First, an admission: I'm not a rubber or latex fetishist. To be sure, I must be at least a little curious, to pick up a book called Rubber Sex, but mostly, other than as a safe sex tool, I can take it or leave it. I suppose I largely picked up this volume as a challenge: can the quality of the writing be so good that I'll enjoy it despite not being into the spotlighted fetish?

The short answer is yes. Rachel Kramer Bussel does a superb job with her selection and editing of the stories in here. Her crowning achievement with this collection is how she managed to fit so many different kinds of stories in here. Most collections can claim to have something for everyone, but Rubber Sex actually delivers on that promise. The stories explore the typical range of gender, orientation, and activity, but more astonishingly, different styles and genres of writing as well. One of my favorites, "Butterfly's Kiss", brings a film-noir breath of danger and mystery into porn. Several stories explore humor, including "Sergeant Pepper", "Exchanges", and definitely "Breathing". "Breathing" made me laugh out loud, in a good way - not something you tend to encounter in porn. There's even a particularly strange story, "The Balloonatics", which I'm not entirely sure how to categorize. Let's just say that it reminded me most of Baron von Munchausen and leave it at that.

As usual with short story collections, particularly in porn, the quality of the stories varied. The collection starts and ends with its strongest stories, but this meant that there was a bunch of weaker stories in the middle. This meant that I got a third of the way into the book and then quickly lost momentum. I'm very happy I forged on, though, because I think the best stories are in the last half of the book. My main complaint was that several of the stories failed to pace the plots properly, ending the story abruptly and with too little build-up in characterization, plot, or even just plain emotional or physical intensity. On the other hand, that meant that it was easy to move on to the next and hopefully better story.

And there were several gems in this collection. My favorites include "Slicker than Silk", a gender-bending story of a lesbian couple experimenting with liquid latex; "Rubber-Party Virgin", an exuberant romp through sex party with a classic focus on sex, sex, and more sex; and "Butterfly's Kiss". Most of all, though, there's a sense of play in this collection - the same sense of excitement, exploration, and just plain *fun* that is there in all my favorite sexual encounters. Bussel does a great job with this collection, and I'll be keeping an eye out for any other collections she comes out with.