Inside Him - book discontinued by Carroll & Graff - review by Antipova

Inside Him: New Gay Erotica promises to be a collection that takes 'classic gay erotic forms and motifs to another level.' Editor Joël B. Tan asks in his preface "If every story's already been told, what makes Inside Him new?"

If you've been searching for a deeper root in your erotica, Inside Him is exactly where you want to look. The stunning literary quality of nearly every story will stir your thoughts and emotions. Tan takes seriously his commitment to bringing only stories with masterful storytelling, innovative form, and compelling content---and his effort really shows. Among these fifteen stories (all M/M, occasionally M/M/M, one gang bang) only one left me with a neutral impression. Many stories strongly impressed me, and two nearly sickened me---but a strong reaction, whether positive or negative, speaks to powerful writing.

Even if the majority of the stories succeeded more on a literary level than on an erotic level with me, I'm thoroughly glad to have read Inside Him. This 209-paged, pulp-leafed paperback from Running Press will have a place on my bookshelf, but I'll be putting it with my poetry instead of with my erotica collection.


EXPERIENCE
When I decided to order Inside Him, there were no reviews online, and I had only the cover to judge it by. The cover is beautiful, intimate, (definitely not discreet!), and it suggested steamy hot men with steamy hot stories to be told. Sadly, for the majority of the anthology, that wasn't really the case. After reading the first half of this book, I thought I'd title my review "Fascinating, Well-Written Short Tragedies Which Also Contain Gay Sex." Inside Him is comprised of really beautiful literature, and I was moved, enlightened, occasionally sickened, gripped, and introduced to new ideas by the journeys its characters made. Many of the stories made plain to the reader the vulnerability of the men involved. As a book of short stories (if you exclude story #4), especially for someone who enjoys dark literature, Inside Him would have five stars from me.

However---it's marketed as erotica. The first story sped past neutral, and after a slow introduction the warm consensual rollicking gang-bang of Prince/Whore made a wonderful impression on me. The third story, though, shook me straight out of my good mood due to use and abuse of drugs, and the fourth flipped my stomach over and I almost quit reading the book (nonconsensual druggings and human trafficking).

I am glad that I picked it up again, because the fifth through tenth stories were well-written, heart-rending introspections. I especially liked the sad but endearing story A Start in Life---but I liked it in the same way you like Charles Bukowski---because it spoke to me in a gravelly way about a chess-playing ex-con and a lost young man, and not because it turned me on, which is what I'd expect from a collection of "New Gay Erotica."

Finally, with Jay Lygon's Green Mountain Boys, Inside Him begins to offer what the subtitle promises. Young men leaving their hometown for college, a stay-at-home top who finds a creative way to learn to tie Knots. Davem Verne's King of the Mat taught me a lot about wrestling while turning me on (which is not something I would have predicted). And Thomas Fuchs' Bonding, in which a master of martial arts shares his expertise with a new lover, was my second-favorite erotic story of the book. Here You Go, Nancy contains the only female in the anthology---she's the editor of a collection of men's fantasies which David Christensen read as a youth, and he wants to submit a shoebox of his own fantasies, though they appear in Inside Him instead of in Nancy's next edition. This story was the greatest literary and erotic success---that is, some of these stories I loved for their literary value, and others I loved for their erotic value. Here You Go, Nancy impressed me with both.

I believe I will come back to this section of stories, along with Prince/Whore, when I'm in the mood for erotica. The fifth through tenth stories, and the last one, I might actually read again when I'm in a dark short story mood. I actually wish I could share a few of these essays (Hislandia, A Start in Life, The Abortionist's Lover) with friends, but I'd be leery of lending out a book with stories about human trafficking just in case my friends would flip beyond my suggested pages.