Bastard Life

Reunions

Neal Boulton — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:39:23 -0700

Mapplethorpe. This major, long out-of-print survey, widely regarded as the definitive overview of Mapplethorpe's black-and-white photography, is once again available in a new, updated edition. It presents a comprehensive selection of Mapplethorpe's nudes, portraits, self-portraits, floral still lifes and other works, including his best known and most controversial images. Mapplethorpe's choices were both innovative and bold, and his work has continued to resonate since his early death in 1989. His cutting-edge use of homoerotic and other challenging themes has become embedded in our culture, with pervasive echoes not only in the work of other artists but in mainstream advertising as well. Mapplethorpe is on sale now and worth it.-N.B.

Born in the U.S.A.

Neal Boulton — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 11:13:35 -0700

America Swings by Naomi Harris. "These people are definitely having better sex than the rest of us."-Naomi Harris

In her first book (more like a giant and amazing tome actually), Naomi Harris, who has been published in Life, Fortune, Flaunt, and Heep magazines, presents us with the altnernative lifestyles of real Americans-without any glamour. But in doing so, Ms. Harris gives American sexuality a richer context and presents it, in it's raw beat up Levi jeans form, with even more sex appeal. Everyday folks, you might say, of all walks of life and desires live inside America Swings, thanks to Naomi, who celebrates without glorifying those who still make the most of life, liberty, and the pursuit of sexual happiness. On sale now and worth it.-N.B.

The Pants Girl

Neal Boulton — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 09:13:00 -0800

By Rachel Kramer Bussel, from the anthology Stirring Up a Storm: Tales of the Sensual, the Sexual, and the Erotic. Edited by Marilyn Jaye Lewis. On sale now, and worth it.-N.B.

I usually go for girls in skirts, girls whose legs peek out from all manner of clingy fabrics, whose legs I can imagine sliding my hand up, up, up and meeting a hot, wet pussy that I can taste and twirl and play with to my heart’s delight. Girls in skirts invite this kind of speculation, as they sashay down the street, a slight breeze all that stands between them and a peek at their lacy, pretty panties.

Girls in skirts are much more likely to be flirts, to try to get me going with a carefully placed twitch as they inch their skirt just enough for me to catch a glimpse of thigh. Skirt girls are teases, their mouths almost always lipsticked into some bright shade of pink or red, their eyes round and taunting. Skirt girls bring out my most aggressive side, and even though I’m one myself, I feel a flush of heat pass through my body when skirt girls, whether in thrift store dresses, clingy minis, or prim to-the-knee office numbers, pass me by. Skirt girls make me wish I were a boy, wish I were a butch, wish I could grab them and shove them up against the wall and find out exactly what’s happening underneath their hems. But this story isn’t about a skirt girl. It’s about another kind of tease entirely--a pants girl.

Shana was wearing pants that were clearly not from this era, with a slight resemblance to bell-bottoms, which curved all along her tender ass. Her ass wasn’t big, but it was perfectly rounded, not flat, which is all the rage but does nothing for me. These pants made me want to wear pants, to be a pants girl, made me realize that for all the allure of the skirt, pants could cling and tuck and bend in ways a skirt just couldn’t do. In addition to her pants, Shana wore a 70’s style shirt, a burnt orange color covered in white beads that clung to her breasts with tenacity. She looked like an extra from “Charlie’s Angels,” a 70’s hot mama ready to take me for a ride. I couldn’t take my eyes off her legs, her ass, covered in those gorgeous pants as she danced to the music at the annual dyke rock festival, shaking her hips as her drink sloshed around in its big red plastic cup.

We were in that kind of crowd where the butches and the femmes pick their sides, but she was a free spirit, shaking her ass in the midst of a group of freaks who didn’t care what the rest of the crowd was doing. She raised a hand in the air, trying to hold onto her cup, her ass jutting out. I’d been talking to some friends but had stopped abruptly when I noticed her, my eyes glued to the way her clothes clung to every feminine curve. Though she wasn’t wearing a skirt or any makeup, she was clearly a femme, her hair flopping down around her in pigtails, her face sun-kissed and healthy with a perfectly earthy glow.

She looked over at me, a brief smile flashing across her lips, before she closed her eyes and threw her head back. I knew I’d have to be the pursuer if I wanted to start something, which I most definitely did.

