Bisexual Reading List
By William Burleson
Cross Dressing by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Cleis Press/ISBN-13: 978-1-57344-288-6, ISBN-10: 1-57344-288-7
Paperback $14.95, 204pp.
I must confess: one area of my reading life I’ve neglected is erotica. Why? I’m not sure. I’m certainly not opposed to it. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t had great experiences with it in the past. However, I know that’s not fair, since I’ve hardly read enough to discard the entire category.
Perhaps I just needed the right piece of erotica to awaken my, ah, erotica side. I think Cross Dressing: Erotic Stories, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel may have done the trick.
I didn’t pick Cross Dressing to read; it was one of a number of books nominated for a 2007 Lammy in the “Bisexual” category that I had to review. This book surprised me. It surprised me with its consistency of quality writing. It surprised me how compelling these tales of gender exploration were. It surprised me how much I not only enjoyed the read, but how much I got from it.
Also, it struck me that this book was absolutely in the right category. Not that this is a screed on bi politics, not in the least. In fact, I can’t remember one time the word “bisexual” was ever uttered. But that’s not the point: who else but a bisexual can truly appreciate all these tales?
“I just thought the stories were high quality,” said Bussel. I talked with the editor of the collection after she was in my home town of Minneapolis for a workshop and book reading at a women’s adult sex toy shop, the Smitten Kitten. “I wanted stories across the spectrum.”
To call Bussel prolific wouldn’t do her volume of work justice. She has edited 20 anthologies through 2007, and has published or will soon be publishing six more in 2008. Her own writing has appeared in over 100 anthologies, and she has not one, but two books coming from Bantam. Meanwhile, she is the editor of Penthouse Variations, and a contributing editor for Penthouse.
In a nut shell, Cross Dressing is a collection of 18 short stories exploring the boundaries of gender expression and sexuality. The 200 pages consider a wide range of gender play: woman on woman, one of whom is a drag king. Man in drag on woman, man in drag on man, man on woman on man in drag on woman in drag, and on and on. According to Bussel, “It’s about looking one way on the outside, but feeling different on the inside. I think it’s more common than we give it credit for.” The stories are an exploration of transgression, “The fear of that, the thrill of that.”
Take for example Alison Tyler’s Like a Girl. We join an encounter in progress, with Logan, the outsider, coaching the female narrator in the ways of being a man and her boyfriend, Caleb, in how to be a woman, and ultimately “jack[s] off” the female character and performs oral sex on the dressed-in-drag Caleb. Transgression indeed.
Actually, I find it challenging to pick out stories to highlight. I think that is a testament to the consistent quality and overall pacing of the book, a quality I often find lacking in anthologies. They belong as a set. That said, my personal favorite is Beefeater by Lisabet Sari. Beefeater stuck with me for several reasons, not the least of which was the unusual setting. No, “Beefeater” doesn’t mean what one might think in the context of erotica; instead, this story is about a woman exploring with her boyfriend the erotic potential of the uniform of a Beefeater, the guardians of the Tower of London.
Other tales to highlight include Halloween, by Helen Boyd. Here a couple uses a Halloween party as an excuse for some gender-play when the woman dresses her boyfriend in drag. There they meet another mixed gender couple who are dressed as James Dean and Sal Mineo. In Temporary, by Tulsa Brown, the author tells a gritty noir tale of a drag performer who has an encounter with a dishwasher in a club, only to have her violent ex boyfriend come and interrupt. Author Debra Hyde in Just Like a Boy tells of some dominance and submission play when a boyfriend sends his girlfriend packages making her into the boy she wants to be, and the boy he wants, for the weekend. In Down in the Basement, Ryan Field’s male college student attends a frat party in drag and passes all evening (he thinks). That’s just a start.
Picking up Cross Dressing one may notice that most stories are told in first person from a women’s point of view, and in fact most of the stories are written by women. That seems appropriate, given that Bussel has a degree in Political Science and Women’s Studies from Berkeley. I think this informs the flavor of Cross Dressing: these are stories about empowerment: empowerment to explore the edges of sexuality and gender, empowerment to be in charge of one’s sexuality (or, for some, willfully give up power), and empowerment to be a sexual being. This is not Girls Gone Wild: the reader is not a passive voyeur to exploitation, but is instead a participant in a crescendo in these character’s sexual lives.
I’m left to wonder: who is the audience for Cross Dressing? “It’s all across the spectrum,” according to Bussel. She adds, “I’ve gotten really good feedback from the cross dressing community.” Bussel thinks it is important we all keep an open mind to writing that may be out of our demographic, or even out of our comfort zone. “Gay people shouldn’t just have to only read gay erotica.”
I agree. As a bisexual Cross Dressing hits all the right buttons for me, but as a middle-aged man I may not be the demographic for this or other books of this genre. But you know what? I think I’ll enjoy it anyway.
William Burleson is the author of Bi America, Myths, Truths, and Struggles of an Invisible Community from Haworth Press. www.williamburleson.org