Satyricon USA is a groundbreaking tour of America's contemporary sexual landscape, written by a young woman who's already been called "the most compelling writer of sex in the English language." Like Petronius, the ancient Roman writer she takes as her model, Eurydice presents a first-hand account of the chaos of human sexuality in its kinky, confused, and transgressive expressions. With a style that combines erudition, wit and hipness, and audaciously draws on both the factual authority of journalism and the atmospheric license of fiction, Eurydice transports us inside the nightmarish, breathtaking realms of dungeons and bloodletting clubs, cross-dressing conferences, supersized strip emporiums, as well as military bases and Catholic monasteries. In one chapter she accompanies a sex addict on a voracious nightlong escapade, in the next she meets with men and women who claim to have ongoing sexual relations with aliens, in another she describes the bone-chilling desires of neighborhood necrophiliacs.
Her aim is to understand these people who are drawn to the farthest sexual "fringe." On her journeys, Eurydice learns that, in fact, they are well-educated middle to upper class professional Americans. They are housewives and stockbrokers, college students and grandparents, doctors and priests. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, Eurydice probes people's dual lives to answer some fundamental questions: Why is our society simultaneously obsessed with and afraid of sex? How does this widespread sexual eccentricity co-exist with our puritanical hysteria about sexual harassment and "moral turpitude"? Are we today more liberated or actually more confined than in the past? Rules and stereotypes, Eurydice eloquently reports, are emerging in new forms. As she writes, "What I encountered were mostly ancient, confining, sexual mores going by new, emancipatory names." Daring and ferociously smart, Eurydice dives into the "deviant" lifestyle to untangle the contradictions of our modern morality. A unique blend of reportage, memoir, extensive research and incisive analysis, Satyricon USA is a compelling portrait of a nation in the midst of redefining its sexual issues and needs.
Publishers Weekly:
Hip without being glib, smart without being smug, Eurydice takes readers on an eye-opening tour of the American sexual underworld and emerges with the news that sexual deviance isn't deviant at all: it's deeply embedded in mainstream, middle-class America. In Greek mythology, Eurydice was the unfortunate bride of Orpheus, who tried to lead her out of Hades and failed. As a writer for Spin, this modern-day Eurydice reverses the journey, willingly descending into dank bars and addict meetings to explore the terrain of sexual deviance in America. Setting out to discover perversion behind the accepted norm, she finds instead that normalcy abides within such practices as necrophilia, sadomasochism, cybersex and erotic bloodletting. She also devotes considerable space to soldiers and priests who struggle with the conflict between desire and duty. Rising above voyeurism, moral judgment and titillation, the work is an intelligently and beautifully written collection of the author's thoughts as she watches drag queens, lap dances, whippings and even a sex addict making an illicit score. The cast of real people, who readily tell all in response to the author's gentle inquiries, prove that seemingly perverse proclivities aren't limited to the fringe elements of society. Offering exemplary insights into how unusual sexual practices are perceived in our culture, the book also draws strength from Eurydice's honest confessions about how she feels about what she observes, sustaining a wonderful balance of intellect and emotion throughout her illuminating trek through contemporary sexuality. (Feb.)
Eurydice takes as her model the Roman writer Petronius, who claimed that his salacious Satyricon was "simple realism and nothing more." Her vivid tour of America's sexual underside in the mid-1990s--ranging from suburban sadomasochism to male cross-dressing conferences, from lesbian bloodletting rituals to supersize Texas strip clubs--is only slightly less fantastic than the original Satyricon, and would be worth reading solely for anthropological interest (or voyeuristic thrill) even if it were not also exceptionally well written, lively, and acute. Sadly, perhaps, the author finds most of the contemporary deviant practices she observes to be joyless and vaguely pernicious, "the tricky disguise of our self-denials as sexual excesses." Alert to the reactionary undertow complicating each of these supposed advances, Eurydice is especially suspicious of our rush to define our sexual identities in ever-more-specific terms (butch bottom boy, radical fairy, bigenderist, transbisexual), codifying and policing what ought to be fluid and anarchic. "Words and signs are displacing our genitals," she argues. "Emancipation has brought us no peace." --Regina Marler
A series of voyeuristic snapshots of the fringe world of American sexuality at the millenium's end, in all it's kinky, confused and transgressive expressions. Dungeons, blood-letting clubs, cross dressing conferences, strip emporiums, military bases and Catholic monasteries. A unique blend of reportage, memoir, research and incisive analysis.