I pushed my way through the crowd, clumping along in my black combat boots. Normally, I stood to the sides, watched the other dancers, never admitting to my deep-seated self-consciousness. But this time, I threw myself into it, matching her beat for beat, showing her that even though I was in a dress straight out of the closet of a 50's housewife, I was a truly modern girl.

I grabbed her a few times, gave her a twirl, copped the lightest of feels, the kind that would make her wonder whether it was her imagination, whether I meant it or was oblivious to her beauty.

She finished her drink and tossed her cup to the ground, closed her eyes and proceeded to ignore me, dancing up a storm to her own unique beat. I did the same, not caring what my friends thought, knowing that the only way to woo her was to match her individuality with my own. Finally, hours later, the music stopped, and she looked up at me, glowing with sweat and energy and sass. She leaned up and kissed me on the forehead, then I led her onto the street, onto my bike, and into my bed.

When I had her alone, I realized I had my hands full. Girls in skirts are generally easy to figure out, they’ll grab my hand and slide it under their panties. But “pants girl,” Shana, was harder to figure out. She straddled me, grinding her hips down, pushing against me until I was totally wet. I grabbed her hips and tried settling her onto my lap. She was hot, yet somehow I wanted her to keep her clothes on, those clothes that hugged every curve. She leaned close and kissed me, a full, juicy kiss that made me topple backwards.

We tumbled around on the bed, laughing, turning over and over, until finally I landed on top. I wedged my knee between her legs, pushing it up hard against her cunt, and she instinctively brought her legs up onto my shoulders.

Her huge breasts were straining under her shirt and I had to taste them. “Lift up your shirt,” I said, a shiver racing through me when she quickly did as I commanded. Her breasts were barely covered by her wispy bra, and though her breasts were big, they were clearly natural, full and round and perfect.

I planted my knees on her legs, keeping them pinned down as I pushed her luscious tits together and began attacking both nipples at once, peeling down the lacy edges of her bra with my teeth to take in the hard, pink nubs.

I licked them at first, my tongue darting out, tasting and teasing, before bringing my lips together to suck on them. I knew she’d be the kind of girl to go crazy if I so much as brushed against her nipples, and I was doing much more than that as I pressed my lips together tightly, kneading her nipples into dark red points before lashing them with my tongue.

“Yessss,” she hissed as I twisted them hard between my fingers, so hard I knew she’d feel it for days afterward, welcoming the pleasurable pain even as it made her tender buds stiffen under her shirt, letting anyone around her see them. I loved how she didn’t flaunt her tits in public, didn’t have them practically hanging out, an offering to any horny passerby, but instead kept them covered, the full, rich orbs practically obscured by her plain brown top, just waiting for the right lover to come along and unlock their secrets. The more I twisted, the more I licked and sucked and bit, the wilder she became, squirming all around, making a pretense of wanting me to stop but clearly desiring nothing of the sort.

Finally, I paused, reaching my hand between her legs, pulling her now-wet pants tight against her straining pussy. She was practically dripping; melting, so wet I knew she couldn’t stand it, which is exactly where I wanted her. And I was wet too; my panties were drenched from having my face buried between those juicy tits, now glowing a gorgeous red.

“Turn over,” I barked at her, not certain whether she’d comply.

She did, too caught up in her erotic trance to care what I’d do next, as long as I touched her, somewhere, anywhere along her blazingly hot skin.

I reached underneath her and unbuttoned her pants. She lay passively and let me do it--like a child, even though she was 100% full-grown woman. I went slowly with those pants, playing with her pussy, pinching her ass as I went. I felt her shuddering beneath me, and when I finally eased those beguiling pants all the way down, I found only the flimsiest of panties, soaked through with her juices. I peeled those all the way off, too, and spread her legs, admiring the view of her pink pussy lips as she waited patiently for my next move. Holding the lips open with my fingers, I played with her wetness, stroking her, priming her. I slid a single finger up her and it practically melted inside her as she silently begged for more, her cunt tightening around me. I slid the finger out, trailing the wetness along her inner thigh. Then I leaned down and licked along her slit, plunging my tongue inside her. She was sweet and salty, ripe in the best possible way as she pushed herself against my mouth, slick and delicious. I squeezed her ass cheeks, giving them the occasional slap as I tasted her wildness.

