$14.95
ISBN 1573442569
available through
Amazon
Reviewed by William S. Dean
(11/22/2006)
At least in theory, if not actual practice, we all house a little voyeurism and a bit of exhibitionism. Also, at least in theory, everybody is a star, and, considering the prevalence of skin and desire on the World Wide Web, it often turns out we're wanna-be porn stars at that.
Some do it with style, some with crudity, but the fact is, we all do it, from the pseudo-shy to the blatant "look at me!" types. Now, for our erotic reading pleasure, editors Alison Tyler and Rachel Kramer Bussel collect an anthology dedicated to the proposition that we all like to look at naked people and, seemingly as often, we like to be the naked people others look at.
Caught Looking, by Cleis Press, presents twenty tales of the tawdry, torrid, and tantalizing adventures of voyeurs and exhibitionists. The anthology gathers up such well-known eroticists as Thomas S. Roche, Erica Dumas, Simon Sheppard, Dominic Santi, Shanna Germain, Sage Vivant, M. Christian, Debra Hyde, and others, including Tyler and Bussel, of course.
Gone, in our modern age, is the old cliché of the Peeping Tom, often a sweaty, bespectacled milquetoast whose sole expression of sexual hunger turns out to be heavy breathing and furtive self-fondling. In his place, we now have the potential peeper of any gender who is eager to join in, the bold masturbator who loves an audience, and the closet peeker who does herself while secretly checking out the bedroom action.
I can't help wondering if the sliding away of guilt for peeking hasn't removed some of the thrill-cachet. On the other hand, there's something to be said for the symbiosis of matching up exhibitionist and voyeur: he needs to watch, she needs to show off. What could be wrong in that combination?
There are a lot of other fetishes that wash up on the shores of E and V (Exhibitionism and Voyeurism). The cuckold fetish -- you know, the "do my wife while I watch" thing -- is one of these detours. So, of course, is the public flash syndrome. Look but don't touch! Whether it's long-term relationship or a one-off, the Es and Vs of Caught Looking are a pretty sex-positive healthy crowd. No one calls the cops, no one beats the hell out of a "watcher." This is, after all, sheer fantasy fodder in which everyone eventually admits that it's sexy being peeped on or doing the peeping, not nasty or creepy.
"What the hell are you doing looking in my window?"
I shrugged.
"Have you done it before?" he asked.
I nodded.
"Are you stalking me?"
"No," I said. "Not really."
"Then what exactly were you doing?" he demanded.
What could I say? No amount of fabrication in the world was going to make this sound reasonable. I decided to come clean.
"I was masturbating," I said --
When it's a consensual or pseudo-consensual act, exhibitionism or voyeurism can be seen as a kind of foreplay to relationship-type sex. Who hasn't imagined getting caught looking and it turns into a way of breaking the social ice and leading to a stupendous fuck? All too often, however, voyeurism in real life turns out to be a predator-slash-stalker situation, just as exhibitionism can be an exploitative "job" (think Webcam girls and lap dancers, for example) in which no sense whatever of an emotional commitment is involved.
Fetishes, like E and V, are no longer demonized as psychologically obsessive conditions and maybe that's a good thing. If you're looking for some heady sensuality and hot contemporary erotica, get Caught Looking. Leave it out on your coffee table, on the floor by your bedside, somewhere prominent and easily peeked at. Who knows? It might just lead to a fantasy come true.
