Do Me: Sex Tales from Tin House

by Win McCormack (Editor)

“Is it all right if I reach out and touch you? she said. While you read?”
— Peter Rock, “Blooms”

Do Me gathers the smartest, sexiest fiction and essays from the award-winning journal Tin House. In this collection, the stories do more than just titillate; Tin House authors explore sex from all angles: first moves, breakups, blind gay cruises, furrie conventions, married sex, bad sex, on the phone, and in pools, fun houses, Vegas hotels, and public parks. Hilarious and irreverent, Do Me puts a new spin on bedtime reading and is essential fare for those who crave food for the brain as well as the libido.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Erotica, Anthologies

250 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 2007

About the author

Win McCormack is an American publisher and editor from Oregon.

He is editor-in-chief of Tin House magazine and Tin House Books, the former publisher of Oregon Magazine, and founder and treasurer of MediAmerica, Inc. He serves on the board of directors of the journal New Perspectives Quarterly. His political and social writings have appeared in Oregon Humanities, Tin House, The Nation, The Oregonian, and Oregon Magazine. McCormack's investigative coverage of the Rajneeshee movement was awarded a William Allen White Commendation from the University of Kansas and the City and Regional Magazine Association. His latest book, You Don’t Know Me: A Citizen's Guide to Republican Family Values, examines the sex scandals of Republican politicians who espouse "moral values."

As a political activist, McCormack served as Chair of the Oregon Steering Committee for Gary Hart's 1984 presidential campaign. He is chair of the Democratic Party of Oregon's President's Council and a member of the Obama for President Oregon Finance Committee. McCormack was also chosen as Alternate Delegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. He currently serves on the Oregon Council for the Humanities and the Oregon Tourism Commission. Additionally, McCormack sits on the Board of Overseers for Emerson College, and is a co-founder of the Los Angeles-based Liberty Hill Foundation

Reviews

[Tracy Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am tempted to give this 5 stars, because I really liked some of the stories so much. Also the title: what sort of audience were the publishers trying to attract? And not just the title, there's this standing out in big letters on the back of the dust jacket: "DO ME GOES ALL THE WAY......" Stupid.

My Favorite stories were:
Michael Lowenthal's "You Don't See the Other Person Looking Back"--about a gay cruise for the blind, and it is very little like DFW's "A Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again". It has a flat ending but brings up some interesting ideas about human sexuality, as do many of the stories in this collection. In fact, there seems to be some sort of attempt, to isolate various aspects of human sensual experiences, to explore their values and contribution to our erotic experiences??

My absolute favorite was Stephen Millhauser's "The Room In the Attic." A girl with a nervous breakdown has an unusual way, with the help of her brother and his friend, to come back to the land of the living, leaving traces.

Robert Travieso's "Frogs" also was interesting and neatly wrapped up.
"I, Maggot", "Sick Fuck" and several others were nice just for offering unusual views of the subject.

I also like how these stories were joined, with this diaphanous thread of semi-continuity, as I did the individual stories. Go, Steve Almond.

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite the title and cover, this collection of odd and wonderful stories is really about connecting with others... the strange odd dynamics that occur due to love, lust, jealousy, loneliness, etc. It's rare that I enjoy so many stories in a single collection, but these were oddly delightful.

[Brandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aside from the cover, this was a lot less steamy than I'd anticipated. All the same, it's a decent collection on a theme--sex as love, as romance, as power, as coping mechanism, as social anthropology.

This is a collection of stories and essays, but no distinction is made for which is which. I suppose it doesn't matter much--good writing is good writing--but fiction and essay are evaluated differently in my mind; distance between reader and author is blurred. The anthology is arranged alphabetically by author, which makes some transitions a little rough but is a pretty standard method of organization, even if it's not my preference. As with any collection, quality varies from author to author; there are some stand-out pieces and some forgettable ones, and plenty that fall somewhere in between. (The essay on the furrie convention was particularly interesting, even if the author did have a definite "aren't these people kind of weird?" vibe coming through her writing.)

I'm waffling between keeping this four stars and acknowledging that it's probably more like 3.5, so I'll call it three-and-three-quarters and be done with it.

One last point: as far as I can tell, Steve Almond is nowhere in this collection, but he's tied to it on Amazon and therefore here on GoodReads.

