Best Gay Erotica 2014

You can't experience a cookbook from an easy chair; you've got to take it into the kitchen. The opposite is true of a travelogue, which takes you to places all around the world without ever needing to get on a plane. Erotica holds a special place in between the two genres. It takes you to the hottest, muskiest, and most dangerous places without any of the threat of STIs and Craigslist killers, but you can't read erotica passively. You've got to get your hands dirty.

In the interest of giving you the most thorough review, we took "Best Gay Erotica 2014" into the kitchen, so to speak, or at least we read it with plenty of olive oil and a drawer full of utensils.

New editor to the series Larry Duplechan and former erotic video performer Joe Mannetti have compiled a set of 19 well-built, pungent stories that take you to some places you've been and some places that you hadn't thought of going.

The book starts out with a favorite of the genre, that all too familiar scenario: Jerking off at home when who drops by but "The Power Man."

"I glance down, quickly, and see a faint dark shadow between his legs. I look back up and see his eyes, electric blue, haven't left my face."

"'Do you want some water or something?' I ask. 'You look pretty hot.'"

No one is bitching that this story by Lee Hitt isn't the most original. The guy knows his business and we shut-up and let him service us.

It just keeps going from there. The writers introduce us to a bunch of hot looking and forcefully horny guys doing things like gambling for sex, negotiating with a terse security guard after being caught shoplifting and secretly spying on their best friend's dad as he fucks away his debits.

You'll want to clean up as you go along; then you won't have a big mess to deal with when you're ready to put down the book.

In first person and present tense, Shane Allison introduces us to an encounter in an adult bookstore/video arcade. He lets us watch him as he fuck-around with two patrons that he describes in the story's title: "Big Thick Dick and Double-Chocolate Bubble Booty."

What makes Allison's writing so compelling is his voice. He talks dirty to us in a way that lets us see him without him describing himself. The story never feels stodgy or "written;" it's no-nonsense, simple and effective. Like our favorite recipes in a cookbook, these pages will inevitably get a little crusted, because we keep flipping back to them again and again.

"Coach's Pussy" by Dan Cavanaugh is a hard story to get through, because you'll come to your climax several times before the story comes to its. Still, if you want a "better body," you've got to let this charming, powerful man with "hard muscle under hairy, deeply tanned skin" put you through the ringer. Man-up because the results are unbelievable. No pain, no gain, right?

There are gentler moments: The boys of two feuding families skinny dip together in "Hatfield and McCoy" by Jay Starre and "A Walk in the Park" by Max Vos offers a little romance. (Even though, the romance culminates in the lovers fucking at a party attended by a bunch of family members. Have no fear; the fucking happens in the privacy of the bedroom.)

"Light-Rail" by Calvin Gimpelevich starts out traditionally -- an anonymous encounter on a train, but then there's an unexpected twist.

Oh, God, you may think, I don't know about that. I've never gone there before.

We're not saying that everything in this book is for every kind of taste. You may need to make a substitution or two -- remove a tattoo here and add a little pubic hair there. We recommend that you try each story as written the first time. At worst you discover it's just not your thing, but at best you develop your palette and possibly pick up a new fetish or two.

"Everybody's Doin' It" by Dale Lazarov and Jason A. Quest offers something different. It's a graphic story (all drawing no words) where four couples in different locations end up getting off at the same time.

Have you ever wondered who else in the world is coming at the same time you are? You'll have plenty of opportunities to think about that before you finish reading this book.

"Best Gay Erotica 2014"
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