all guaranteed to hold your interest, but not to turn you on. Some of the pieces in this collection express a connoisseur's appreciation of sex for its own sake, while one (written by a rabbi) deplores the separation of sex from love (monogamous, heterosexual marriage). Several of the fact-based articles deal with insanely repressive laws in places such as Iran and California.
An article reprinted from L.A. Weekly outlines some of the bizarre consequences of current enforcement of a law demanding the registration of sex offenders, including those who were convicted of homosexual "offenses" (such as cruising for a same-sex date) in the 1940s and 1950s. As the author points out:
"The problem with this approach -- enforcing something as potentially catastrophic as the registration mandate based on a database patched together out of old and often incomplete, misleading, or entirely missing records -- became evident soon enough."
Apparently, the sex-offender-registration laws that existed before 1980 were collecting dust on the books when several well-publicized crimes brought them back into the spotlight. Specifically, the 1994 rape and murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka in New Jersey by a convicted sex offender led to the adoption of "Megan's Law" (demanding greater police control and public awareness of sex offenders, including those who have completed prison sentences) by the United States federal government and all fifty states.
While "Megan's Law" looks like a logical attempt to protect the public at large from known predators, its enforcement has apparently been a comedy of errors. Bewildered elderly men who were once victims of police raids on clandestine hangouts for "perverts" or "deviants" have been told that they should have routinely visited their local police stations to register as sex offenders every year since they were arrested, despite changes in the social climate. Sometimes the law, as they say, is an ass.
On that note, the crusade to legalize sex toys in Alabama is described in a humorous article from the Web site Nerve.com. The author explains:
"The details vary depending on who's telling the story, but the general outline is as follows: several years ago, a Hunterville preacher built a church next to a topless bar and promptly decided that his new neighbor was a negative influence on the community. The preacher approached a state senator named Tom Butler, who then approached a local prosecutor and asked him to find a law that would prohibit nude dancing in Madison County [Alabama]. Legislation was borrowed from a nearby state (some say Georgia, others Indiana)...none of the legislators, including the bill's sponsor, Tom Butler, read the bill thoroughly before voting unanimously to pass it...Accused of governing bedroom activities, he [Tom Butler] countered that Alabamians were free to skip over the state line to Tennessee to buy vibrators."
This line does not satisfy vendors in Alabama who have challenged the state legislature for the right to sell adult toys.
A much more disturbing article, on Islamic law in Iran, focuses on several teenage girls condemned to death for "acts incompatible with chastity." One of the girls was sold into prostitution at age eight by her parents. One claimed to have been assaulted by an older man, but was executed by hanging. A third was convicted of having sex with her boyfriend.
Opposing the barbarity of the system is dangerous in itself; an Iranian woman academic was arrested for "querying some aspects of Iranian justice in a speech at a conference." She was held for a month before being charged with "acting against the security of the country," which could result in a long prison sentence.
Several articles describe medical breakthroughs and medical hysteria. A doctor in France has changed the lives of genitally-mutilated women from African and Middle Eastern cultures, by reconstructing their missing parts. A doctor in Michigan has founded an institute which provides fast, low-risk (but not especially low-cost) outpatient laser surgery for women whose vaginas have been damaged by childbirth or other causes.
More grimly, "The Invention of Patient Zero," first published in New York Magazine, describes the dissemination of factoids or half-truths which led to a widespread belief that a new, deadlier strain of HIV was about to wipe out a large percentage of an urban population.
Several of the most colorful pieces in this book are autobiographical accounts of unorthodox sex lives, or apologiae pro vita sua. In "The Brothel Creeper," a shameless john (from his teens into his forties) explains why he has never lost interest in prostitutes. In an excerpt from her book, Callgirl, writer Jeannette Angell gives a corresponding account of the risks and wry comedy of her life as a call girl in Boston in the 1980s.
A gay Hollywood scriptwriter describes a surprisingly intimate encounter with a crack-smoking professional Dom in an excerpt from his book-length memoir, Blue Days, Black Nights. The BDSM scene is also lyrically described in "The Holy Fuck," a dancer's tribute to anal sex from her own erotic memoir, The Surrender. The writer explains the spirituality of the experience:
"Sodomy is the ultimate sexual act of trust. I mean you could really get hurt -- if you resist. But pushing past that fear, by passing through it literally, ah the joy that lies on the other side of convention."
Another submissive woman, who wittily calls herself "Polly Peachum" (the name of a character in The Threepenny Opera, a musical about a Victorian rogue, Mac the Knife, and his stable of girlfriends), defends her lifestyle in a self-contained essay, "Violence in the Garden." The title is taken from a passage in The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf:
"The locus of fantasy of a lucky man holds no robots; of a lucky woman, no predators; they reach adulthood with no violence in the garden."
Peachum, as "a full-time slave within a heterosexual sadomasochistic relationship," disputes Wolf's conception of luck for women. Peachum claims:
"My jungle daydreams (and my hardcore reality) represent the living out of sexual desires that are for me far more positive than -- albeit radically different from -- what most people consider to be healthy or even sane." Peachum comes across as brave and articulate.
And there is more: the interview with Harry Reems, an ex-porn star who performed with Linda Lovelace in the notorious 1972 film, Deep Throat, is enlightening. But I will stop here. Despite the lack of any clear thread of connection which might hold those pieces together, and despite the braggadocio of the title -- The World's Best Sex Writing -- this book is a delectable smorgasbord. There is not a wasted line in the collection, which begs to be read from cover to cover.
