I is for Indecent

I is for Indecent
Edited by Alison Tyler
Cleis Press
ISBN: 9781573443050
Fiction, Anthology, Erotica
Reviewed by Jean Roberta

This pocket-sized volume of fifteen stories is adorned with a radiant cartoon pinup girl on the cover, complete with a World War II-era sailor’s cap. This little book is part of Alison Tyler’s alphabet series, beginning with A is for Amour, B is for Bondage, and so forth. Each volume contains fewer stories than the average erotic anthology, but the whole collection will eventually include quite a range of styles, plots and sexual flavors.
Alison Tyler is a prolific editor as well as a writer of stories and novels which have been translated into various languages and circulated all over the world. Besides editing anthologies for Cleis Press, she runs her own small company, Pretty Things Press. She is a kind of one-woman industry, and her “brand” (to use a popular buzz-word) is usually easy to spot. The sex in her stories tends to be offbeat, spontaneous, fun and heterosexual. Her male characters sometimes mislead her female characters, or vice versa, but Tyler describes disappointment in a light and witty way. No one seems to get seriously hurt. If any of her characters have dark nights of the soul, these happen off the page.
This book is quirkier, stranger and darker than any of her other anthologies that I know of. These stories answer the question: Is anything considered indecent these days, even by those who consider themselves sexually free? (Or, to paraphrase a line from the 1980s music that Tyler loves, what would it take to make a pro blush?)
Several of these stories deal with exhibitionism in public places. Showing off in itself doesn’t seem shocking in works of erotic fantasy, but the characters in these stories deliberately risk violence, injury, arrest and unexpected emotional transformation. In “That Monday Morning Feeling” by Lisette Ashton, Mandy consoles herself for having to go to a boring office job by flashing her shapely butt and pressing herself against men in the London tube. Have a Nice Day by Mike Kimera carries the break-from-work theme further: an emotionally-detached male narrator sends his girlfriend a package at work containing a large dildo which she is ordered to stuff into herself before going to a “meeting” with a strange woman who ushers her into the narrator’s stretch limo, which seems equipped for every conceivable sexual activity.
Lisabet Sarai’s Crowd Pleaser describes a happy couple visiting New Orleans for their anniversary during Mardi Gras. Nothing about them seems unusual until the general revelry inspires them to have sex in a place where they are caught by television cameras before escaping from security guards.
In The Installation by Michael Hemmingson, a financially desperate young woman in graduate school agrees to perform sexually as part of an art exhibit. Her only reward, supposedly, is a fee which will get her out of debt. The older, experienced male artist who hires her awakens her capacity for pleasure and endurance. The change in her feelings, from grim resignation to the self-centered thrill of performing for a snobbish audience that loses interest after awhile, could have led to an ironic role-reversal. Would the artist simply forget his “object” after opening night? Would she contact him again, after resisting the impulse to do so during the lead-up to the public performance? The author doesn’t say.
In Wet by Janine Ashbless, a middle-class woman on a date with her husband searches in vain for an open public lavatory until she loses control of her bladder. Her public embarrassment leads to a passionate response from her husband, despite the presence of passers-by.
In A Genuine Motherfucker by Sommer Marsden, a female narrator tells the reader that she specializes in discovering the most shameful fantasies of the men she dates, and rubbing their noses in them (so to speak) when the men are most vulnerable. Parallel to this strategy for breaking down any semblance of dignity or self-esteem is the elaborate violation scene in The Things You Do When You’re in Love by Mathilde Madden, in which a domme seems to abandon her male pet in a rundown gas-station urinal after securing him to the plumbing. The scene is consensual enough in the context of a Dominant-submissive relationship, but it is hardly decent by any standards.
In Daddy’s Pillow by Rita Winchester, a more conventional male Dominant-female submissive encounter takes place via long-distance telephone call, and the physical absence of “Daddy” gives the narrator’s story of rapturous release a certain eeriness.
In Waif by Alana Noel Voth, an angry man who has been fired by his embezzling boss is approached by a young male prostitute who seems even more powerless than the unemployed corporate pawn. The story raises questions about corruption and responsibility while showing two wounded males warily responding to each other. The developing relationship between the hustler with nothing left to lose and his reluctant john shows a glimmer of hope for humanity in general, but the punch line removes any trace of sentimentality.
Thomas Roche’s black comedy, Death Rock, is an uncomfortably amusing look at a certain gay goth sub-community of young men who are literally in love with death. The ending, which mimics that of Romeo and Juliet, is both melodramatic and too plausible for my taste.
In From Here to Indecency, Stan Kent refers to a romantic movie about wartime lovers while satirizing Hollywood conventions in general. In a slapstick climax, three people who are far from glamorous are thrown together in the ocean off the coast of California. The looney-tunes romance which follows shows that Mother Nature is the best script-writer.
Guilt by Tsaurah Litzky is both gritty and bittersweet. The narrator’s situation suggests a line sung by Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl: “Would a convent take a Jewish girl?” The breaking of sexual vows, whether to a human spouse or to God, seems indecent to all those who believe that promises should mean something. The dilemma of the guilt-ridden man in the story is that he has already proven himself a hypocrite, and he can’t do the right thing by his own standards without hurting himself and the woman who confronts him.
The stories by Rachel Kramer Bussel (who has co-edited anthologies with Alison Tyler) and Tyler herself seem downright sweet and innocent compared to most of the rest. In Bussel’s story, The Secret to a Happy Marriage, the “secret” is revealed to involve sex outside the marriage—and outside the heterosexual “mainstream.” The narrator’s encounter with a lesbian couple seems to be exactly the outlet she needs to remain faithful to her husband in her fashion. In Tyler’s story, Milk and Honey, a charming man meets a woman in a coffee shop and persuades her to drink her coffee differently than before. The delicious new flavors of sex that he introduces her to lead her to hope that something long-term might be developing between them. She learns that whatever seems too good to be true probably is.
Donna George Storey’s The Cunt Book also involves a dishonest man and the woman who is enchanted by his imagination even when she knows he is not telling her the factual truth. The photographic evidence of his seduction of her (or of her exhibitionist streak) suggests the woman-centered art and photography of lesbian artist Tee Corinne, which foreshadowed The Vagina Monologues some twenty years earlier.
These stories take risks and leak out of a predictable marketing niche. They could inspire you to find the sides of yourself that you’ve kept hidden from the light of day, desires which still feel indecent.