While posing for Playboy magazine, freelance Bill of Rights defender Karen Finley was told, while chocolate dripped down her nipples, that her smirk wasn't "Playboy sexy." When writing for nerve.com, the so-called erotic on line magazine, she was told she would need to replace the word "cock" with something - something less objectionable? Having heard her friends complain of similar silliness Karen has invited them to write "whatever the hell you want" to reawaken this "exhausted topic." Aroused is an anthology of erotica, sexual culture, passionate texts, sensual encounters and essays on gender bending, neurotic erotic lust, school girl antics, coming of age, and first times, ranging from personal gratification to denying gratification, control, submission, possession, and jealousy, with race, age, and economics thrown in for a more heightened emotional response. Aroused defies our now familiar compartmentalization of sexuality and the erotic hit list of specialties: the best of lesbian erotica, the best of the new erotica, the best of old man and the sea erotica, famous person tattoo erotica, eclectic, esoteric erotica.