Boyslut
A Memoir and Manifesto
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
**A 2024 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST**
“Zachary Zane is one of the best sex writers working today.” —Dan Savage, New York Times bestselling author
Named a Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Book of the Year by Buzzfeed
A sex and relationship columnist bares it all in a series of essays—part memoir, part manifesto—that explore the author’s coming-of-age and coming out as a bisexual man and move toward embracing and celebrating sex unencumbered by shame.
As a boy, Zachary Zane sensed that all was not right when images of his therapist naked popped into his head. Without an explanation as to why, a deep sense of shame pervaded these thoughts. Though his therapist assured him a little imagination was nothing to be ashamed of, over the years, society told him otherwise.
Boyslut is a series of personal and tantalizing essays that articulate how our society still shames people for the sex that they have and the sexualities that they inhabit. Through the lens of his bisexuality and much self-described sluttiness, Zane breaks down exactly how this sexual shame negatively impacts the sex and relationships in our lives, and through personal experience, shares how we can unlearn the harmful, entrenched messages that society imparts to us.
From stories of drug-fueled threesomes and risqué Grindr hookups to insights on dealing with rejection and living with his boyfriend and his boyfriend’s wife, Boyslut is reassuring and often painfully funny—but is most potently a testimony that we can all learn to live healthier lives unburdened by stigma.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sex columnist Zane (coauthor, Best. Sex. Ever.) calls for an end to sexual shame in this revealing if uneven memoir. He starts by recounting a mostly nonreligious upbringing that nevertheless left him feeling deep-seated sexual shame, driven partly by severe OCD and intrusive thoughts. While at Vassar, he moved beyond heterosexual hookups with the aid of alcohol and cocaine, and after coming to terms with his bisexuality, he pursued his prodigious sexual appetites (by his count, he has had around 2,000 partners). He intercuts accounts of his exploits with insightful discussions of rejection, assumptions about bisexuality, and the benefits (strengthening queer community) and drawbacks (promoting infidelity and fetishization) of gay hookup apps. Zane recounts coming to terms with his vomit fetish and his discovery, while in a polyamorous relationship, that he might be fraysexual (someone primarily attracted to people they do not know well). His arguments about the complications of bisexual visibility are particularly salient, though his cavalier anti-condom attitude and his at-times smug humor ("I'm working on screwing an Oscar winner to achieve my sexual EGOT") might alienate readers. Zane pushes the envelope, but the results aren't always worth the work.