Page-turners

A literary roundup of bisexual vampires, libidinal cheerleading, kinky shorts, and more.

By Amanda Davidson

HORNY AND VORACIOUS readers can bed down with a bordello's worth of edgy sex-writing anthologies in the anything-goes environment of San Francisco's literary libido-rama. But if overindulgence has given you a case of erotica fatigue, or you're grappling with repetitive strain injuries from too much one-handed reading, try stimulating that most potent of pleasure centers: the brain. The following new (and newish) books are sexy by virtue of their exciting and unexpected uses of language, coupled with a certain fearlessness in writing about the power, danger, and irreducible weirdness of desire. A word of warning: These works may induce the kind of wide-awake, crushed-out-on-the-world sensation that moves you to throw down your tome and get busy with the cute bookworm sitting next to you at the library.

Fledgling By Octavia E. Butler (October 2005, 7 Stories Press, $24.95)

In the cosmology of Fledgling, sci-fi superstar Octavia Butler's first novel in seven years, vampires are bisexual superbeings who live in remote, polyamorous communes. If utopian fantasizing doesn't get you throbbing, don't worry. Butler renders the erotics of fang and tongue in hot, dizzying little passages. Best of all, as the heroine races to uncover a deadly plot and bring racist vampires to justice, Fledgling woos the reader with one of fiction's greatest enticements: the pleasure of a totally page-turning plot.

Veronica By Mary Gaitskill (October 2005, Pantheon, $23)

Fifty pages into the new Mary Gaitskill novel, I grabbed a nearby friend and panted, "Can you tell that I have an existential hard-on?" Veronica tells the story of a former fashion model living with hepatitis C, and its prose often blurs the line between health and illness, beauty and shit, sex and decay. Gaitskill is attuned to big, messy, animal emotions and appetites (joy, loneliness, desire) but also to sophistication and cruelty – to the depth of hold that surfaces have on us. Veronica produces a sort of fever effect, the sense of being infected (or seduced, or possessed) by a book. In short, Gaitskill's subversively insightful writing gets me hot and bothered in a way that ripples off the page and into the world.

Dr. Sprinkle's Spectacular Sex: Make Over Your Love Life with One of the World's Greatest Experts on Sex By Dr. Annie Sprinkle, PhD (June 2005, Jeremy P. Tarcher, $19.95)

Lover, seduce yourself. Or rather, seduce your selves: Annie Sprinkle's sex guide will muster up an army of kinky alter egos ready to help you navigate new erotic territory. Sure, the book is a little cheesy and a little New Agey. But even in this sex-positive, sex-saturated city, who couldn't use a little libidinal cheerleading and affirmation? Sprinkle's tips and tools for sexing it up alone or with others, whether you're single and lovin' it, partnered for life, or somewhere in between, are inventive and demystifying – and they frequently involve costumes. Most useful of all for inspiring erotic prowess is Sprinkle's bolstering mantra: "What would Dolly do?"

Wide Eyed By Trinie Dalton (October 2005, Akashic Press, $13.95)

Lust infuses the sticky, furry, microbial surfaces of Trinie Dalton's stories, as Wide Eyed's horny first-person narrator turns herself on with a wide-ranging appetite for myth (unicorns and werewolves), the material world (fungal spores and horticulture), and pop culture (Han Solo and the Flaming Lips!). What stimulates most in Dalton's writing is the element of surprise, the unexpected synaptic leaps between corners of culture that don't usually touch. Published as part of the Little House on the Bowery series, Wide Eyed definitely fulfills editor Dennis Cooper's aim: to introduce new fiction that is playfully experimental and aesthetically daring – and as culturally relevant as music or film. Now that's an arousing proposition.

Bottoms Up: Writing about Sex Edited by Diana Cage (August 2004, Soft Skull Press, $14)

Local lady of letters Diana Cage has collected a tasty sampling of stories and poems that blast open queer identity and provide fantasy fodder for an array of erotic inclinations. Stories such as "Walking to the Ocean This Morning," by the late, legendary Sam D'Allesandro, serve up stripped-down sex – but not without a devastating layer of self-awareness. Other pieces, like Sara Fran Wisby's "Knockout," take erotic scenarios as points of departure for reflections on memory and family. All in all, the stories in Bottoms Up, whether kinky or sweet, ironic or sincere, demonstrate that wordplay can be as much of a turn-on as actually doin' it.

Amanda Davidson writes for the Bay Guardian and slings smutty books (and other titles) at Modern Times Bookstore.