Dirty Bird

Exercise Your Inktank
Bad Sex

I will confess I was dreading the prospect of writing bad literary sex scenes as examples for discussion. Thankfully, the Literary Review’s 2006 Bad Sex Award winner was announced yesterday. The judges say the award’s mandate is “to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it.” Here are their criteria for bad sexiness: “unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant sex scene in an otherwise sound literary novel.” Pretty vague, if you ask me, but otherwise maybe fairly sound. If you already know the winner, hold your tongue. Otherwise, read through these selections and see if you can pick it. A disclaimer: the following excerpts contain seriously graphic sexual content that may not be appropriate for some readers and may completely ruin our chances of ever having a grown-up conversation about the topic.

David Mitchell from Black Swan Green
“Now she made a noise like a tortured Moomintroll.”
Irvine Walsh from Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs:
“Skinner took his thick green slime and spread it like a chef might glaze some pastry…A ludicrously distended clitoris popped out from nowhere like a jack-in-the-box.”

Thomas Pynchon from Against the Day
“Ruperta had trained her toy spaniel to provide intimate ‘French’ caresses of the tongue for the pleasure of its mistress. …Reef followed, taking out his penis, breathing heavily through his mouth. 'Here Mouffie, nice big dog bone for you right here.’”

Julia Glass from The Whole World Over:
“And then before her inner eye, a tide of words leaped high and free, a chaotic joy like frothing rapids: truncate, adjudicate, fornicate, frivolous, rivulet, violet, oriole, orifice, conifer, aquifer, allegiance, alacrity…all the words this time not a crowding but a heavenly chain, an ostrich fan, a vision as much as an orgasm, a release of something deep in the core of her altered brain, words she thought she'd lost for good.”

Mark Haddon from A Spot of Bother:
“And it swept over her like surf sweeping over sand then falling back and sweeping up over the sand again and falling back. Images went off in her head like little fireworks. The smell of coconut. Brass firedogs.”

Will Self from The Book of Dave
“The confusion of their bodies—his hairy shanks, her sweaty thighs, his bow-taut cock, her engorged basketry of cowl and lip.”

Tim Willocks from The Religion
“He bent her across the cold steel face of the anvil...she called out to God and convulsed with each slow stroke, her head thrown back and her eyelids aflutter, and her cries filled the forge…until she squeezed him from inside and he exploded to a prayer of his own within her body.”

Iain Hollingshead from Twentysomething
“And then I’m inside her, and everything is pure white as we're lost in a commotion of grunts and squeaks, flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles…I can feel her breasts against her chest. I cup my hands round her face and start to kiss her properly. She slides one of her slender legs in between mine. ‘Oh Jack,’ she was moaning now, her curves pushed up against me, her crotch taut against my bulging trousers, her hands gripping fistfuls of my hair. She reaches for my belt. I groan too, in expectation. And then I'm inside her, and everything is pure white as we’re lost in a commotion of grunts and squeaks, flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles.”

The Challenge:
Write some bad literary sex. Attempting the worst can be as instructive as attempting the best. Use any of the above passages as a model, or create your own scenario.