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What do you know about sex?
I'm putting together an anthology-short, sinful, and sweet.
I know you know something, but where did you get that information. Where did you learn it?
What kinds of books did you read that had sexy bits?
Did Catcher in the Rye turn you on? Shakespeare's sonnets, and if so, which ones? Did you turn down the page on the bridesmaid + Sonny passage in The Godfather, perhaps? Are there sections you reread in Notes on a Scandal? Did I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell seem to be the most accurate reflection on sex you've ever read? Was it Ginsberg who inspired you, or Yeats? Molly's monologue in Ulysees or was it Margaret Mitchell's description of kisses and swoons in Gone with the Wind? How about Fear of Flying?
Who made you laugh about sex? Who made you never want to touch another human being again?
What works took you by surprise?
Here's my surprise story: thirty-one years ago I picked up a copy of Anais Nin's Little Birds, thinking it was simply a book of short stories. Imagine how shocked I was to discover that I'd chosen, at the railway station bookstore, a selection of erotica that made my fingers tingle and my face blush. That wasn't the worst or the best of it, either. I was on the way back from seeing my boyfriend in London, on my way back to New Hall, Cambridge, where I was a graduate student, and I don't think I looked up from the Nin book even once.
There has been no train since that ride I remember with such a sense of deep shame or such a deep sense of unexpected and enormous pleasure.
The two were often twinned in my experience of sex and the page.
It still embarrasses me slightly to talk about the "dirty bits" that I like, so it's probably very healthy for me to throw myself into the compiling of sexy material.
But I need your help. I'm looking for suggestions. What are your ten favorite pieces about sex?
Okay, so here's what I want: poems, stories, plays, passages, essays, or scenes from longer works describing sex, embodying sex, revealing sex. Offer a list, please. To be even more specific, I'm looking for pieces that will incite discussion about sex, that will provoke readers--even sophisticated, erudite, jaded, knowledgeable ones such as ourselves, to think, to smile, to blush-to respond.
crossposted with The CHE
