Excessive detail isn’t generally appreciated when discussing sex with friends. “We did this; it was or wasn’t great” will usually suffice.
“I took the backs of her thighs in my hands, adjusting her legs around my waist. I reached under her. I brought her up to me. And then my body, like a cathedral, broke out into ringing” ( Middlesex) is not the sort of thing one says over smashed avocado, or any other sociable food.
Books are things we do alone, when there’s not much else to do; like on trains or planes, before we fall asleep or on the tube jammed between suits in the morning. And it’s in these – life’s dullest moments – that the sexiest passages often present themselves, making us blush, stop to check no one’s peering over our shoulder, and quietly delight.
I was on a long-haul flight, sat next to my snoring father at about 17 years old when I read the line in Atonement that comes abruptly out of nowhere, “In my dreams I kiss your c*nt, your sweet, wet c*nt.”
It’s funny thinking of these writers – often balding, bearded or white-haired men, possibly in corduroys and a baggy shirt, admiring a pleasant garden view – writing the most thrilling, delicate and carnal sex scenes in literary history.
From Richard Yates to Jeffrey Eugenides, here's nine of the raciest scenes in high-brow literature that will blow your mind.
The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides
"He sat in his car, gazing at the house, watching as downstairs lights traded places with those upstairs, and then, one by one, went out. He thought about Lux getting ready for bed, and just the idea of her holding a toothbrush excited him more than the full fledged nudity he saw in his own bedroom nearly every night. He laid his head back on the headrest and opened his mouth to ease the constriction in his chest, when suddenly the air inside the car churned. He felt himself grasped by his long lapels, pulled forward and pushed back, as a creature with a hundred mouths started sucking the marrow from his bones. She said nothing as she came on like a starved animal, and he wouldn't have known who it was if it hadn't been for the taste of her watermelon gum, which after the first few torrid kisses he found himself chewing. She was no longer wearing pants but a flannel nightgown. Her feet, wet from the lawn, gave off a pasture smell. He felt her clammy shins, her hot knees, her bristly thighs, and then with terror he put his finger in the ravenous mouth of the animal leashed below her waist. It was as though he had never touched a girl before; he felt fur and an oily substance like otter insulation. Two beasts lived in the car, one above, snuffling and biting him, and one below, struggling to get out of its damp cage. Valiantly he did what he could to feed them, placate them, but the sense of his insufficiency grew, and after a few minutes, with only the words, 'Gotta get back before bed check,' Lux left him, more dead than alive."
Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates
"'I’m afraid the place is an awful mess; won’t you sit down?' – and when she sank one knee into a studio couch to reach across it for the cord that opened one of the blinds, he moved up close behind her and put his hand on her waist. That was all it took. With a moist little whimpering groan she turned and pressed herself into his arms, offering up her mouth. They were on the couch and the only problem in the world was the bondage of their clothing. Twisting and gasping together, they worked urgently at knots and buttons and buckles and hooks until the last impediment slipped away; and then in the warmest rhythm of her flesh he found an over-whelming sense of this is what I needed; this is what I needed; his self-absorption was so complete that he was only dimly aware of her whispering, 'Oh, yes; yes, yes…'"
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
"With a queer obedience, she lay down on the blanket. Then she felt the soft, groping, helplessly desirous hand touching her body, feeling for her face. The hand stroked her face softly, softly, with infinite soothing and assurance, and at last there was the soft touch of a kiss on her cheek.
"She lay quite still, in a sort of sleep, in a sort of dream. Then she quivered as she felt his hand groping softly, yet with queer thwarted clumsiness, among her clothing. Yet the hand knew, too, how to unclothe her where it wanted. He drew down the thin silk sheath, slowly, carefully, right down and over her feet. Then with a quiver of exquisite pleasure he touched the warm soft body, and touched her navel for a moment in a kiss. And he had to come in to her at once, to enter the peace on earth of her soft, quiescent body. It was the moment of pure peace for him, the entry into the body of the woman.
"She lay still, in a kind of sleep, always in a kind of sleep. The activity, the orgasm was his, all his; she could strive for herself no more. Even the tightness of his arms round her, even the intense movement of his body, and the springing of his seed in her, was a kind of sleep, from which she did not begin to rouse till he had finished and lay softly panting against her breast."
Atonement, by Ian McEwan
"Then, after a few moments' reverie, tilted back on his chair, during which time he thought about the page at which his Anatomy tended to fall open these days, he dropped forward and typed before he could stop himself, 'In my dreams I kiss your cunt, you sweet, wet cunt. In my thoughts I make love to you all day long.'
[...]
