Erotica--his and hers.

We all know that men and women are really different, including how they approach the realm of the erotic. When two veteran writers who frequently appear in the pages of Black Issues Book Review each turned up as editors of erotic literature anthologies, we just had to get some sort of representative conversation going between them. We asked Samiya A. Bashir and Robert Fleming to read each other's collections. What, if anything, did these two editors--one a man; the other, a woman--learn about the thinking of the opposite sex? Read on.

Mating Calls From the Sisters

"Eroticism is a main ingredient of life" by Robert Fleming

At a time when an unprecedented number of African American erotic works have appeared on the literary scene, some critics question whether we need "nasty books" with their emphasis on "naughty words and acts." These critics find very little difference between erotic literature and porn's glorification of lust and seduction, indiscriminate coupling and depersonalized sex. In their way of thinking, all of it somehow cheapens human behavior at its most vital.

But good erotica goes beyond the clash of testosterone and estrogen, beyond taboo words, beyond desire and satisfaction. An example of this high standard is Samiya Bashir's Best Black Women's Erotica 2 (Cleis Press, February 2003, $14.95, ISBN 1-573-44163-5). This collection stresses the significance of story and narrative, the notion that sexy phrases and images are not enough, that the truly erotic must be attached to the daily routine of life. A capable editor and writer, Bashir understands that an erotic narrative must effectively blend the urges of the flesh with matters of the soul.

As I grow older, and maybe even wiser, I realize what a grand mystery African American women are: how glorious their sense of womanhood; how captivating their strength and practicality; how mythic their ability to possess the many sides of sensuality. What black men and black women want and desire are similar more often than we acknowledge. As time goes on, that merging of sexual interests has deepened even in its variety and methods. Bashir knows this. She has found a way to gather a collection in which sisters venture into realms of consensual pleasure that offer alternate routes for black men to learn more about the women who share our space in this post-Jim Crow time.

These 20 stories are more than a survey of sexual tastes, trends and styles, but extend to inner glimpses of what many of our women dream, want and need. Hetero, bisexual or lesbian--it's all here. While some of the stories may not be your taste, you cannot help but feel the pull and throb of these electric yarns by the likes of Dorothy Randal Gray, Kiini Ibura Salaam, Donna Sherard, Tracy Price-Thompson, C.C. Carter, Michele Elliott, Robin G. White, Opal Palmer Adisa, and Tara Betts. Something in the closing words of the story "Funky Ride" by Janee Bolden, catches some of the alchemy of erotic bonding, the mix of fantasy and reality, that permits us to lose ourselves in these flesh dances that the High Court sometimes seeks to rule and regulate: "We sleep and we dream about all we have done, and add and subtract things we forgot to do, or things we shouldn't have done. We're both smiling as we sleep, because we know what will come next when all this dreaming and imagining resurfaces in the next funky ride." Eroticism is a main ingredient of life. So Bashir finds stories that make us look and feel differently about intimacy, no matter what form or shape it takes.

Some commentators have called for erotica's hasty return to adult bookstores, to the plain brown wrappers, to the secret place at the bottom of the dresser drawer. Erotica is here to do more than provoke an emotional and sexual response. It should provoke an exchange of ideas and notions about what eros, love and desire really are. At the root of sensuality is a commonality of desires and urges between the sexes, in both the tenderness and fury of the erotic. The power of these heated words must tell us that love, sex and intimacy go beyond inches and rhythm, or positions and performance. They whisper that we must return to each other's arms, to our own lives and to the community of souls that has helped us to survive a very long winter in this land. I think this is a part of what Sister Bashir is trying to tell us here. As a man and as a fellow writer, I welcome her effort and her stories, for the world has become a dangerous and obscene place, far more hazardous than any sex act you will find in her book.

--Robert Fleming is a frequent contributor to BIBR. His second erotic anthology, Intimacy, is scheduled for release in 2004.

