Liquid
Longing: An Erotic Anthology of the Sacred and Profane
By
Annabeth Leong
Forbidden
Fiction, 2015
Some
erotica aims primarily to arouse and entertain. In stories of this
sort, few complications arise, no one asks any difficult questions,
and everyone achieves a world-shaking climax by the conclusion. Some
erotica, in contrast, takes nothing for granted—not
even sexual satisfaction. Stories of this type explore the intricate,
layered meanings associated with desire, its fulfillment and its
frustration. They recognize the intimate connections between sex and
other powerful forces: violence, spirituality, healing and death.
Happy endings are by no means assured.
Annabeth
Leong’s stories belong to the second category. In Liquid
Longing, she has collected a set of tales remarkable for their
originality, their unflinching honesty and, in many cases, for their
raw, uncensored sensuality. Elements of spirit and magic loosely
connect them, but the tone and perspective vary greatly from one to
the next.
Several
stories (“Hunting Artemis”, “The Snake and the Lyre”,
“Andromache’s Prize”, “Icarus Bleeds”) riff on plots and
characters from classical mythology. Others (“In the Death of
Winter”, “The Fires of Edo”) create new legends. “The Three
Wives of Bluebeard” offers a sapphic-themed retelling of the
familiar fairy tale, along with a chilling evocation of male
brutality. “Screen Siren” is an weird but wonderful outlier, a
thought experiment on the societal implications of zombies, while
“Touching Freedom” provides a surprising twist on tentacle porn.
“Less than a Day”, featuring a mysterious being who fucks women
about to die, comes close to urban fantasy. “The Miracles of
Dorothea of Andrine” offers a perverse but satisfying twist on
Christian doctrine, and is perhaps the story that most closely
mingles the sacred and profane of the book’s subtitle.
I
liked every story in the book; some of them I absolutely loved. I
don’t want to spoil the personal delight readers will experience in
discovering these tales, so I will not go into detail. However, I
can’t stop myself from raving about “Icarus Bleeds”, the gem at
the heart of this collection. This is as close to a perfect erotic
story as I’ve ever read—
beautiful, devastating, uplifting, and intensely arousing. Ms. Leong
has created a small masterpiece in this tale of obsessive desire and
it tragic fulfillment. I reread it three times, appreciating new
aspects each time through.
Although
inspired by the familiar Greek myth of the young man who flew too
close to the sun, “Icarus Bleeds” unfolds in a dark future where
the chasm between the elite and everyone else yawns even wider than
it does at present. The story chronicles the nuanced, desperate,
doomed relationship between exquisitely beautiful Icarus, whose only
dream is to fly, and Daedalus, the aging technologist who’ll
promise anything to keep Icarus near him. No one’s motives are pure
and, as in the myth, the protagonists ultimately crash and burn. Yet
at the same time, the story provides a hint of redemption and a
haunting sense that a true dream may be worth even the most terrible
sacrifice.
If
there were a Pulitzer Prize for erotica, I’d award it to this
story.
My
one complaint about this book is leveled at the publisher, not at the
author. All of the stories in the book have been broken into
chapters. Furthermore, each story begins with a blurb, plus a summary
of the types of sexual pairing found in the tale. I found both of
these editorial additions very distracting, to the point of
interfering with my reading experience.
Having
read a few of the stories previously, I know that Ms. Leong didn’t
originally write them in chapter format. In most cases, the
artificial breaks negatively impact the story flow—at
least for me. This was particularly true for “Icarus Bleeds”,
where a steadily mounting tension carries the narrative forward in an
upward spiral that the chapter breaks interrupt.
The
gender labeling convention, common in erotic romance, felt insulting
to me, implying that I’d choose my reading material based on the
assortment of genitalia involved. Furthermore, in many cases the
labels just don’t fit Ms. Leong’s erotica. Gender in her stories
is fluid and ambiguous. Characters have sex with monsters, with gods,
with demons, with the embodiment of a magical tattoo. There is even a
case where a character who is originally a woman transforms into a
male by the story’s end. Attraction in Ms. Leong’s universe (and
in mine) does not fit into neat pigeonholes. I resented the
publisher’s suggestion that it should.
Overall,
I recommend Liquid Longing very highly,
if you’re a person who enjoys erotica that engages your mind
as well as your body. Some of the stories may make you uncomfortable;
that’s intentional. If you prefer to skim the surface rather than
plumb the depths of desire, you should choose a different collection.
