Loads of people have slept with authors or well-read individuals, but what would it be like to sleep with a book?
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Kafka
There’s something about it that seems like a BDSM fantasy, but here it’s the sadist that’s always tied up. You aren’t normally into things like this. Perhaps this night, this afternoon, tomorrow morning will be your threshold to a new openness and an acceptance of the darker side of yourself. In the middle you realize that the excitement here stems from something profound in the other person that needs fixing. Something out of your control. You can only save yourself.
No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
The person lying beside you is a stranger, masquerading as a friend with their unexpected bursts of empathy. A warm body. Better than being alone but falling short of your own colorful fantasy life. He turns toward you, half-dressed. You want to strip your apathy like a sweaty unitard.
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
You don’t fuck The Fountainhead, The Fountainhead fucks you.
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
It’s the kind of romance that makes you want to put on a floor-length cotton nightie just so you can take it off later. The itchy kind. Before you take off your glasses and climb into bed, you sip on a glass of grape juice that tastes strongly of tannin and the experimentations of youth. Somewhere in the mix is a classic Canadian love triangle and now you finally understand what bosom buddies really means. You leave with your socks still on and paddle back home down the river, hoping you make it before your heart–or something else–springs a leak.
Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins
If there were a definition for sex of the body without the full stimulation of the senses that was the opposite of pornography, this would be it. You are satisfied in they ways you can easily articulate. Sheets were mussed and you lie in bed with your nicotine addiction and without the urge for a cigarette. Somewhere, a dog barks.
The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White
There’s a first time for everyone. Sometimes it’s with two dudes. They say all the right things, and for a moment you think that everything is going too smoothly, according to plan and schedule. Before you get a chance to think too hard about how no one else will ever be as effortlessly serene, it’s time for the post-coital embrace pose. You struggle to think of the exact right thing to say.
Tinkers by Paul Harding
Never before have you been unsure whether something was an act of sex or menial assembly. Each time you approach a climax your imagination trails into an alternate fantasy, but your body ticks off its list of carnal needs like an hourly chime. Only once you’re finished do you realize you’re actually all alone.
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Stop jumping to conclusions, you say. You’re shaking the bed. What do you want? she asks. You mean which want do I need? you say back. Sure, she says, it’s all in how you say it. You don’t say, you say, you do. She asks for your hand. She pulls out a pen. On your palm she writes: “DO IT YOURSELF.”
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
If all hipsters are this spry mix of classical endurance and impulsive flexibility, then you take back all those things you said about them. Sure, your social standings are mis-matched and you’re too old and stuck up to dance like that in public, but you’ve never felt so alive…
Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins and Embryoyo by Dean Young
There’s only one phrase for a sexual experience like this: poetic justice.
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Author and Editor’s note: Obviously a lot of well-deserving books with good personalities and potential are left out here. What book would you bed? And how and why and where and would you buy it dinner first?
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55 responses
Infinite Jest definitely ——– me in the ——– about ——————– times.
I would pick up Still Life with Woodpecker at a bar, we’d spend the weekend in bed subsisting on wedding cake and champagne, and then we’d part ways without exchanging phone numbers.
Absolom, Absolom! will tell you what feels to be, what screams, quietly, to be his deepest, darkest secrets, before he’s even penetrated you, which of course he will do, soon, soon, but after you have both become, mostly, blankly naked. But.
After you will wonder whether you have just been totally fucked by this man.
And even though he hangs around for weeks, you’re never sure what you’re allowed to take or comment on. Later, though you haven’t seen him now in months, something obscure will make you think of him, you’ll remember how coarsely he made you quake, with just his long, strong fingers, and you’ll know then that all your worst and highest suspicions of him were spot on.
I want to try and seduce Holden Caulfield, get close, fail, and leave one fat tear on the checkerboard before leaving.
Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille would be unforgetable.
Unbearable Lightness of Being will be really intense and full of infinitely overlapping partners until it all ends and I’m left miserable and questioning every decision I’ve ever made.
Elissa –
Heh.
