Notable 2016 Sex Books

Sex: there's so much to learn! These well-written, 2016 non-fiction books present new information, helpful tips, and provocative points of view that you'll find illuminating. These books make great holiday gifts -- buy them in time to read them first!



Inviting Desire: A guide for women who want to enhance their sex life by Walker J. Thornton, is a self-help book of tips, tools, questions, and exercises that help you understand and own your sexuality after the shifts you’ve experienced after menopause. It’s written as a 30-day process to invite desire and sexuality back into your life, and help you examine new ways to think about sexual desire, prepare for sex, understand your own arousal pattern, and accept yourself as a sexual being. Thornton's tone is soft-spoken and intimate, sharing the practices that she has learned along her own journey. "This is about you, your body, and your desire," writes Thornton.

Thornton covers many useful topics in her 30-day journey. You'll learn more about yourself as a sexual being as well as tools for making changes.  Although Thornton says, "it's for you, not you and a partner" and the exercises are done independently, the book is geared to women who have partners or partners-to-be. If you're solo, some of the practices won't apply, but you'll still learn new ways to think about your own body, your own desire, and your own pleasure.



 Future Sex: A New Kind of Free Love by Emily Witt. Single, in her thirties, and (sometimes) enjoying the hook-up culture, Emily Witt decides to observe and participate in other ways that people enjoy sex. She explores Orgasmic Meditation, the making of porn, sex parties, and Burning Man, for example. If you liked America Unzipped and Secret Sex Lives, you'll enjoy this one, too. Some of Witt's discoveries/conclusions:

• "Some experiences you avoid not because you know you don't like them but because you don't want to like them...My aversion to pornography was not because the images didn't stimulate, but because i did not want to be turned on by sex that was not the kind of sex I wanted to have." 
• "I think if someone were to draw a portrait of the people who were 'ruining Burning Man' it would have looked like us."
• "I now understood the fabrication of my sexuality. I saw the seams of its construction and the arbitrary nature of its myths...Just as wanting to fall in love did not manifest love, proclaiming myself 'sexually free' would not liberate me from inhibition."

In Search of My Sexy Old Self: Re-discovering sex after sixty and beyond  by Cathy Thomas is a memoir + self-help guide on rediscovering sex with a partner after it has gone dormant. At 71 and 74, Cathy Thomas and her partner had been together 30 years, and for the last decade, sex had stopped for them. They rarely talked about it, and skittishly dropped the subject if it happened to come up. Then Thomas decided to go on a journey, researching whether people were really having sex at their age, and if so, what kind of sex, and why, and how. Her research led her to several authors (among them, me) and websites, and the new knowledge she gained culminated in a rebirth of sex and a new kind of communication and intimacy between Thomas and her partner. The end of each chapter includes "Discovery Tasks" to help you take this journey yourself.

I recommend this well-written and buoyant book especially for readers who want a gentler, more one-step-at-a-time pace in rediscovering their sex lives than I often promote. Whereas I may seem to push you into a "just do it" attitude whether talking to a partner or a doctor or self-pleasuring with sex toys, I know that many of you might appreciate a more gradual approach. This book may be just right for you.

Talking about Sex Without Intercourse

Let’s get one misconception out of the way. Sex without intercourse is still sex. Real sex. Satisfying sex. Hot sex. The idea that only intercourse constitutes “real sex” limits our creativity and our satisfaction.

Sex is any activity that arouses you and brings you sexual pleasure. 

So begins "A Senior's Guide to Sex Without Intercourse" which I wrote for Senior Planet. I spell out some reasons why you might want or need sex without penis-in-vagina (PIV), how you might want to explore sexual expression without vaginal penetration, activities to help you prepare for this change, and ways to communicate about it. I hope you'll read it and post your comments there. Let's make that Guide just the beginning of the discussion.

One of the topics I discuss is how to negotiate what you want sexually, whether you've been with your partner for decades or you're just starting to get intimate. I offer these opening statements if you're starting a new relationship and you want to become sexual in ways that do not involve PIV:

• I’m very attracted to you. Intercourse is not possible for me, but I’d love to explore all the other ways we can enjoy each other. 
• I’m excited about where this is leading. Can we explore how to make love to each other without the goal of intercourse? 
• I have to tell you that we might not be able to have intercourse. But, if you’d enjoy it, I’d love to use my mouth and hand to satisfy you.

