Aphrodisiac, fiction from Christopher Street.

A collection of short fiction from the gay magazine Christopher Street--with only three items of literary merit: Jane Rule's touching story of an old lesbian faced with the wholly different outlooks of four young gay women boarding in her house; Noel Ryan's well-turned ""Wild Figs""--a family's discord and discomfort around a gay son; and Edmund White's initiation-at-the-lake ""First Love"" (affecting even though White's calculated and enameled allusiveness is truly cloying). Otherwise, there's reportage-like work from Andrew Holleran and George Whitmore, who both record Fire Island with a cognoscenti fondness and sharp eye. And from there on, it's downhill all the way: sticky sentiment from Christopher Bram (""Here I was, happily married, and not only had I fallen in love with somebody else, I had fallen in love with a guy""), James D. Wagoner, and Kate Millet; plus much almost-porn from Noretta Koertge, Robert S. Ryan (pain-freak), Ron Harvie (bikers), Daniel Curzon, and. . . never-too-famous-to-be-crude Tennessee Williams ("". . . the masculine but prominent buttocks that Dame Nature has gifted him with. . .""). Unimpressive--but reasonably representative of the state of ""gay fiction. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.