| Dirty Girls: Erotica for Women |
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| Reviews - Books | |
| Written by Marcelle Manhattan | |
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In the corner of every few pages of Dirty Girls is a smudge: the fingerprint of an eager reader who has dipped into the smut of its pages and is combing through it excitedly. This little design element perfectly captures the experience of reading Dirty Girls: Erotica for Women, Rachel Kramer Bussel’s latest and greatest compilation of titillating short stories. Dirty Girls is just dirty enough to get your hands (and other parts) a little soiled, but it’s basically good, clean fun. At various times dark or romantic, the stories are always tasteful and well written. They lure the reader in like sirens—another cadre of dirty ladies—and beckon one to read all night. It’s great entertainment for the beach, the airplane (as in one story), or a little bedtime sharing with your lover. I have to confess that I don’t get turned on by reading much erotica. Writing about sex all day desensitizes a person after a while. However, this book managed to excite me, and I credit Rachel Kramer Bussel and her sheer love of variety. Stories in this anthology cross cultures, nations, kinks and sexual orientations. There’s even a sexy story focused on all-male desire and homoerotic masturbation—Darklady’s “The Garden of Sinn”—which I found daringly queer and intensely hot in a woman-centered collection. However, Dirty Girls is certainly not just for girls alone. As Bussel was quick to point out at the New York launch party, which I attended, the book’s original title was Dirty Girls: Erotica by Women. Anyone with a love of erotic fiction can explore his or her dirty side with this volume. And I guarantee anyone will want to. Get the best seats in the house at the Lusty Lady Theatre in the legendary Carol Queen’s “Shocking Expose! Secrets Revealed!” Explore a tangle of the senses and a melding of two strangers’ bodies in Rachel Kramer Bussel’s expertly crafted tale “Icy Hot.” Encounter the post-structuralist implications of ownership and autonomy within a relationship as Isabelle Gray’s “In the Name Of …” sees a couple exploring sensual pleasures outside their marriage for the first time. And delight in a darkly-tinged, BDSM tale in Alison Tyler’s provocative “Like a Good Girl.” Of course, as with any anthology, especially one of this length (an impressive 380 pages), it’s difficult to sustain a consistent level of quality throughout. The stories I just mentioned were some of the highlights. Certain others I found myself skipping through more quickly, as opposed to lying back and teasing myself with the prose. However, erotica is like sex; everyone’s turned on by something different, and finding what works for you isn’t always easy. Luckily, a book of this size does offer incredible variety—in case what I consider an unmemorable quickie turns out to be the sweaty, satisfying read of your life. My own personal favorite is a clever little scherzo which begins the book, a play on places and faces whose moral might be, “Sometimes you have to leave love to find it.” In Marie Lyn Bernard’s “Fucking Around,” the narrator leaves her lover in search of rambling trysts across the country, wherein the fuckbuddies are named, in synecdoche, for the city in which they live. The cleverness of rhetoric and humor, combined with a poignant ending, illustrates why Dirty Girls is such a fantastic collection. Dirty, clean, or somewhere in-between, the wide range of emotions and truths it captures will most assuredly offer something for you—provided you’re willing to dip in and get your fingers a bit smudged along the way.
© 2008 Marcelle Manhattan Marcelle Manhattan is a former literary scholar who dropped out of her PhD program to begin a writing career in September. Despite juggling a double identity and a job on Madison Avenue. Her fiction will appear in Susie Bright’s X: An Erotic Treasury, and her comic readings are a hit on YouTube. Marcelle writes at sexegesis.blogspot.com. For more information about Dirty Girls, please visit Dirty Girls on Wordpress.
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Great review, Marcelle, and another great anthology by RKB.