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The twitter account of Literary Review (@Lit_Review) has cheered many of us up in recent lunchtimes by sharing some highlights from previous years’ Bad Sex Awards. This year’s award is announced tonight.

There was some concern yesterday about whether their tweets contravened the new rules governing British pornography. This on the same day the news broke that Radio 4 has had ‘high level talks’ to discuss whether the fictional Samantha from I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue is subject to outrageous sexist objectification.

Never was there a bigger yearning for euphemism.

Given all this stimulation, I feel compelled to lay myself bare and incorporate some of their tweets in this little story, in honour of tonight’s award.

The beach

Gerald had been aching for this day ever since Brunhilda suggested it, when they had shared a fag out the back of the restaurant where she worked. Gerald didn’t work there, but arranged to be in place precisely two minutes before Brunhilda’s scheduled breaks. Gerald hadn’t smoked before either, but over the last few weeks had developed a pipe habit he fancied gave him an air of maturity. He lit Brunhilda’s cigars for her and watched her inhale. He sensed all the gravid tremulousness of her breasts under her tabard.

So here they were: on a hot day in August, scrambling over the dunes towards the surf hand in hand. Her nails tore into him. Soon they both were burning, and sweat pooled in the ridge of his back. He made a mental note to mention emery boards at the earliest opportunity.

“Oh, look!” Brunhilda ejaculated. “An ice-cream van. Shall we ..?”

They lost no time in purchasing two extravagantly besprinkled orbs, the like of which neither had hithertofore experienced. Brunhilda began inexpertly to circumnavigate it with her lips and tongue. Gerald tried to copy her, beseeching her with his mouth and tongue, his licking a primitive form of language in a simple prayer that he would not spill ice-cream down his new shirt: the one with the naked ladies on. All the rocket scientists were wearing them now.

They set out their picnic on the sand, bumping into each other as they arranged the food. Their bodies came together again and Gerald groaned, “Oh! Chairman Mao!” From the corner of the wicker basket peered the face of a tiny kitten. “How did you get in there?”

Brunhilda seemed less than enraptured about his feline nomenclature, and, having finished her ice-cream, suggested a swim in the lace-edged water. She was dressed in an extravagantly knotted pashmina – no wonder she had been sweating so much, Gerald thought. She whisked the scarf away and threw it to the floor, leaving herself naked, but for a pair of small black knickers.

“This isn’t one of those beaches,” warned Gerald, glancing nervously about him.

“Oh, nobody worries about that kind of thing any more,” she laughed, stepping back slightly and removing his clothes, one by one, and then led him to the thick fur rug in front of the fire. Gerald assumed he was hallucinating because of heat-stroke.

They plunged into the water, Gerald still unsure of his own mind. “Her hands are all over me,” he thought, “four hands it seems, or more than four, and as she touches she makes me weightless.” But then, she had promised to teach him to swim. For all he knew, everyone turned into an octopus on contact with water.

The next thing he remembered was being pulled roughly onto the sand. Her lips were on his. She was breathing very hard. As her gasps grew more urgent he glanced upwards and saw her face almost angrily flushed and straining. It felt amazing. It felt important. It felt right. He grimaced as he got flung willy-nilly in and out of the pink tunnel. Gerald gazed up at Brunhilda, surrendering to her utterly, hearing a voice as if from far away narrating his life: he’s climbing, he’s filling, he’s plugging. He completes me.

It was over in minutes.

Brunhilda’s face shimmered back into focus. “Nearly lost you there, Gerald,” she said. “Thank goodness for my lifeguard training. Perhaps we should go back to the pool for a few more lessons before we try sea-bathing again. Let’s find Chairman Mao and go home.”

The end

Of course, no discussion of sex is complete without this from The Flight of the Conchords: 3 mins 55 seconds of absolute perfection. Business Time.