Then I turned her over, needing to see her in every possible position. Her eyes were closed, her hands splayed out at her sides, her body totally serene as her pussy beckoned to me. Her hips arched involuntarily and I pushed three fingers inside her, pressing and twisting as her cunt again tightened around me.

I didn’t know her, not as well as I would come to, but for now, this was all I needed to know; that she wanted me, was ready and willing and needy. If I’d thought those pants did her body justice, they were nothing compared to what her naked body did to me, leaving me breathless.

She reached for me, her fingers grasping for contact as she grabbed my arm, and I lay down alongside her, nibbling her lips, whispering sweet nothings into her ear as I pressed another finger into her.

“More, please,” she said quietly, again like a child, but with an adult’s manners and grace, her voice breaking as I quickly gave her exactly what she’d asked for. I pressed my thumb against her clit, pushing it deeply against her pubic bone, swirling it into ecstasy, before sliding that last digit inside. She took my whole hand like it was nothing, but we both knew it was much more than that. She clutched me tightly, her teeth clenched, eyes closed tight as she spasmed around me. I barely had to move, only ever so slightly, my knuckles grazing her most tender walls, brushing against her body’s deepest secrets, making tears of joy form in her eyes. She let go of me and jerked backwards, coming in a torrent of curses and contractions that left both of us speechless.

I held her afterwards, cradling her in my arms as she curled up against me, gripping my thin cotton dress as if for dear life. I looked down at her, her shirt still rising above her jutting breasts, her bottom half pale and bare. After seeing her so stark and vulnerable, so graceful even as she let everything go, I knew I’d never look at her in quite the same way again. But no matter what, she’d always be my favorite pants girl.-R.K.B

Photograph by Helmut Newton for Vogue

Lap Dance

Neal Boulton — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:07:30 -0800

From Glamour Girls: Femme/Femme Erotica, by Rachel Kramer Bussel. On sale now and worth it.-N.B.

We pull into the shadowy parking lot in some corner of Los Angeles. I look around the deserted area, wondering where exactly we are, only half caring. Most strip clubs in L.A. are located in tucked away corners like this one.

I’m a little apprehensive as we walk around to the entrance and part the strings of beads to enter Cheetah’s-a strip club, a real live strip club! I’ve been dreaming of just such a place for years, but have never worked up the courage to actually go, until now.

I’d heard that Cheetah’s was "women friendly," and from the crowd I can immediately tell it’s true. There are plenty of guys but also a decent number of female customers who look like they’re having a good time.

My three friends and I take ringside seats along the surprisingly empty stage and animatedly set about checking out each new dancer. Many of them are what I expected-peroxide blonde, fake boobs, very L.A. and very boring. Some have a spark of creativity, and feign a glimmer of interest to tease out one of the dollars we hold in our hands, but many pass right by us or stare back with vacant eyes.

We watch as one girl after another maneuvers around the stage, shimmying up and then down the shiny silver pole, twisting and writhing in ways I can’t imagine my body doing. It feels surreal, this world of glamour and money and lights and ultra-femininity. I look and stare and whisper to my friends.

Though I’m having fun, the place starts to lose its charm when I have to get more change and still no girl has really grabbed my eye. I settle in with a new drink and a fresh stack of bills and hope that I won’t be disappointed by the next round of dancers.

When the next girl walks out, I’m transfixed. She’s the hottest girl I’ve ever seen. She’s wearing cave-girl attire: a leopard print bandeau top and hot pants - all tan skin, natural curves and gleaming black hair. She looks shiny, like she’s just put on suntan lotion.

She slithers along, making eye contact when she passes us, crawling back across the stage, putting her whole body into the performance. She toys with her shorts, thumbs hooked into the waist, before sliding them down her long legs to reveal black panties. I know that she’s the one for me, that I really like her and am not just an indiscriminate ogler, when I realize that I preferred her with her shorts on.

After her performance, I offer her a wad of dollars. "Thanks," she says. "I’m Gabrielle."

"Hi," I say shyly. "I really like your outfit."

"Me too," she giggles, then smiles before waving her fingers and gliding off the stage.

"Oooooh, you like her. You should get a lap dance."

"Yeah, get a lap dance! Get a lap dance!"

My friends are practically jumping up and down in their excitement, making me blush.

"Maybe."

"No, no, you should get one. She’s totally hot."

"I know, I know, but let me think about it, okay?

They’re so eager for me to lose my lap dance virginity, I’m afraid they may drag me over to her."

