Review: Take It Outside (edited by Cash Torn and Orlando Silver)

This collection of erotica issues its ambition with the clarity of a command. To “take it” means, often, to be on the receiving end of sex. But these short pieces remind us the giver — call them what you will: top, dom, Sir — may also be receiving something important. That sense of reciprocity and blurring roles, even when they seem distinct, in fact generated by their distinctness, pervades this collection. Across more than 20 pieces we are introduced to a rabble of queers: femmes, butches, bois, Sirs, Daddies, “dirty submissive working class trans faggots”, and memorably, a dryad who takes her lover/victim into the woods. You can count on one hand the number of cismen, none are protagonists, and penises are delightfully beside the point. There are though many, many cocks, like the silicone one tucked in the glove box of a truck in Cash Torn’s jubilant I Spy, which sees a Daddy and his transboy playing a daring game as they drive through town.

“Outside”, or at least out of the home, is the setting for pretty much all of these stories. There is a lot of nature fucking — this is one for the exhibitionists, voyeurs, ecosexuals. Early highlight, Untitled, May 13th by Ma Bo, sees a biker stop by the coastal highway to bare themself to the sun on a hot afternoon. They consider the geology, “thinking about the slow-burn of erosion is erotic”. Their body is marine, “baring the wet sand and clusters of glossy varech”, “the throat opens,” “the uvula pulsates” like a creature in a rockpool. Nature is not just setting in many of these stories; often it is just as much a participant, whether the energy of the tree channelled by the eponymous dryad in Jaymie Wagner’s story, or the pathetic fallacy (such a negative term for a rich technique) of the rocks and waves in Macsen K. Rhaff’s Salt.

To “take it outside” is a challenge, often a violent one, and there is indeed violence in these stories. Violent words: “Such a sad lonely housewife, so desperate for anyone to fuck her,” says the enraged protagonist in Lilith Young’s You Were Never Mine, before rather charmingly following it up with, “Look at you and your perfect fucking tits”. There are violent actions: bindings, beatings, a preponderance of knife-play. The rules are not always established on the page, but it is always clear that they do exist.

Most importantly though, to “take it outside” is a promise of resolving something. The deeper you get into this collection (sorry), the more it opens out, becomes more complicated and thoughtful, existential even, as it explores the edges of desire and eroticism. Sex is, of course, not only about pleasure, and in the most moving stories here characters search for healing and answers through the rituals of intimacy. In Anna Samson’s Steadfast And True the narrator is taken by their friends to a circle of standing stones said to be women frozen. Although they are the strong friend, the “one who would blow my friends out of any prison — whether incarcerated or self-imposed”, their body has become stiff and painful, “I was doomed to end up like one of the dancing women: forever turned to stone”. It is their turn to submit, as they are draped over the sacrificial plinth their friends vow to “fuck you until you remember who you are”. In A Lover’s Guide To Warning Bells by Des DeVivo, a lover struggles with the distance that has grown after their partner’s top surgery. It’s a tough, bracing confession, “‘They’ promised a lot of things that haven’t been true about this experience,” but an afternoon on the beach offers a moment of graceful release in the sun. In erin riley’s George, the protagonist takes a trip to Berlin to learn more about the titular persona within them in a hot encounter with a minor celebrity. But it is the feeling of searching, permission and care that lingers. Come for the horny hijinks — hot, silly, sometimes a bit scary and grotesque — but stay for the feels, and trust that you’ll be cared for after.

Gay rating: 5/5 barely a cisperson in sight.