Posts Tagged ‘books’
He Said What? book review
I’ve read and enjoyed all Victoria Zackheim’s anthologies. She’s our age, and she knows the themes that affect our lives and haunt our memories. She has a knack for gathering top-notch writers to share their personal moments, and she’s at the top of her game with He Said What?
The essays are powerful revelations of a moment when something a man said changed how a women saw herself, or made a life decision, or knew a relationship was over. As you’d guess, some of the personal essays (and they’re very personal!) revolve around bad boys, bad dates, bad lovers, bad husbands, and bad liars. But sometimes the man uttering the life altering words is a father, a teacher, a doctor, or a brother, and sometimes they’re not bad people, just bearers of bad news.
Some of the essays are funny, especially those about the “demented dance of dating,” as Jane Ganahl calls it. Some are searing. All are worth reading.
Most of the writers in this anthology are over 50, Zackheim tells me. Sometimes you can tell that from the context of the essay: a 6th grade bathroom in 1964; a miniskirt, tie-died shirt, or Grateful Dead song at 15; marrying a naval officer before he ships out to Vietnam. Writing these essays with the perspective of decades after the pivotal event makes them even more powerful to a reader, especially readers our age.
I’ll bet this review is making you think about which “He Said What?” incident you’d choose. Please feel free to comment with your own memory here. Men, “She Said What?” memories are welcome, too!
Big Sex Little Death by Susie Bright: book review
Sex. Drugs. Rock and roll. If that were the whole story of Big Sex Little Death
But this brilliant memoir is much more, revealing Susie’s own childhood abuse and her commitment to social and political activism as a high school drop-out, the underbelly of the cultural/ sexual/ political movement, the heady thrill of working to make a difference in the world, and the bewilderment of being betrayed by the people she least expected to betray her.
I knew Susie Bright as a sexuality writer, but until this book from Seal Press, I had no idea how smart and deep she was. She’s the historian that the sixties need — a clear-eyed view of protesters, activists (many emotionally damaged), and those who went along for the ride.
Yes, there’s plenty of sex, too, but for much of the book, it’s body parts that go bump, devoid of passion, emotional connection, or even pleasure. That’s part of the sixties political and sexual “revolution” that we’re embarrassed to admit now: women were expected to have sex freely but we weren’t supposed to expect our partners to have any clue about satisfying us. Still, part of Susie’s fantasy was true, at least some of the time:
Women wouldn’t be catty. No one would bother to be jealous. Who would have the time? Sex would be friendly and kind and fun. You’d get to see what everyone was like in bed. You’d learn things in bed… Exclusivity would be for bores and babies.
Susie doesn’t glamorize the sexual/feminist revolution or gloss over the deep disillusions when women fought each other (she got death threats for her pro-pornography stance), betrayed each other, and, through it all, loved each other.
For me, the most interesting part of Big Sex Little Death was the story behind On Our Backs, the lesbian magazine that Susie co-founded. Before On Our Backs, female models, from fashion ads to male magazine centerfolds, “were shot the same way kittens and puppies are photographed for holiday calendars: in fetching poses, with no intentions of their own.” In contrast, “The great relief of dyke porn,” writes Susie, “was that all that went out the window. We had an objective on our minds… we had a sexual story to tell.”
I hope these snippets encourage you to read Big Sex Little Death for yourself — it’s an engrossing read, and guaranteed to be more than you expect.
FYI, my favorite line from the book: “My dominatrix friend Tina once told me, ‘I’m not spanking Republicans anymore. I’ve had it.'”
Have you read Big Sex Little Death? I invite you to comment!
Bonk by Mary Roach: book review
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roachis the most entertaining — and, in a madcap way, the most informative — book I’ve read in years. Filled with the weirdness of both the procedures and findings of sex research, Bonk combines arcane details with amazing facts and research tools (e.g. the “penis-camera).
Regale your friends with anecdotes from this book, and you’ll be the life of the party – as long as the party is filled with open-minded friends who enjoy zany details about sex.
Mary Roach writes in a clever, often hilarious style, which makes her books a pleasure to read, whether she’s writing about cadavers (Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers ), the afterlife (Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife), or, in this case, sex. My copy quickly became spotted with Post-Its as I read, marking passages I simply had to tell you about, but numbering an impossible 45 markers by the time I finished.
Here’s just a small sampling of the facts I learned:
Princess Marie Bonaparte (great-grand-niece of Napoleon) blamed her inability to orgasm during intercourse on the fact that her clitoris was three centimeters away from her vagina. She did her own research in 1924 with a ruler and interviews and discovered that “téléclitoridiennes,” women with more than 2.5 centimeters between clitoris and vagina, were incapable of orgasm during intercourse. So she employed a surgeon to relocate her clitoris. (No, sorry, it didn’t work for her.)
