Public Love
by Talmage Cooley and Andy Spade
Chronicle Books, $14.95 hard
If Public Love doesn’t prompt guests at your next adults-only party into reminiscence, nothing will. The authors have assembled 44 stories from men and women about how and where they’ve gotten off in a locale other than the bedroom. See, you’re already thinking back yourself, aren’t you? Can you top, say, a BJ in the middle of 55th Street in New York? A trip to third base while sitting at the table at a Chi Omega pledge banquet? Or how about daily, vertical coitus in the parking garage of your office building? Paired with stirring color photographs by Cooley representing each location in which the dirty deed took place, some of the stories are sexy, funny, or sweet. But just as there’s bad sex out there, there are some boring stories, too. On the hood of a car, in a motorboat? Who cares? Public Love is also long on hetero tales — only one involves two men. And just one of the two two-women-and-a-man stories was interesting or believable — and that’s because the two women were telling it. But for a premise that has the potential to bring out the braggart or liar in people, there’s a refreshing honesty here.
This article appears in September 3 • 1999.