Sex with “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” would be sad and rough. It would be filled with multiple storylines and 1,000 cigarette breaks.
Where is the Like button for Isaac’s comment?
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My copy of Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” is dirty and grease-splattered and I like it that way.
Sex with Motherless Brooklyn would be spastic, profane, and broken up with inexplicable violence, but at least it would end with a nice sandwich at a hipster dive at three in the morning.
CMS 16. It hems and haws at first, shuffling its feet, then strips off its gold-rimmed cat-eye specs and tells me exactly how and when and why, with charts. Postcoital Q&A.
‘Dangerous Liaisons’ it would be rough, unapologetic and prolly all kinds of wrong.
I’d stumble across “The Little Prince” at some quiet drinks & coffee spoken word event and his shy banter would leave me wondering if I should soil so young a spirit. We’d drink too much wine and talk the whole night through, with nuzzles and giggles slipped in between philosophical speculation. There would be a few soft moments of tears that taste of joy, and the sunrise, watched through the sliding glass door next to the rug where we lay, would be just a little too pink to seem real. When silence and sleep set in, I’d slip away without leaving a number. I’d blush in moments of silent remembrance for the rest of my life, wondering where he was, and if he ever forgave my unexplained retreat.
Sex with The Secret History would involve a Bacchanal, incest, accidental murder, and premeditated murder to cover it up but would be completely worth it to see all the hot, privileged classics majors naked.
The Man Without Qualities: a widely touted swinger’s party to which we all arrive with high expectations. But after numerous drinks, some failed attempts at small talk, and a few tentative but preliminarily suspended forays, you realize: your search for thrills is itself pedestrian, the inability to satiate your desire has grown mind-numbingly predictable, and no one here has anything you’re looking for. In a weird twist of events, you end the night by sleeping with your sister.
Letters to Georgian Friends is an intimate affair; Nina Tabidze is an ageless presence, and Pasternak’s letters put you at her feet. Work your way up from there.
oh, and Emma Bovary, filed under “mistakes we knew we were making.”
The Maytrees by Annie Dillard. Because the sex would always be spare, precise, full of love, and exactly what you needed.
And Invisible Cities, just because.
And if I may throw in a play, I’d totally bang Arcadia (Tom Stoppard). The combination of math, theatre, Regency-era dudes, and devastating eloquence just gives me the vapors, honestly.
I’d curl up and fuck Amelie Nothomb’s “Tokyo Fiancee” and it would be unpredictable and intimate and strange and spiritual and good and bad and in the morning I’d be left alone. I know that for sure.
I’d fuck anything by Raymond Carver or Mary Gaitskill.
But I’d call Alice Munro in the morning.
Don Quixote would be epic, both fantastical and true, an unlikely juxtaposition that would be enchanting and would convince you that, up until this magical encounter, you had been doing it wrong. Things would suddenly feel so modern! And the digressions: Each one enticing you in a new direction, only to bring you back to where you left off, exhausted but wanting more. There would be windmills, which would be weird, because that would seem impossible, but somehow even that would work. Eventually it would dawn on you that the whole Dulcinea fantasy was a ruse to lure you into a three-way, but by then you would have seen so much you wouldn’t care. Finally, just when you thought it was ending, and you couldn’t possibly rouse yourself even one more time, you would learn that had only finished Book One.
Geek Love… and it would be perverse.
I would meet The Dharma Bums outside the cafeteria on a college campus, piled in the stacks of some older hippie who needed cash. I would pay him two dollars. I would take them home, the affair would be disjointed, shifting, and strange. I would introduce them to a friend who I’d probably never really see again. Nineteen years later, after I’ve lost my accounting job and my wife has left me for my brother the attorney, I’d regret ever letting them go.
My dictionary. It’s long, thick. Makes nice pillow, too.
I’m not sure there’s a book written that I’d kick out of bed.
“You don’t fuck The Fountainhead, The Fountainhead fucks you”. There was never a more clever way to present the works of Ayn Rand. Despite the fact that I absolutely abhorred Atlas Shrugged (but I read it through anyway), I have been told that The Fountainhead was more challenging. Like a giant dildo chasing you down a hallway.
