Seven Oaks Magazine.

Despite the cynical responses to postmodernism articulated by leftist intellectuals and activists alike – understandable because of its frightening capacity, if employed overindulgently, to dismantle and divide decades of movement building – its positive influences can not be denied: in its defiance of heteronormativity; in its attempts and success in democratizing, recognizing, and celebrating an immeasurable range of human desire, postmodernism has, at the very least, encouraged many of us to thumb our noses at sexual and gender fundamentalism.

In Lust for Life: Tales of Sex and Love, editors Claude Lalumiere and Elise Moser have put together a wonderfully sundry anthology of twenty-one erotic short stories with the goal of exploring human yearnings for touch, sex, and romance – longings that tell us we are alive, that we are sexual and passionate subjects of the world, and that we have every right to be. Twenty-two writers – experienced and new – contribute to the anthology, the majority of whom presently live in North America. As an examination into varying forms of desire – queer, straight, or undetermined – the stories in Lust for Life are compatible with the political and theoretical frameworks that undergird Third Wave Feminism, with its profoundly postmodern influences and its emphasis on difference, diversity, and contradiction.

In order for average readers to appreciate anthologies like Lust for Life– and by average, I mean someone who is relatively inexperienced in progressive erotic literature such as myself and, mind you, Harlequin romances fall outside this purview – this reviewer highly recommends that readers prepare themselves mentally before reading this collection of erotic short stories. Sexual inhibitions? Leave them at the door. If not, expect to navigate two hundred pages worth of erotica that will invariably leave you in the mood to ridicule. A candid mixture of the magical with the real, of the political with the bizarre, I found Lust for Life to be a pleasure to read, but only after I decided, midway, to temporarily relinquish any loyalties I have to prudishness.

In contrast to some of the other blatantly sexual content in the rest of the anthology, the book appropriately begins with Matthew Anderson’s “Charity in Her Flesh”, a story that – through its humorous and charming storyline – is sure to disarm readers, whet their sexual and literary appetite, and lead them into the envelope pushing subject matter that will follow. “Charity in Her Flesh” is the story of a priest, Virgil, who performs at a marriage ceremony where Charity, the bride – for reasons of cold feet – delays her arrival. Despite the feelings of unmistakable attraction and tenderness he has towards Charity, Virgil must counsel the bride and coax her into making the right decision. The story concludes with a comical mishap that tests the poise of all those involved in, and in attendance at, the wedding ceremony.

The most explicitly and conventionally erotic of the stories, “Emily Says”, by Catherine Lundoff, focuses on one woman’s sexual yearnings in the devastating aftermath of the breakdown of her relationship with a woman whom, it initially seems, no longer requites her love. During the period in which the relationship deteriorates, the protagonist must look elsewhere for sexual comfort and reciprocity and finds it in Emily, an imaginary lover, who grants her sexual pleasure whenever and wherever she needs it - episodes of orgasmic pleasure are impressively illustrated here in sexy and sensual prose – and who coaches her through her heartbreak. We later find out, however, that Emily is but a hallucinatory image, a result of the protagonist’s struggle with drug addiction – the real culprit in the breakdown of her relationship.

Neil Kroetsch’s “Had A Lover” is perhaps one of least engaging and most sexually regressive stories of the anthology. The story unfolds promisingly enough, appearing to be a salute to the desires of older women: a woman in her sixties reaffirms herself as a sexual being after decades of celibacy by allowing herself to seduce and be seduced by a young man in his twenties. The story, however, culminates in a disturbing and unwelcome conclusion that seems incongruent with the rest of an anthology that, most of all, markets itself as sex-positive.

In Scott D. Pomfret’s “Sucksluts Anonymous”, an all gay male support group for self-proclaimed “sucksluts” – those who are addicted to the act of performing oral sex – meet every week in order to engage in a process of rehabilitation from their addiction through a 12-step program imitative of those employed at recovery programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous. Despite the efforts of these purported “addicts”, however, the addiction proves to be a pleasure too difficult to overcome – as the oral orgy at the end of the story so humorously testifies. Aside from the clever humor at play in this short story, “Sucksluts Anonymous” examines the ways in which sexually conservative discourses – manifest, in this case, as a support group for “sucksluts” – attempt to discipline human sexuality and desire, and the forms of resistance that will inevitably follow. Or, if this reading is a little too extreme, this story can also just be about our immediate, spontaneous humanly need for sexual pleasure.

Dan Rafter’s “The Adventures of Ultima” takes a new spin altogether, blending the erotic with the absurd and supernatural; it is also a clever jab at religious fundamentalism. Through the powers granted by a magic vibrator – which, upon first use, shoots out a genie – an ordinary woman transforms into Ultima, a sexy superhero. Sent to save a priest from the captivity of the supervillain, the Eel, she runs out of powers; her limited supply can only be replenished through sexual provocation and, in this situation, the priest seems to be the only accessible source.

The book concludes with a story of extremely dark humor, “The Penis of My Beloved”, written by Ian Watson and Roberto Quaglia. After the death of her lover, a woman summons the most advanced forms of medical technology to clone her lover’s penis in order to bring “the best part of her beloved” back to life, only to discover that cloning her beloved’s body parts will not bring the him – the real him – back. It will, instead, incite the agendas – political or otherwise – of religious zealots, the media, and the scientific communities, in addition to causing a stir on the international stage.

The contributors to this anthology successfully emancipate themselves from the constraints of heteronormativity in order to explore the lengths we will go to and the measures we will take for human contact: be they of the tender, amorous, or raunchy sort. Lust for Life is a welcome addition to the growing medley of Third Wave Feminist books which emphasize the important role that personal narratives and voice can play in the pursuit of political change, self empowerment, and community building. And if exclusively political fiction is not what you are looking to read, it may also manage to titillate you and, at the very least, give you more creative ideas in the bedroom.