On "Skull" by Steve Almond ***

One of the stories from Almond's collection, The Evil B. B. Chow, this one involves a drawn-out conversation about a man's weird sex life with his woman, who happens to be missing an eye. It's the kind of story I would expect in Nerve, which often tends to focus on strange sex, if only because a story that focuses merely on sex is generally really going to be a story about a relationship. Read the story here.

On "Secretary" by Mary Gaitskill (6060 words) *****

Some of you may be familiar with the movie Secretary, which came out about five years ago. That film is an erotic love story involving S&M. The brainchild for the film, however, was Gaitskill's story of the same name, but the direction that the two works take is decidedly different. The movie is a romance. The story is goes in the direction we would more likely expect--a certain disgust with the actions of the boss. What makes it compelling, however, is the main character who, as in the movie, seems turned on by her boss's actions. But here it isn't simplified. Here, the girl's interest is offset by her own uncertain feelings about herself and her life, her own lack of confidence. The ending, as one might expect, is very different from the movie. Gaitskill's work revels in these awkward situations created by our own untoward desires. Not surprisingly, this story is in a collection called Bad Behavior. Read the story here at Nerve.