SATYRICON USA By Eurydice This collection of interviews with inhabitants of the sexual fringe reads like a reporter's raw files. The strength here is that the author does dig up unquestionably fascinating subjects: vampires who drink one another's blood, necrophiliac morticians, people who claim to have been abducted and sexually molested by aliens, a married surgeon who sleeps with 10 women a month. ..The book is worth reading--you'll feel contentedly average afterward.
BY JOEL STEIN
Everything in our lives is so structured, it sometimes seems that the only chaos we have left is in our sexual desires ... (and some people try to control that). In Satyricon USA, Eurydice, who has been described as ´the most compelling writer of sex in the English language,´ travels across America and studies its sexual landscape. Along the way she meets a fascinating and bizarre cast of people: Roy, a Colonial Literature Ph.D and teacher of "classic sadism" who sends a sex slave to Eurydice´s hotel room; a 44 year old Yale grad, descendent of George Washington, marketer for DuPont, divorced father of one, and a self described "vicious bitch queen" when dressed as a woman; and Rob, a Los Angeleno, married father of two young girls, and part time necrophiliac.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews, Eurydice attempts to answer questions like: Why is our society simultaneously obsessed with and afraid of sex? How can this widespread sexual eccentricity coexist with the recent puritanical hysteria about sexual harassment and sex in the military? Are we today more liberated or actually more confined than in the past?
While shedding light on the varied answers to these questions, Eurydice learns that her subjects are not in fact on the "fringe" of society; they are well educated, middle to upper class professional Americans, many of whose "perversions" represent a quest for continuity, safety, and uniformity. Rather than acting as a travel guide to the sexual underground, Satyricon USA reveals the normalcy lurking behind the dark spaces Eurydice visits. A unique blend of reportage, memoir, extensive research, and incisive analysis, it is a compelling portrait of a nation in the midst of redefining its sexual life as it careens toward the new millennium.
(Village Voice)
Arizona Daily Wildcat March 4, 1999
by kevin dicus
We've come a long way from the missionary position. And procreative sex has become so passé that if it weren't for those little mishaps and unthinkingly passionate rendezvous, we may have had a population crisis of an entirely different sort. Yes, we are a stimulus-addicted species, constantly searching for experiences to arouse the senses, constantly seeking the greatest rush to stir up our rather monotonous and lonely lives. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in our most instinctual desire for sex. Getting our rocks off in new and often dangerous ways just may be the new grail quest.
Satyricon USA (Scribner, $22.00), written by the mysteriously-named Eurydice, takes us on an exploration of fetishes, introducing us to many of the bizarre, erotic and sometimes disturbing sexual practices transpiring in the United States. She opens the locked doors and lets us look beyond the pale at these sub-cultures that in so many ways resemble ancient mystery schools in their ritual and secrecy.
"At best," Eurydice writes, "this book aspires to capture our psychic anatomy in a textual snapshot of our moment in history and to illustrate part of the sexual nerve pulsing across America."
Satyricon USA is a book of observation and confession. Each chapter focuses on a different practice in which she immerses herself, gleaning every minute detail and obtaining extremely intimate testimonies from those involved. Thus, it becomes a far more personal, immediate study than so many of those academic texts replete with references and lengthy bibliographies. The people and their motivations are real and believable.
With our own conceptions of "normality" and "morality" in the fore, we are required to contend with people like Electra and her "bottom," Esther, dedicated sexual bloodletters who find their erotic satisfaction through cutting. "When we do it, Electra gets my blood all over her face and looks like a complete savage." This chapter is particularly graphic, in which straight-edge razors and knives slice through the air and through the skin of a completely dominated woman.
