Best Bisexual Erotica

Eds. Bill Brent and Carol Queen,
Black Books.
It's true: you can have too much of a good thing. The title is somewhat misleading, implying the stories have been creamed from previous
publications, but in fact it's simply to be in line with other anthologies like Best American Erotica.

The book is exclusively American: the editors "figured this book would be San Francisco-centric" but "were gratified to find this is not the case.""We don't just celebrate diversity, we embody it", they claim, as the"authors and their characters hail from practically all corners of the United States". I admit there are plenty of Hispanic and transsexual characters, but none with any disabilities, only one story with black characters, and given the book's being sold here, it's a bit cheeky not to acknowledge the world outside the American continents.

The stories are good, but overwhelmingly similar. I read the book in one go (thanks to British Rail giving me such a long opportunity), and by page 200 arousal had been replaced by boredom, which was a shame seeing as I was still stuck on the same train. Almost all are getting down to anal sex, mostly with SM overtones, by the second page. I have no problem with anal sex - the masterpiece of the book is Marilyn Jaye Lewis' original "Anal", in which the main characters are an arsehole and a strawberry - but twenty episodes an hour of "Steve whispers in my ear 'I'm coming" and pulls his cock out of my ass" - no metaphor, just cocks and dildos thrusting in and sliding out of asses and holes - gets unbelievably tedious.

Many of the authors have published more intricate work elsewhere, so this completely unsubtle erotica must be what the editors like. They even state in the foreword that "many of the writers... did not get very explicit when the sex part of the story came along. This was especially true of certain vanilla stories whose sexual content was largely implied. This would be fine for a book of bisexual fiction, but not for erotica." Speak for yourselves. Desire, thoughts, and dreams can be hugely erotic. Reporting incidences of penetration and whipping can equally be utterly unerotic.

There are some good stories here, and the rest are perfectly competent, but unfortunately together they cancel out rather than building up to a climax.

Kumquat