$14.00
ISBN 0452283329
available through
Amazon
Reviewed by William Dean
(10/09/02)
Long before I marveled at the eloquence of Frederick Douglass and W. E. B DuBois, I was grooving on the street savvy and raw world of Chester Himes' Harlem. Higher literature than the pulp paperbacks led me as easily to Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright as it did to Elias Canetti and Gunter Grass. It wasn't so much Oscar Wilde's witty repartee that helped me understand about homosexuality as it was the deeply moving struggles of James Baldwin. After the Martian froth of Ray Bradbury and the wild imaginings of Robert Heinlein, it was the futuristic brilliance of Samuel R. Delaney that told me what tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow might be like. If you're unfamiliar with such names as Wright, Baldwin, and Delaney, you shouldn't be. If you're unfamiliar with today's rising young Black writers of erotica, there is now help on the way.
As a reviewer, I approach each new collection of stories wondering which will contain those beautiful diamonds among the rough prose. Editors often admit to themselves that only a few stories will really stand out in any assemblage. In After Hours, however, Robert Fleming has picked his jewels with dazzling care. Each tale is worthy of a separate setting, like a pendant, but, lucky reader, they are instead linked together like strung pearls or a rare necklace.
These are deep and moving voices of nineteen men who are, at once, bold and surprisingly tender, alive with their passions and yet elegant and graceful. To be sure, as Fleming notes, within these pages are not the ready, wanton nymph nor the blatant, unthinking stud of stereotype, but honest, real, challenging and challenged Black men and women finding their way in the tricky mazes of desire and satisfaction.
Beverly had a small bottle of honey in her hand. Sitting on top of his desk and leaning back, she unscrewed it and poured drops of it on her breasts. Back in college, Charles had told her that her nipples were like silver dollar pancakes. He would always lick them clean, and Beverly brought him back to his old ritual, licking and slurping like a thirsty puppy. Beverly giggled and squirmed, becoming more aroused by the second. Charles licked his way down to her stomach, nuzzling her navel and pulling on her panty hose with his teeth. Beverly pushed him off with her knees.
"Me first," she commanded. She got to her feet, then got down on her knees and pulled his underwear down.
Most of the writers in After Hours are novelists; mainstream and genre prose-masters who here present fully-polished smaller examples of accomplished work and skill. What struck me most, I admit, was not that these were writings by Black men, but that they were truly stories and not simply sex scenes with a bit of tale-dressing of character and situation to gain the title of "erotica."
As a reader, I genuinely have to care about the characters who are getting their groove on, otherwise it's too much like watching a vacuous porno flick. My mind has to be engaged before the imagined senses start inveigling their way into my lust glands and the "erotic impulse" is stimulated. I have to be able to identify, which means sometimes experiencing along with the characters the unsureness, to be able to be pleasingly surprised at the turn of events and the way the "lover" acts.
He didn't want to appear soft, a wimp, so he said nothing. He kept busy, rolling his hips, feeling himself pulse inside her. She reared back, opened her legs wider, letting him slip even farther into her sweetness, making a hissing sound much as an agitated cat would do.
That hissing sound. If you've ever experienced that, you never forget it. It is unique and deliciously wicked details such as this that stir the reader of After Hours. To be sure, After Hours is not simply a collection of sex stories, but something far more deeply reaching. As I say, it's direct, intelligent, and sensual "people" seeking and, fortunately, finding the erotic in life as they live it. With all the variant niche kink and fantasy anthologies being published, it's good to know that some authors -- these authors -- can still take the basics and stir our senses to the point that we must...well...seek out what they write about.
"Now, give me the dick, Antonio," she shrieked, pushing me back into position. "Give me the dick, fuck me until I can't stand it no more! Fuck me!" I was in it, back snapping, hips going side to side, all on it. She shouted something else, something that made no sense, just before she lost all control of her body. I felt the rush of her sweetness as it drenched me seconds later and I collapsed into her with our climaxes peaking in unison.
I felt the tremors rippling her limp body below me and tried to move but couldn't.
