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 FICTION


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"I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it," wrote Henry Miller in his 1934 novel Tropic of Cancer. "We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and soul." I'm generally not a fan of quotes, especially when they're offered as vague proof of an author's erudition instead of as an addendum to his or her work, but sometimes a writer sums up your feelings so succinctly that rewording is an exercise in futility.
   For Miller, the early-twentieth century writer known for his unprecedented sexual candor, writing explicitly about sex was less about a desire to shock than it was about a need to present complete stories. More than seven decades later, eyebrow-raising depictions of sex in fiction are hardly unusual. However, honest literary sex scenes capable of "resuscitating the body and soul" are surprisingly rare.
   With that in mind, every month Hooksexup will present you with five nominees for our monthly Henry Miller Award. These scenes, ranging from three hundred to five hundred words in length, will be excerpted from new fiction that we feel should be sought out on the merit of these passages alone. Which of these five passages paints the most complete picture? Which one most successfully evokes the myriad sensations and emotions that accompany sex? Which one incites the most visceral response? You decide by rating each passage on three equally weighted criteria: literary value, hotness and originality. The winner will be posted in four weeks along with next month's nominees. Each month's highest-ranked entry will proceed to the year-end competition. Two winners of that contest will be announced: grand prize (as chosen by a panel of a celebrity judges) and readers' choice. The judges' pick will receive $1,934, commemorating the publication date of Tropic of Cancer. — Tobin Levy  
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From: Home Land
by Sam Lipsyte
(Picador)
OVERALL RATING: 5.6
 

To buy Home Land,
click here
 

"I need you in the stockroom, Lewis," said Roni. "We've got to find more napkins."
   The stockroom is not my favorite nook. It's dark, reeks of decomposing animals, but it seemed a cozy mountain villa here with Roni. Enormous cans of tomato sauce and tubs of red powder filled the shelves around us. Hate to divulge a divine Moonbeam secret, but that red powder is actually barbecue sauce. Stick a hose in the tub, voilà, fresh batch.
   It took me a moment to get my bearings in the must, the clutter. Roni wheeled and we nearly collided, stood, huffed fraught breath. Light from a bare bulb fell down her hair, caught the glitter in the hollows of her neck.
   "Napkins," I said.
   "Napkins," said Roni.
   We kissed, our hands marauders, jerked each other to the floor.
   Roni's skirt was peel-away. I yanked her giant ass to my face. I was like a man who refuses to lose the ass-eating contest.
   It was maybe an ancient kind of contest where the winner wins a kingdom, the loser loses his tongue..
...read more
 

To buy Home Land,
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"I need you in the stockroom, Lewis," said Roni. "We've got to find more napkins."
   The stockroom is not my favorite nook. It's dark, reeks of decomposing animals, but it seemed a cozy mountain villa here with Roni. Enormous cans of tomato sauce and tubs of red powder filled the shelves around us. Hate to divulge a divine Moonbeam secret, but that red powder is actually barbecue sauce. Stick a hose in the tub, voilà, fresh batch.
   It took me a moment to get my bearings in the must, the clutter. Roni wheeled and we nearly collided, stood, huffed fraught breath. Light from a bare bulb fell down her hair, caught the glitter in the hollows of her neck.
   "Napkins," I said.
   "Napkins," said Roni.
   We kissed, our hands marauders, jerked each other to the floor.
   Roni's skirt was peel-away. I yanked her giant ass to my face. I was like a man who refuses to lose the ass-eating contest.
   It was maybe an ancient kind of contest where the winner wins a kingdom, the loser loses his tongue.
   It was a new moist language I gibbered up into her, too. I flipped her over, concocted more delicate lingo for the other hole. Catamounts, perhaps it's best not to get too graphic, to instead let the subtle play of metaphor carry the day, but I must confess I'd never seen a chick bust a load like that before. Her thick hips were sort of tremoring and her juice just fountained out of her, crystalline, stinky-sweet. Roni moaned, flibbered on the floor, a plump exquisite porpoise. Me, I was Poseidon, horndog of the deep, or maybe the Man from Atlantis.
   When we'd finished and I'd messed my Moonbeam-issue kitchen shirt, Roni shot up, started to dress. Done, near decent, she knocked a packet of napkins from the shelf, rocked it in her arms, a paper baby, while I scrambled with my pants.
   "Hurry up," she said.
   "I'm hurrying," I said. "And don't worry about anything. I know the drill. I won't tell anybody and I won't expect special treatment. I won't act like we're ever going to do this again."
   "What drill?" said Roni.
   "You mean we can do this again?"
   "We'll see," said Roni. "But the special treatment thing is true. No special treatment. Except for this kind."
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From: Paradise
by A.L. Kennedy
(Knopf)
OVERALL RATING: 6.0
 

To buy Paradise,
click here
 

We are both very near to sober — he may even be completely sober. And being without clothes is one thing — is a fine thing — but being without clothes and without drinking and about to do what we have to be about to do — that's completely another thing and one that we've never attempted. Like this, I don't know if I can stand how beautiful he is — the rush of that and need and hormones and nothing to smooth it out, nothing to keep me held so I can focus.
   I don't want to fall over and I think I might.
   Then he gives me that little glance, that small, specific glance you both recognize: the mix of shame and pride and resignation: the way men always have of saying they know you're going to look at their prick next, give it some time.
...read more
 

