As I rise and straddle him, I feel very happy. He is still touching my face. His prick fills me up to the top, hooks me into the center of life. I’m so hot I think I must be burning him, but he does not flinch. He moves, thrusting higher and higher into me as I open wider and wider until we are at ground zero. From my position astride him I can see through the bedroom door the picture of the jet hitting the second tower. I hear a distant sound, a great explosion, like worlds colliding. The walls of the room are shaking, the edges of the ceiling beginning to break apart. Just as I am coming, he comes too, exploding into me in a ball of fire, and we are both propelled up through the crumbling roof, up, up into the black skies, our bodies disintegrating, mixing with the clouds like ashes.

TSAURAH LITZKY

on “End-of-the-World Sex,” first published in Best American Erotica in 2003

There was trembling but fearlessness in the way people reacted in New York City in the wake of 9/11. People talked to one another openly and caringly in the streets—in stores, on the subway. It seemed briefly as if some higher consciousness might rise phoenix-like from the ashes. “End-of-the-World Sex” captures that feeling.

It’s all gone now. People sit on the subway wired up into their iPods, huddled into their books and newspapers, as every day the casualties of this obscene war increase.

It makes me sad to remember what could’ve been.

I started writing erotic stories out my need to make some sense out of my own chaotic erotic life, of my need to change the negatives into positives, to find seeds of transformation and liberation in the part of my garden given over to despair.

I’ve been influenced by all my mistakes in love, and by the heat of my few brilliant successes. Then there’s my unquenchable thirst for romance and my passion for the movies.

Recently, I was asked to write about Emma Goldman (one of my heroes) for a history of the Lower East Side. I finished it yesterday. Talk about someone with an intense erotic life!

The courage of Colette, Emma Goldman, and the great Lenny Bruce all have been a big influence. I learned how to write short stories by reading John Cheever. I’ve been inspired by Doris Lessing, Pablo Neruda, I. B. Singer, and Norman Mailer—and, my most beloved teacher, my mother.

A Jew Berserk on
Christmas Eve

Steve Almond

Suzanne Blacet stepped back from the Blacet Christmas tree and let out a quiet trill. The tree was enormous, something like fifty feet tall. It nearly reached the ceiling of the den, with its plush appointments.

“Traditions,” Suzanne said. She paused for a moment and cocked her head, as if listening for a pleasing echo. “That’s what we believe in here: traditions. Family traditions. Don’t we, honey?”