I need to get away for a minute, so I go to the bathroom. To my shock, I find her sitting inside, casually chatting with a friend. "Oh, hi," I stammer. "Is this your dressing room?"

She laughs. "No, but it’s almost the same quality."

I smile at her and then go into the stall, nervous at having spoken to her. When I emerge and begin to wash my hands, she admires my purse. I tell her about it and then take out my sparkly lip gloss. She asks to try some, and I hold it out to her, watching as her finger dips into the red goo. We talk a bit more about makeup and then she says, casually, "Did you want to get a lap dance?"

Did I? Of course!

"Yes, I’d like that," I say.

"Great, just give me a few more minutes and I’ll come get you."

I practically float out the door and back to my friends. 'I’m going to get a lap dance, and I arranged it all by myself! Ha!' I feel like gloating. I wait patiently, trying not to let my excitement show in a big stupid grin.

After a few minutes, she emerges and summons me, leading me to the other side of the stage, against a wall where I’ve seen other girls pressed up against mostly older men. She seats me on a plastic-covered coach, then takes a chair and places it a few feet in front of me.

"So people can’t look up your skirt," she tells me.

I smile to hank her for her kindness; it never would’ve occurred to me. I give her some larger bills, and we talk for a minute or two before a song she likes comes on.

And then, quite suddenly, it starts. She pushes me so my head is tilted back against the wall, the rest of me pressed against he sticky plastic, my legs slightly spread. She stands between my legs, then leans forward, pressing her entire body along the length of mine. She smells like sweat and lotion and some undefinable sweetness, and I breathe deeply. Even her sweat smells good, like baby powder.

Her soft hair brushes against my face and shoulders; her breasts are pressed up against mine. Then I feel her thigh against my hand; she’s climbed up on the couch with me.

This is definitely not what I expected. I’ve never been to a strip club before, but I thought I knew the deal-I’d seen 'Go', right? You can’t touch the dancers or you’ll get kicked out.

But what if they’re touching you?

What about her hand gliding along mine, the outside of her smooth thigh touching my arm, her slightly damp skin setting mine on fire?

The look she gives me is priceless: as her body moves downwards and she’s crouched near my stomach, I look down and her hooded eyes are on me, her face a vision of pure lust, her mouth slightly open. I’m sure it’s a practiced look, but it feels as real as any look I’ve ever received, and it enters and warms me.

I think I know what I’m getting into; I’ve read all the feminist arguments, the sex worker manifestos. This is just a job and I’m a paying customer: one song, one lap, one transaction. But all of that background disappears, likewise my friends, my family, L.A., everyone else in the club. It’s just me and her, never mind the music; it’s that look as she slides between my open legs.

I swallow heavily. I can’t move, and I don’t want to, ever again. I just want to sit here and let her brush herself against me again and again as I keep getting wetter. And then her hand reaches up, delicately turning around my necklace, a Jewish star. It’s the sweetest gesture, and something only another femme would notice or care about. She gives me a little smile as she does it, and I give her one back.

The song is almost over, and she gives it her all. Her body pushes hard against mine, pressing my chest, stomach, thighs. She’s working me so good this huge bouncer walks over and glances at us suspiciously, but she turns around and gives him a look that tells him to move along. I like knowing that whatever she’s doing with me is enough out of the norm to warrant the bouncer’s attention. I feel ravished in a way I’ve never felt before; it’s pure sexual desire, concentrated into whatever messages her skin and her eyes can send me in the course of a five-minute song.

When the song ends, I give her a generous tip, and she sits with me for a little while. She takes my hand in hers, which is delicate and soft, and I revel in her touch. It’s tender and sensitive, and I need this, need to hear her sweet voice tell me about her career as a singer, her friendship with a famous musician, her upcoming trip to New York.

I need to hear whatever it is she wants to tell me, true or not. My head knows certain things; this is a strip club, that was a lap dance, this is her job. But inside, inside, I know something else. I know that we just exchanged something special. It wasn’t sex or passion or lust per se; it was more than, and less than, each of those things. It was contact, attention, and adoration. Call me crazy, but I think it went both ways.

After we talk, I go back to my friends, but I feel a bit odd. I know they were watching, but did they see what really happened?

"That was some lap dance."

"Yeah, that was really amazing for your first time."

"She gave you her real name? That’s a big stripper no-no."

"I think she liked you."

