Erotica is a tricky business. It usually concerns such subjects as love, lust or various shades of carnal desire. Tenille Brown, a veteran practitioner of the flesh print wars, has edited a sublime example of erotica, Can’t Get Enough, dedicated to the worthy theme of “hot, steamy, mouth-watering sex,” which will bewitch readers like a magical spell.
Desire, as interpreted by Tenille Brown, is a good thing. She issues a stern warning to her detractors that these stories are not enticements to “endless orgies and empty encounters,” but a positive tribute to moments of pleasurable, smoldering sex that anyone can embrace in all its glory. Those reading these tales should not be afraid of catching the virus of sexual promiscuity.
Nothing in these stories smacks of psychosis with its pathological, compulsive behavior, manic episodes, substance abuse or dependence. The characters contained within them are having a great time without guilt or shame. Good sex in these pages doesn’t take into account whether the man can be seduced or the woman is lovable. It’s anything goes. Throw all the rules out. When willing partners are involved, anything can happen and fireworks can occur whether in public or between the sheets.
Although the editor states these stories were selected for the woman reader, there is something in them for men as well. A sense of free-spirited disregard for the traditional and the customary is dumped out of the window as the writers go for the max in trashing old stereotypes and clichés. Male readers should make room for this dose of powerful female hunger in their sexual vocabulary. It would do them well to absorb some of these prescriptions for satisfying their partners. Open themselves beyond limits and restrictions. Going beyond the notion of good pussy and a big dick can only expand their reach for great, sizzling, addictive sex.
An older woman I once dated said, “Good sex is like a drug. Once you have had it, it can make you do anything to capture that first high. If you’re lucky, you can push past that point to something even better, even hotter, even crazier. When you get to that level, watch out! I’ve seen men and women jeopardize their jobs, careers and community standing just to get that good sex. Believe me, that feeling…oh man!”
In each of the stories of Can’t Get Enough, the key ingredients are openness, boldness, self-respect and an erotic connection not often seen in the real world. These lovers are not afraid to become vulnerable or to accommodate each other to reach the highest pleasure available. None of these folks need prompting or permission to get off and to keep coming back for more.
For example, take the threesome that roars into a torrid sexual flame in Rachel Kramer Bussel’s “Under His Watch,” where ecstasy is all that matters: “Everyone had a role—Colin’s to push his cock deeper down my throat, Josh’s to tighten his grip on my hair and bring his legs to either side of me, and Leonard’s to touch himself while he looked on. Me? My role was to simply be the center of attention, to take what each man was offering me.”
Or the uninhibited woman, not a tramp, slut or any restrictive tag, in Jacqueline Applebee’s “Rocket Fuel” who declares she loves dick and facials. “It’s simple really: I can’t get enough of cock. I love blow jobs, hand jobs, taking it up my arse or my cunt. I love the feel, the look and the smell of cock.”
And finally, Lucy Felthouse’s “When He Gets Home” gives the perfect blueprint for a complete, drenching fulfillment: “Touching his wife’s nub caused her eyes to roll back in her head and her pussy to contract around his cock, which in turn caused his cock to throb and twitch inside her. He’d have to up his game if he wanted to make sure she came before—or at the same time as—him. Grasping the slippery and sensitive bundle of nerve endings between his finger and thumb, he rolled and pinched at it. Amazingly, it swelled further at his ministrations, and he looked up to see Nina stifling her own moans by biting down on her fist.”
We are a country who loves to be in love, loves to be desired. However, we are puritans who want to be free of emotional and sexual restraints. The stories in this book hold some of the cures for what ails us, and contain some of the answers for our popular moral cages.
Tenille Brown and Cleis Press are taking a firm stand for an end to sexual repression at a time when opposition has been shrill and resistant to progressive trends going full tilt. Both parties are to be commended for such bravery in an atmosphere of madcap cookie-cutter conformity and Tea Party conservative dogma.
Enjoy Can’t Get Enough for all its treasured worth. We all want the best in sex. Think about what poet Sylvia Plath wrote in her journals: “If they substituted the word ‘Lust’ for ‘Love’ in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth.”
Cole Riley
New York City