If God really thought sex was a mortal sin, why did He give young men so much testosterone? If you doubt, I suggest you visit Mayo Clinic.org to discover the facts. The Mayo Clinic says, “Testosterone is a hormone produced primarily in the testicles. Testosterone helps maintain men’s sex drive and sperm production.”
Warning, if you are an uptight, born-again Puritan, this mostly erotic collection of short stories might offend you.
The stories in Isham Cook’s collection, The Exact Unknown, reveal men driven by the often oppressed and censured libido. These stories are not an author’s sex fantasy as some Puritanical minds might claim, because many of the characters in these stories don’t achieve their goal—bedding down Chinese beauties that are not as easy to seduce as some think.
This collection is set in modern China where women are considered equal to men and are experimenting with that freedom and their sexuality. In case you are unaware of it, bound feet women in China and concubines as the property of men—you know, legal sex slaves—was officially ended by Mao after his famous liberating ‘Women hold up half the sky’ speech.
I think the best story in this 5-star collection of testosterone driven characters was Good Teacher, Bad Teacher starting on page 103 of the paperback. John Cobalt is from Los Angeles and he’s teaching English in Guangzhou, China to Chinese college students. “This strange six-foot-five American dressed in what struck his employers as pajamas … went barefoot both in class and out on the street. … If that wasn’t bad enough, some students complained to the department head they could make out Cobalt’s penis against the flimsy fabric of his pants, in its flaccid state to be sure, yet they considered this to be highly improper nonetheless.”
To discover how Cobalt ends up with a devout and loyal following of Chinese college graduates, who are mostly female, you’ll have to buy the book.
My second best choice would be The Curious Benefits of Neurosis starting on page 130 in the paperback that’s about a sex addict who sets out one night to visit as many massage parlors as possible—with some surprising results.
I must warn you though that there are a few well-written stories in this collection that have nothing to do with the out-of-control libidos of foreigners hoping to exploit the women of China.
The author sent me a complementary paperback copy of this book for my honest opinion that I’m sure modern, born-again Puritans will not approve of.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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