I nod and respond minimally, still in my own world. For the rest of the trip, whatever I’m doing, wherever I am, part of me is still sitting on that plastic-covered couch, looking down at her, breathing her scent, reveling in her look.

I haven’t gone to any more strip clubs since, or gotten any more dances. How could they ever live up to her? I don’t know if I want to find out.-R.K.B.

Bastard

Neal Boulton — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:42:31 -0800

How could we not run this gem. Bastard by Alison Tyler from the book Frenzy, edited by Alison Tyler. On sale now, and worth it.-N.B.

"Why would anyone wear a belt buckle with the word Bastard on it?"

"Bess bought that for him."

"Doesn’t answer my question."

Flynn arched one brow and then leaned in close. "The word suits him."

I stared over the bar at the dark-haired man in the far booth. He was by himself, drinking a beer, and he had treated me nicely when I’d gone to serve him. But I’d noticed the buckle on his belt when he’d arrived, and I’d been curious from the start.

“Watch out for that one,” Flynn added as she headed to her tables in the rear. She couldn’t have said anything more likely to make me want to fuck him.

I waited until we had a moment together behind the bar once more and I begged for information. Flynn took me out back with her, and while she lit a cigarette, I bit my lip. She’d been the one to train me over the past three days. I knew how the place worked-or I thought I did. The only thing left was for me to understand the customers.

“He came in one evening, and told Bess he was going to make her come like she never had.”

Bess was the tall blonde with the snowy stare. She didn’t seem like she’d melt for anyone.

“And Bess told him where I get off.”

“You’d think, but she was curious. She took him home, planning to show him a thing or two about what women want, you know straddle his face for hours until he practically smothered. And he had different plans.”

I don’t know why I was getting wet listening to the story, but I was.

“She came in the next day, and I never saw her sit down. Not once.”

Now I knew why I’d been intrigued by the man. He was someone who could give me what I wanted. But I needed to hear the rest of the story, first.

“She said it was the best god damn night of her life. That he’d pushed her down on the bed and lifted her skirt. She had thought he was going to fuck her. Just shove it in. And she was ready. But he didn’t. He pulled her panties down and smacked her ass once. Hard. She squirmed and tried to pull away, but he held her in place and spanked her again. Bess said she was ready to tell him to leave, when he said, ‘I’m going to give this beautiful ass of yours a hiding you’ll remember. And then I’m going to fuck you so sweet the pain will melt away.’

“Something in his eyes made her nod, she said. Something in the way he promised to please her. She hadn’t been spanked ever, she told me, but she got into the position he wanted, ass up, arms locked in place, and she held herself steady while he smacked her bottom over and over.

“She said she was crying when he was done. Her ass felt swollen and red, but she had remembered what he’d promised her. The reward. And she didn’t complain. He went on his knees behind her, and he started to lick her pussy, slowly at first, pressing his face into her from behind, getting really deep in her. He used his tongue to trace circles around her clit, and then right when she was on the cusp, he stood up, gripped her hips, and pulled her back on him.

“Bess didn’t tell us any of that at first. But she walked gingerly the next day, and she refused to sit down. Even on break. She was constantly standing. It was only when I cornered her in the ladies’ that she admitted what had happened. Then she lifted her little pleated skirt, and showed off the marks on her ass. I knew right then that I was going to go home with him.”

I must have had a similar expression on my face, because Flynn started to laugh. “You, too? Well, wait a second, because you haven’t heard the rest. He didn’t come back in for a few weeks, and when he did, Bess was stalking around the bar like the Queen of Sheba, which she does pretty much every night. Thinks she’s the top dog, you know? But he had his sights on Lizzie that night. And Lizzie had already heard the whole thing from me, so she was ready to see for herself what this guy was like."

“Isn’t Lizzie gay?” I asked. I was still trying to keep all the ladies straight in my head.

"She's bi," Flynn shrugged. “Lizzie goes home with him that night, and she doesn’t even wait until the morning to tell me. She stops over on her way back to the Valley, and she shows me the bruises and tells me exactly how he did it. Grabbed her up and put her over his lap on the sofa, spanked her with a paddle he had at the ready. Made her cry and beg him to stop before he fingered her pussy until she came. And she said the whole time she didn’t want him to stop. 'Isn’t that crazy?' she asked me. She just wanted the spanking and the rubbing and the coming to go on and on."

"Did she have marks?"