Richard Yates: a threesome featuring you, the book, and g-chat.
The Complete Stories: Flannery O’Connor – screaming “Oh God!” just took on a whole new meaning.
Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior — for obvious reasons.
Anna Karenina would probably be a good lay, if you could avoid a big scene at the end.
“Remembrance of Things Past”: long and slow and multiple, with time out for madeleines and gossip.
All the Pretty Horses. No contest.
I was trying to come up with a Cormac McCarthy novel I’d like to have sex with, LMoney, but I kept seeing despair and skinned babies everywhere, and I just save that for special occasions.
“Darkmans” by Nicola Barker. I’d do anything that book told me to do. I think I’d keep well away from “Hogg” though.
What I like about this: it makes me want to read the ones I haven’t already read. (The comments, too.) I’m always trying to think of ways to trick people into reading something – anything! – and hats off to Jessica for demonstrating a hot new method.
Lord of the Rings seemed to last forever. Tension, then release, repeated right up to the formally constructed double climax. And it was hot the way it babbled lovingly in its own private languages. But I couldn’t go steady because it didn’t “get” women. I’m with Erika Lopez’ trilogy now.
Amy Hempel’s Reasons to Live and I would have to elope first and she would still leave her shirt on. The dog would probably be watching.
the nine by jeffrey toobin. ruth bader-ginsburg + sandra day o’connor. nothing sexier than highly intelligent, uber-powerful women and that book has two of them. but scalia can’t watch.
I’d have to attempt a seduction of Sense and Sensibility. I think I could show that book a good time in the four-poster sack. Nothing spells hot, passionate lovemaking for me quite like Regency-era decorum. Think of the repression! Think of how tawdry everything would seem the next morning. Oh, the sexy, sexy shame.
The English Patient – It would happen somewhere outside, over a period of days or weeks or maybe months (time would become instantly non-linear and dilated) and involve earth, plants, cave paint, maybe food… it would be sensual and passionate at the same time, great attention paid to small places like that hollow where neck meets collarbone… we’d come from different sides of a war, we’d know it couldn’t last, and that would make it all the sweeter… one of us would have to die, of course, at the end, and I fear it would be me because such a beautiful book can’t die, but if I were the one left living somehow, I would have to spend the rest of my life trying to recapture the love affair in spare yet lush language, circling back to scenes again and again, describing tastes and smells, collaging photos and drawings and bits of other books in other languages into and over the text, until it became indistinguishable from a body.
any roth novel, of course. the book would be too young for me, too untamed, and i would be ultimately undeserving of its true affection. i would act horribly toward it till it left, leaving me to contemplate my selfishness and my imminent mortality.
“The Waves” and I would be naked after a lot of kissing but that’s as far as it would go. Then I’d lie there holding “The Waves” and saying, “It’s going to be ok” but I’d be thinking, “No, actually, no it’s not.”
“Lamb” would make me laugh but then astound me with some move I didn’t see coming (pun intended?). The end would be climactic and appropriate and just when I’m thinking “maybe I should go” he’d grab me and say “where you going? Get back over here!” and there’d be spooning and breakfast (a bagel with lox and cream cheese, split between the two of us and crappy instant coffee). Absolute boyfriend material.
“With” would be someone you were friends with for a while. You’d think they were too old fashioned, too backwater and it would take forever for them to make a move. When they did though it would be something simple and sweet like giving you a hershey bar or a hand picked flower. They’d then mow you down with their incredible, abundant, lusty sex prowess. You move to a log cabin somewhere by a lake, barefoot and pregnant, stunned but happy.
Kerouac’s On the Road – fast and feverish, fueled by alcohol and drugs
“If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” would make you feel special for understanding him, give you long, lingering looks appreciating your intelligence. You’d know he’d had many others who also understood him, but they would make you feel part of special group, as you would get to know some of them, be friends with them, maybe from afar, because the passion you felt for Winter’s Night would make you want to own him as all your own, at the same time.
