After Hours: A Collection of Erotic Writing by Black Men
Edited By Robert Fleming
(Penguin Putnam, 256 pages, $14) Reviewed By J.D. Simmons

These stories show that black men can dream of sex that's more than friction and of women who are eagerly, voluptuously sexual and also loveable, smart, self-respecting and respectable.

About the Author

 

Judy Dothard Simmons is an award-winning poet, feature writer, broadcaster and editor. Question and comments for her should be addressed to dexta@cableone.net.

Robert Fleming's unique collection of erotic short stories reveals black sensuality that's imaginative and touching as well as breath-taking and sweat-breaking. Stereotyped as studs and dominatrices, portrayed in videos with gyrating booties backing it up to spraddle-legged loins, black people rarely encounter literary and pop images integrating their genital sexuality with head, heart, work, commitment and soul hunger.

So, Fleming has intentionally selected stories about heterosexual coupling that illustrate a principle claimed by Maya Angelou: the hottest erogenous zone is between our ears, not between our legs. Have no fear, though; fire down below is by no means neglected here. But it ain't porn — sex reduced to its least human terms — when the titillation flows from the pens of Old Masters like John A. Williams and Clarence Major, the lush vision of Syracuse University fiction professor Arthur Flowers and the feminist consciousness of New Orleans arts guru Kalamu Ya Salaam, who edited The Black Collegian for more than a decade and has moved on to co-found a multi-media publishing company, lead a poetry performance ensemble and cut a spoken-word CD.

These men and a deft crew of next-wave writers beguile us with true erotica: flowing technicolor dream sequences in locales that seduce, like the Maui of Earl Sewell's opulently descriptive tale, "Rock Me Baby." In this edgy fantasy a man used to owning and controlling finds himself on a boat, captive and captivated by a knife-wielding woman who immobilizes him in a thunderstorm on the Pacific Ocean and stirs up his own personal typhoon by giving him...and he...well, you gotta go there for yourself (it's good for that; taking a friend along wouldn't be a bad thing either).

In "Where Strangers Meet," Bobby Adams delivers a long invocation of sensuality like a Baptist deacon doing the main prayer at Sunday service. Time after time, when his panting pleas bring you to the crest, ready for the release of "in Jesus name we pray, Amen," the good brother pauses, takes another breath and commences to raise the Spirit with even greater fervor, leaving you no choice but keep on riding the crest. The premise: a couple, already in an illicit relationship, decides to spice it up even more with a re-enactment of a first meeting. As Adams says at the start of the story, "There is something erotic about just the thought of meeting some unknown person for the first time and getting so turned on that you are completely willing to risk compromising your traditional ideas of acquaintance, courtship and ethics in order to just go ahead and get taboo love." Well, after first using the pencil to prune this rather cumbersome sentence, I would sign on to the sentiment. I mean, we've all been there, haven't we? (Seventeen, cross-country train, suddenly and inexplicably hands-on with my seatmate, a soldier in crisp Army khaki probably not much older than me, but I was so ignorant I didn't know why after a while he walked bent over to the bathroom with little wet spots on his fly.)

Fleming has been a canny editor here. After Hours opens with a nifty giggle from National Book Award-winner Charles Johnson (he who displayed green-eyed bad grace when Toni Morrison received the 1993 Nobel Prize in literature, tut tut tut). After that understated opener, the themes and styles of the stories are nicely interspersed so the collection doesn't become an indistinguishable stream of slurps, sucks and trigger words. The second story, "Twisted," fulfills its title on more than one level, using a sparse, linear prose, while the next, Flowers' "Once Upon a Time" is opulently Southern as crepe myrtle, the surreal South of kudzu-covered forest and Spanish moss hanging from the poplar trees. Later, "1-800-CONNECT" shows the real miracle of modern technology, and Brian Egleston's "Wallbanging" delivers a pair of sex-obsessed globetrotters who should have remembered they weren't in Kansas any more.

Women and men do and get done equally in After Hours' erotic universe. Women who complain that men don't know from romance might pick up on the wonder and yearning threading through these stories. At the very least they show that black men can dream of sex that's more than friction and of women who are eagerly, voluptuously sexual and also loveable, smart, self-respecting and respectable. It might not be the worst idea in the world to give After Hours to teens of both sexes who are immersed in rap culture's version of sex — just to suggest making the deep raunch sweeter and more personal than the g-string bump-and-grind to narcotic beats, assaultive language and modal-minor groans typical of much pop. Maybe help get JuWan and Shaneekwa to read more? Okay, whatever.

Anyway, Fleming's done a fine piece of work with this anthology. It's an After Hours joint self-aware, self-loving people can enter without checking brain and class at the door.