Tag: awards

It’s everyone’s favorite time of the year! The contenders for the Bad Sex in Fiction award have been named—and man are they bad. From games of tennis to muddy fields, let’s get intimate with some of 2016’s worst sex scenes.

1. A Doubter’s Almanac by Ethan Canin
   “The act itself was fervent. Like a brisk tennis game or a summer track meet, something performed in daylight between competitors. The cheap mattress bounced. She liked to do it more than once, and he was usually able to comply. Bourbon was his gasoline. Between sessions, he poured it at the counter while she lay panting on the sheets. Sweat burnished her body. The lean neck. The surprisingly full breasts. He would down another glass and return.” Game, set, match! Who’s gonna beat that awful sex scene?
2. Men Like Air by Tom Connolly
   “The walkway to the terminal was all carpet, no oxygen. Dilly bundled Finn into the first restroom on offer, locked the cubicle door and pulled at his leather belt. ‘You’re beautiful,’ she told him, going down on to her haunches and unzipping him. He watched her passport rise gradually out of the back pocket of her jeans in time with the rhythmic bobbing of her buttocks as she sucked him. He arched over her back and took hold of the passport before it landed on the pimpled floor. Despite the immediate circumstances, human nature obliged him to take a look at her passport photo.” Down on her haunches? Pimpled floor? Looking at a passport photo while getting a blowjob? Most. Unsexy. Sex. Scene. Ever.
3. The Butcher’s Hook by Janet Ellis
   “When his hand goes to my breasts, my feet are envious. I slide my hands down his back, all along his spine, rutted with bone like mud ridges in a dry field, to the audacious swell below. His finger is inside me, his thumb circling, and I spill like grain from a bucket. He is panting, still running his race. I laugh at the incongruous size of him, sticking to his stomach and escaping from the springing hair below.” A back like mud ridges and cum like grain from a bucket. Someone’s taking the expression “romp in the hay” a bit too literally!
4. The Day Before Happiness by Erri De Luca
   “She pushed on my hips, an order that thrust me in. I entered her. Not only my prick, but the whole of me entered her, into her guts, into her darkness, eyes wide open, seeing nothing. My whole body had gone inside her. I went in with her thrusts and stayed still. While I got used to the quiet and the pulsing of my blood in my ears and nose, she pushed me out a little, then in again. She did it again and again, holding me with force and moving me to the rhythm of the surf. She wiggled her breasts beneath my hands and intensified the pushing. I went in up to my groin and came out almost entirely. My body was her gearstick.” Quick, pull your emergency break—you’re gonna plummet off the cliff of terrible sex writing! Oops, too late…

Want your body to feel like the gearstick? We can definitely rev your engine right here!

Check out more excerpts from the Bad Sex in Fiction award: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/17/bad-sex-award-2016-the-contenders-in-quotes