My back pages

Someone wrote me saying she was putting together an anthology of the best erotica of the last 25 years and wanted recommendations on what my "favorite" erotic stories were. Here's what came to mind:

Top of the list for me would have to be "Jessie" by Pat Califia (published in Califia's Macho Sluts collection. It's a long, nuanced story that was probably the first great story anyone ever wrote about lesbian s/m. A genuine groundbreaking work.

Second would be the first story I ever read that had explicit sex in it. This was "Sea, Sea Rider" by Richard Brautigan, in Trout Fishing in America. I was 15. I guess any story that's the first sex story you ever read blows you away. It's a really beautiful story, though it was published in 1961, so it doesn't exactly fall into the 25-year window they wanted.

Third is Marilyn Jaye Lewis' story "The Urge Toward Jo," which I published in Frighten the Horses in 1990. Amazing transgressive story.

And finally I really have to say something about another big influence, Kathy Acker. Though it would be impossible to pick "a story" from her, a passage from "The Childhood Life of the Black Tarantula" or "Blood and Guts in High School" would do the trick. And I think it would actually be difficult to have an anthology of the last 25 years of erotic writing without acknowledging what Acker achieved. Even if she wasn't primarily trying to write "erotica."

I came up with that list really fast. And to tell you the truth, it's not hard to stop there. I'm sure there's great erotic writing all over, and since I haven't been editing a sex magazine for ten years, I can hardly claim to be on top of what's out there. Those are the big standouts for me.