The Best American Erotica 2003 - Softcover

Bright, Susie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 074322261X ISBN 13: 9780743222617

Publisher: Touchstone, 2003

Synopsis

Special 10th Anniversary Edition

More Stories * More Sex * Author Interviews * Readers' Poll Results

There's a party going on in here. Please come.

Lick the icing on this cake: from the raunchy to the sensual, the 10th anniversary edition of The Best American Erotica includes the most esteemed and lascivious writers at work today.

Dorothy Allison explores the wonderful, mysterious abilities of the human hand, Chuck Palahniuk opens the door on a carnal meeting in a church bathroom, Susanna Kaysen takes us inside that sensual moment before two lovers touch for the first time, and Zane's corporate tigress plays mind games that make other office shenanigans look like mere games of Candyland.

In candid Q&A's the authors reveal that they are great-grandfathers, prostitutes with Ivy League diplomas, and former lunatic asylum attendants. Here, too, are the results of the readers' survey. Straight, bisexual, or gay; dominant or submissive; kinky or just curious, you're sure to be turned on by the steamiest Best American Erotica ever.

* CONTRIBUTORS *

Martha Miller, Chuck Palahniuk, Susan St. Aubin, Mel Smith, Greta Christina, James Williams, Robert Irwin, Susan Volchok, Myriam Gurba, Vaginal Davis, Bertice Berry, Dorothy Allison, Susanna Kaysen, Jack Fritscher, Lisa Wolfe, Zane, Scott, Jill Soloway, Tennessee Jones, Alison L. Smith, Paula Bomer, Dagoberto Gilb, Tsaurah Litzky, Aaron Travis, Nicholson Baker, Rose White and Eric Albert, Ivy Topiary, William Harrison

About this title

About the Author:

Susie Bright is the editor of The Best American Erotica series and host of the weekly audio show In Bed with Susie Bright on Audible.com. She has been a columnist for Playboy and Salon, and has been profiled in USA TODAY, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and Vanity Fair, among other publications. An international lecturer on sexuality and feminism, she won the 2004 Writer of the Year Award at the Erotic Awards in London. Ms. Bright lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Introduction

Happy anniversary, everyone. This is the tenth year of The Best American Erotica, and in the last decade we've enjoyed some of the most memorable erotica ever published in the English language. We've been on best-seller lists and shit lists; we've been hailed both as the decline of fine literature and as the end of hallowed traditions in mediocre smut. We are the only "Best of..." series, in any genre, to stay in print for all ten years we've published.

I suppose our dirtiest secret is that we've had an awful lot of fun.

This year, I decided to interview as many of our BAE author alumni as I could find, and discover a little about their writing lives and history -- as well as their sexual opinions. Out of the 257 authors I've published in BAE, I spoke to 137, and researched another 50 or so from previous interview material, Web sites, and editors' notes. Four authors had passed away since we began the series, much to my sorrow. The ones I didn't get my hands on, as they say, "remain at large." If anyone is offended that they don't see themselves included, I can only say -- we understand you're busy, but your mom says she wants to talk to you, and there's a check waiting for you at your last publisher's office.

In addition to interviewing our authors, I talked to hundreds of fans about their favorite stories of the past ten years. At the end of this edition you'll find "Readers' Choice: The Top 100 of the Past Ten Years," your favorite BAE fiction of the decade.

I loved tallying the results, and at the same time, I have a tender spot about any sort of contest -- I wanna give a trophy to everyone. After all, fans voted on over 300 different stories, so virtually every BAE story was somebody's favorite. Hunter Thompson, who I had no idea was a BAE reader, called me at three in the morning to tell me that "The Queen of Exit 17" was his favorite BAE selection. And yet it didn't make the Top 100. Many superb stories didn't make the cut, but I'd never call this poll the final arbiter. My favorite part of BAE isn't any one story -- I could never narrow it down -- but rather the unprecedented variety of expression and sexuality we bring under one cover. It doesn't happen anyplace else.

Finally, in lieu of cutting a big enough cake for all to partake in, I'd like to thank a few people who have worked with me on The Best American Erotica since we first began the series in 1993.

My managers, Joanie Shoemaker and Jo-Lynne Worley (favorite stories: "Horse Heaven" and "Quiet Please"), are always the first to report that BAE is selling at a new small bookstore in a town ordinarily known for selling more Bibles than erotica. They've negotiated with six different editors and two publishers since the series began, and they've taken BAE to places as far-flung as Beijing (where I hear I have quite a following if I ever want to make an appearance). Their experience in every facet of publishing and the entertainment business has meant all the difference in how my editorial work has developed -- and their loyalty and insight have kept me going through every political and artistic hurdle.

My father, Bill Bright (favorite story: "Sweating Profusely in Merida"), has been the best reader and editor this series ever had. I've never taken a formal writing course, but every time my father edits one of my books, I feel like I'm receiving a master class in the English language -- as well as the many other languages that crop up in BAE storytelling! Bill has been a writer and editor in linguistics, anthropology, and poetry for decades now. When I was little, he would let me get into his big oak desk chair and look over his manuscripts with a red pencil, to see if I could find any typos. I remember the glee I felt when I found a mistake -- even then, I was an editorial sadist. He said when I got good enough, I'd be able to use a red pen, but frankly, I've never let go of the pencil -- it reminds me that he's still there, to look through the pages one more time.

