Eight Inches, by Sean Wolfe

Title: Eight Inches
Author: Sean Wolfe
Publisher: Kensington Books
Length: 336 pages
Buy: Publisher

Blurb:

Sean Wolfe knows what men want. In his anthologies Aroused, Taboo, and Close Contact, he delivered smart, sophisticated tales of intensely erotic escapades. Now he goes one step further, with a collection of eight interconnected stories that explore the very nature of desire—how it shapes us, drives us, brings us together…and just how far we’re willing to go to satisfy it…

A teenage runaway gets an education in the ways of the street, and the heart, from a gorgeous young hustler in “Street Smart.” In “Head of the Class,” a college athlete who’s used his sexual talents to keep his grades up learns all about pleasure from one of his professors. The exclusive Kappa Lambda Phi fraternity includes a mind-blowing initiation that’s only the beginning of their debauchery in “Frat Frenzy.” And in “DudeSearch” two men who frequent an online site specializing in random hookups agree to meet—and are completely unprepared for the fireworks that explode between them…

As compelling as they are explicit, these stories offer more than instant gratification. They’re funny, touching, intimate, and complex—and of course, incredibly, irresistibly hot…

Review:

Sean Wolfe’s new book begins with a dedication to his partner of thirteen years, Gustavo Paredes-Wolfe, who at the time of the writing had been dead six years. And while that may seem like a strange way to start a fuck-book, in this case it’s absolutely perfect.

Let me explain.

‘Eight Inches’ is a collection of eight stories sewn loosely together at the seams; characters walk through the background of one inch only to star in the next. And the further the stories grow, the more you see the pattern behind them all, and the pattern has been subtly deepening while your attention was elsewhere. It’s masterful storytelling that–and this is important–in no way takes away from how hot the sex is. (Hint: it’s pretty damn hot.)

The protagonists form a wildly motley crew: a naive street hustler; the closeted leader of a dangerously cruel fraternity; a bodybuilding prison guard with an online crush; a businessman on his way up the corporate ladder and out of the closet; a madman and the president of Mexico. But each story gives the reader a piece of what turns out to be a fairly complicated puzzle that smoothly travels between different countries, different socioeconomic classes and even back and forth in time, just to make a point.

My favorite of the collection by far was “Tick Tock”, a surreal and terrifying look at the reality of altered brain chemistry and its consequences. Sure the antihero protagonist is unlikeable and difficult, but as the story unfolds, you see the forces which made him that way and inevitably drive his spiral of self-destruction. It’s easily the most powerful depiction of mental illness I’ve seen in a very long time.

And while I don’t want to give anything away, I will say that I gasped out loud at the end of the last story, “No Looking Back”, not just because the twist snuck up on me but because of the sheer balls involved in even trying to pull that off as a writer.

Now, my one complaint overall is that there was precious little mention of safe-sex practices here, even in cases where the partners very openly had many and anonymous sexual partners. For stories with modern-day settings, that’s a questionable choice, but one that’s overshadowed by Wolfe’s narrative control and storytelling prowess.

In his introduction to the book, Wolfe writes of an exercise he uses in working as a professional diversity trainer; he asks participants to draw their lives as a Venn diagram and then look at the people whose circles overlap theirs. It’s a fairly trite exercise, but Wolfe takes the impetus there and brings it to life through the stories in his book and the tenuous but ultimately inescapable connections between them. He writes,

In a day and age where we can, and do, travel all across the world simply to go shopping, or experience a meal…or, even more intimately, adopt children to become a part of our own family, many of us are beginning to realize that we are all part of one family, and that our “village” is much larger and more influential than we once thought.

Now, that’s a pretty heavy sentiment to lay on a fuck-book.

It’s pretty and facile but ultimately unprovable (although maybe I just don’t travel in the type of circles where dinner in another country is a feasible endeavor). And for a collection of explicit erotic stories it’s an incredibly lofty goal. But Wolfe doesn’t just carry off this conceit, he gives it life.

The stories are ordered in such a way that the transition from one to the next has just enough of a jolt to make the reader notice–from hustling on the streets of San Francisco to dreaming of a football scholarship in Philadelphia to mansions of the rich and politically connected in Mexico–but they’re all interesting and believable.

Most of the stories deal with the seamier side of sex: a spontaneous farewell blow-job in the dive bar of a bathroom, an intense and bacchanal-like fraternity initiation, an exploitative underage threesome, and even a dose of the non-consensual variety. Yet all of the encounters are well-executed and hot.

So ultimately, Wolfe’s grasp exceeds his aim. Instead of a trite send-up of We Are the World, he’s executed a hot and memorable series of linked vignettes. It’s true they may not make you feel like all mankind is your brother but they will titillate and enthrall you, and keep you reading just one more page.

And that’s a pretty lofty tribute to anyone’s partner. Gustavo Paredes-Wolfe, Sean’s readers thank you.