"Like you wouldn’t believe. Her ass was plum-colored. Pretty, I have to say." Flynn got silent for a moment, and I wondered whether she and Lizzie had fooled around together, but didn’t feel as if it was my place to ask.

"Finally, he comes in, and I know it’s my turn. He’s got his eyes on me, and Bess won’t even look my way. But I don’t care. I’m ready. The way the girls have talked about him, the way they’ve built him up, I know he can’t possibly live up to the expectations in my head. But that doesn’t stop me from going home with him, from pretending I don’t know what he has in mind.

"The thing is, I don’t. He hand-spanked Bess. And he paddled Lizzie. Well, he’s got something else in mind for me. We’re in his kitchen when he tells me to bend over and hold my ankles."

“Just like that?”

“No, of course not. There’s been petting and kissing in the car and in the elevator up to his place. But we’re at that moment, when the glaze is over us. That sex glaze that makes everything seem speeded up. Your heart’s pumping so fast, and your pussy. I was dripping. And I do what he says. I bend over, hold my ankles, I’ve got these striped thigh-high stockings on and high heels, and I’m a bit unstable, but I do my best.

"Then I hear the buckle on his belt, and I think, oh, wow, he’s just going to fuck me. I didn’t realize right away that he was pulling the leather free. I didn’t understand until I heard the snap of the belt, and then it was too late."

"Would you have wanted him to stop?"

She grinned and shook her head, long feathery cinnamon-red hair dancing over her cheeks. “No. I wouldn’t have. I was feeling special that he thought I could take this. Take the leather. When he hadn’t used his belt on the other girls.”

“So he spanked you?” Saying the word almost makes me come right there in the alley.

“He spanked the living daylights out of me. You wouldn’t have believed the sounds I made while he worked me over. I lost my grip on my ankles right away, but he told me to put my palms flat on the floor, and he striped me with that belt until I thought I would go hoarse from all the begging. And then, just like he’d said, just like he promised, he pushed me down on the floor, flipped me over, and ate my pussy until I creamed all over his face. I was in heaven, the cool tiles under my hot ass, and his sweet tongue on my clit, and while I was floating he fucked me, so that I came all over again. Like magic."

There was silence then. We both seemed awed by her story. But then I remembered. The buckle. Why would anyone wear a buckle with the word Bastard on it?

"Bess went out and bought the thing for him. She was so pissed he’d fucked us all. That he’d worked his way through the girls. It was a warning, she said, for any other ladies who might want to try him out. But I don’t think he considers it a warning. I think he considers it a prize."

I nodded and stole a drag off her cigarette before she crushed out the butt with the point of her heel. And I wondered whether the word would make an imprint in my skin when it was my turn.-Alison Tyler

Photograph by Igor Amelkovich, on sale now, and worth it.

Through her eyes

Neal Boulton — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:17:00 -0800

Inside the Chelsea Hotel, by Julia Calfee. "People are always asking me what it's like to live in the Chelsea  Hotel. Not always easy. There are times I felt like a fly caught in  a spider's web, at risk of being eaten alive if I made the wrong move."-Julia Calfee

Julia Calfee's coffee table book of rich, filmic images chronicling the lustful, no boundary aura and life inside one of America's most notorious and oldest hotels is a must have in your book collection. Calfee's work deepens the viewers relationship with not just the underside of human sexuality and proximity to danger and risk, it also intensifies the gravity of life in New York and affirms the city's long reputation as a place where not only anything can happen at anytime of day or night-everything does happen. On sale now and worth it.-N.B.

Intercourse

Neal Boulton — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:58:00 -0800

Intercourse, by Robert Olen Butler. On sale now, and worth it.-N.B.

Robert Olen Butler’s new story collection, Intercourse, is, as its title suggests, totally about doing it. It imagines the thoughts of 50 iconic couples as they knock the proverbial boots, beginning with Adam and Eve copulating on “a patch of earth cleared of thorns and thistles, a little east of Eden,” and ending with Santa Claus blowing off postholiday steam in January 2008 by doing the nasty with an 826-year-old elf in the back room of his workshop. But, as the clinical tone of Butler’s title also suggests, Intercourse is very much not a work of erotica. It tends to ignore messy fluids and crotch-logistics in favor of wordplay and psychological nuance. The book proceeds through twinned vignettes-complementary stream-of-consciousness prose-poems paired across facing pages, with the primal physical act implied in the margins between. (When you close the book, each of the couples gets pressed together.) The entire thing contains, by my count, only one legitimate orgasm-and that probably shouldn’t even qualify, since it involves Richard Nixon masturbating while thinking about his mother.

