The Sadness of Sex

by Barry Yourgrau

From the man The New York Times Book  Review called "an uncommon  diagnostician of the curiosities of the human heart" and  hailed on NPR (National Public Radio) as "the  stand-up comedian of the unconscious" comes  this extraordinary new collction of metaphor-rich,  wildly imaginative short-short stories. Barry  Yourgrau, who performs his written work in clubs  across the country and on NPR, Comedy Central, MTVs  Spoken Word programs, and in an upcoming one-man  feature film, now explores the imagination's twilight  terrain in which love, lust, and loss reside in  this achingly beautiful and rich surreal tour de  force. An affair with a cannibal woman is filled with  devouring kisses. A flower sprouts from a woman's  flesh wherever a man kisses her, impeding their  lovemaking. An abandoned lover seeks repair of the  cuckoo clock that is his heart. Exploring the  archetypal he-and-she from the first glance to the  last tortured look, this exhilirating new collection  of flash-fiction--short-short stories thematically  connected--merges Freud with Fellini, Kafka with  Woody Allen. At once sad, alarming, and wickedly  brilliant, Barry Yourgrau is, in the uneasy land of  desire and heartbreak, the spokesman for our  secret self.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Literature

255 pages, Paperback

First published February 2, 1995

About the author

Writer-performer Barry Yourgrau is author of "A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane: Stories" (new edition, May '17). His other books of surreal brief tales include "Wearing Dad's Head," "Haunted Traveller," and "The Sadness of Sex," in whose movie version he starred.

Audio of story, "Honky-Tonk,"" from "A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane" is on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKPPj...

Barry is also the author of a memoir, "Mess." He has appeared on MTV and NPR, and workshopped at Sundance Theatre Lab.

Born in South Africa, he lives in New York and Istanbul and travels widely.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

If I were passing out literary awards, Barry Yourgrau wins the grand prize in the category of short-story writer with a vivid, outrageous, over-the-top imagination. And in this collection of ninety wacky, surreal micro-stories, Barry turns his extraordinary imaginative powers to the topic of Eros, or, in more plain language, that good ol’ trio to which we can all relate: love, lust, sex. To share a taste of what a reader will find in these pages, here are the openings sentences from five of my favorites:

POETRY
My girlfriend leaves me. I become so unhinged that I douse myself with flammable liquid and set myself on fire. I squat in an awkward hideous position on the sidewalk, bleating her name as I gasp in shock at what I’ve done. The chaos of flames envelopes me and the air about me trembles. Passersby scramble away in horror, their faces covered behind their arms. Their screaming gives way to the shrieking of sirens, I topple stiffly onto my side, crackling, unconscious.

POISON
I sit in a café in late morning. A girl hurries by. She gives a distracted smile. She’s quite pretty. In an appealing way. I stare hurriedly down at my coffee. I stir it with a spoon that trembles. A while later, she goes by again. I can’t stop myself: I look. She’s not pretty, I realize. She’s lovely! She’s utterly, wonderfully lovely! I groan and shift my shoes about on the floor and clutch the little round table with both hands. ------ Youtube video of this story with Barry as actor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaQ7n...

SILVER ARROWS
I track a girl I fancy through the park. My little friend is helping. It’s slow going. The path veers up and down all the time and the stubby wings my friend sports are in fact just ornamental, so I’m forced to lug him about on my back, so he can keep up. The arrows in his quiver jab me in the neck. I have to put him down repeatedly to make him rearrange things. --------- Again, a Youtube video of this story with Barry acting as main character: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwzFT...

DARK HOSPITAL
I get a job at a hospital. It’s for victims of love. The wards are dingy and ill furnished, and the sufferings of the stricken in their squalor are truly heartrending. I’m overwhelmed. I have to stuff my ears with bathroom tissue to try to shut out the moans of anguish, the cries of longing, the desperate monologues into imaginary telephones that are never answered, never connected. Even semibuffered so, the tears often drip down my chin as I ply my mop sluggishly up and down the worn, crumbling corridors.

GOLDEN AGE
I have the good fortune to die and come back to life during far, far bygone days of a golden age. I find myself in the palm-crested precincts of some balmy South Seas isle. The locals are as benevolent as you could ever hope, physically glamorous and culturally on the simple side, and spotlessly clean of person. ------- Turns out, the young girls on the island lack one very important body part necessary for experiencing intense pleasure: a clitoris. But, no problem, Barry proposes a solution to the local old crone Shaman – sewing in a pearl. The results are fantastic beyond belief! Bizarre? From my own experience I can say that when you open yourself to your unconscious dream-world and then mold those crazy images into short prose, be prepared for some disturbing mindbenders and weird combinations you wouldn’t want to repeat in polite company.