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We are both very near to sober — he may even be completely sober. And being without clothes is one thing — is a fine thing — but being without clothes and without drinking and about to do what we have to be about to do — that's completely another thing and one that we've never attempted. Like this, I don't know if I can stand how beautiful he is — the rush of that and need and hormones and nothing to smooth it out, nothing to keep me held so I can focus.
   I don't want to fall over and I think I might.
   Then he gives me that little glance, that small, specific glance you both recognize: the mix of shame and pride and resignation: the way men always have of saying they know you're going to look at their prick next, give it some time.
   We've met before, of course — Robert's prick and I — but not like this. We've never been formally introduced.
   And there's no room in this for saying anything — not to tell him that he's lovely, that all of him is lovely and couldn't be anything else and not to tell him that I disapprove absolutely of circumcision, but love that he is circumcised, because it lets me be selfish, lets me like to have him always so deeply, clearly stripped for my benefit. Even when he isn't hard he looks closer to it, more ready.
   But now he is hard, quite ready enough.
   "Robert Gardner."
   He stays as quiet as I do and walks out of the storeroom, waits for me in the hall.
   "No. Don't do that. Not at the moment." Robert gathers my hands together in his before I can reach him. Then, concentrating on his fingers, frowning down, he methodically removes my jacket, my blouse, my bra.
   He doesn't pause. "What we do at the moment is this. And this."
   I hold his head as he bows it and then kisses, suckles the way a son would, then teases, bites, because he is a man and, either way, draws out my heart from me like a thorn. I'm hauled out beyond myself, beneath myself, outside myself, inside his mouth.
   I love his tongue. No other word will do it. I love his tongue.
   And the sweet scalp underneath his hair and the drive of his breath, the fierce push of his cheek and the howl, our howl, the one we make out of our skin.

   Which is very well, but it isn't filth.
   What I was after was filth.
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From: Milk
by
(Bloomsbury)
OVERALL RATING: 7.1
 

To buy Milk,
click here
 

A couple walked by on the street talking. She remembered the baby; her breasts were so tight she knew he'd need to nurse soon. But John was kissing her neck, all down the raised tendons and on the soft skin between, and she began to feel his cock defining itself, like a little god, against her thigh. Hadn't she been a good person? Hadn't she sold Girl Scout cookies and collected every Halloween for UNICEF? Didn't she recycle? she thought as she moved between his legs and set her tongue against his delicate circumcised V. Tasting the first bit of come, musty, green, she closed her mouth and sucked as if his cock were a tiny breast, and she slid her tongue inside the slit at the tip and tasted salt; and there began the slow descent into the animal kingdom where the halos around streetlights seemed to be singing, and she remembered how, when the baby's head first appeared between her legs, she'd felt for a moment like a circus freak. ...read more
 

To buy Milk,
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A couple walked by on the street talking. She remembered the baby; her breasts were so tight she knew he'd need to nurse soon. But John was kissing her neck, all down the raised tendons and on the soft skin between, and she began to feel his cock defining itself, like a little god, against her thigh. Hadn't she been a good person? Hadn't she sold Girl Scout cookies and collected every Halloween for UNICEF? Didn't she recycle? she thought as she moved between his legs and set her tongue against his delicate circumcised V. Tasting the first bit of come, musty, green, she closed her mouth and sucked as if his cock were a tiny breast, and she slid her tongue inside the slit at the tip and tasted salt; and there began the slow descent into the animal kingdom where the halos around streetlights seemed to be singing, and she remembered how, when the baby's head first appeared between her legs, she'd felt for a moment like a circus freak.
   She put her hand between his thighs, traced her fingers over his balls, then reached into the crack of his ass and pressed her pointer finger against his anus and she wanted butterflies to gather in a heap on her abdomen and the ice teaspoon to spill its dirt. She needed soil for the garden and the rose trestle and the little lamb who recited French poetry. He pulled her up to his face, and Mary rocked her pelvis against his and looked up at the tiny black shadows falling down over the wall and over his features; his face was wet. Water trickled out of the edges of his eyes. Mary rolled on top of him, and they kissed until his cock dug into her stomach. She reached back and unlatched her bra; her breasts fell forward, heavy as water balloons. The sensation made his eyes jump open and he strained his head up, took her nipple into his mouth. His brow furrowed and his features compressed with intense pleasure at the taste of her milk.
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From: The Position
by Meg Wolitzer
(Scribner)
OVERALL RATING: 6.4
 

To buy The Position,
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It's too bad the imaginary audience isn't here, Thea thought, because this is so amazingly aesthetic. That was the thing about two good-looking women having sex. At first you could almost die from delicacy, from the long wrists, yoga-bred bodies, and subtle flashes of thin gold chain or ear-stud or pearl-gloss pedicure. Sex between two women now seemed to her like an exclusive club, and in order to join it you would need to look like this, and admire yourself and the other person, and feel a great relief that no one else was allowed in…Making love with another woman was an intoxicant, an inhalation of all the surface scent until you came to what was below it, the liquid center — unapologetic, vivid — and found to your astonishment that you wanted that, too… ...read more
 

