Arts
Queer Cinematherapy Misses Its Mark
Crazy, Sexy & Cool
Crazy, Sexy & Cool
by Elizabeth A. Allen
Erotic
Fantastic: Celia Tan, Editor Circlet Press, 2003 |
How
do you review an anthology without devolving to a list of one-sentence
summaries? Simple. Find a good anthology, like Erotic Fantastic,
edited by Cecilia Tan. The title promises the cream of an independent
press known for high-quality racy fiction, and EF doesn't disappoint.
The best stories in the book all follow classic, surprisingly hopeful
arcs that affect our hearts as much as our imaginations and hormones.
Raven Kaldera's "Cyberfruit Swamp,"
for example, launches us into an intoxicatingly sensuous near future where
transpeople are out and proud, but still wary as they look for love. In
this setting of new sexual divisions and terms, our narrator, an unlucky
schmuck whose bravado conceals a fragile heart, makes us feel right at
home.
We may take a while to figure out the difference
between winktis (M2Fs) and kurami (F2Ms), but we're already rooting for
the winkti protagonist as he gets the one-night stand he craves... as
well as much more than he bargained for when an innocent little kurami
captures his heart and his dick. The characters' world may be fantastic,
but the familiar and crisply executed triumph-of-the-underdog plot reminds
you that love and lust are the same, no matter what the place or the contents
of your pants.
And then there's a story like Laura
Antoniou's "Shayna Maidle," the Gothic elements of which form
the foundation for the old coming-out saga. In this tale, Kiva, a young
Jewish woman, tries to conceal her lesbian relationship from her family,
thinking they will be revolted. Besides her gayness, Kiva has another
socially reviled identity: she is the latest in a line of vampiric women.
At first revolted when her grandmother
explains to her, Kiva eventually acknowledges her supernatural side; she
now even has a girlfriend who offers her blood willingly. But Kiva's family
could never wrap their heads around Kiva's gayness, could they? In the
end, they do, surprising Kiva and suggesting that her monstrousness was
mostly a projection of her own nervous mind. For all their initial shock
and their general bloodsucking, Kiva's family makes you realize how open-minded,
tender - and human - others can be if you're willing to trust them.
Even the most graphic stories in EF expose
something deeper than skin. In Gary Bowen's "Heir Apparent,"
an overlooked virgin princess rises to a peculiar challenge: that of impersonating
her mad brother in order to seduce a gay prince, thus ensuring her marriage
and the safety of her throne. There's enough whoring, cross-dressing,
dom/sub play and large leather dildos to fill several porn novels, and
it's all detailed in the hero/heroine's wry and sensual voice.
Of anal entry, she says, "I gripped
his hips firmly, just my phallus protruding from my trousers. It was like
a dance almost, one step forward, one step back, pause, repeat. It was
pleasant even. I began to see why men might like doing it so much."
Such glimmers of her queer consciousness titillate and eventually culminate
in her debut as a cheerfully transgressive transperson. Like the princess,
Bowen seems to be saying, we all have strange desires that could lead
us to fun and satisfaction if we had the courage to explore them.
My favorite story of the lot, Thomas Roche's
"Temporary Insanity," crystallizes EF's mind-bending optimism.
The unnamed main character, a porn writer in a creative dry spell, finds
the fusion genre of erotic fantasy in an unlikely place: as a temp for
a tech support hotline. The highly charged pleas for computer help ("...I
need my access! Lines closed up! Need them open!... Open me up - wide!")
re-awaken the protagonist's imagination (and loins). He/She crafts mundane
life into steamy, outrageous, mind-blowing art. Even when you least expect
it, there's hope for love... or at least lust. Now that's the best of
Circlet Press.
Elizabeth Allen looks for good erotica in Boston, where she and her
girlfriend recently married.