Travel
Bound
by Jim Gladstone
 AIRPLANE
READ OF THE MONTH
Either you´re on the airbus, or you’re
on the magic bus. Time will fly, and you’ll appreciate
the relative comforts of even economy class, as you roll
through the pages of Rory McClean’s utterly engaging
non-fiction narrative, Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail
from Istanbul to India (Ig Press. $14.95. www.igpress.com),
in which the author revisits the route that thousands
of young Brits and Americans traveled through Turkey,
Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nepal in search
of enlightenment in the late 1960s and early 70s. With
a winning combination of good humor and serious introspection,
McClean considers the influence of the West, the rise
of Islamic extremism, and the community of intrepid tie-dyed
travelers who never came back home, but stayed behind
in an effort to plant the seeds of Flower Child idealism
along this once utopian dream path.
Over the past decade, readers could depend on separate
annual anthologies of the year´s best gay and
lesbian erotica for easy-reading horn-ucopias of sexy
stories; plus a chance to catch up with established
authors between full-length books and to discover new
writers using salacious tales for training wheels as
they rolled toward more nuanced work. That writerly
desire for nuance—better-developed characters,
stronger plotting, subtler symbolism—has driven
constant improvement in these series, moving the collections
from the realm of stroke books toward Lit Lite. At the
same time the writing in the erotica series has improved,
Cleis Press has initiated two new series: Best Gay
Romance, edited by Richard Labonte, and Best Lesbian
Romance, edited by Radclyffe ($14.95 each, www.cleispress.com).
The 2009 editions of each are fun, lively reads, chockfull
of work by writers familiar to LGBT erotica buffs: Karen
Kallmaker and Rachel Kramer Bussel among the women,
Simon Sheppard and Rob Rosen among the men. But there´s
a rub (ahem): virtually all of the stories in these
collections include sex scenes—many quite hot,
and some made hotter by virtue of the well-wrought romantic
relationships between their characters. Perhaps the
blurring of distinctions between LGBT erotic and romantic
stories indicates a positive evolution in our community´s
perspectives on sex and relationships…and perhaps
the ongoing publication of separate series nominally
dedicated to separating erotica from romance has more
to do with brand marketing than human nature. A final
twist of ambiguity: perhaps the best story across the
two new romance volumes is “What We Leave Behind”
from the men´s book, in which a grieving cancer
widower and a pet hospice worker form an emotional bond
and have supercharged sex; the author, Shanna Germain,
is a woman.
 If
you´re looking for intellectually provocative
writing on sex, unconstrained by orientation, another
new Cleis Press anthology, Best Sex Writing 2009,
edited by Kramer Bussel and Brian Alexander, should
be right up your alley ($14.95). In ¨Father Knows
Best¨, originally published in Marie Claire magazine,
Amanda Robb profiles a young woman who participated
in the virginity-until-marriage movement; Violet Blue
offers a challenging essay that asks “Is Cybersex
Cheating?”; former New Yorker staffer Daphne Merkin
muses on “Penises I Have Known”; and artificial
intelligence expert David Levy reports on technological
advances in the sex doll industry. The word for this
stuff would be mindblowing.
 Frequent
flyers obsessed with legroom and luggage space will
be fascinated by Jennifer Coults Clay´s one-of-a-kind
Jetliner Cabins (John Wiley. $55. www.wiley.com).
Drawing on interviews with dozens of designers, engineers,
marketers, and airline executives, and packed with color
photographs that illuminate the extensive text, the
book dissects the in-flight experience, offering acute
examinations of how corporate branding is extended into
cabin interiors, how first and economy class differ
from airline to airline, the finer points of cabin lighting
design, and the evolution (some would say degradation)
of in-flight cuisine. Rich in arcane detail about topics
many passengers have never noticed, this volume will
open your eyes to some unfamiliar intricacies of a familiar
industry.
 Perhaps
the most frequent flyers of all are the hastily printed
paper ones that appear in daily profusion on utility
poles, construction site walls, bulletin boards, and
are piled high on coffee shop and boutique window sills.
For urban tourists, these handbills are perhaps the
timeliest way to discover cool nightlife options, given
the inherently dated entries in guidebooks. To British
designer and clubhopper Craig McCarthy, they´re
also a bona fide form of pop art, which he celebrates
in his DIY-style collage of a paperback, Fly By Night
(Thames & Hudson. $19.95. www.thamesandhudsonusa.com).
From garish, Technicolor scribbles to elaborate digitally-rendered
dreamscapes, this London-based collection includes classic
guerilla promos for gay meccas, including Heaven and
The Cock as well as anything-goes parties with names
like The Bum Bum Train and Butt Plug Bar. This is a
blast of youthful energy between soft covers, perfect
for perusing while gearing up for a night on the town
or a hip trip to London.
[Published:
May, 2009]
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