Foreward
This slim edition of selected works by J. contains fiction covering a four-year period. These are sexy stories (not necessarily about sex), intense with sweat-driven prose, endowed with the sinewy power of life lived hard.
And without intent, these stories are the essence of niggafaggot writing.
These short pieces do something, much like a drug; the tension, the mood are readily felt and yet are ephemeral - much like a high. Urbanerotica is raw to be sure; but here - as in many of J.'s works - is rawness perfected, drawn from sources close to us. From the pulse of the clubs, from the smells and rhythms of body-inside-body, from the shards of broken promises; from these comes freedom of living the moment without convention. Without conformity.
The fault is ours if we refuse the richness that touches us.
Urbanerotica is more than a collection of black, gay sex stories. The crucial task for us as black, gay men right now is to create and explore works - whether it is growing a body of literature or forming the bonds of a new culture - that signify us, permeates us. There are no answers in Urbanerotica; only intimate suggestions and possibilities.
Dan Robinson
Spring, 1994