Sunday, April 15, 2007
Erotic Elite: Rachel Kramer Bussel’s He’s on Top
filed under: Erotic Elite by Melissa Gira
As part of Rachel Kramer Bussel’s whistleblogstop book tour, Sexerati comes up for air on a Sunday to review her most recent erotica anthologies, He’s on Top and She’s on Top.
He’s on Top: Erotic Stories of Male Dominance and Female Submission appeared in my mailbox just in time for me to decide not to bring it with to Phnom Penh. Reading pornography on airplanes, as much I indulge stateside, is, what with all those messy Customs declarations on obscene materials, not something I wanted to take a gamble on just to get a leg up. That’s what coming home after a web party, swimming from key lime cocktails, and a vibrator, is for.
Was it the lipsmacking liquor or the taut lines on what makes a top that got me? Leave it to consummate cupcake fetishist RKB to include a story where sugary treats are not only a feature, but a deliberate prelude to bent-over-the-bakesheet sex (anal sex, no less) in the kitchen (”Yes,” Donna George Storey). Sadly, I went all soft-on as I got lost on why it’s story-making that a sexually dominant male might, for example, crave vanilla sex sometimes (”Incurable Romantic,” Lisabet Sarai), or cruise chatrooms with an unfortunate handle (”In Control,” M. Christian). Bits like these were contributed by strong writers, but some turned a bit too closely on parodying — maybe? — the cliches of straightboy dom culture. Which is actually, honestly, the problem with straightboy dom culture: one never really knows when it’s just putting itself on.
It might be that I could never call someone topping me “Master” without a tongue firmly planted in cheek, and so that sort of language wilts me when I’m looking to, you know, come, and tease and denial is a cornerstone of erotic dominance and submission, true. But the heat that lingered for me after this read was not for a hard slap, but a longing for a denser, literate, primal, raucous sort of exploration of what it is to be a woman who ably, proudly, shamelessly takes it, a story as stung through with fuck as the words the most erudite of sluts is able to form around a cock.
My He’s on Top wants a She’s on Bottom, please.
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You might prefer reading N.T. Morley’s anthology “Master/Slave” which has stories from both perspectives and is fairly serious and often very bottom-centric…