Recognizing this psychoanalytic fact and in the spirit of Barry’s story of Golden Age, here is a short piece I wrote some years ago taken directly from one of my own vivid dreams. Apologies to any of my Goodreads freinds who might be offended - the muse sometimes speaks in ways that cause sheer pasta shock:

CONCERTO
On their feet, whistling, hooting, shouting, applauding, feet stomping in unison, the audience responds to a command performance by the soloist and orchestra of a cello concerto. There is a call, especially from the tuxedoed young men, for an encore! encore! But the cellist, a fetching young lady with long golden hair curling down over her shoulders and framing her fairy-tale princess face couldn’t play another note even if she wanted to. Anyone could see her energy is spent, her skin flushed and perspiring. All her skin, that is, for she is completely naked, having used her body for her cello, clitoris for bowstrings and the middle finger of her right hand for her bow.

[dr]

i borrowed this from a friend, and, the particulars of these stories still come back to me. like, a runaway vagina sitting in a tree? what the. universal messages using crazy fantastical elements. i love this book!

[ill.cut.you]

“This is my favoritest book of all time. my bible. “ - Jen in 2008. Still a good book but I wouldn’t say my fav anymore. Prob cause I’m an old crotchety asexual cat lady now

[Lauren Shawcross]

i consider myself a passionate lover of the short story, but these are a little too micro for me... there isn't time to develop the themes into anything substantive, and they often finish before they even get started. the whole collection is like the literary equivalent of premature ejaculation.

[Landis]

I can not really express my thoughts about this except to say than it is full of bits; precious, precious bits.

It makes me want to write more than anything else I have read.

[Lu]

I don't like this book at all. It reads like a bunch of dreams where you wake up and can't remember the whole thing. A lot of them are negative - ex: stalking and forcing a woman to love him, noose included standard in a room for rent, and suicide. Most of the "stories" are about someone having sex with him, and very unlikely scenarios where he is some sort of sexual savior to all women. Disgusting read. Do not recommend. I'd give it a lower reading if it was possible.

P6-7
"Help me! Help me!" I bleat, my cries lost in the women's rising screams. But it's too late. The hideous toxin of love has been ingested, and has taken. A spasm wracks my whole body, and powerfully and copiously, almost luxuriantly, down there on all fours, I begin to vomit out a tide of rose petals and perfume- bottle shards, and scraps of desperately scribbled, expensive notepaper

P8
But I can't, I'm paralyzed with fear. I stare out into the blaze of space, and my stomach dies away in me.

P13
slender, grimy fingers, nimble and made for the subtleties of tending infants

(Ughhhh)

P62
We look on in delight as men with hearts on their helmets come running up to where a big truck has turned over, skin of its cargo of love letters into the street

P69-72
story about stalking girl
Forcing her to love him pinning her down and having his friend cupid shoot her

P70-71
"My sweetest of sweet, my beloved!" I shout. "My permanent rose! My autumn heart's golden apple!" At last I hear her wounded voice, quailing. "Please," it cries from somewhere not too far off. "I confess I do find you (unexpectedly) profoundly attractive, but my personal life has other priorities just now."
"Oh but true love is merciless!" I bellow. "It won't take no for an answer!"

(He won't take no for an answer and literally chases her as she is trying to run away from him and his friend )

P132
... pain hangs its vapor in the air, blotting it the sun for days.

P135
inflamed by his words

P140
noose comes with room

P149
The walls of the chamber around me are stacked with the bodies of women, arranged in tiered shelves hazy with cobwebs, like loaves of bread in an abandoned pantry. They are naked, motionless and somber, seemingly asleep. But they're more than asleep. A cold pall mutes them forever, all gray, all lifeless.

P153
"It's ice," she declares quietly. She brings out two cups. "I was lost in a storm of my own. Like you," she says. "I'm like this since. I'll never thaw. It's permanent." She gives a shrug, and an abstracted, mechanical little smile. "But I'm used to it," she murmurs.

P211
I reach the sad opinion that I have been irreparably damaged for the rest of my life by a broken heart. I'm diminished and enfeebled, subtly but essentially. I have a flaw now in the quick of my soul, a wound that will never quite heal, will never quite be as good as new. I believe my capacity for joy has been permanently disabled.

