Good Vibrations
"A salacious glimpse into the sex lives of bisexual women as they really are… a smart, one-handed read."

The San Francisco Examiner
"Cara Bruce is San Francisco’s hippest young erotica writer."

Book Description
"Bisexuality, like sex itself, is neither cut and dry nor black and white," writes series editor Cara Bruce. Best Bisexual Women’s Erotica explores in provocative detail the steamy sex lives and loves of bisexual women everywhere. Among the settings are sex parties, threesomes, first time encounters, partner-switching, and anonymous sex.

From the Author
Bisexual women are a staple of everyone else’s porn and erotica, and maybe that’s why you rarely see collections specifically by and for them. In that sense, this collection is the first chance for bisexual women to explicitly reveal themselves, their sex lives, and their desires. I was ecstatic when Cleis Press asked me to edit this collection. To me, this project reflected the joys, difficulties, and exquisite range of sexual encounters that come with being a bisexual woman.

About the Author
Cara Bruce runs Venus Or Vixen Press and the erotic web magazine VenusOrVixen.com, which won the San Francisco Bay Guardian’s Best of the Bay 2000 prize. She is the editor of Viscera and publisher of Embraces: Dark Erotica. She is coauthor, with Lisa Montanarelli, of The First Year: Hepatitis C (Morse & Co.). Her fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2001; Best Women’s Erotica 2000, 2001, and 2002; Best Lesbian Erotica 2000; The Unmade Bed: Twentieth Century Erotica; Starf*ckers; Uniform Sex; The Oy of Sex; Best S/M Erotica; Mammoth Best of the Year Erotica; Hot and Bothered 3; and Noirotica 4. Her nonfiction has appeared in Salon.com, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, While You Were Sleeping, On Our Backs, and Bust, among others. She is the editor of Good Vibrations Magazine. She is also editing Obsessed: Fetish Erotica for Cleis Press. She is very busy but always makes time for the best bisexual sex.

Excerpted from Best Bisexual Women's Erotica by Cara Bruce. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Most people seem to think bisexual women have a magical ability to have their cake and eat it, too. This perception makes them sometimes the most hated and other times the most lusted after sexual group under the rainbow. In a way, bi women have become the ultimate pornographic symbol. Nowadays, it’s rare to find a mainstream porn film without your token "girl-on-girl" scene (I think they actually call those films lacking girl-girl action "gay male"). Why is this? For straight men, seeing two or more women in steamy scenarios seems to offer a glimpse into the compelling and arousing mysteries of women. For women, it offers an image of themselves as supersexual: The bisexual woman is the one who will try anything, who is comfortable enough with her sexuality to act on her same-gender desires. Women who don’t know much about lesbianism, or are curious about experimenting, view bisexual women—the cake eaters—as women they can not only relate to, but also learn from. Certainly I, like many of my bi friends, have taught a "straight" woman a thing or two. And while gay and bisexual men are not yet really accepted by the "mainstream," two women together seem, to many, "safe." Bisexual women are a staple of everyone else’s porn and erotica, and maybe that’s why you rarely see collections specifically by and for them. In that sense, this collection is the first chance for bisexual women to explicitly reveal themselves, their sex lives, and their desires. I was ecstatic when Cleis Press asked me to edit this collection. To me, this project reflected the joys, difficulties, and exquisite range of sexual encounters that come with being a bisexual woman. One thing I discovered was that a lot of people’s misconceptions about bisexual behavior showed up in many of the stories I received as submissions. A large percentage of stories featured predictably scripted threeways, a pointedly straight woman experimenting for the first time, or a lesbian stepping out with a man. Sure, every group is stereotyped in some way, but I have to admit I was surprised to see that in our information-addled era, the urban-legends-as-sexual-fantasies still loomed so large. So where do all of these misconceptions about bisexual women come from? While the fantasy bisexual woman appears as a sex-loving goddess, there is also a real-life stereotype of the bisexual woman as confused or "just experimenting." And yet bisexuality itself is difficult to define. Does being bisexual mean you actually have sex with both men and women on a regular basis, or does it merely mean that you identify as being bisexual? It’s easy to assume we know what a bisexual is, but when you try to define it (even for yourself) it can often prove quite difficult. Most folks think that if you like boys and girls, either you like one a bit better than the other or you must be ready to take on all comers. Others think that to be a bisexual woman means that you have a 50/50 split of men and women in your erotic life. (I, for one, don’t have a chart by my bed so that I can easily check off "guy" or "girl" right after I come, to keep my Bisexual Membership intact.) But those assumptions hint at a larger stereotype about bisexual women: Bisexuals are often considered disdainfully as having no taste—liking everything, or having too much appetite (again, liking everything). Not everyone seems to think that having the cake and eating it is cute. When I first came out as bi, I thought that my chances of dating would double. This didn’t happen. In fact, many of the lesbians I met wouldn’t date me, while the guys wanted to see if they could get into a threeway with me. I felt as if potential lovers thought I couldn’t be trusted to be true to either gender—because I liked both. Needless to say, this wasn’t what I was hoping for. Are bisexual women really the confused gourmands people think we are? As we sometimes think we are? As the stories in this book show, confusion is one thing that isn’t part of our identity. This book shows sexually confident women and men having red-hot experiences with one or more lovers, women watching their bisexual male partners get off with another man, and lesbians watching their wives get fucked by a man. In this book, as in the ideal world, anything goes. A few stories in this book fall into those stereotyped categories I mentioned before, yet they are not here as "token" stories. They are superbly written, hot, and, more importantly, real. I am happy to say that the stories in this book are also supremely original. Many of them don’t even dwell on the fact that the authors or characters are bisexual—they are just sexual, the "bi" simply becoming two extra letters, like a "Mr." or a "Ms." They don’t really change the essence of who you are. The stories range from wickedly dark and disturbing ("Scenes from Thailand," "Night on Twelfth Street") to salaciously funny ("The Year of Fucking Badly," "On the Care and Feeding of White Boys"). Some, like "Triptych" and "Hair Club for Bisexuals," are essay-like pieces that lyrically explore bisexual relationships. "Thwack!" has a polyamorous phone sex operator juggling two relationships, "Party of One" fulfills a lesbian’s fantasy with a special surprise, and "Surrender Dorothy" is a playful romp about coming out. "The Devil Is a Squirrel," "Full Service," "Leaving the Past," and "Go" take gender bending to a delicious new level. I hope that, bi, straight, gay—or whatever you are—these stories will turn you on. I hope they’ll show you what we, as bisexual women, are really thinking. I had a wonderful time editing this anthology, and I’m happy that we finally have our own place on the bookshelves. Now can I please have my cake?

FROM THE PUBLISHER