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It's too bad the imaginary audience isn't here, Thea thought, because this is so amazingly aesthetic. That was the thing about two good-looking women having sex. At first you could almost die from delicacy, from the long wrists, yoga-bred bodies, and subtle flashes of thin gold chain or ear-stud or pearl-gloss pedicure. Sex between two women now seemed to her like an exclusive club, and in order to join it you would need to look like this, and admire yourself and the other person, and feel a great relief that no one else was allowed in…Making love with another woman was an intoxicant, an inhalation of all the surface scent until you came to what was below it, the liquid center — unapologetic, vivid — and found to your astonishment that you wanted that, too…
   They were fully naked, both of them seemingly poreless, with matching skin tones the color of good stationery, with Anne cupping her hand between Thea's legs, and Thea aroused to distraction, pliant, open for Anne and Anne alone, emitting some sounds that were like sighs but more insistent, thinking how this was like the surprise ending to her life — except, of course, it was far too soon for this to be the end of her life at all. A single finger entered her; women had fingers, after all, and here they were in action…
   Thea felt herself clench her jaw and curl her toes, and she was unable to stop herself from these familiar actions; they were encoded into her. Anne, too, responded similarly a little later, and Thea had the startling opportunity to imagine herself in orgasm, to see what Michael saw, and what those other men before him had seen. And as she saw, she was lifted further into a strange appreciation and shyness of the female body, that banshee with its throat sounds and wet center and locked jaw and tree-dweller toes. This was what she looked like too; how amazing to get that view…
   Making love with a woman, like a life itself, offered possibilities for mutual stirring and admiration and a kind of excitement that required no accommodation to differences. You could be similar to; you didn't have to complement. There was no furred against hairless, no star contrast to marvel at. You didn't have to take care of the other person, and try to resolve their problems, although you could if you wanted to.
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From: Beautiful Blemish
by Kevin Sampsell
(World Riot Press )
OVERALL RATING: 6.2
 

To buy Beautiful Blemish,
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"Say it," he said.
   "I am a slut," she said.
   "What else?" he said. She looked at him, thinking to himself. She brought the pen up to her breasts and wrote Bitch between her nipples. "Good. Good. I'll get the mirror," he said.
   He grabbed a large mirror from the bathroom and brought it out to where his wife lay. He set it against a foot stool. He grabbed a blue pen and began marking on her body himself. He drew a pair of arrows pointing to her vagina. He gave her a fake black eye. She gave up her skin for him. He marked her carelessly, waiting for something to appear in the blemishes. Then she watched her body in the mirror as he entered her from behind. He watched too, and they became angry with excitement. She whimpered a little as he moved. "You fuck like a dog. You fuck like a dirty dog," she told him.
   "What's your pussy feel like? What's my dick feel like?"
...read more
 

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"Say it," he said.
   "I am a slut," she said.
   "What else?" he said. She looked at him, thinking to himself. She brought the pen up to her breasts and wrote Bitch between her nipples. "Good. Good. I'll get the mirror," he said.
   He grabbed a large mirror from the bathroom and brought it out to where his wife lay. He set it against a foot stool. He grabbed a blue pen and began marking on her body himself. He drew a pair of arrows pointing to her vagina. He gave her a fake black eye. She gave up her skin for him. He marked her carelessly, waiting for something to appear in the blemishes. Then she watched her body in the mirror as he entered her from behind. He watched too, and they became angry with excitement. She whimpered a little as he moved. "You fuck like a dog. You fuck like a dirty dog," she told him.
   "What's your pussy feel like? What's my dick feel like?"
   "My pussy is wet. Your cock is hard."
   "Is this too hard for ya', grandma?"
   "No way, old man. You got to tear my pussy up."
   A puff of air blew out of Joseph's mouth like a tire exploding. His penis was out and it oozed a small amount of semen. Helen flattened underneath him, quivering slightly herself. Both bodies sucking air. Helen twisted around and smeared his goo across her belly, smudging the words there. Joseph spooned himself against her. "That was a good one," Helen panted. Joseph chuckled lightly into her back. "What's so funny?" she asked.
   Joseph rubbed some of the black marker from his eyes onto Helen's shoulder blades. "Bang me," he blurted, then started laughing more freely.
   Helen turned around, put her hands around his throat, an imaginary choke hold. "Well, we're almost to that point, aren't we? You better watch out next time or you might be the slut." They held each other for a moment and felt their breathing synchronize. "Your birthday's coming up. I'll make sure to put a dildo on the list," she told him. "For the man who has everything."
   Between the cracks in the blinds, they saw the early night darken. Each of them could swear that they could hear the other's heart beating.
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Firewife
by Tinling Choong


8.73
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by Ali Liebegott

7.92
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by Chris Abani


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by John Marks

6.17
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by Simon Ings

3.67
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