Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex

``Today, at the amazing age of forty, I am trying to cause just as much trouble as I did when I was twenty-five,'' writes Califia, author of 12 books, including Macho Sluts and Sapphistry. Public Sex comprises 19 of Califia's smartest essays on sex and politics from 1980 to the present. Always intelligent but never academic, Califia takes bold, unpopular stances on censorship and sexual freedom. She unequivocally supports NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association), sex clubs, pornography and kinky sex of all kinds. No aspect of sex is too forbidden or too undignified to merit Califia's critical attention: she devotes an entire essay to rubber, and she doesn't just mean safe sex equipment. The older articles are from popular gay-community newspapers and magazines, while the most recent are from academic journals, although the older pieces are no less theoretical and the newer pieces no less sexy. This comparison gives some credence to Califia's claim that ``the gay press has traded censorship by the chief of police or the postmaster general for a more subtle form of social control by Absolut Vodka.'' (Nov.)