Bro, you need to see a doctor. Folding your manhood in two cannot be a good idea.
And beyond any of these award nominees, pick up almost any highbrow literary book and just watch the way they describe bodies and sex. You’ll find that there’s almost always something intentionally off-putting in the description. Not to mention all the times we’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for two characters to get it on, only to get close-doored or badly metaphor-ed.
It wasn’t always like this. Anais Nin, Henry Miller and Erica Jong are considered to be great literary figures, and they put explicit sex into their novels. Heck, even Madeleine L’Engle has a great scene in her young adult book A House Like a Lotus.
It seems to me, with absolutely no scientific evidence to back it up, that once women started writing sexy romance designed to be read by other women, the literary establishment took the general stance that bodies and sex are not to be celebrated if you want your book to be as well. The patriarchy is a foolish thing. Because every girl I know stole romance books to read as teenagers and quietly learn about how much more there is to the act than Cosmo’s position of the month — but where are the boys going to learn it?
I don’t think it’s coincidence that most of the Bad Sex nominees are men.
Publishers of America, I implore you. Dudes have to learn this stuff somewhere, and porn is really not the way to learn about anything but interesting camera angles. You gotta put the banging back in our books.
And I get it. Sex is really hard to write. There are really only so many words out there to describe the same parts and actions. But surely even a novice can come up with something more detailed than, “We fucked, we fucked, we fucked, we fucked, we fucked, we fucked.” (The Future Won’t Be Long by Jarett Kobek.) For an absolute master-class in all available sex words and descriptions, I’d highly recommend any Sierra Simone book, but particularly her New Camelot series.