Have you negotiated sex without PIV with either a longtime or a new partner? What words did you use to open the conversation? I invite you to post your comments here. (I want everyone including readers in their seventies, eighties, nineties to feel comfortable with the language here, so express yourself candidly but in words that wouldn't get bleeped on network TV.)

As sex columnist Dan Savage explained in a recent podcast,

Straight people should take from gay people these four magic words: “What are you into?” That question, when two guys are going to have sex, is always asked. When it’s a man and a woman, all too often, consent is granted and then all communication ceases. What’s happening next is assumed: if it’s heterosexual sex, it’s penis in vagina.

We don’t have that default assumption in gay land. When two guys say yes to sex, it’s the beginning of a whole other conversation. Everything has to be discussed and negotiated. Asking “What are you into?” is so empowering, because at that moment, you can rule anything in and anything out. It’s a sexy negotiation. Straight people sometimes say to me, I wish I could have more sex. I say, "You could, if you had a broader definition of sex."

In the Resources section of "A Senior's Guide to Sex Without Intercourse", I recommend several books. To make them easy to find, here they are with direct links to their Amazon pages -- or your local independent bookstore can order them for you.

Secret Sex Lives by Suzy Spencer: book review

Suzy Spencer
photo by Randy Austin-Cardona

Since first grade, when I first lusted over a gorgeous dark-haired boy named Travis, I prayed to Jesus for a boyfriend. I never got one. The closest I ever came was a couple of briefly consummated associations with married men. . . I don't trust men enough to be emotionally intimate with them. And I don't know why men terrify me so. They just do. God, they do. 

Does that sound like the kind of person who interviews strangers about their sexual behavior for a book? Yet that's what Suzy Spencer did. At age 50, she took a yearlong detour from writing true crime and placed an ad on Craigslist, asking for people who were willing to talk about their sex lives.

Her "sex freaks" -- as she dubbed them -- contacted her in droves. They were eager, often titillated, to talk about their sexual encounters, desires, and secrets -- including cheating on their spouses, swinging, kink play, Dom/sub, phone sex, cross-dressing, and more. The result: Secret Sex Lives: A Year on the Fringes of American Sexuality.

Was Spencer kinky and wild herself? Quite the opposite. She hadn't had sex in ten years and admitted feeling out of her element about the whole subject. Raised Southern Baptist and never having experienced satisfying sexual freedom personally, she was uneasy about her own reactions to some of the wild stories and confessions she was hearing. Sometimes she was fascinated past journalistic curiosity. Sometimes she pushed journalistic boundaries* as well as personal ones. Sometimes she was disgusted. And occasionally she described trying not to laugh.

Those last two reactions interfered with my appreciation of the book at times. I don't think she realized how judgmental she was (or if she did realize it, it didn't bother her). For example, she told a round-bellied, truck-driving Texan that he didn't look bisexual ("I am just shocked -- I mean, no one would look at you and think -- ever."). She had to fight back "something putrid" rising in her throat when one of her interviewees described having daddy/daughter phone sex. She described Lady Sapphire, giving a presentation on bondage, this way:

Lady Sapphire's demeanor is pure rural. Her eyeglasses look like one-hour wire frames. Her...dress reveals white, scarred, toneless arms. Its neckline...covers her breasts, which are aligned with her protruding stomach...Slump-shouldered, Lady Sapphire looks like she's about to go grocery shopping on a hot summer day.

* About the boundary pushing. At one point, a man who has been describing his phone sex encounters invites Spencer to listen in on his multi-orgasm-producing conversation with phone sex partner of the moment. However, the recipient of this call -- and of the multiple orgasms -- would not know that Spencer was listening in. Spencer agreed and went through with it, which struck me as highly unethical. The phone sex was consensual -- but would it have been if the recipient had known that a journalist was listening and taking notes, and would later record this conversation in a book?


I appreciated seeing the changes in Spencer's attitudes about sex as she delved into other people's sex lives and how they felt about what they did. She was painfully aware of how tightly closed up her own desires were, and she realized she was living vicariously through her "sex freaks."