Since I began BAE, my partner Jon Bailiff (favorite story: "Je t'aime, Batman, je t'adore") has had a thankless, and occasionally exhilarating, task -- to live with a woman who takes every story so to heart that he never knows who's going to emerge from her writing studio at the end of the day. Jon's tastes in literature and smut are equally fine; he always has the right instincts. He nurtures this series every year by loving me well; and he is the one with whom I share the most laughs and curses along the way.

I'm sorry, but nostalgia makes me sentimental. There is one last piece of cake to honor, the piece with the hard bean hiding inside it -- which will probably break the tooth of whoever bites down hard. That prize would go to the notorious and plentiful critics of erotica, the people who said:

"Literature and sex don't mix!"

"Women want romance, not smut!"

"Men want crotch shots, not stories!"

"Great writers don't write filth!"

"When it comes to erotica, people only want to read about themselves!"

"Why's a nice girl like you doing a dirty book like this?"

and,

"But you can't say that!"

Yet we did say it, and we wrote it, and we've lived to see a banquet of inspiration come out of it. Thanks to everybody, for making it taste so sweet.

Introduction and compilation copyright © 2003 by Susie Bright

Talking with The Best American Erotica Authors

What do people think of erotic writers? The stereotype is that they are spectacled horndogs, nerdy nymphos, or the "A" students into kink. To a certain degree, BAE authors proved this to be true. Most of them confessed they were overeducated, and the National Merit scholars, grade grubbers, and stuffy literary award winners are too numerous to list here. They overachieved, and suffered the consequences.

What people don't know about erotic writers, according to my interviews, is how sexy, wholesome, daring, brave, strong, tough, and hilarious they are. What you'll find below are my ordinary questions to them, and their extraordinary answers in return.

Q. Have you ever won an award for your writing? How about any sort of prize for your talents, no matter how silly or awful?

I've led a remarkably award-free life, although, of course, I realize that virtue is its own reward. -- Marian Phillips

I won "Best Mom" for an essay I wrote about my mother in 1972 and "Top Pop" for an essay about my father in 1973. And I won a $50 U.S. savings bond for my essay about "What America Means to Me" in 1975 (I cashed it last year and it was worth almost six hundred bucks). -- Chuck Palahniuk

I am the reigning queen of our local hamburger chain's beauty pageant -- I get free burgers and fries for life, plus my poster all over town. -- Ivy Topiary

I am a Knight of the Garter of the Order of Mark Twain (a group in Hannibal, Missouri). I hasten to add that the Miss Universe Contest won by Carter Wilson, the contestant from Virginia, in 1973 was the other Carter Wilson and not me. -- Carter Wilson

I have won boxes and boxes of awards for high school debate and made it to the state quarterfinals. Once a team forfeited when I walked in the room. ("Oh my God, it's her! Never mind. We give up.") -- Jess Wells

I was one of the "50 Most Intriguing Women" in Boston Magazine in 1996. Hee hee hee. -- Amelia Copeland

I came in second once in a competition for shortest hot pants. -- Nalo Hopkinson

I have never won any awards, trophies, etc., unless you count, to my intense embarrassment, winning the Howdy Doody look-alike smile contest when I was ten. My mother sent my picture in. -- Tsaurah Litzky (who has appeared in more BAEs than any other author -- ed.)

Martial Arts

Working on my third Dan, Shotokan Karate. -- Susan Volchok

Musical Achievement

I used to be a classical mezzo-soprano -- I won the George Whitfield Chadwick Medal for contemporary music performance, and I was a fellow in voice performance at the Tanglewood Institute. -- Hanne Blank

Twice won "Best Bassist in Boston," according to our local magazine, The Noise. -- Margaret Weigel

I was a bassoon player, a double reed man, a player of Stravinsky's "Berceuse," from The Firebird. I wanted to be Brahms but I wasn't. -- Nicholson Baker

Special Awards

In the late seventies, I won the PIG award, from the National Organization of Women, for the most chauvinistic advertising of the year -- I was the only woman to receive it that year. I was the one who created "The Maidenform Bra Woman: You never know where she'll turn up next." -- M. J. Rose

I got a pair of engraved handcuffs for being the top academic graduate in my police academy. -- Mel Smith

"Most Christian Day Student" award for my leadership of the Missionary Committee. -- Charles Flowers

When I was twenty-two I won the Wormwood Award for "most neglected book of the year." Shit, that should have told me what the rest of my career would be like. -- Greg Boyd

Have I ever won an award of any kind for my writing? Other than being worshiped by disenfranchised teenage girls, disturbed grown men, faded strippers, runaways, would-be presidential assassins, and volunteers for chemical castration -- No, not that I remember. -- Maggie Estep

I won an award in fourth grade for the "Best Arbor Day Essay." It went, "Trees are happy, trees are gay, if they could talk here's what they'd say..." My brother Buddy won the same award eight years before me, so I just copied his essay! Did you know my brother has never read a book cover-to-cover in his entire life, except for mine? -- Lisa Palac

School Daze

I won lots of baseball trophies, and many track and cross-country awards, all of which I threw away after I became a...

About this edition

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 074322261X
• ISBN 13: 9780743222617
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368