The Erotica Project

This is hot reading by any standard, a revelation of the unwieldy and unrelenting desires of straight women and an assertion that "it is revolutionary for women to take charge of and own their sexuality." The Erotica Project began as a program for WBAI Radio New York and moved to the stage in 1998, where performances sold out night after night and were critically lauded. While lesbian writers have been throwing off the sexually repressive views of some '70s feminists for the past 15 years, the authors of The Erotica Project felt that straight women still suffered from "anti-phallic theory" and needed a celebration of the male organ and their own frank infatuation with it. In brief vignettes drawn from memory, fantasy, and the life stories of friends, they explore heterosexual desire from the mainstream to the dark and transcendent, even including a few mundane and unhappy tales and a sprinkling of same-sex adventures. It is hard to imagine a straight man, straight woman, or lesbian who wouldn't want to hear these stories, by turns sordid and lyrical, graphic and tender, all of them grounded in a sense of sexual entitlement that would make Freud blush and Dr. Ruth wipe away a tear of pride. --Regina Marler