Bad Sex Prize 2001

The Winner

Rescue Me by Christopher Hart

"Her hand is moving away from my knee and heading north. Heading unnervingly and with a steely willtowards the pole. And, like Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Pamela will not easily be discouraged. I try twitching, andthen shaking my leg, but to no avail. At last, disastrously, I try squeezing her hand painfully between mybony thighs, but this only serves to inflame her ardour the more. Ever northward moves her hand, while shesmiles languorously at my right ear. And when she reaches the north pole, I think in wonder and terror....shewill surely want to pitch her tent."

The Shortlist

Dreams, Demons and Desires by Wendy Perriam (Peter Owen)

The wind thrust between her legs, its icy blast displaced by solid warmth as he covered her like a dog. Thething inside her jerked and threshed, a rising salmon, plunging home to spawn.
"Yes!" she shouted, relishing the scarlet pain in her knees as he kept grinding them against thebarnacled surface of the groyne. She arched against him, picking up his rhythm - an angry, breathless rhythm,as he slammed and thrust against her, his barbarous nails clawing her bare back. The sea was joining in:slavering towards her; panting, foaming, gathering speed; one headstrong wave swelling up and up, sweeping herto treacherous heights before crashing, pounding down.
There was a last frantic spasm, followed by a cry. His voice or hers? She couldn't tell.

Where Do We Go From Here? by Doris Dörrie (Bloomsbury)

She confiscated the zapper and slid my hand between her thighs. It was wet and warm down there, which wasonly to be expected, but she might just as well have deposited my hand on a pizza for all the effect it had. Iactually found my self wondering if I would be able to tell a pizza and my wife apart by touch alone, and myuncertainty saddened me immeasurably.
She arched her body against mine, and I felt her desire surge over me like a tidal wave.
In a moment it would break on the reef of my incapacity...

Game Over by Adele Parks (Viking)

It's frantic and hurried and amazing. He touches my hand. He's not trying to restrain me. But he has. I'mrooted. His finger is resting gently on my wrist. I'm shackled. I'm ignited. I kiss him. He kisses back.Strong and dark. Engulfing. I've never kissed before. Or if I have, they were poor dress rehearsals. . . We'releft with naked silence. Stripped to desire. He tosses a few quid on the table and, not waiting for thechange, we dash out the cafe, into the rain. He points to an alleyway behind the station. I'm already headingthat way; I have an in-built mechanism that helps me to locate dark streets and other possible places forfornication. I'm boiling over with anticipation. He takes a tight hold on my arm. We cross the road, notchecking for traffic. Darren flings me up against the wall, barely pausing to check for privacy, I wrap mycoat around him. His lips mesh into mine and we're kissing so hard I can't tell them apart. He scrabbles withhis flies and then sinks into me. I stare into his eyes and he stares back, never losing me. Not for a second.It feels amazing. It feels important. It feels right.
He's climbing, he's filling, he's plugging. He completes me.
It's over in minutes.

Fourplay by Jane Moore (Orion)

His hand reached through the armhole of her halter-neck top and pulled it to one side to expose her breast.She let out an involuntary gasp as his tongue flicked the aroused nipple and his left hand caressed the otherthrough the flimsy material. The double breast stroke had always been a winner for Jo, and within seconds theywere tearing at each other's clothes in a drink-induced frenzy. Anxious not to break the sexual spell, theycontinued to kiss mercilessly. As Jo made the final tug on Sean's Calvins, his penis sprang out in anadmirably erect state.
"Gosh, he does look cross," she giggled, unable to take her eyes off it. "He's bloodyfurious," murmured Sean, guiding her hand to the base of the shaft.

Choke by Chuck Palahniuk (Jonathan Cape)

In the women's room, Nico pulls me down onto the cold tile and squats over my hips, digging me out of mypants. With her other hand, Nico cups the back of my neck and pulls my face, my open mouth, into hers. Hertongue wrestling against my tongue, she's wetting the head of my dog with the pad of her thumb. She's pushingmy jeans down off my hips. She lifts the hem of her dress in a curtsey with her eyes closed and her headtilted a little back. She settles her pubes hard against my pubes and says something against the side of myneck.
I say, "God, you're so beautiful," because for the next few minutes I can.
And Nico pulls back to look at me and says, "What's that supposed to mean?"
And I say, "I don't know." I say, "Nothing, I guess." I say, "Never mind."

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (Fourth Estate)

The night of Alfred's seventy-fifth birthday had found Chip alone at Tilton Ledge pursuing sexual congresswith his red chaise-longue.
... He was kneeling at the feet of his chaise and sniffing its plush minutely, inch by inch, in hopes thatsome vaginal tang might still be lingering eight weeks after Melissa Paquette had lain here. Ordinarilydistinct and identifiable smells - dust, sweat, urine, the dayroom reek of cigarette smoke, the fugitiveafterscent of quim - became abstract and indistinguishable from oversmelling, and so he had to pause again andagain to refresh his nostrils. He worked his lips down into the chaise's buttoned navels and kissed the lintand grit and crumbs and hairs that had collected in them. None of the three spots where he thought he smelledMelissa was unambiguously tangy, but after exhaustive comparison he was able to settle on the leastquestionable of the three spots, near a button just south of the backrest, and give it his full nasalattention. He fingered other buttons with both hands, the cool plush chafing his nether parts in a poorapproximation of Melissa's skin, until finally he achieved sufficient belief in the smell's reality -sufficient faith that he still possessed some relic of Melissa - to consummate the act. Then he rolled off hiscompliant antique and slumped on the floor with his pants undone and his head on the cushion, an hour closerto having failed to call his father on his birthday.

Little Green Man by Simon Armitage (Viking)

Bloke was lying on her back with her arms at her side. My eyes strayed from her face, but carefully,vertically, down her throat and her breastbone, and further, to a line of hairs that ran from her belly buttonto the top of her jeans. I took my time opening the orange and white packet, fumbling on purpose. TastyTicklers: peaches and cream flavour. When I tore the foil, a smell like tinned fruit cocktail escaped into theroom. Tinned fruit, and Carnation. Sunday tea at my grandmother's. The condom itself smelt worse, likechildren's medicine mixed with powdered milk. I fiddled with it, pretending I couldn't find the end, holdingit up to the light to see if it was inside out. I was shocked, truly shocked, when she took it from me and putit to one side.

Previous Winners

1993 Melvyn Bragg: A Time to Dance
1994 Philip Hook: The Stonebreakers
1995 Philip Kerr: Gridiron 
1996 David Huggins: The Big Kiss
1997 Nicholas Royle: The Matter of the Heart
1998: Sebastian Faulks: Charlotte Gray
1999 A.A. Gill: Starcrossed 
2000 Sean Thomas: Kissing England