If you’re opening up this page turner to get turned on, be warned: Most of the subject matter in the 140-plus stories, poems, essays, and artwork that make up the 640-page anthology, The Unbearables Big Book of Sex, is closer to Camus than cunnilingus.

The trail started with a penny, round and burnished, hot from sitting so long in the summer sun. Angela scooped it up and held it in her palm so tightly the copper nearly burnt her skin.