Brothers in Love

Black men's musings about desire and the right to express the heart by Samiya A. Bashir

Speaking about the erotic in public--free, naked and plain-has long been a punishable offense, particularly for black men. Their sexual history in the United States has been marked by violence and censure, just as their bodies have been perceived largely through the lens of physicality, virility, strength and sexual prowess or exploitability.

Black communities have struggled against the dominant culture's attempts to control black male sexuality. Still, our spirit as black people, as well as our natural, sensual, physical essence, has continued to shine through attempts to contort it into invisibility. We've carried our sexuality with us into every arena we've entered, transforming the context with our very presence. Yet, it has been difficult to take the expression we've achieved in music, for example, to the page with the same fluidity. The ghosts of those old, ugly images, that historical sexual coercion have often led us to err on the side of denial.

When he sat down to craft After Hours: A Collection of Erotic Writing by Black Men (Plume, July 2002, $14, ISBN 0-452-28332-9), Robert Fleming understood the history and context. He also saw the empowerment offered by previous collections of African American erotica, such as the groundbreaking Erotique Noire/Black Erotica, edited by Miriam Decosta-Willis, Roseann E Bell and Reginald Martin (Anchor, 1992, $15.95 ISBN 0-385-42309-8). In the 10 years between the publication of Erotique Noire/Black Erotica and Fleming's collection, the genre of African American erotic fiction has grown immensely. The singular voices of black men, however, have been conspicuously absent. Most anthologies include writers of both genders, but the majority have been edited by black women. Black men have been incorporated into volumes of both straight and gay erotica, but there was no real home for heterosexual black male erotica in which the brothers were not just object, but also subject, writer, creator and host of the imagination. After Hours is that home.

Fleming has compiled the work of 19 writers who approach their work from different points along the recognizably diverse spectrum of black male experience. The collection starts with "Cultural Relativity" by Charles Johnson, a National Book Award winner. Johnson stretches the erotic imagination as he recasts a fairy tale in the deep hues of a West African prince in search of his bride.

The stories in Fleming's collection speak of married and single brothers, virgins and players, conjure men and preacher men, one-night stands and lifelong love affairs. Readers travel from Maui to Chicago, New Orleans to Mexico to the Great Wall of China on the jet stream that effortlessly carries each story into the next. Our tour guides never cease to keep us guessing, from Kenji Jasper's ambitious poet to Jervey Tervalon's graduate student teacher whose entanglement with a student keeps him dangling on the edge. Tracy Grant's young Reverend Holland walks a long and painful road through temptation in order to find the salvation he needs to accept his blessings. Kalamu ya Salaam's "The Roses Are Beautiful, but the Thorns Are So Sharp" puts erotic expectations through the spin cycle as a fiery coupling explodes into a tale of two people together for all the wrong reasons. Ya Salaam uses his quick-cut style as he follows one man's obsession for a beautiful news anchor, and her own paralyzing fear of intimacy. Cole Riley raises the stakes even higher in "If It Makes You Happy," a tale of physical attraction leading to the most dangerous places, while leaving readers to wonder if his character will escape with his life.

Reading After Hours is almost like getting the answer to a question from someone whose opinion no one had ever thought to ask: The perspective is fresh, it defies expectations, it surprises with each page and makes perfect sense. Readers may begin to wonder why they haven't read this before, why aren't there dozens more books of its kind on shelves. You won't find everyone represented in these stories, but you will certainly find someone you know (or want to know). Each writer takes readers' expectations and flips them in his own defiant style; the result is a breathlessness like that after a wild spin on the dance floor.

There is danger in these pages, which is an interesting commentary on the state of sexual relations today. But there is also great joy, passion and fulfillment. As in life, there are more questions than answers in the stories the brothers offer as a sample of their erotic imaginations. After reading After Hours, I say, Let's continue this call and response exchange.

--Samiya A. Bashir is co-editor of Roll Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art.