BOOK REVIEW : Tales of How the Sexes Love and Let Live : A PLACE I’VE NEVER BEEN, <i> by David Leavitt</i> . Viking. $18.95, 195 pages

David Leavitt, like a modern Tiresias, explores aspects of love from both masculine and feminine points of view. Though the primary sensibility in this fine collection is homosexual, the author’s empathy is far broader and deeper than that perspective might suggest. Instead of dwelling in exclusively gay or straight worlds, his characters are profoundly involved in the lives of family, friends and lovers.

This constant interaction not only expands the relevance of his fiction, but also encourages us to re-examine preconceptions and stereotypes. After reading these 10 extraordinary stories, notions of what constitutes “the other” will be radically altered, if not altogether reversed.

Some readers may even discover that the concept of “otherness” virtually disappears in the vastness of emotional response--a reaction heightened by the fact that Leavitt’s people are distinctly mainstream types who turn “The Place I’ve Never Been” from an exotic underworld into a familiar universe.

The title story chronicles subtle changes in the long friendship of Nathan and Celia. Though Nathan is openly homosexual and Celia is fully and painfully aware of his preference, she has always been in love with him. Neither psychoanalysis nor her burgeoning romance with another man has yet eradicated that feeling, though she has made considerable progress while Nathan has been in Europe. Convincingly written from Celia’s point of view, the story describes Nathan’s traumatic return to an apartment all but demolished by irresponsible tenants--a gay couple to whom he had rented because he had a crush on one of the men. Celia, as always, rolls up her sleeves and pitches in. Together, the old friends manage to restore the apartment to a semblance of its pristine self, an act that precisely mirrors the declining relationship between the two principals.

Diana, in “My Marriage to Vengeance,” is a sexual dilettante, a promiscuous young woman who “tried” lesbianism for a year the way another person might “try” writing screenplays. What Diana liked was the grand theatrical gesture--cutting her long hair, confronting her parents with her new identity, bidding teary adieus to her horde of boyfriends. If allowing herself to be adored by a genuine lesbian was part of the deal, Diana would accept that too, for a while. The narrator is Ellen, the woman who loved Diana, recalling the affair after she receives the exceedingly formal invitation to Diana’s wedding. Ellen buys a flowered dress, splurges on a wedding present, and goes to the ceremony with murder in her heart. After meeting the three-name bridegroom and watching Diana play bride, Ellen realizes what a truly vapid and dishonest person her erstwhile beloved was, and is. The insight is both consolation and revenge.

“Roads to Rome” investigates the tangled, polymorphously perverse relationships of an aristocratic Italian family, as perceived by a young American homosexual man. Satiric and witty, full of authentic historical detail enhanced by considerable emotional depth, this story provides the author with a chance to show that Americans, regardless of sexual identity, remain eternal innocents abroad. During Nicholas’ short stay with this family, he learns that the glow of warmth and elegance he had so admired is nothing more than the sheen of decay.

The male narrator of “Houses” sells real estate, and has just returned to his wife and child after a brief but doomed affair with a man.

The symbol of that romance was a modest cottage the men thought of as their dream house, though each was sadly aware that the dream was ephemeral. Still, as long as the house was unsold, they could pretend, but when a pair of elderly retirees seem determined to buy that particular house and no other, we know that the narrator, like others in this book, will capitulate, despite his vow to “burn it down before he’d let that couple take possession of it.”

Instead, he protests in a far more original way, no less effective for being harmless, a course of action often chosen by Leavitt’s gentle, honorable, and desperate characters.

Next: Carolyn See reviews “Crazy Ladies” by Michael Lee West (Long Street Press).