Much as I didn't like Spencer's judgmental reactions to her subjects, I respect her as a writer for her courage in revealing the jarring flaws in her own sex-positivity. She easily could have cut comments like "I need a break from cross-dressing, enemas, slaves, sluts, and whips" or "I was so tired of hearing men rationalize their cheating by complaining that their wives had lost all sexual interest due to menopause or a hysterectomy" or "I wasn't all that interested in watching a beer-bellied retiree with rosacea rub his penis until sperm oozed," and we'd be none the wiser. But the struggles with her upbringing and prejudices are part of the journey for Spencer.

This aim of this book reminded me a little of America Unzipped: In Search of Sex and Satisfaction by Brian Alexander, which I enjoyed tremendously and reviewed in 2008. If you haven't read that one and you like learning about how other people enjoy/ express/ revel in sex (and we're not talking about missionary position with the lights out), check it out, too.

Scary Old Sex by Arlene Heyman: book review

I was prepared to love this book even before I opened it. Scary Old Sex -- what a title! -- and it was written by Arlene Heyman, who had been a classmate of mine at Bennington College in the 1960s. We didn't know each other well (maybe she didn't know me -- Joan Kassman at the time -- at all), but her reputation as a brilliant writer, certain to succeed, was well-known even then.

Now Heyman, a therapist/psychoanalyst in New York City, has written a stunning collection of stories, some (not all) of which feature people our age. What I love most is that her characters, whether old or younger, have bodies and sex drives and sometimes quirky ways of living with both.

This collection is not erotica, and many of the stories are not directly about sex at all. Some of the characters are old; others are not. But overall, the characters' sexual behavior and longings; their feelings about sex, their own bodies and their partners' bodies; the effects of the passing of years on sexual expression and desire; and how relationships work (or not) -- all of this provides both chaos and clarity about how we age as sexual beings.

For example, in "The Loves of Her Life," 65-year-old Marianne needs both Vagifem and a progression of explicit fantasies in order to make love with her second husband, 70-year-old Stu. "For them, making love was like running a war: plans had to be drawn up, equipment in tiptop condition, troops deployed and coordinated meticulously, there was no room for maverick actions lest the country end up defeated and at each other's throats."

In "Dancing," Matt, who is hospitalized for cancer treatment, must devise constant work-arounds for the pain when he tries to eat. Yet he is absorbed by how to make love to his wife, Ann, despite the fear that their tongues touching might kill him, as immunosuppressed as he is. Their resolution: he triple-gloves his hand, they both wear masks (she also wears a hospital gown, hairnet and booties, taking no chances), and he brings her to orgasm manually. "And he wept. Because she came and because it was over so fast and they were back to themselves with her underpants down around her ankles, the pad beneath her, and leukemia."

Sometimes the bodies Heyman describes sound quite alien -- except that we (who have lived this long) know them to be ours: "Aged flesh is so fertile, grows excrescences: papules, papillomas, skin tags, moles that have to be checked yearly; yet the hair thins out, underarm and pubic, as if the soil had changed to one that no longer supports that verdant shrubbery, but instead nourishes an astonishing variety of wild mushrooms -- beautiful, if you have an eye."

I highly recommend Scary Old Sex if you're fond of literary short stories and you're willing to look at aging, bodies, relationships, and sex with a magnifying glass.

I invited Arlene Heyman to answer a few questions:

Arlene Heyman

JP: Kudos for this collection of beautifully crafted short stories that portray our age group with compassion and insight. Your scenes of older-age sex are powerful because they are realistic and fully human – no caricatures, no derision, no skipping the joys and challenges of sex in older bodies. What went into your decision to write about “old sex” this way?

AH: I didn't decide to write about old sex. Scary Old Sex contains two stories about old people and their sexuality; five other stories are about people of different ages. There is sexuality and the body in almost all of the stories, because the body is with us throughout life and we live to a great extent through it.

JP: Were the sex scenes difficult to write?

AH: I think it is hard to write about sex at any age. The Guardian ran 3 articles about writing about sex, one by a guy in his twenties, one by a woman in her forties, one by me in my seventies) and we were all scared to death of what others would think of us. Frankly, I think it's hard to write about anything. I find writing very difficult. Some great writer said, "Oh, writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein." (Note from Joan: this quote has been attributed to Red Smith, Paul Gallico, and Ernest Hemingway.)

