Bottoms Up: Writing About Sex

by Diana Cage (Editor)

Bottoms Writing About Sex is a collection of writing about desire. The stories are not straight up sexual narrations, but pieces, poems and stories that examine the concept and manifestation of desire itself. Rather than describing the physical acts of sex, the book examines the impetus, experiences, thoughts and feelings that drive desire. Contributors include Eileen Myles, Michelle Tea, Red Jordan Arobateau, Lori Selke, Victoria Brownworth, Robert Gluck and Patrick Califia.

The stories in the collection are an examination of iconoclastic sexuality(musing on what it would be like to both fuck James Dean and fuck like James Dean), the zenith of desire residing in the sweat-darkened leather pants of Lenny Kaye after a Patti Smith Group show, genderqueer cruising, the connection between sex and loss.

The book is not explicitly "gay", but it is explicitly queer. The stories often break down normal conceptions of gender, eliminating categories such as homo- and heterosexual.

Genres: Queer

164 pages, Paperback

First published September 27, 2004

Reviews

[Richard]

Bottoms Up: Writing About Sex follows 12 writers on an adventurous and unrepentant search for sexual intensity and intellectual fulfillment. As one short story writer follows a girl while she cruises the litter-strewn docks of Long Beach disguised as a fag, a poet imagines what if would be like to both be James Dean and be fucked by James Dean. In a third piece, another woman feels clumsily sexy in her date’s presence, like “some kind of frankenwhore.” Yet she allows herself to be tied child’s desk and made to read from Revelations while bits of torn toast are placed on her tongue.

Both an erotic and literary thrill, Bottoms Up, eschews conventional conceptions of gender, eliminating categories such as homo- and heterosexual. The stories are not straight up sexual narrations, but poems and stories that examine the concept and manifestation of desire itself. The subject matter ranges from straight to queer and transgender, from darkly vanilla to tenderly sadomasochist.

Including contributions from Eileen Myles, Michelle Tea, Red Jordan Arobateau, and Robert Gluck, the pieces of Bottoms Up go quickly to the heart of what makes sex desparate, dangerous, hysterical, and essential. Editor and sexpert Diana Cage has crafted a sleazy and surprisingly tender ode to bottoming, topping, and just plain wanting it.

[Bea · Rating 5 out of 5]

By far one of the best literary anthologies I have had the pleasure to read, Bottoms Up is a collection of stories (and some poetry) about sex and how we use sex: to rescue someone and to redeem ourselves; as an affirmation of belonging to the pack---or of desperately wanting to bond to a group you have no hope of belonging to; as a means of humiliation; as an expression of wanting the forgiveness that never comes; as an affirmation of life in the face of terminal illness; and as a means of destroying the ego.

Edited by Diana Cage, editor of On Our Backs magazine, this collection of twenty outstanding pieces includes strong writing by Daphne Gottlieb, Tennessee Jones, Jess Arndt, among many talented others. Personal favorites for being especially complelling to me are:
"The Glass Mountain" by Eileen Myles
" '73 Nova" by Annie Leigh
"Manifesto" by Felicia Luna Lemus
"Knockout" by Sarah Fran Wisby
"Relationship" by Ammi Emergency
"To the Marrow" by Sharon Wachsler

[tmll · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hm, well that Tennesee Jones piece was hella hot...