Women don’t like men’s cologne, according to their rate of vaginal blood flow. The scent of men’s cologne actually reduced vaginal blood flow, as did the smell of charcoal-barbecue meat. Oddly, what increased vaginal blood flow the most (by 13%) was a mixture of cucumber and Good’n’ Plenty candy. Hmmm.
[describing one of many sex machine inventions:] “The motor housing is the size of a lunchbox and is raised on one end, like a slide projector. A flesh-colored phallus on a stick slides quietly in and out. The erotic appeal seems limited. It would be like dating a corn dog.”
[describing another sex machine invention, called “Therapeutic Apparatus for Relieving Sexual Frustrations in Women Without Sex Partners”:] “At the base of the penial assembly was a wide, black, wiry cuff of fur-like or hair-like material. For the partnerless woman who wants not only the ultimate climax or orgasm, but also the feeling that she is having sex with a shoe buffer.”
You’ll learn about “uterine upsuck” in pigs and how Danish farmers increased their pigs’ fertility by sexually stimulating their sows to “upsuck” the semen better. Why it rarely worked to use an MRI to study couples having sex. How porn stars make extra money by having their orifices replicated into plaster casts which are then used for sex dolls. And what Mary Roach and her husband did in full view of scientists to further sex research.
Some of the most intriguing diversions are found in the footnotes. Did you know that Victorian gynecologists and urologists wouldn’t look at the nether parts of the women they were examining? Can you guess why men land in emergency rooms when they can’t remove their improvised cock rings? Or the strangest foreign objects that have been removed from rectums? (I can’t decide whether to vote for the frozen pig tail or the spectacles.)
I highly recommend Bonk for your own delight and as gifts for your sex-minded friends.
[Read my interview with Mary Roach here.]
Dear John, I Love Jane: book review
Dear John, I Love Jane — isn’t the title perfect? — is a 2011 anthology edited by Candace Walsh and Laura André (who happen to be a couple) and written by women who left their straight life/ relationships/ husbands because they fell in love with women.
Some always knew they were attracted to women, but bowed to society’s norm and married men anyway. Others had no idea they could or would fall in love with a woman.
The stories are engrossing, well-crafted, intimate, and dramatic. I felt I was sitting in a room hearing these women’s personal stories — their conflicts, thrills, misgivings (sometimes), and declarations.
When Seal Press offered me this book to review, I emailed back, “I hope some of the stories highlight women over 50.” I was surprised and pleased to learn that several of these authors are over 50, and in case you want to read their stories first–as I did–here are their names: Leigh Stuart, Sheila Smith, Susan Grier, Meredith Maran, Kami Day, Micki Grimland, and Katherine Briccetti.
I loved many of the stories, including “Memoirs of a Wanton Prude” by Sheila Smith, who first fell in love with a woman at age 69. As a teen, she was taught that gays and lesbians were “Sick! Immoral! Perverted!” and she fought back her feelings until age 50. Still, she stayed with her husband, “reading lesbian books and [keeping] my feelings about women under wraps. A divorce and a few years of solitude readied her to meet Diana, who taught her that “Lesbians are about intimacy”: “It wasn’t so much she wanted to go to bed with me; it was that she wanted to wake up with me.”
One of the most moving stories to me was “The Right Fit” by Kami Day (also over 50), who was raised Mormon and was taught that “Heavenly Father had made one man whose penis would fit just perfectly inside my vagina,” and that perfect fit would be revealed on her wedding night. It wasn’t. But 15 years later, the perfect fit arrived: Michele. And 15 after that, they are still together, “using only about half the mattress in our double bed.”
The writing is terrific — often lyrical, sometimes funny, and full of surprises. For example:
- “I have always been far more turned on by our magical, slippery little orchid than by their — what is that? A puppet? Some sort of sea creature?” (Veronica Masen)
- “My body has a need that’s burning a hole through the mattress. My brain is hanging on for dear life to what remains of my heterosexuality.” (Meredith Maran)
- “I had never imagined kissing another woman, but now I did, wanting to know the gentleness of soft skin, the taste of female, this female.” (Susan Grier)
- “I had recurrent dreams of making out with Ellen DeGeneres in a rustic Spanish house in Santa Barbara.” (Leigh Stuart)
Dear John, I Love Jane is an important book. It is more than a lesbian anthology — it’s about women making choices at first that go counter to what they really want or need (and isn’t that especially true of our age group?), then facing and accepting — and being thrilled by! — their true natures. It shows women’s sexual fluidity in a way we seldom see or acknowledge.
When I was writing Naked at Our Age, several women over 50 sent me their stories about marrying men (some quite contently, others battling their nature) and in later life discovering love with another woman — or wanting to experience sex with another woman and not yet putting it into action. If this book had been out then, I would have recommended it. I recommend it now!
Purchase the Dear John, I Love Jane on Amazon or order from your independent bookseller.
As always, I welcome your comments.