JP: Why do you think it’s so rare to find books that treat older people as sexual beings?

AH: I think it's because of oedipal taboos that it's rare to find books that deal with old adults having sex. The little girl loves her mother, then her father; the boy loves his mother, and then again his mother until the age of 5 or 6. Everyone who has had children and was open-minded saw that the boy wants to marry mommy and the girl daddy. 

Then the passionate intensity goes underground and in adolescence the main job is breaking the passionate attachment to parents and turning the passion towards one's peers. It is a period of mourning, of giving up the parents, and it is hard.(It is also a time of great excitement because one is entering the larger world.). 

Part of the way one turns away from the parents is by finding them disgusting as sexual objects. One tries not to think of them as sexual. That barrier one has to set up to start out on one's own life remains firmly in place. And it extends throughout life: one views one's parents as asexual throughout life. Old people are people's parents. They must be asexual. 

And then old people do it to themselves; they neuter themselves as they had to neuter their parents. Hence, books about sex in old age--disgusting. And no one writes them.

JP: What else would you like my readers to know?

AH: A fiction writer doesn't have an ax to grind. I'm not a politician. I didn't write that book to propagandize anyone. As a person, I do hope to stay alive until I'm dead, and part of being alive is having a body. I wish for myself (and so I suppose for your readers) to think freely, know what I think, and to try to act on it so long as it doesn't hurt myself or another person. Life, more life!

Consensual Non-Monogamy: A Relationship Choice

I'm recovering from ankle-replacement surgery* and watching far too much TV and far too many films. Why is it that mainstream TV shows and films never show ethical, consensual non-monogamy as a relationship choice that works for many? We only see sexual exclusivity as the gold star of relationships, and when someone strays from the monogamy agreement, love turns into hurt and hate -- almost never into a renegotiation of what the couple wants the relationship to be going forward. (Showtime's "Masters of Sex" is the only exception that I can think of, and it's not mainstream.)

Don't get me started on how rarely we see older-age relationships portrayed in any way other than traditional, if they're portrayed at all! Even the new Netflix series "Grace and Frankie"  made me cringe at the stereotypical portrayal of older people and relationships. Yes, the men came out as gay and in love with each other instead of their long-time wives, but even they lapsed into spats and pain when it came out that one of them had either a past one-night stand or a last-night tryst with his ex-wife. Why not just say, "Yeah, these things happen and will happen and because I love you, I'll work to understand and accept -- let's talk"?

And the sweet, vulnerable, free-spirited, hippie Frankie played by Lily Tomlin?  Why isn't one of those cute, ex-convict artists emerging from her bedroom from time to time? (I have to say that as much as I'm dumping on this series, Frank Waterston is wonderful and adorable and the sexiest person on the show. He'd be welcome in my house anytime.)


Back to reality: sex therapists, researchers, and educators know that the sexual exclusivity model works for some but not for all. For others, ethical and consensual non-monogamy (which isn't cheating, because both partners agree to it) keeps many relationships strong. Pioneers like Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence and TED talk speaker on "Rethinking Infidelity," and Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, authors of Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships, have done brilliant work demystifying the causes and effects of infidelity and whether human beings are monogamous creatures.

My favorite podcaster, Dan Savage, talks about this often. He coined the term "monogamish" to describe couples who are committed, intimately bonded, and who sometimes have sex with others. The partner might want to know all the details or might not want to know anything, depending on the couple's agreement. Savage also says that when a couple has a monogamy agreement -- no sex with anyone else -- and one of them strays once in a while, the strayer is doing "a pretty good job at monogamy."

Please don't misunderstand me -- I'm not "promoting" non-monogamy or any sexual lifestyle. I'm just saying that I know many couples who stay together happily and intimately because they acknowledge that sexual exclusivity is not right for them. Let's not judge them or say (as I've heard some people righteously insist) that they "don't know how to be committed to another person."  

