Scanner : bad sex

And The Bad Sex in Fiction Winners Are...

Brian Fairbanks — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:18:00 GMT

The British know their sex... which is why they're also qualified to judge the 2008 Bad Sex in Fiction Awards. And this ain't "bad sex" that appears "in fiction." It's bad sex writing from some of the great novels of the year, including John Updike's Witches of Eastwick sequel...

Updike takes the year's Lifetime Achievement Award, while the year's top honoree is Rachel Johnson, sister of London Mayor Boris (what's up with these conservatives, like Bill O'Reilly and Scooter Libby, not knowing how to write sex? Wait, nevermind, we know the answer.)

Based on a cursory search of these books for sex scenes, we found this one from Updike's latest:

She said nothing then, her lovely mouth otherwise engaged, until he came, all over her face. She had gagged, and moved him outside her lips, rubbing his spurting glans across her cheeks and chin. God, she was antique, but here they were. Her face gleamed with his jism in the spotty light of the motel room, there on the far end of East Beach, within sound of the sea.

In a Guardian interview, Johnson is a good sport, while the article's author points out some passages that might have caught the committee's attention:

Johnson was singled out for her novel's slew of animal metaphors, including comparing her male protagonist's "light fingers" to "a moth caught inside a lampshade", and his tongue to "a cat lapping up a dish of cream so as not to miss a single drop". Literary Review deputy editor Tom Fleming was also disturbed by the heroine's "grab, to put him, now angrily slapping against both our bellies, inside".

Just for laughs, here's the 2007 winner, by our good buddy, now deceased, Norman Mailer:

'Are you alright?' she cried out as he lay beside her, his breath going in and out with a rasp that sounded as terrible as the last winds of their lost children.
'All right. Yes. No,' he said. Then she was on him. She did not know if this would resuscitate him or end him, but the same spite, sharp as a needle, that had come to her after Fanni's death was in her again. Fanni had told her once what to do. So Klara turned head to foot, and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth, and took his old battering ram into her lips. Uncle was now as soft as a coil of excrement. She sucked on him nonetheless with an avidity that could come only from the Evil One - that she knew. From there, the impulse had come. So now they both had their heads at the wrong end, and the Evil One was there. He had never been so close before.
The Hound began to come to life. Right in her mouth. it surprised her. Alois had been so limp. But now he was a man again! His mouth lathered with her sap, he turned around and embraced her face with all the passion of his own lips and face, ready at last to grind into her with the Hound, drive it into her piety.

It's enough to turn you off having sex, let alone just reading about it.

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Scanner Roundtable: The Worst Sex You Ever Had

Emily Farris — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:37:00 GMT

Without being so graphic as to be shot down by our commenter SPAM filter, we want to know about the worst sex you ever had.

Bummer: Rock Star Threeway Ends In Suicide

Bryan Christian — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 12:00:00 GMT

These are the survivors of the threeway -- in case you weren't sure.

Hate to harsh your sex buzz today, but we've got a little piece of advice: turns out letting your wife sleep with your rock'n'roll idol isn't always the best idea -- even if you get to be in on the action.

A devoted Status Quo fan who plunged into depression after his wife left him for guitarist Rick Parfitt has hanged himself at home, it emerged today.
[...]
In 1995, a day after marrying [former wife] Angie, [Nigel Hewitt] introduced his new bride to his hero at a Quo gig in Birmingham, where Rick flirted with her.
But it wasn't until December 2003 that, astonishingly, Mr Hewitt agreed to let Rick sleep with his wife - as long as he could join in.
Afterwards Angie lost interest in her husband and started spending more time with Rick. Eventually they split up.

Is there a lesson to be learned here? We don't know. We always thought threeways with rock stars were, like, a Platonic good. Straight spouse swaps are still cool, though, right? Dean?

"Grey's Anatomy" Star's Incestuous Past Makes Us Glad We Watch "Scrubs"

Nicole Pasulka — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:00:00 GMT

The word is that Chyler Leigh, who plays Meredith Grey's younger sister in Grey's Anatomy, made out with her brother in the movie Kickboxing Academy. This shit better be a joke, or a mistake, or a conspiracy, because we are not about to live in a world where people in B-movies make out with their brothers and then end up getting a secondary part on a high-rated one-hour comidrama thereby forcing us to hear about how the once did incest for a movie. Because we have a brother, and -- EW!! Just, EW!! Not acceptable. What is happening behind the scenes of Grey's Anatomy that makes it so evil? It's like Adi Da over there. Don't be surprised when the production staff starts running pyramid schemes and Patrick Dempsey changes his name to Da Love-Ananda.

"Coil of Excrement" Line Tips Bad Sex Award to the Late, Great Norman Mailer

Bryan Christian — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 13:23:00 GMT

It's a real shame that Norman Mailer was not alive to accept -- or maybe violently reject -- his latest accolade: the 2007 Bad Sex in Literature Award (which Emily noted yesterday). What would he have said in response to winning for a scene in "The Castle in the Forest," his first book in ten years, depicting a bit of oral between Hitler's parents... and Satan?

So Klara turned head to foot, and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth, and took his old battering ram into her lips. Uncle was now as soft as a coil of excrement. She sucked on him nonetheless with an avidity that could come only from the Evil One - that she knew....So now they both had their heads at the wrong end, and the Evil One was there. He had never been so close before.
The Hound began to come to life. Right in her mouth. It surprised her. Alois had been so limp. But now he was a man again!

OK, we don't care if Jeannette Winterson's nominee involved girl-on-robot action: how could anything beat a coprophilia-tinged, threeway sixty-nine between relatives of Hitler and Special Guest Star The Dark Lord -- written by a dead 80-year old? Like, what is possibly missing from that? That shit beats anything at anything. The Bad Sex Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Goodwill Games, So You Think You Can Dance... they're all in the bag.

[Thanks, Robert 4343!]

"O glorious pubes!"

Emily Farris — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:37:00 GMT

We still can't decide if we loved or hated Absurdistan, but we have to give Gary Shteyngart props for his vivid description of pubic hair in the novel:

Her vagina was all that, as they say in the urban media – a powerful ethnic muscle scented by bitter melon, the breezes of the local sea, and the sweaty needs of a tiny nation trying to breed itself into a future. Was it especially hairy? Good Lord, yes it was. Mountains of kinkiness black as the night above the Serengeti with paprika shoots at the edges – the pubic hair alone must have clocked in at half a kilo, while providing the inspiration for two discernible trails of hair, one running up to the navel, the other to the base of the spine.

So does Literary Review, for their Bad Sex in Fiction Awards 2007. Also on this year's list: Ian McEwan ("Had she pulled the wrong thing?"), Quim Monzo ("She felt the cylinder rod of his plunger.") and Christopher Rush ("O glorioius pubes!").