Bad Sex Award

Here's the winner of this year's Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction award:

"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."

Well yes, "bulging trousers" is funny (and shouldn't that be "against my chest"?), but really - it's not all that bad, is it? If this is the best/worst they can find, maybe it's time to pack the whole thing in.

The winning author, Iain Hollingshead, goes through the usual "yes, ha ha, I can see the funny side of it now" motions, and at this stage in the awards, after 13 years, it's probably not even through gritted teeth. It was all very Auberon Waugh back in 1993, but now it seems pointless.

Comments

[Peter Briffa]

How do you kiss someone properly?

I've always wanted to know.

[Dom]

Somewhere, Anthony Burgess has a writer of pulp fiction refer to his penis as "my purple engorgement". I think that's better (meaning funnier) than "bulging trousers."

[Peter Briffa]

If you google "purple engorgement" you will only find one site. Do it soon, before this one comes up.

[DaninVan]

"...her crotch taut against my bulging trousers, her hands gripping fistfuls of my hair."

Ouch!