Reviewed by Gary Meyer
(12/05/01)
"I catch a glimpse of us in the bar mirror, two men melting into each other while a third stands by, disapproving."
-- Taurus by Wayne Courtois
No sex is safe. The better the sex is, the more is at stake. There's physical and emotional vulnerability, performance anxiety, jealousy, fear of loss, the potential for exploitation and abuse, societal taboos -- the list goes on and on. So why dwell on the dark side of desire? Why make sex riskier? What's the appeal of Dangerous New Fiction?
Greg Wharton's distinguished roster of invitation-only contributors aren't merely adding danger to sex, they're recognizing the inherent danger native to every union of the flesh, the risk all of us take on when we take off our clothes and embrace. That danger arises from who we are, what we need, from the basic nature of physical relationships. Wharton notes, "Many stories came in dealing with the very concept of sexuality itself being the danger."
Not that he neglects "the good stuff: pain, torture -- mental and physical, murder and death." If you've got a craving for a bit of the old ultraviolence, you won't be disappointed. Masochists (we know you're out here) will delight in being taken for a ride by Sean Meriwether's Marking Territory: in the trunk, hands bound behind, reeking with piss. Small arms lovers will revel in Hertzan Chimera's My Fucky Sucky Valentine, which does for guns what J. G. Ballard's Crash did for cars.
In Ian Phillip's novella, Memento Mori, an elder Fey Dom, the Scourge of SOMA, celebrates an agonizing first anniversary with the young slave he met too late in life. He inscribes a love poem with a scalpel. Danger doesn't preclude passion; risk doesn't rule out romance: these two are deeply devoted, master and acolyte, having evaded the tripwire of income and class differences to share the "sweet, bitter, madness of love."
Disparity makes sex dangerous, as proved in the opening tale When I Take You to New Orleans, a "love letter of abominable darkness" by Maxim Jakubowski. A sugar daddy pines for his occasional date. For him, she's the one; for her, he's one of many.
Compulsion makes sex dangerous. In Debra Hyde's Time in Hand, an institutional inmate fights not to lose his desire for desire in the face of debilitating medication. Urgent need won't wait for later, for some time, some place that's safe. Susannah Indigo knows this well. Her heroine in Night Dreams who says "I wear my breasts so that men want to slap them," meets her ideal mate. "They're perfect," he tells her, before painting them with mustard in a fast food joint.
Compulsion meets kink meets crime in a trademark Thomas S. Roche romp House Call on Beverly. A jewel thief with a soiled-panty fetish starts to pull a job at a McMansion owned by a "blonde dame he'd seen lounging around the pool wearing nothing but a rich-bitch scowl, Gucci shades, and a string of diamonds on every limb." But he gets distracted by her laundry. Roche's hilarious farce rapidly blows up to Marx Brothers proportions. It would be a cautionary parable of how sex screws up our priorities if it weren't so damn funny.
Memory makes sex dangerous. horehound stillpoint's dreamy mood piece A Street with a Deal traces a bicyclists's surreal odyssey through city streets rife with sexual history, to the beat of a music mix in his headphones.
Empathy makes sex dangerous. Carol Queen's fantasy Blow Job City has a heroine who's a blowjob clairvoyant, attuned to the psychic vibes of every local dick-sucking:
"So now for days at a time I lie in bed and feel the tremors of mediocre suck-offs and the rare good one that shakes me and my phantom cock into breathlessness."
M. Christian shows how social conditions can make sex dangerous in his deftly crafted cyberpunk number Utter West, where sex is escape from the raging boredom and futility of teenage life in an over-regulated near-future:
"The machines in the arcade all warned about the dangers of hard drugs, played only sanctioned songs, dispensed only low-intensity joints that wouldn't get the family dog high, legitimized near-sex while watching for the dangers of losing any virginity."
With a similar theme, Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite's "Judges" offers a sharp contrast in style, a hip-hop patois of the street:
"They waz trippin pretty in britty columby.... When they got together with, they were a highrollin wolfpack -- living large -- white macho -- peckerwoodin barrio thug style -- the new judges."
Coming out makes sex dangerous, when certain kinds of sex can get you ostracized or beaten or killed. Of the Flesh's other long piece, Taurus by Wayne Courtois, tells a remarkably tender coming-out and coming-to-power story in rock-solid classic prose -- no flash, no gimmicks:
"I'd never seen two men kissing before. When I looked, really looked now, I saw men kissing all over the room, two of them at my elbow, their moustaches mingling like waves meeting over rocks."
His direct, simple style anchors the tale as an old New England maritime mansion weaves its spell.
Greg Wharton knows that sexual danger comes from inside, not out. The more that's at stake, the better the sex is. All sex is dangerous if you're doing it right.
