Best American Erotica 2005

Introduction Every February, I have a crisis of erotic conscience. This is the month in which I must cull the best of my favorite erotic stories from the past year. I make cruel decisions among dozens of perfectly excellent candidates I've savored the past year. I sit there, reading the pages again and again, asking myself, "Is this the story that no one will be able to resist?"In the middle of this year's meltdown, I got a phone call from a saucy men's magazine. It's one of those newer "laddie" mags you hear so much about, where girl celebrities in their underwear taunt readers but never quite take it all off. As a child raised on Playboy's centerfold formula, I am mystified. But laddie magazines don't offer that kind of third act. They specialize in an endless loop of second-base titillation.The reporter began his interview with me by asking how young men can employ erotic lit as foreplay, to lubricate their female dates and get them to acquiesce to intercourse. "Isn't it easier to just pop in an X-rated DVD?" he asked.I imagined my hand inserting a disk into a woman's vagina and then programming her to my will.I didn't tell him that. I actually had no idea what he was talking about. I've never been on a date where my beau seduced me with a porn movie. I'm usually as interested in having sex as my companion, so no tricks are necessary.Of course, I'm a pretty odd porn watcher. In my heyday, I watched more XXX videos than any other woman I know, and most men for that matter -- because I reviewed them professionally. I'm in the X-Rated Hall of Fame for porn criticism. I would load up dozens of tapes in front of my screen and watch them as fast as possible with my reporter's notebook in my lap. Sure, I had to relent and masturbate every once in a while, but even that was at breakneck speed. I was completely alone, except for occasional friends who would walk in and make fun of me. They left when they realized my dedication to deadlines was devout. I wouldn't have dreamed of subjecting a lover to my bizarre work ethic.Clearly, in order to answer this laddie interview, I needed to speak to some ordinary young people to see if porn DVDs and videos are part of their customary foreplay. Furthermore, what was so "easy" about it?My first informant was rather cynical. "If 'easy' is what you're interested in," he said, "then you ply your date with liquor until she's helpless. It doesn't matter whether you screen Barney or Paris Hilton. Your only task is to maintain enough alertness to take advantage of her.""That's raping, not dating," I protested.He cut me off: "What do you think these stupid magazines are promoting? They're incapable of considering women's sexual self-interest."Harsh? Yes, but I heard similar disdain from others. The most innocent response I got was from a college student who said that it was just another twist on 1950s drive-in nostalgia. "When you go out with someone, you like an excuse to get it on. You watch a dumb movie, and you start getting busy, 'cause neither of you cares what's on the screen."It's the American Puritan Reflex again: two people who pretend they're not going to have sex even though that's exactly where they're heading. It's not easy, it's contrived.It certainly is more challenging to tell your date an erotic story, or hand her some provocative pages to read. Sharing is caring, but where to begin? The hard part is that such disclosures are so intimate -- you're showing her something private. It's the beginning of mutual rapport, and it's also taking a risk, the ultimate aphrodisiac.I did talk to some couples who watch porn for fun...but they weren't exactly the laddie crowd. These were longtime couples way past the dating phase. Porn night is part of their familiarity.The most popular porn-watching group activity I found occurs at parties. Someone throws a kegger and keeps a sleazy porn tape on the tube for the wBright, Susie is the author of 'Best American Erotica 2005', published 2004 under ISBN 9780743258500 and ISBN 0743258509.