On Desperadoes

by John Powers

October 13, 2004

Bookend: Flying home from the Midwest last weekend, I spent a merry two hours reading The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir. (What can I say? I was in an airport bookstore.) It was written by former Balanchine ballerina Toni Bentley, who could teach ABC's desperate housewives a thing or two about desperation. Genuinely daring in its self-exposure, stabs at philosophy and downright silliness, both witting and un-, her book is surely the greatest hymn to the transcendent powers of sodomy since the Marquis de Sade (or at least the original Devil in Miss Jones).

Early on, Bentley tells us, "I came to know God experientially, from being fucked in the ass—over and over and over again." If you didn't know better, you would swear you were reading the latest pro-Bush speech by onetime liberal Ron Silver.