cover image His Secret Life: Male Sexual Fantasies

His Secret Life: Male Sexual Fantasies

Bob Berkowitz. Simon & Schuster, $23 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-684-81103-1

The ""Testosterone Curtain"" is coming down, according to Berkowitz (What Men Won't Tell You but Women Need to Know), who believes there has been a dramatic change in American men's sexual attitudes over the past two decades. They are now more open to talk about their sex lives and willing, even eager, to deal with women who have sexual minds of their own. Berkowitz also reports a boom in oral sex and in fantasies about threesomes. Based, he claims, on fantasies described by ""roughly five hundred men,"" this is something of an anthology that covers the range of masturbatory daydreams from prostitutes to sex in public to the menage a trois to group sex to hard-core S&M. Berkowitz is uneasy about S&M that goes beyond fantasy and thinks the menage a trois has the greatest potential of any of the aforementioned activities for ""doing damage to a couple's relationship."" The fantasies included here are reported with breathless enthusiasm and detail. Despite the so-called categories of fantasy described--and whatever happened to gays and bisexuals?--one gets the impression that all men think alike, which is itself a fantasy. (June) FYI: For a look at women's sexual fantasies, see the review of In the Garden of Desire, below.