What's hot for one should be hot for all, or at least that's what Yau's hip, high-smut collection seems to imply. In an introductory note, he claims that we're all natural voyeurs: "We want to know what others among us worship, desire, need," and thus we'll be just as interested in someone else's fetish as that person is. This theory is put, rather rigorously, to the test in 42 stories by the likes of Charles Bukowski, Gordon Lish, Jonathan Lethem, Jessica Hagedorn, Rikki Ducornet and Guy Davenport. In Bukowski's "Love for $17.50," a man gets up close and personal with a mannequin, while Laurie Weeks's "Swallow" documents a sister's desire for a brother enamored of her wasting disease. Yet a fetish, almost by definition, is idiosyncratic. Just because someone might enjoy watching another person undress does not mean he or she will enjoy reading about one writer's Joycean fecal indulgences in "Metempsychosis," by Garrett Caples. The same holds true about a rock groupie who describes the various performers' genitalia in Janice Eidus's "Snow White and the Seven Dicks." Some of the selections, most original to this collection, are presented poetically, some artlessly, some humorously and others as experimental narratives. If they share anything in common?besides an impressive degree of hipster literacy?it is their eccentricity. Whether or not Yau's faith in the universal erotic appeal of a well-told tale is justified, there is undeniably something here for everyone.
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