Poor Katie Moran. For a woman who’s supposedly a sexual genius, she takes the crème de la crème of literary subject matter and reduces it to a head-clutching bore. The bimbo-ish Moran is a writer for Playboy, and despite her bisexuality, she reinforces (in clunky prose) the kind of heteronormative, pre-feminist agenda that you would expect from sex’s biggest periodical. Kiss-and-tell Moran bops around L.A. fucking anything that breathes and then writing about it. She also relates anecdotes, torrents of them, about her friends and partners and exes, picking through every last shred of their sexual dalliances and deviances. In between moans, she talks about stuff that “makes her gag,” and she actually uses the word “poo”—multiple times. Dude, are you serious? I can just smell the salon hair products and sheaves of makeup from here.

Moran’s first chapter is about vibrators - the least titillating, informative, and funny writing about vibrators I have ever read. Moran recites pertinent facts from the (quite sexy) history of vibrators as though she were reciting a genealogy from the Bible. Then—then!—she gets to her favorite part: the anecdotes. “My friend Sheryl is a stunning brunette with flawless features, a master’s degree, and a great sense of humor.” (Moran must have been asleep—or fucking?—during the class where they talked about transitions.) Long story short, Sheryl lands a guy for the first time in a while; nice guy comes home to Sheryl’s place, offers to fix a broken lamp, and accidentally pulls the cord that leads to—oops!—a vibrator! “A few moments later, the handyman politely excused himself from Sheryl’s life.” Of course! I forgot that Playboy men are still championing the notion that vaginas are obsolete without cocks.

It’s painfully clear that Moran and her cross-section of L.A. morons are not representative of any realistic spectrum of sexual expression. Moran’s idea of sexual diversity is her gay friend Bobby, who peruses Friendster “trolling for cock.” In fact, the entire middle section of the book is devoted to sappy tales of dating, failed one-night-stands, and breakups - a clever attempt to cater to both the Sex and the City crowd and Bridget Jones’ Diary fans all at once.

Unsurprisingly, Moran is at her best when she shuts up about her friends (and her friends’ friends, and her friends’ friends’ friends…) and fiddles with the fictive. Smack in the middle of a series of nonfiction stories about her sexcapades (which reads more like a handbook of how to end up in dumb situations than an inquiry into the wheres and whens of sex), she delivers a racy piece about two college roommates, Cindy and Nancy. A series of happenstance experiences brings them into the same bed during their first night on campus. Moran’s prose suddenly takes a turn for the lean and mean; her narrative is charged with equal parts anticipation and tenderness. It’s the first time in the book that sexuality takes on a truly human tone, and sex becomes an expression of need and desire, of attraction and compassion, rather than an attempt to satisfy some unquenchable thirst. Cindy and Nancy—who turn out to be fictive personalities Moran and her partner adopt in bed—throw the cold, detached voraciousness of Moran’s own sexuality into sharp relief.

Cindy and Nancy may be the only substantive material The ‘On’ Position has to offer. Roll down to Barnes and Noble, fetch this book from the shelf, and acquaint yourself with the happy couple. If you’re single, their story will give you cannon fodder for the night; if you’re lucky enough to have an open-minded partner, you may want to follow Moran’s lead and try two fictive personalities on for size. Either way, there are more thrills per word in that short section than in the entire rest of Moran’s book—proof that sometimes fiction offers far more sustenance than the truth.

The “On” Position
by Katie Moran
Volt Press, 2005

-Dan Barry is a freelance writer, music critic, and Clamor contributor.
Email Dan Barry.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2005 at 8:55 am by Jason Kucsma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.