Those of you who are in consensually non-exclusive relationships, especially after age 50, I invite your thoughts here. Was this always the kind of relationship you wanted? Or did you come to it because you tried to embrace monogamy and it didn't work? I hope you'll share your views and experiences. (If you have trouble posting a comment, please email me and I'll post it for you.)

* In case you're curious about my surgery:I was in a near-fatal auto accident in 1979, which, among many other injuries, shattered my right heel and crushed my ankle. For the past 36 years, I've walked and danced on an ankle that barely moved and often caused pain. I sometimes described my foot as "a block of wood with nerve endings." I am extremely fortunate that now a reliable procedure is available that replaces a damaged ankle with a new, mobile one! I had the surgery in November, and I expect to be back on the dance floor in February! 

This Thing We Call Sex by David Steinberg: book review

David Steinberg has compiled a brilliant book of essays and erotic photographs in This Thing We Call Sex: A Radically Sensible Look at Sex in America.

Steinberg, now 71, has been writing about sex since 1985 and photographing couples being sexual at home since 1999. In This Thing We Call Sex, he describes many types of sexual awakenings and insights: his first swing party; his first sexual encounter with a trans woman, where he discovered how much he's turned on by a woman possessing both feminine energy and a penis; the gift of a gang bang for his partner's 52nd birthday; learning to slap a woman he loved because it excited her; and much more. Through Steinberg's candor and beautifully crafted writing, I felt I was getting more than a window into his views and activities -- I was experiencing them myself.

Steinberg grew up in the same era I did. We came of age when sexual repression was the norm, and we were foot soldiers in the sexual revolution (though I was far less adventurous, even in what I considered my wilder days). In 1963, when both he and I were in college, "rumblings of sexual change could be heard on the cultural landscape if you listened really hard, but they were distinctly muted to say the least."

David Steinberg

Steinberg puts his experiences and reflections in the context of discovering our sexuality despite our society's sex-negative view. Sexual acceptance has improved greatly since we were growing up, but sex negativity still persists. We're shamed for wanting what we want, called perverts and worse if what we like is outside the very small box of what society condones. Here, I'll let him say it his own way:

• "Who are we. really, when it comes to sex? Do we ever really get to know the full range and depth of our sexual desires and possibilities for pleasure? If we could strip away the rules, the moralizing, the early antisexual childhood training, the internalized raised eyebrows, what might we find of ourselves underneath?"


• "Sex is such a powerful and unpredictable arena for psychic discovery; it's no wonder it scares us to death. When we let the proprieties drift out the window, when we face our individual menageries of urges and desires without the referees of reason and reasonability, we are apt to uncover the most surprising and disconcerting things about ourselves -- things we don't even begin to understand, things we may well not want to acknowledge."


• "We are told repeatedly, and we come to believe ... that if we acknowledge, honor, and embrace the erotic impulses of our sensual selves we will destroy the order in our world and be cast into chaos. This terrifies us. We turn against desire itself, against our erotic impulses and feelings, as well as the erotic expressions of others. we set ourselves the task of keeping the erotic down at all cost."

Copyright (c) David Steinberg, 2000

And the photos! Deliciously erotic and intensely personal photos of faces smiling, grimacing, laughing in ecstasy; intimate gazes; entwined bodies. The diversity of the people in the photos is startling because it's so rare. As David told me in an email interview,

One of the core statements that I hope my photographs of people being sexual makes is that we all can be vibrant, alive, sexy, sexual people, despite the cultural biases that would restrict that appreciation to people who are young, thin, physically fit, etc. I make a point of including as wide a range of subjects as possible, including people of all ages, body types, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, gender identities, and sexual proclivities. I have photographed people ranging in age from 19 to 75, from 90 to 300 pounds, and over a dozen couples that include someone with a physical disability.

Hopefully, when people see my photographs they think, "Oh, look, this is someone like me being wonderfully sexual," rather than seeing someone whose sexuality confirms all the insecurities and self-doubts that we are encouraged to have about ourselves almost from birth.

Copyright (c) David Steinberg, 2007

I'm a sex geek -- I'm fascinated by all things sexual, and I love learning about how people think and express themselves sexually. In this book, Steinberg educates and fascinates me. I wholeheartedly recommend This Thing We Call Sex to my fellow sex geeks.

