Published in 1998, Gay Erotica gathers short stories from the previous fifteen years, with the intention of incorporating a broad cross section of the genre – restricted only to contemporary and living male authors, across a variety of nationalities (stories come from the UK, Canada and Australia, as well as the US), the editor aimed for “a celebration of gay men and gay sex, in all its complexity – from the delights of the flesh to anxiety about disease, from ephemeral anonymous encounters to long-term relationships. But each is unquestionably and unapologetically the story of desires between men.”
A large number of women enjoy reading gay porn or erotica (“a distinction based on marketing rather than content or quality, per se”), and I am one. I know from talking with gay male friends that, though there’s overlap, different audiences look for different things. I won’t go in to what it is I look for, except to say that I didn’t find it in this collection.
There have been significant changes in the gay community over the past decade, a fact that is true even though the phrase “gay community” makes it sound as though there’s a homogenous clump of gay men, which is of course not the case. With more, cheaper and better antiretroviral drugs, HIV/AIDS is more often a chronic disease than the imminent death sentence it once was, and the spectre of death less frequently haunts gay men. Ten years ago the effect of HIV drugs was beginning to be felt, but for many men too many friends and lovers had already died, and it’s wholly understandable that this is present in the collection, that those relationships be honoured, and the impact of the disease be acknowledged. Indeed, the earliest story was first published in 1982, before most of the world, including the medical community, had even heard about the disease.
However, death and dying aren’t erotic, or at least not to an appreciably large audience. When I’m reading erotica I’m more interested in being titillated than I am in literature, a distinction not shared by many of the authors. I’m also not thrilled about the heavy drinking and sustained drug use that is frequently present in the collection; I know it accurately reflects reality, but I’m not reading the collection to enhance my understanding of the lived experience of gay life at the turn of the century.
All of that’s fine – no collection will be all things to all readers, and the disinterested can skip over the bits that don’t appeal to them. But I was actively distressed by the inclusion by no fewer than three authors of strong and frequent references to the protagonists’ mothers. Take, for example, “John,” by G Winston James, where the narrative of a man leaving his therapist’s office and seeking anonymous sex in a gay porn theatre is interrupted frequently by flashbacks of his abusive mother, a past lover, and other unidentified characters. It might be interesting in a psychological portrait but I found it the antithesis of erotic. - Alex
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