The keynote of Intercourse is not connection but distraction. Very few of Butler’s characters are what you would call “in the moment.” Many scheme for political gain: Cleopatra, for instance, services “stone-fingered” Marcus Antonius while remembering hot nights with Caesar and plotting the consolidation of her power-“the first thing I will ask of him is that he kill my sister.” Others see sex as redemptive, a chance to heal past abuses. A Mississippi slave sleeps with a fellow slave in order to cancel out her rape at the hands of the Master; the sixteenth-century Italian aristocrat Lucrezia Borgia sees the consummation of her marriage as a way to negate being raped by her father, the pope. Butler’s best vignettes create, in just a handful of lines, surprisingly rich dramatic texture. Mary Magdalene has sex with a Roman centurion under a fig tree on the day she first sees Jesus; she thinks of the mysterious holy stranger as the centurion ponders his first murder, which he committed earlier that day. Leda is insulted that Zeus, as a swan, stopped to eat barley on his way to meet her. Louis XVI hates sleeping with Marie Antoinette, who thinks of Mozart. “I would much prefer,” the king thinks, “to put my member in the forge until it is yellow-hot from the flame and then pound it on an anvil with a hammer.”

Butler, a 63-year-old Vietnam vet and Pulitzer Prize winner, has become, over his long career, increasingly prone to this kind of fictional gimmickry. He wrote one book inspired entirely by outlandish tabloid headlines, another by his own personal collection of vintage postcards. He once wrote a short story during a 34-hour live Webcast. His last book, Severance, tracked the fleeting final thoughts of 62 victims of beheadings, from a caveman named Mud (beheaded by a saber-toothed tiger in 40,000 B.C.) to Nicole Brown Simpson (“decapitated by assailant, 1994”). Intercourse steers a nice middle road-an “inter-course,” literally-between gimmickry and art. It’s both titillating and meaty. Butler has a deep talent for particularizing these mythic sexual encounters; he gives them settings (in a Spanish forest, on the Titanic), dates (Adam and Eve get down “the first day after the new moon of the fourth month of the eighth year after Creation”), and often-witty biographical tags (“Santa Claus, 471, philanthropist”).

As the vignettes accumulate, they cohere into a kind of Spoon River Anthology of getting it on. Characters reappear unexpectedly; events echo. Inga Arvad, a journalist, has sex with both Hitler and JFK, beginning each monologue with the mild shock of “how can this be.” One chapter depicts Helen having sex with Paris at the start of the Trojan War; the next depicts her ten years later, on the boat heading home, in bed with Menelaus. (He thinks, “This is familiar, after a decade, this is too familiar, I should have just let her go.”)

Intercourse is a clever project, in both conception and execution-but occasionally this strength becomes a weakness. Butler sometimes abandons the novelist’s search for psychological truth in favor of cheap jokes. When Nixon’s mother catches him masturbating, he raises his hands over his head and says, “I am not a masturbator”-an easy gag that undermines the book’s more serious ambition. A few of the big names here inspire Butler to trade characterization for caricature, human depth for winky references to catchphrases and clichés. Mozart thinks in musical terms (“treble cleft of breasts,” “trilling laugh”), Picasso in paint (“her skin Yellow Ochre,” the trees “Cobalt Black”), and Lincoln in logs (“she rail-split my log long ago, the products of which were dispatched to erect a fence in some far land and leaving nothing erectable behind”). Freud engages in dream analysis, Milton Berle tells mental one-liners, and Gertrude Stein, bedding Alice B. Toklas, thinks exactly like she writes: “her mustache is her mustache is her mustache.” Jean-Paul Sartre-who, you may be aware, was an existentialist who wrote a novel called Nausea-thinks existential thoughts (“all of it too much, all of it with no reason for being”) and ends with a feeling of nausea: “I think I’m going to be sick.” Such shortcuts downgrade the book from legitimate literature-which it often is-to a secondary stunt, a virtuoso writing-seminar exercise. The less-famous half of a coupling Intercourse’s boldest and most ethically dangerous moments are its portraits of modern politicians, many of whom are, predictably, grotesque. A young JFK, thinking of himself cockily in the third person, ponders renouncing political ambition forever in a moment of ecstatic pre-orgasmic delay. J. Edgar Hoover gets off by fantasizing about (and recording) JFK. RFK compares his performance obsessively with his more dashing brother. (Marilyn Monroe, pointedly, does not.) Joseph McCarthy, in the middle of consummating his new marriage, becomes overwhelmed with paranoia when his wife breaks eye contact.