Book Roundup #1: Interviews with Arlene Schindler, Lynn Brown Rosenberg, and J.F. Silver

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The Right Side of History by Adrian Brooks: book review

I have an unalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may...and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere...I trust that I am fully understood, for I mean just that. 

-- Victoria Hull, 1871

The Right Side of History: 100 Years of LGBTQI Activism, edited by Adrian Brooks, should be in every bookstore and library and adopted as a textbook in every college-level, American history course.

Adrian Brooks has assembled a formidable body of work that chronicles the events and the people who have worked towards and spoken out for gay liberation and LGBT issues since before Stonewall. Yes, before Stonewall.

I was born in 1943. It hit me hard to realize these injustices were happening during my childhood:

• In 1948, homosexuality and adultery were criminal, masturbation purportedly caused mental illness, and premarital sex was deemed shameful. But Kinsey showed such “perverted activities” to be prevalent, thereby torpedoing a cozy concept of manhood rigorously reinforced. The nation reeled.
• In 1950, a Senate subcommittee issued a report, calling homosexuals a threat to national security...Even the appearance of homosexuality—butch women, effeminate men—became grounds for firing and arrest...it was still a crime to be a gay man or lesbian with myriad sodomy and lewdness laws on the books.
• In 1953, one of President Eisenhower’s first actions in office was to issue an executive order barring all gays, lesbians, and bisexuals from federal employment. 
• Cops would walk in slowly like they owned the place, eyeballing everyone, pushing people with nightsticks. If they put you in a paddy wagon, you’d be hauled off to the Tombs (jail). If they put you in a car, they’d take you to some alley or empty parking lot, make you suck their dick, take all your clothes, throw them in the trunk of their car, and tell you to go home naked.

Look at the diversity of topics and the big names in the table of contents:

Part I: Before Stonewall

• The Divine Discontent of Isadora Duncan by Adrian Brooks 

• Henry Gerber’s Bridge to the World by Hayden L. Mora 

• The 1934 Longshoremen’s Strike by Adrian Brooks 

• The Cradle Will Rock by Eric A. Gordon 

• Bayard Rustin: Offensive Lineman for Freedom by Patricia Nell Warren

• The Kinsey Reports by Anahi Russo Garrido

• Criminals and Subversives: The Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis by Victoria A. Brownworth 

• The Beats: Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac by Neeli Cherkovski

• Frank Kameny: Advocate for Freedom by John D’Emilio

• Josephine Baker’s Dream without Fire or War: An Interview with Jean-Claude Baker by Adrian Brooks

• April 4, 1968 by Adrian Brooks

• Ground Zero by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

Part II: After Stonewall

• The Revolutionary Joy of Gary Alinder by Paul Gabriel

• Lesbian Nation: Jill Johnston and the Revolution of Women by Victoria A. Brownworth

• The Angels of Light: Paris Sites Under the Bourgeois Sea by Adrian Brooks

• Anita Bryant’s Anti-Gay Crusade by Jeanne Córdova

• “The Mayor of Castro Street” by Adrian Brooks

• Interview with Charlotte Bunch: Human Rights and Gender Equality by Anahi Russo Garrido

• The Enemy Is Me: Becoming a Man inside a Feminist World by Max Wolf Valerio

• My Battle with the University of California by Merle Woo

• The Quilt by Julie Rhoad

• The Red Camaro by Matt Ebert

• Between the Sexes by Tiger Howard Devore

• A Hero in Search of a Myth: The Navajo Journey of Jack C. Jackson, Jr. by Max Wolf Valerio

• Interview with Judy Shepard: Remembering Matthew Shepard by Adrian Brooks

• Interview: Barney Frank by Brenda Knight and Adrian Brooks

• Black, Gay, and Muslim by Sultan Shakir

• Bullying by James Gilliam

• A Conversation with Evan Wolfson: Freedom to Marry Leader by Angela Dallara

• Diana Nyad by Rita Mae Brown

• Our Lives, Our Words: Newspapers, Bookstores, and Gay Liberation by Victoria A. Brownworth

I recognized many of the writers and subjects -- others were new to me, and I'm grateful to know them now. Most of the writers in of The Right Side of History: 100 Years of LGBTQI Activism are of our generation. We grew up not knowing this information. Let's change that now. I hope you'll read this book and purchase another for a friend. I did.