Zach is an alien abductee with the blood and soul of an alien. Regularly, he enters their craft where "this superior, refined being is milking my ejaculate." Rob is a married father of two and part-time necrophiliac. "Necroplay requires only one consenting adult. The dead are dead, it's no harm to them; it's safe, painless sex." (This chapter is particularly interesting in that Eurydice's normally objective observations give way to her own moral convictions.) Buck Mulligan and Jackie are classic sex addicts, seeking sheer numbers to satisfy their cravings.
Throughout these scenes, Eurydice treats us to her own interpretations of the deep-seated reasons that motivate these people. Some of these are right on, intelligent and sometimes biting. Others seem to be for her own benefit and come with the distracting sound of "hand of Eurydice patting back of Eurydice." An example: In the company of the bloodletting lesbians, with women on leashes, blindfolded and bleeding, she informs us that "I feel as if I have fallen in with a league of amateur ideological commissars that bring to my mind Mao's child soldiers of the Cultural Revolution." My thoughts exactly. Admittedly it is an intelligible and grammatically perfect sentence, but what this and so many others like it succeed in doing is to draw the reader away for a moment, to separate us from the world she is trying so hard to illustrate. I find it harder to trust the opinions of one whom I suspect of pretentious impulses.
Regardless, Satyricon USA is a fascinating glimpse into extremely creative sexplay. It can leave you outraged or shaking your head in wonder. And maybe, for some, it will be inspirational.
New Frontiers
Everything in our lives is so structured, it sometimes seems that the only chaos we have left is in our sexual desires ... (and some people try to control that). In Satyricon USA, Eurydice, who has been described as ´the most compelling writer of sex in the English language,´ travels across America and studies its sexual landscape. Along the way she meets a fascinating and bizarre cast of people: Roy, a Colonial Literature Ph.D and teacher of "classic sadism" who sends a sex slave to Eurydice´s hotel room; a 44 year old Yale grad, descendent of George Washington, marketer for DuPont, divorced father of one, and a self described "vicious bitch queen" when dressed as a woman; and Rob, a Los Angeleno, married father of two young girls, and part time necrophiliac.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews, Eurydice attempts to answer questions like: Why is our society simultaneously obsessed with and afraid of sex? How can this widespread sexual eccentricity coexist with the recent puritanical hysteria about sexual harassment and sex in the military? Are we today more liberated or actually more confined than in the past?
While shedding light on the varied answers to these questions, Eurydice learns that her subjects are not in fact on the "fringe" of society; they are well educated, middle to upper class professional Americans, many of whose "perversions" represent a quest for continuity, safety, and uniformity. Rather than acting as a travel guide to the sexual underground, Satyricon USA reveals the normalcy lurking behind the dark spaces Eurydice visits. A unique blend of reportage, memoir, extensive research, and incisive analysis, it is a compelling portrait of a nation in the midst of redefining its sexual life as it careens toward the new millennium.
* Lambda Publications, The Weekly Voice of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Community
Satyricon USA : A Journey Across the New Sexual Frontier
by: Eurydice.
Touchstone Books, 2000.
Very good or better..
Used, paperback.
ISBN: U0684862492
$6.00
In what "Gear" magazine deemed a "rich and fascinating portrait of sex in America, " Eurydice gives us a frontline report on the reality of sex life in the United States -- from "fringe" sexual behavior and sex-on-the-Net to how and why sex has changed from a private activity to a public display. With an extraordinary talent for evoking a scene, Eurydice plumbs the strange worlds of cross-dressing conferences, supersized strip emporiums, and sadomasochist gathering spots. She records the surprising sexual adventures of ordinary Americans and introduces such unlikely characters as a former IBM executive who has been cross-dressing since age twelve and a dental assistant who has won fame as a porn star on the Web. Part reportage, part analysis, and part memoir, "Satyricon USA" is an unforgettable reading experience, catching a society in the throes of redefining its sexual mores.