The book’s stakes, both aesthetic and legal, seem to rise even higher when Butler channels the sex lives of still-living public figures. For one thing, this puts him in direct artistic competition with the massive energy of transatlantic tabloid culture, whose lurid imagination (cigars, dress stains, potty-mouthed royalty) would require a Tolstoy, or at least a Roth, to improve. Butler’s versions, accordingly, all pretty much follow the script. Prince Charles and Princess Di suffer mechanically through their final time together. George W. Bush conducts a belligerent inner argument with liberal journalists (“I will kick your ass unremittlessly”) while a patient Laura mentally redecorates the Lincoln bedroom (“won’t be long-wallpaper wallpaper”). The ballsiest vignette, the “oh, snap” moment that will make you hunch over protectively on the subway and possibly Google the basic legal definition of slander, is Butler’s depiction of Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham as striving twentysomething law students: “this had to be done eventually,” Hillary thinks, and goes on to fantasize about sex on the floor of the Oval Office-“I don’t care if that’s the next time we do this, to be honest with myself, but I choose this time and I will choose some others in between because one day we’ll be fucking on the eagle and there’s a soft knock at the door and the secretary knows not to barge in and she says Madame President, the Soviet premier is on the phone.” Although it’s predictable- perhaps even because it’s predictable-the episode feels convincing, and even, in the dusk of our overheated never-ending primary, poignant. Hillary’s dispassionate scheming is right out of central casting, and recalls all the book’s other political lovers, from Eve to Cleopatra to Henry VIII. Butler seems to be telling us that repetition, above all, is the essence of humankind’s perpetual bump and grind. And, in a world in which all the secrets are out, perhaps the greatest art lies in making us blush anew at what we already know.-Sam Anderson

All the right stuff

Neal Boulton — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:26:00 -0800

Nervous, by Zane. Zane's legion of fans can't get enough of her way of telling a juicy, sexy story. In Nervous, the New York Times bestselling queen of erotica brings us a tale of a woman with a split personality. Jonquinette has always been nervous around men, but on the weekends her alter ego, Jude, goes on intense sexual escapades. When Jonquinette seeks the help of Dr. Marcella Spencer, the psychiatrist Zane originated in her bestselling novel Addicted, Jude's response is to go on a sexual rampage. In the meantime, Jonquinette becomes interested in her new neighbor, Mason, but Jude has no intention of letting Jonquinette fall in love -- not when Jude's having so much fun. Based on a short story of the same title from her bestselling collection The Sex Chronicles, Nervous is classic Zane with an edge. So, relax, sit back. You're in for a nerve-tingling read. On Sale now, and worth it.-N.B.

Some girls

Neal Boulton — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:13:00 -0800

Defiance. According to Maria Russo, author J. Courtney Sullivan "has fun with the "lesbian until graduation" phenomenon-which, in Commencement (Knopf) at least, involves a lot of kissing and some forays to second base. But in Bree's unexpected passionate relationship with another woman, Lara, the novel bumps up against profound questions about love and sexuality," and issues that suggest they may linger with Sullivan's characters well after graduation. Russo goes on to ask the questions of a fluid sexuality that most would dismiss as confusion: "Is Bree, who insists that if not for Lara she would be with a man, really straight, or just unable to admit she's gay? Or do some attractions defy not just labels, but a person's predominant orientation?" Well put, Maria-we believe the latter. Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan, on sale now and worth it.-N.B.

Girl power

Neal Boulton — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:46:37 -0800

The Other Woman, by Eric Jerome Dickey. Author Eric Jerome Dickey has reached a pinnacle in urban erotica with his classic book The Other Woman by writing the urban female-who-has-been-slighted-by-her-man but gets-her-revenge-by-seeking-her-own-hot-boys-while-her-man-is-philandering side of the story. Ha! With Woman he allows the reader to invite herself to finally look at the intimate situation of being "the other woman" from the outside in-literally. On sale now, and worth it.-N.B.