Many a confident urban lesbian in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago was once a wide-eyed newcomer. Every year thousands of young women arrive in these queer-friendly cities, seduced by downtown life and its erotic possibilities. In Where the Girls Are, D.L. King collects explicit memoirs and stories about these newly arrived country girls. Here are stories of first times, initiations, bars, dance clubs, and parties, reading (or misreading) the codes — and sometimes teaching those city girls a thing or two in the process. Featuring such stories as “My First Play Party,” “Rush Hour,” and “The Critic” from well-regarded authors of erotica Charlotte Dare, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Sophie Mouette, Lisabet Sarai, and others, Where the Girls Are burns with the immense heat of the furnace that lies just below the urban landscape.