You would feel many, many things, which you never fully were given the chance to understand and resolve, and each time he made love with you with his mind but not his body, would start foreplay and then, glinting eyed, retreat, would grasp a handful of your hair at the nape of your neck and pull it down in public and leave you standing there on the edge of orgasm, the mystery and the build up would leave you wanting more, which you know you would never have, as he can never, never be possessed. You would remain quivering, waiting for the next time he took you almost there, and you would finally learn to sublimate, though some part of your subconscious would never forgive him. Your smile would go crooked, your jaw draw back. You would stand with your arms folded around you. You would get some Ben Wa balls.
Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine would probably involve hours of meticulously detailed foreplay, but you’d have to be comfortable with a footnote fetishist.
Last night with The Lord of the Rings was intense and unique. His attention to detail made you feel like you’d been transported to another world. But now you’re in bed alone, and he stands at the window watching all of history sweep across the landscape with his immortal eyes, and unable to do anything to stop it.
The Great Gatsby was already a lot like the first few times. I couldn’t even finish the first go-around. It was disappointing because everyone said it was so awesome. So I kind of shied away from it for a while, thinking maybe, just maybe, I’d try it again, all the while rationalizing with myself that I had, in fact, hated it. That it made no sense, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on at any given point.
Luckily, a short read is an easy sell when it comes to a re-read, so I hit it again. That time, I finished. In record time. It was shorter than I expected, and since it went so fast, I couldn’t even tell if it was any good. I figured I either didn’t get it, or everyone was exaggerating how good it was. The third time, I fucked it without a condom. I could finally feel the pages against my skin. Nine months later, that momentary indiscretion begat an ugly baby of a novel. I couldn’t even look it in its fat, earnest little face. I gave it up for adoption. I understand it’s now living in an orphanage with Murakami’s earlier works.
I’d go to bed with any of my books…especially THE COSMOPOLITAN GIRL…A talking dog who’s outspoken, mean, and available. Also I AM THE BEAUTIFUL STRANGER a young women’s coming of age : finds out about sex, and doesn’t turn back. Can be read in libraries, and bought at Amazon, Abe books, etc. Who knows where they are kept after so many years! But fun if you can find them. I’ve looked everywhere.
“Lamb” and anything else by Christopher Moore would be funny, giggly sex filled with multiple orgasms….
“Out Stealing Horses” would be Sunday afternoon in bed lazy slow with the comics flung from covers to floor…
“Deux Ex Machina” would be voyeuristic and controlled by someone unseen controlling the background music, lighting, and rising of the moon.
Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games. I so didn’t want it to end.
Fucking “The Trial” would be like some poisonous affair that sneaks its way into your life, leaves you feeling abject and miserable after committing vaguely sadomasochistic acts, and only calls on you at the worst possible times, but you let it in for the night anyway, because you’d feel dirtier without it. Also, it gives you chlamydia, but you’ll have to find this out on your own, because it’s certainly not going to give you the courtesy of a call, or even a text. It may, however, send someone completely different to your door, who wants to put a collar around your neck and pluck out your hairs, one by one.
“The Stars My Destination” by Bester.
When you’re with this book, you can’t flick the pages fast enough to satisfy your desire. The chapters keep coming and coming until you can no longer tell where one ended, and the next began. Time and space seem to unravel, and you completely lose your mind, only to find it again in another room, another time, another place.
When you’re done, and have the presence of mind to examine your partner closely, you realize that all those microscopic cuts and bruises came from your fingers, exerting pressure that you were unaware of at the time.
You both are now sprawled across whatever surface you finished on, in a vain attempt to catch your breath. It isn’t long before one of you regains the strength to stretch over, and gently slip the bookmark out to start a fresh cycle.
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. For old time’s sake. Haven’t thought about Sissy’s thumbs in a long time. Would be nice to take a nice long under the covers hitchhike [used to be able to take real hitchhikes in my early 20s new england but no one hitchhikes now] with Sissy and meet up with Bonanza Jellybean.,,,and end up with Tom Robbins himself.
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