canadians are weird (in bed)

In a lecture about sexuality in Canadian film a couple of years back, Tom Waugh, a professor in Concordia's film studies department and the chair of the Minor in Sexuality Studies, said it seems as though we Canadians can't just have happy, neutral-value regular old sex in our films. We have to make sex weird. (Just ask David Cronenberg.) If I remembered when he gave the lecture, I'd flip back for my notes and tell you what films he mentioned to back up this claim, but in the absence of this information, you'll just have to trust me - the man knows what he's talking about. After all, he did just publish a book on the topic.

Chris Gudgeon, in his book The Naked Truth: The Untold Story of Sex in Canada, seems to agree with the weirdness factor. In the concluding chapter to his volume of humourously presented research, he writes: "As I made my way through the tangled web of neurotica, I developed a respect for this country and its people." Unfortunately his book doesn't really touch on the topic of sexual representation in our cultural products, but he certainly outlines the rich and twisted role that sex has played in our national history. It's a great read if you can get your hands on it.

Just in case I needed any further confirmation that Canadians do it weirdly, or at least talk about it weirdly, all I had to do was read the unapologetically pansexual anthology Lust for Life: Tales of Sex and Love, edited by Claude Lalumière and Élise Moser, which has got to be the most tamely titled tome of completely fucking bizarre sexual prose I have ever come across. And that's saying something. "Tame" is not usually the name of the game when it comes to such works.

It contains such gems as the tale of a soldier who doesn't fuck a quasi-cannibalistic necromancer virgin; a guy who has conversations with his runaway wife's suits; a pair of gloves that has an affair with a dismembered foot (by the brilliant Neil Smith, who just published his first collection of short stories, Bang Crunch); a guy who fucks a really old lady with the help of margarine; a bunch of teenagers who dress up one of their own as a girl to send him to wreak revenge on someone, without realizing their intended hit man gets off on wearing women's clothing; a dyke who decides she doesn't think her lover is sexy anymore; a pair of gay guys, one of whom likes wearing dresses but who isn't a drag queen; a lesbian who prefers her imaginary friend to her girlfriend; a dude with a seriously messed-up Santa Claus fetish (ew! ew!); and a superheroine whose powers only rise when she's aroused.

The anthology does not contain a single story I found arousing, with the possible exception of the gay-guy-in-a-dress one. And yet, somehow, the whole thing is pretty frickin' good. The writing is totally solid in every piece, no exceptions, and the ideas are so freaky and twisted I couldn't help but continue, tale after tale, to see what the hell oddity was up next.

I wouldn't recommend it as wank material, but if you're looking for some fresh writing and a few surprises, go find it. The True North brave and... freaky!