White Flames: Erotic Dreams, by Cecilia Tan

In her collection White Flames: Erotic Dreams, Cecilia Tan is passionate about erotica. She writes with authority and creates an authentic sense of place, whether the story is about cruising, the Asian sex slave trade, Goths, gay bars, baseball, music, psychotherapy, archeology, mythology, futuristic technologies, or adventures in space.

A great many of the stories have unnamed narrators and are told in first person. It appears the anonymity is deliberate, to allow the reader to “become” the character, or to experience the author’s fantasies. I kept reminding myself this wasn’t a memoir.

My favorites in this collection of 21 selections are those that plunge the reader into real life situations, showing how sex and sexuality intertwine in the everyday lives of the characters.

Readers, be warned. These stories are graphic and likely to offend the sensitive or conservative. Some of them, particularly those that portray sexual violence, can be disturbing. Even though they are presented in the context of the psychology of BDSM, some stretch the consensual nature of the encounters to the breaking point.

The book is organized into sections, with the stories becoming progressively more speculative in nature.

Section I – Flares begins with a flash piece entitled “Love’s Year.” Each month corresponds to a different stage of a couple’s relationship. The sensuality is enhanced by Tan’s use of temperature and seasonal analogies.

“Always” felt real to me. The first person narration of everyday life gives it an extra touch of verisimilitude. Two women and one man live together, sharing the chores, the cooking, and the bedroom:

…when I fell in love with Morgan, and she fell in love with me, and we had a hilltop wedding where we both wore white dresses and two out of our four parents looked on happily; I figured I was off the hook on the parenting issue. That was, of course, before John, and way before Jillian.”

Section II – Modern Love starts off with “The Hard Sell,” a tender story of a woman who loves a man so much, it hurts her to think of it ending:

“…what will we be after one of us no longer wants the other, assuming that that happens someday?”

“Friends,” Kyle said. […] He caressed a damp strand of hair away from her eyes. “Does that seem likely to happen soon?”

She let a yawn creep up. “No, it sure doesn’t.”

“Ahh…,” said the reviewer.

“Thought So” is an outlandish fantasy where a woman just happens to find the guy she so desperately needs waiting in a bookstore. This one seems like a naughty wish come true transcribed onto the page.

“Baseball Fever” is another first person story, and given the subjects of the unnamed character’s erotic fantasies (Derek Jeter, with a cameo by Tiger Woods), it best illustrates Tan’s bravura.

Section III – Mythic starts off with “The Little Mermaid,” which has appeared in many incarnations. This one isn’t for children and harkens back to the darker Hans Christian Andersen version which pre-dated Disney’s adaptation.

“Rite of Spring” has a medieval tone and flair, as the maidens are called to the service of the king. He gets to sample them all before he chooses his queen. The Keeper turns out to be a sadomasochistic boor, but the king is worthy of this fair maiden. This is the first of several BDSM tales, though the mildest. It concludes with beautiful imagery depicting the life-giving, primal nature of sexuality.

“I felt as though I could see across the country, a cow giving birth in one of my father’s paddocks, a wolf mounting his mate, Arnissa’s sister Hellenne suckling her first born son. The magic raced from us to everywhere in the kingdom.”

“Bodies of Water” is the first science fiction offering. A crew of archeologists unearths amphorae and jars full of what appears to be whale oil from an old wreck. And then a curious drawing depicting a city being engulfed by the sea. It seems there is something in the water transforming the crew, if it doesn’t kill them first. Underneath the speculative element flows the theme of being released from a plodding, land-locked existence into the free flowing water.

“Dragon’s Daughter,” the most complex of all the stories in this collection, begins:

“This is a story that began in ancient times, so it is hard to know where to begin the telling. Perhaps at the beginning of the end, although even the end is a beginning, just as the end of the night is the start of the day, and the end of the day, the start of the night.”

Is the protagonist the Asian sex slave who goes missing, the woman who desperately tries to find and rescue her, every woman seeking to help a sister in need, or all of the above? You’ll need the roadmap spelled out in the opening to make your way through the jumbled fictional pointillism.

There is something I like very much about a woman who turns the tables on her would-be attackers, but nevertheless, the rape scene in “The Lady in Black” is excruciating to read. I can’t spoil this because the fantasy twist, and the way the Lady meets up with Stormclaw in the gay, BDSM “Storm Rider,” defies explanation.

“Sleeping Beauty” continues the previous two tales, finally reuniting Stormclaw and the Lady in Black. The two are linked, perhaps the personification of the eternal war between the sexes, an immortal yin and yang, the pleasure-pain continuum, and the darker sides of male and female sexual expression. You have to read them to appreciate how Tan does this.

Beginning Section IV – Disconnect, “Just Tell Me the Rules” tells a tale about a woman who considers herself a virgin, and faithful to her fiancé, because she has never had sexual intercourse. Bill and Monica could relate to this.

In “Halloween,” an unnamed Goth girl is attracted to a stranger in black leather. Lots of tricks and treats follow. They exchange names in the morning, but we never find out who they are.

“Balancing Act” is narrated by a gay therapist who has some serious transference/counter transference with a client. Lou clinically analyzes every single move his clients, and their other lovers, make. Again, through the lens of first person point of view, the reader has a very humanizing look inside the complexity of intimate and therapeutic relationships.

“A Tale of the Marketplace” is my least favorite in this collection—BDSM at its excruciating height. I can’t buy the psychology, no matter how much I keep reminding myself that the submissive really is in control. There are often fine lines between violence, subjugation of women, and BDSM erotica.

In Queer as Folk – Section V, two majorettes get together, away from the rest of the marching band as quick as a “Drumbeat.”

“Lip Service” is another story that seems likely to be true. Haley takes us into a gay men’s bar to complete a research assignment. I won’t say more, lest I spoil the read.

The last section, Section VI – Technofile, closes out the collection. I have seen the future, and it isn’t pretty.

When “The Spark” goes out of these rock stars, they die. No foul play involved. But if they pass it on, a part of them will live forever. Musicians will appreciate the verisimilitude here. I did find it a bit creepy that this cross-gender, techo-enhanced ménage à trois Olympics was going on with a body on the coffee table in the living room, even if she was a Saturnál.

I suppose that is the point these last three stories are making, when you reduce bodies to mechanized toys in “Gyndroid.” Or, as in “Now,” use timed group sex as a debriefing and atmospheric re-entry procedure.

Probably because I spend much of my workday talking to women, and a few men, about both the joys and complications of sexuality, I know that these stories reflect current societal trends, as well as the timeless, primitive fascination humans have with sex, in all its varied forms of expression.

In Tan’s own words:

“…my subconscious thinks the “normal” state of sexual repression in real life needs cracking open, and sometimes the cracks come in the erotic lives of the characters, sometimes in the reality they inhabit, and sometimes both.”

Publisher: Running Press (May 2008)
Price: $11.21
Paperback: 288 pages
ISBN: 078672080