"He put his hands on her shoulders, and her bare skin was cool to the touch. As their faces drew closer he was uncertain enough to think she might spring away, or hit him, movie-style, across the cheek with her open hand. Her mouth tasted of lipstick and salt. They drew away for a second, he put his arms around her and they kissed again with greater confidence. Daringly, they touched the tips of their tongues, and it was then she made the falling, sighing sound which, he realised later, marked a transformation. Until that moment, there was still something ludicrious about having a familiar face so close to one’s own. They felt watched by their bemused childhood selves. But the contact of tongues, alice and slippery muscle, moist flesh on flesh, and the strange sound it drew from her, changed that. This sound seemed to enter him, pierce him down his length so that his whole body opened up and he was able to step out of himself and kiss her freely.
[…]
"The sighing noise she made was greedy and made him greedy too."
[...]
"They were beyond the present, outside time, with no memories and no future. There was nothing but obliterating sensation, thrilling and swelling, and the sound of fabric on fabric and skin on fabric as their limbs slid across each other in this restless, sensuous wrestling. His experience was limited and he knew only at second hand that they need not lie down. As for her, beyond all the films she had seen, and all the novels and lyrical poems she had read, she had no experience at all. Despite these limitations, it did not surprise them how clearly they knew their own needs."
Tipping The Velvet, by Sarah Waters
"'If you were King of Pleasure,' she said, 'and I were Queen of Pain...' Then, in a different tone, 'You're very handsome, Miss King.'
[…]
"Beneath the wool of my uniform my nipples sprang up stiff as little sergeants; my breasts--which had grown used to being as it were put aside with my corset and chemise--seemed at her touch to rise and swell and strain against their wrappings. I felt like a man being transformed into a woman at the hand of a sorceress.
[…]
"On a square of velvet lay the queerest, lewdest thing I ever saw...
It was, in short, a dildo. I had never seen one before; I did not, at that time, know that such things existed and had names. For all I knew of it, this might be an original, that the lady had fashioned to a pattern of her own.
"Perhaps Eve thought the same, when she saw her first apple. Even so, it didn't stop her knowing what the apple was for...
"The lady now spoke. 'Put it on,' she called... 'and come to me.'
[…]
"I had one brief moment of self-consciousness, when I saw myself as from a distance, straddled by a stranger in an unknown house, buckled inside that monstrous instrument, panting with pleasure and sweating with lust. Then in another moment I could think nothing, only shudder...
"After a second, she eased herself from my lap, then straddled my thigh and rocked gently there, occasionally jerking, and at last growing still. Her hair, which had come loose, was hot against my jaw. At length she laughed, and moved again against my hip.
"'Oh, you exquisite little tart!' she said."
Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
"I turned the light off. I pressed against the Object. I took the backs of her thighs in my hands, adjusting her legs around my waist. I reached under her. I brought her up to me. And then my body, like a cathedral, broke out into ringing. The hunchback in the belfry had jumped and was swinging madly on the rope."
On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan
"With his lips clamped firmly onto hers, he probed the fleshy floor of her mouth, then moved around inside the teeth of her lower jaw to the empty place where three years ago a wisdom tooth had crookedly grown until removed under general anaesthesia. This cavity was where her own tongue usually strayed when she was lost in thought. By association, it was more like an idea than a location, a private imaginary place rather than a hollow in her gum, and it seemed peculiar to her that another tongue should be able to go there too. ... He wanted to engage her tongue in some activity of its own, coax it into a hideous mute duet. ... She understood perfectly that this business with tongues, this penetration, was a small-scale enactment, a ritual tableau vivant, of what was still to come, like a prologue before an old play that tells you everything that must happen.
In deciding to be married, she had agreed to exactly this. She had agreed it was right to do this and have this done to her. Edward: When he heard her moan, Edward knew that his happiness was almost complete.
"He ... emptied himself over her in gouts, in vigorous but diminishing quantities. ... If his jugular had burst, it could not have seemed more terrible."
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson
"She stroked my head for a long time, and then we hugged and it felt like drowning. Then I was frightened but couldn’t stop. There was something crawling in my belly. I had an octopus inside me.
"And it was evening and it was morning; another day.
"After that we did everything together…
[...]
"We were quiet, and I traced the outline of her marvellous bones and the triangle of muscle in her stomach. What is it about intimacy that makes it so very disturbing?"
The L shaped Room, by Lynne Reid Banks
"Toby sat on the bed with means held my hands and said to me, ‘What is it, darling? Don’t cry, love, please, don’t, what is it, can’t you tell me?’ – wiping my face with his handkerchief. And then he was taking the tears with his lips, he was kissing them away; he was kissing my eyes and my mouth and our arms were round each other, and somehow my crying changed, I wasn’t crying in despair and wretchedness any more, but with a kind of luxury. My tears weren’t coming out of pain now, but out of a new feeling, a feeling his lips were rousing, and his hands, and there was no part of my mind or body that wished to resist it, or had the strength to: without reasoning or doubting, all of me wanted what he wanted."
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