In tragic news, the 2020 instalment of the Bad Sex In Fiction Awards has been cancelled, on account of 2020 being just too dreadful.
The editors of the awards took to Literary Review to announce the calamitous news.
“The judges felt that the public had been subjected to too many bad things this year to justify exposing it to bad sex as well,” the statement said. “They warned, however, that the cancellation of the 2020 awards should not be taken as a license to write bad sex.”
“With lockdown regulations giving rise to all manner of novel sexual practices, the judges anticipate a rash of entries next year,” the statement continued. “Authors are reminded that cybersex and other forms of home entertainment fall within the purview of this award. Scenes set in fields, parks or back yards, or indoors with the windows open and fewer than six people present will not be exempt from scrutiny either.”
It’s an act of nobility but one we feel is misguided. If anything I have found that leaning into dread has been the only thing that has kept me sane during an era where everything is completely insane.
The awards, which were established in 1993 by critic Rhoda Koenig and editor Auberon Waugh, are a celebration of the worst sex writing on the literally landscape. As a way to honour each years “most outstandingly awful scene of sexual description” and to highlight “to the poorly written, redundant or downright cringe-worthy passages of sexual description in modern fiction.”
It’s a god damn pisser of an affair. Though a great opportunity to take a look at winners from years-gone-by. It’s the literary equivalent of taking SSRI’s. A total libidinal killer.
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My personal favourite is an excerpt from 2007 shortlist nominee Christopher Rush’s Will. Read the excerpt below:
O glorious pubes! The ultimate triangle, whose angles delve to hell but point to paradise. Let me sing the black banner, the blackbird’s wing, the chink, the cleft, the keyhole in the door. The fig, the fanny, the cranny, the quim – I’d come close to it now, this sudden blush, this ancient avenue, the end of all odysseys and epic aim of life, pulling at my prick now, pulling like a lodestone.
Anne Hathaway’s cow-milking fingers, cradling my balls in her almond palm, now took pity on the poor anguished erection, and in the infinite agony of her desire, guided it to the quick of the wound. At the same time I searched wildly with the fingers of my left hand, groping blind as Cyclops, found the pulpy furred wetness, parted the old lips of time and slipped my middle finger into the sancta sanctorum. It welcomed me with soft sucking sounds, syllables older than language, solace lovelier than words. She pulled my hand away, positioned the prick, slid her buttocks deep into the grass, raised her thighs back high, crossed her legs behind my back, dug her heels into my spine and hauled at me savagely and hard. I fell into her.