Adrian Brooks (born 1947, 68 at the time of the book release), who curated this book and wrote several of its essays, is a social and political activist, poet, performer and writer who has been working for change since the 1960s.

Best Sex Writing of the Year 2015 review

I love the Best Sex Writing series from Cleis Press. I've been a loyal reader since the first edition in 2005. I collect them, give them as gifts, read them cover to cover. This year's edition (titled inexplicably "Best Sex Writing of the Year, volume 1" instead of "2015"), edited by Jon Pressick, has the breadth and quality I've come to expect.

Realize that this series isn't erotica (although Cleis is known for erotica) -- it's a collection of non-fiction essays about all colors and stripes of sex-themed topics. Some of the essays are intensely personal (e.g. my own contribution, "Sharing Body Heat"), some are commentary on sexual issues in the news, some are sex-nerdy opinions, many open windows to sexual practices and worlds that might be new to you.

The best way to convey the range of topics and writers is to share the chapter titles with quotes from a few of them:

• Foreword • Belle Knox
• Captain Save-A-Ho • Fiona Helmsley
• How a Former Porn Star’s Sex Tape Helped Him Reclaim His Sex Life • Christopher Zeischegg aka Danny Wylde: "I'd done it a thousand times with people I'd barely met, and in the most stressful environments. Yet, I couldn't get my cock hard while in bed with the girl I loved."
• What Should We Call Sex Toys? • Epiphora: "I own over five hundred dildos, vibrators, and anal toys, which I routinely hold against my vulva (not my 'lady bits'), stick in my vagina (not my 'vajayjay'), press against my clitoris (not my 'love button') and push up my butt (not my 'backdoor')."
• We Need a New Orientation to Sex • Cory Silverberg
• I Am the Blogger Who Allegedly “Complicated” the Stuebenville Gang Rape Case—And I Wouldn’t Change a Thing • Alexandria Goddard
• Porn Director: I Changed My Mind about Condoms • Nica Noelle
• Pregger Libido • Ember Swift
• The White Kind of Body • Alok Vaid-Menon
• Sex, Lies and Public Education • Lynn Comella
• Sharing Body Heat • Joan Price
• Being a Real-Life Accomplice • Cameryn Moore
• Oops, I Slept with Your Boyfriend • Charlie Nox
• Pump Dreams • Mitch Kellaway: "I don't have a clitoris. Or, rather, I used to have one. But since starting my gender transition a year ago, my relationship to it has become quite complex."
• Prostitution Law and the Death of Whores • Laura Agustín
• Fisting Day • Jiz Lee: "What I love about fisting someone vaginally is feeling them take me in. There's a moment where the person just opens up to you. Once inside, they're so warm, wet, and every little movement you make can be felt."
• Tell Me You Want Me. • Mollena Williams: "What about submitting, what about service, what about taking a thorough flogging, what about menial chores, what about being useful, is sexy? Why is it eroticized? What makes it hot? In a word? Passion."
• The Gates • Tina Horn
• The Choice of Motherhood and Insidious Drugstore Signage • Stoya
• Kinky, Sober and Free: BDSM in Recovery • Rachel Kramer Bussel: "Can you be clean and sober and still engage kinkily?"
• Crazy Trans Woman Syndrome • Morgan M. Page
• Let’s Talk about Interracial Porn • Jarrett Neal
• When I Was a Birthday Present for an Eighty-Two-Year-Old Grandmother • David Henry Sterry [see below]
• What an Armpit Model Taught Me about Sexual Language • Jon Pressick
• Growing Through the Yuck • Ashley Manta
• I Was a Teenage Porn Model • Lux Alptraum
• Disability and Sex • Jason Armstrong
• Fumbling Towards Humanity: How “Trans Grrrls” Helped Me Open Up to My Partner • Amy Dentata
• In Defense of Celibacy • Lauren Marie Fleming aka Queerie Bradshaw: "There are times in your life when a quick fuck can be beneficial, but sometimes all sex does is add to the confusion that is life. Sex with others muddies the emotional waters; take sex away and there's a better chance of finding clarity within yourself."
• No Restrictions • Dee Dee Behind: "My very first session with a client with severe disabilities was while I was working as a professional dominatrix on the third floor of a dungeon in an elevator-less building."