[Mike · Rating 1 out of 5]

I assumed that this would be good writing even if the sex was on the order of People Magazine, silly me. At least make it Cosmo level...where is Susie Bright when you need her... Have you ever read those pretentious books where the writing is all about how it looks and each sentence is built to stand alone, lookin' good with style and grace for the coastal urbanites? If you want a story with writing that flows like Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, James Clavell, Anne Rice you know, simple writing that keeps going and going with the story so you are in it. Well, keep looking, it ain't here.

I struggled through the first story about the 50 year-old lesbian boinking her mother's oncologist and wandering through her references to her abused childhood with the absent mother and nasty father. The drug addled brother who once was a physicist, and the almost sane sister who wrote off the old bitch of a mother, but who cries over her funeral, completely out of character for what the author started out to build. Then back to the girlfriend who is now a "girlfriend" not a one night stand, and the dog they just got together.

That is half an hour I will never get back.

Flipping through the other stories looked just as bad and posed. I guess there was a reason the used copy was only $0.25. I should have gotten that clue.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a few exceptional pieces of fiction in here and a lot of mediocre CNF

[L.A.Weekly · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a story titled “The Anthropology of Sex,” a 37-year-old woman broods over a long-ago affair with her literature professor — the man’s wife happened to be 37 at the time — and commemorates the guilty event by imagining that her own husband is having an affair. This sounds like a recipe for a stilted literary outing, but in writer Martha McPhee’s hands, the layers of the story slide together effortlessly like sheets of silk. Still, it’s not an erotic story, and not at all what one would expect to find in a collection called Do Me.

Taken together, the stories in Do Me: Tales of Sex & Love from Tin House, are surprisingly dour, and the decision to collect them under a title that suggests a celebratory romp between the sheets is a bit puzzling. Instead, this anthology seems to want to remind us that not all sex is sexy.

A few of the stories feel self-consciously literary and picaresque: In Carol Anshaw’s “Touch and Go,” a woman watches herself conduct a joyless lesbian affair with her mother’s gerontologist; in Alison Grillo’s “Phone Sex in Milwaukee,” a sportswriter watches himself conduct a telephone relationship from various hotel rooms while on the road with the Celtics. Both stories are airless and angst-filled, and don’t seem to be about sex or love so much as they are about ego dystonia.

Click here for the rest of the article.

[Daniel · Rating 1 out of 5]

First, I have to say that I don't know why this was even on a to-read list. Like many of my books, I probably ran across a review somewhere and something about it intrigued me. For this collection, whatever brought me here was likely much better written and much more engaging then this book itself.

I'm not sure what I was expecting ... some sex, certainly ... but I'm sure that what I was hoping for was stories that excited and titillated. Stories about people would be a must.

What I got were mostly stories that bored me. Stories about depressing situations or people that I couldn't identify with.

At this time, only one story stands out. "Jazz" by Dylan Landis was a really nice blend of fiction writing within the rhythms of jazz music. Beyond that, this was a colossal waste of my time.

[Jamie Felton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't finished this yet, but I am about 3/4 of the way through. I have basically decided that I really love this anthology (barring that the last five or six are not disasters). I can't speak for Tin House; however, I don't feel like this anthology was necessarily meant to be "steamy" so I can see how someone who expected that might be disappointed. These stories are about sex or intimacy in some format though, rather than it being about describing the act of, they generally focus more on how people react to certain situations or the ideas they have about it or unique experiences. In particular, I liked Martha McPhee's story about adultery (Anthropology of Sex) and Sarah Shun Bynum's.

[Inga · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hit or miss. I skipped a lot of the stories after not feeling them for one reason or another. A few really hit home and made the whole thing worthwhile. For me they were "The Moves", "Jazz" and "The Anthropology of Sex". Other stories were interesting. As a collection, definitely not as hot and bothered as the dust jacket would suggest.

[Daniel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sorry Ivet - I couldn't rate it as high as you did.

[Beth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eh (or as Jess and Megan would say, meh). I couldn't really get into these stories. None of them really jumped out at me as being particularly interesting.

[Lianne]

I would read anything Miranda July wrote. No joke.

[nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this was going to be more interesting. I'm not really interested in far-out fictional accounts of sex. If you are, this book may be for you.

[Christine · Rating 1 out of 5]

BORRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!

[Nicholas Gourlay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tin House Books

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is 348 pages, not 250. Someone please fix this.