Introduction to High Risk Anthology

Announcing the New Short Story Collection to Discuss

Finding a new book of stories to write about is difficult. So many short story collections are either unfocused anthologies or collections by writers past their prime. I am reading an anthology that promised edge of your seat horror and it begins with an Ancient Greek court case where the cuckold husband got away with killing his wife's lover. That's it. The point is made but then it goes on for 20 pages. The Ray Bradbury collection Long After Midnight was boring, so soul-crushingly boring. Even when I read good short story collections and anthologies, I don't know what to say.

High Risk was one of those books that you couldn't escape in the 1990s, especially if you had friends who enjoyed reading the beats or Jung or comic books. It was on everyone's bookshelf, promising new work by William S. Burroughs, Kathy Acker and other transgressive rebel writers. Coming out of the 1980s, it was ready to talk frankly about everything from BDSM to gay sex to bondage to AIDS.

The editors, Amy Scholder & Ira Silverberg, make it clear that AIDS is very much in the foreground. Thousands had died throughout the 1980s and many more were going to die until 1995 when the cocktail made AIDS manageable. The Reagan administration, built on the two pillars of social conservatism and libertarianism, saw no reason to get serious about the disease. Had Reagan taken it seriously, the CDC could have started earlier, put the safety protocols in place, spent money on research and had a cocktail in place by 1987. Tens of thousands who died of AIDS (including my uncle) could be alive today.

Instead, the social conservatives and libertarians could agree to ignore AIDS. The social conservatives gleefully praised AIDS as divine punishment. The libertarians didn't believe that any money should be spent to help people. If they didn't believe in state-funded road construction, why would they care about heroin users and gay men?

It took hemophiliac children like Ryan White to make the general public care. Some still protest the medical protocols put in place to prevent HIV infected blood from getting in the blood banks, because they really don't remember the time when AIDS was a death sentence. Yet, the perceived need to research and teach about AIDS was a net positive.

I don't love every story in this collection. I doubt I will change my mind on Karen Finley and William S. Burroughs was very disappointing. However, this is an interesting collection and even if I don't love every story, I definitely look forward to writing about every story.

Not sure if it’s still in print but you can buy a used copy here.

Hate to ask, but if you can’t subscribe could you please check out my gofundme?

I just finished writing about BADASS HORROR, the second Dybbuk Press anthology. Buy a copy.