Jon Pressick

Who could resist a book with this range of topics from such a variety of writers, sex educators, performers, sex workers, and other juicy, sex-positive activists? As Pressick puts it,

Some of the topics you will read about here are very specific while others speak to all of us. Bringing them together is an attempt to throw open those doors. Pull the thoughts out from under the mattresses. Talk about sex in meaningful, thoughtful and creative ways.

David Sterry

One of my favorite essays -- you might guess this! -- was "When I Was a Birthday Present for an Eighty-Two-Year-Old Grandmother." Author David Sterry was 17 when he was hired as a sexy birthday gift for a woman who was 65 years his senior. Although he told his employer yes, his brain was imagining "an ancient naked wrinkled saggy droopy granny spread-eagled in front of me and my poor placid flaccid penis ...a lifeless piece of useless meat... What if she wants to do some weird old person sex thing I don't know about?" The experience, of course, was nothing like his nightmare-fantasy, but I don't want to reveal more and ruin the surprise.



I consider myself a sex geek. I'm interested in all things sexual. Whether or not I'm personally interested in exploring a particular behavior, belief, or milieu, my mind wants to take it all in. This book really satisfied my sex geekery. Thank you, Jon, contributors, and Cleis Press.

Order Best Sex Writing from your local independent bookstore or at this Amazon link.

The Years by Nicholas Delbanco

It isn't often that I find a novel to recommend to you that portrays characters our age in a way that's relevant, realistic, and insightful about aging and relationships. As a reader, I want to connect with characters and plot lines that I can relate to at this time of my life (age 71 as I write this) via beautifully crafted fiction.

The Years by Nicholas Delbanco is a splendid example of the kind of book I love to read. It's literary fiction, not a quick or mindless read. It's achingly honest about aging.

How did it happen, Lawrence wondered, that the person in the mirror was sprouting liver spots and wrinkles and hair in his nostrils and ears?

You'll invest some brain power in following the non-chronological sequencing. We meet Lawrence and Hermia when they re-meet in 2004 on a cruise ship after more than 40 years apart. He's 64; she's 63. The book flits back and forth from 2004 to their past. We learn how they met and fell in love in college, how they broke up and drifted apart, different relationships that shaped each of them as they journeyed through their lives, and the scars and regrets they carry with them.

They leaned toward each other, pressed against each other, and she wondered what her breasts would feel like if he kissed them as he used to, and what would happen next. She saw them in the mirror, two bent gray heads adjacent in the ornate gilt-framed glass, saw them touching lips and cheeks as though performing for the camera in some sort of time-lapse photograph, a present overlay upon the past.

Yes, we can anticipate that this chance meeting will lead to a renewed love connection, but the book is still not predictable. In the latter half of the book, we move forward through the time after they reconnect. There are surprises, which I won't reveal, and even the predictable parts are nuanced, never trite.

It's rare to find a novel that speaks realistically about love and aging and includes sex. The sex scenes are tender, slow to unfold, and not graphic. For example:

They had been passionate together the way the young are passionate, and nothing in her life before had readied her for how they fit together or how she, holding him, felt ... That passion was not spent. It was spent in the physical sense, of course; she could no longer manage, and he could not manage, the revels of the young ... But it was like The Tempest; it was everything restored, made whole, old treacheries forgiven and old arguments resolved. What had been lost was found. They were gentle together now, slow. It was strange to be so much in love with someone she had loved before and known so well and parted from and then spent more than forty years not knowing....

I found the writing masterful. I put post-its throughout my copy to remind me of pages I wanted to return to, and this photo shows what my book looks like now.

The Amazon ratings are mixed, and I'd love to know the age breakdown for those who loved and those who were bored by this novel. I suspect that the negative reviews were by younger readers or those who don't have patience for literary fiction that is slow to unfold. At our age, we know that life is slow to unfold, and we don't need to rush a book any more than we have to rush sex these days! I can't imagine readers in their sixties and beyond being unmoved by this novel.

If what I've written here intrigues you, I hope you'll read The Years and post your own comments.

Nicholas Delbanco, born 1942