Bottoms Up: Writing about Sex

By far one of the best literary anthologies I have had the pleasure to read, Bottoms Up is a collection of stories (and some poetry) about sex and how we use sex: to rescue someone and to redeem ourselves; as an affirmation of belonging to the pack---or of desperately wanting to bond to a group you have no hope of belonging to; as a means of humiliation; as an expression of wanting the forgiveness that never comes; as an affirmation of life in the face of terminal illness; and as a means of destroying the ego. Edited by Diana Cage, editor of On Our Backs magazine, this collection of twenty outstanding pieces includes strong writing by Daphne Gottlieb, Tennessee Jones, Jess Arndt, among many talented others. Personal favorites for being especially compelling to me are: "The Glass Mountain" by Eileen Myles " '73 Nova" by Annie Leigh "Manifesto" by Felicia Luna Lemus "Knockout" by Sarah Fran Wisby "Relationship" by Ammi Emergency "To the Marrow" by Sharon Wachsler

"My dreams are small," said Olly. "They can only scratch." "Well, cheers to that," said Mr, Devine. "To scratchy dreams! A house specialty. Bottoms up." This pair of paragraphs from Jess Arndt's lovely story "The Unheard Arms of Olly Malone" suggests some of the extra-literary quality of this collection of 21st Century erotica, ably assisted by San Francisco editor Diana Cage, herself a very fine writer who shouldn't have been so demure, she should have included some of her own work. But that's just my peeve. Outside of that, I think you will find BOTTOMS UP a provocative and intriguing collection, one that includes some of today's best and well-respected authors, as well as a bevy of young talent with lots and lots of skill. "Robin" by Eileen Myles is a story that has been around for some time, but still overpowers one with the specificity and the brilliance of Myles' powers of description and connotation (i.e., she pulls you into the story with image)--"I call her Robin because she is red and black and angular and resembles a bird in her speed and her cruelty. I fell in love with her briefly, last year. I'm just not in love with her anymore but there's this residue." Similarly Robert Gluck's account of the Folsom Street Fair has some of the haunting quality of folk fairy tale material and was originally written for an anthology of fairy tales re-written and made up to date by gay male authors. It is called, "The Glass Mountain" and its sparkle and its sheer impassability call to mind the mountain of its title. Haven't we all been in love a little bit like that. You can't go up, you can only go around. "I can reach myself only through the medium of a brittle young man whose shadow touches what it falls on, the grass rising again after it passes." Among the writers who are newer to me I will evince "Cruising" by Myriam Gurba as a tiny masterpiece of danger, psychic pain, and physical fulfillment. The young woman who tells us this tale brings to mind poor Elizabeth Short, the "Black Dahlia" who, we hear, once cruised these same tawdry beaches and amusement galleries in a slickly drawn Long Beach. Shoshanna Von Blankensee brings is "Billy," a story of multiple sexualities and multiple paragraphs, each one outlining an erotic possibility that should, but cannot, cancel the other out. She is like a Julio Cortazar except with, well, much more sex LOL. Tennessee Jones' story is very tangibly an excerpt and thus leaves you longing for more, for its grittiness and sheer perversity brings to mind the near-Gothic Southern writing of William Goyen or Flannery O'Connor. It is a story of boxcar sex and prison longing, redolent of scents and stench. I look forward to hearing more from Mr. Jones. I could tell you a little bit about each story, but I don't have the time or space, so i should close by citing the unusually structured, and enchanting "Knockout" by San Francisco's Sarah Fran Wisby. "Knockout" perceptively tells the story o