THE BEST AMERICAN EROTICA 2002

Pop sexologist Bright (Full Exposure: Opening Up to Sexual Creativity and Erotic Expression, 1999, etc.) thinks this tenth annual collection marks a turning point because so many of the contributors have moved away from an autobiographical viewpoint to create characters whose sexual desires aren’t synonymous with their authors’.

Actually, the news is even better: This is the first of Bright’s anthologies whose 25 stories can’t be adequately categorized in terms of the characters’ sexual orientation, preferred position, or fetish. That isn’t to say that interested readers won’t find rough-trade gay males (Shaun Levin), drag queens (J.T. LeRoy, Poppy Z. Brite), gender-benders (Adelina Anthony), phone-sex pros (Laurie Sirois), crystal meth addicts (Gary Rosen), murderers (Pam Ward), skin divers (Simon Sheppard), oyster eaters (Debra Boxer), horse fanciers (Alma Marceau, Jane Smiley), gun molls (Lucy Taylor), late-night train passengers (Tsaurah Litzky), and mermaids (Francesca Lia Block) enjoying America’s favorite spectator sport. Most of these stories, however, find a new slant that isn’t reducible to a new thrill, and the best of them create a fullness of experience that goes beyond titillation. Ernie Conrick’s tale of the women’s tennis circuit comes so close to attaching real-life names to its fantasies that it gets a ghoulishly funny charge. The allegedly instructional monologues by Jamie Callan and Stacey Richter make sex sound both antiseptic and scary. Robert Devereaux’s warning about the dangers of simultaneous orgasm is provocative in more ways than one. And Michael Stamp’s fable of sex beyond the grave will touch readers whatever their sexual persuasion.

Bright, who doesn’t quite trust the literary merit of this year’s edition, appends a list of earnest study questions (“In ‘Homewrecker,’ Tina is a somewhat destructive and tumultuous force. Why is it that all the men in this town can’t seem to resist her?”). Ignore them unless you’re in a reading group, and savor an anthology that just might mark this outlaw genre’s coming-of-age.