P253
we're casualties of romance

[Rob Partridge]

I first read The Sadness of Sex in about 1988 and I can't for the life of me remember how I got it. It was possibly a gift from my brother who has an unerring knack of being able to find the perfect gift for someone (because you never conceived of anything close to it before). I think it was a similar time he introduced me to Theatre de Complicite's work in London. All of which is by the by.

This book and the companions Wearing Dad's Head and A Man Jumps Out of an Aeroplane were my baptism into the world of surreal microfiction. Well, of microfiction in general too because until this point I'd not read any prose of a shorter length than a short story. And what a weird and wonderful world I found. Themed on love and its many aspects, this book postulates all sorts of what-if moments. I think I read it in one sitting, devouring the richness of wordplay and gorging myself on every syllable. And then I read it again, taking my time over the stories. The skill taken to sublimate a story down to the bare essentials in the space of a page or less than a page is breathtaking. To connect and feel something in such a short space of time takes a measure of skill beyond me.

[James]

Barry's crazy.
I mean-- he'd have to be to write stories like this; tiny short stories stacked with passionate, lovely sentences with narrative turns that would cause Salvador Dali a sneezing fit. 'I'm romantically involved with a cannibal' -- 'A woman's sex breaks free and terrorizes a town'-- 'A man surgically removes his own heart at a kitchen table.' Really, dude? You mix up your own drugs at home? How can I get some recipes? I don't know how you write so beautifully and so free and so creatively. Once I finished The Sadness of Sex and the story of men with cuckoo clock hearts, then I discover Rufus Wainright made a film adaptation in the mid 90's and the trailer on youtube featuring the story 'Poison' fits the books tone exactly right. Hysterical, insane and brilliant. If you've ever been in love and stood on the cold side of a closing door, have I got something for you. You're gonna laugh...

[Jennie]

At first I didn't feel like this collection was as strong as some of Yourgrau's other work, but around the middle I was completely charmed by these stories that are all at once - sad, sexy, surreal, absurd, honest and hysterical. I loved many of them but my favorites were Taboo (a story about the man dating a cannibal) Raid and Acrobatics - which made me laugh for days after I read it. Yourgrau's vocabulary and way with words is unparalelled. I adore his uncanny ability to inject readers into a tiny dream world and leave a lasting impact in such an economy of prose.

[kimberly]

took me WAY too long to read this one. and i definitely agree with many of the other reviewers here in that it gets better towards the last third. the first bits are cute, and sweet, and quirky and odd. i wish i'd taken the time to read them all in a shorter time span - i think it would have made a bigger impact. i've also been in a long term relationship so long that it was difficult to fully empathize with the pain of loss after a breakup, which seemed to be the main theme of the book.

[Jaime]

I can say, I don't read a lot...not by most people's standards. This book has entered in to my thoughts by way of imagery that has never been rivaled. It's been a REALLY LONG time since I've read it and I can't shake certain tales, one in particular, almost in a creepy sort of "did I dream it?", sort of way. Beautiful language and imagery.

[Carlos]

Outstanding. Imaginative. Varied. Clever.

I have bought this 4 times; end up giving it to someone then buying another.

A true benchmark of imaginative diverse short fiction, as is Clive Barker's Books of Blood.

One of my favorite books, ever.

[Dave]

Carol recomended this book.

[James Alton Moody]

Wish I could see the TV/Movie production of this...
Imaginative, sometimes a bit haunting.
LOVE to read it while I'm high.

[Jodi]

Quirky, bite-sized stories from someone with an impressive creative mind, but the eccentricity begins to seem methodical after reading five or so.

[Dave Cullen]

This WAS sad. An odd downer. Didn't hold my interest.

[Keith Davis]

This collection has some of Yourgrau's best pieces, but after three volumes of these little dream-like stories it starts to feel like a magician who only has one trick.

[Derek]

some of the finest short story I've ever read while rolling on the floor laughing.

[Lila]

Repetitive whimsy. Worth reading a few, but the title is better than the book itself.

[Nikki]

The four stars are for sentimental value.

[NYLon Carry On]

Wacky book. Great stories. I loved it. I reread it all of the time. It is a collection of wacky short stories about... Love.

[Tory Peterson]

quirky and hilarious.

[Kate]

Yourgrau's originality turns a bit pat in this third collection of slipstream stories.