The Sensual Mirror

“She had turned twenty-nine that week before, and on midnight of the day itself had burst into tears because Martin had not called. She knew he wouldn’t and really didn’t want him to, but part of her still clung to certain primitive sentiments, or what used to be called girlish ways. Now she smiled wryly at the memory, wondering how long it would take to forget him completely, simultaneously sad at the realization that such a time might indeed come. For Julia Gordis evening had always been the most beautiful part of the day.”

Marco Vassi was, without a doubt, the foremost erotic writer of our generation. Praised by Norman Mailer, Kate Millett, Saul Bellow, and Gore Vidal, he was not only the ultimate sexual explorer, but a literary craftsman whose own life experiences became the stuff of his fiction—expanded, of course, by a grand imagination and a full sense of the absurd.

Tragically, Vassi died from pneumonia after he had contracted AIDS.