When “Bad Sex” Happens To Good People

Statistically speaking, the more sex one has the less chance it will be bad, even if the bloom might fade from the rose after Partner 100 or Client 9. Perhaps this is why the anecdotes in "Bad Sex," a collection of first-person accounts culled by the editors of Nerve.com, just don't seem all that awful on the (w)hole.

Helpfully arranged in sections with titles like "Bodily Fluids" and "Infidelity" and labeled with funny graphics reminiscent of road signs, "Bad Sex" nevertheless doesn't offer much shock value and, what's worse, provides few tasty examples of good sex before that, too, went bad. Instead, readers are left with a series of literate, astute, and blunted stories of lust gone wrong.

Exceptions include Monica Drake's "The Splatter Artist," a bittersweet tale of an ejaculator both premature and prolific, Lisa Gabriele's "Dead Wood" (you do feel sorry for her) because not only does she lose her boyfriend but she also comes down with a "battered pussy," and the one cringeworthy story in a book tnat should be full of them, Neal Pollack's shamefaced "Man's Best Friend" (it involves a different kind of battered pussy).

Even though I was disappointed with this volume of anti-erotica, I look forward to a sequel with the kinks worked in.

· Nerve (nerve.com)
· "Bad Sex: We Did It, so You Won't Have To" (amazon.com)