“Some sex expresses love, / Some expresses hurt. / Sometimes, hate. / Sex can bring sparkling lightness, / Or incredible darkness. / Sometimes, both…”
These are lines transcribed from the “superdoom supermoon” at the beginning of my new novel Venice Peach. The spectrum of sexuality has always been vast; the fact that all means and ends can lie within human sex acts, eternally confusing. Humanity as a whole has clearly never been able to fully wrap our heads around the myriad different directions in which our sexuality can drive us. In truth, we have seen more hate spawn from lack of understanding than education and evolution. This could certainly be considered yet another way in which we appear to be “superdoomed” as a species. However, we must never lose hope—and sexy books featuring queer sex scenes can help us keep our mojo and spirit alive and thriving. As with all subjects, the keys to empathy and better understanding can always be found in books—but there is more to these steamy sex scenes than initially meets the eye.
Over the last few decades, we’ve undoubtedly been able to make some progress towards reducing sexual stigmas, but now we’re entering a stage of vicious backlash and reverse movement. It feels like the dawn of one of the unsexiest times in human history, but it’s imperative to remember it won’t always be like this. That theme is at the “dark heart” of Venice Peach. Set in Venice Beach in the not-too-distant future, it’s a savagely playful celebration of the carnival of sexuality; an optimistic-yet-fatalistic vision/version of things coming back around from the oppressive and destructive rule of a reality TV star president. The book depicts a sexual renaissance of sorts. Everyone is getting it on—or at least trying. There are elements of horror, sci-fi, satire and magical realism. Towards the end, there’s a particularly graphic threesome between a virgin, an un-dead woman, and a shape-shifting canal creature named Bobobo. It is a giant melting pot of madness to match the times.
This is a list of seven other reads that wave their freak flags unabashedly and indulge far past the usual cutoff point in literary sex scenes. But that doesn’t mean these books are all pleasure. As the world we live in wobbles around on weary legs, some of the most searing queer sex scenes written of the recent past come coupled with dark and ominous undertones. The “freak” treatment of “deviant” sex in both real life and literature is closely intertwined with the demons and dysfunction that haunt the misunderstood and marginalized. There’s a lot of pain in this list, some blood and death, as well as undercurrents of grim warnings that may or may not be received. Still, it feels important to present a collection of books who are as bold in their “undress” as they are in their portrayals of the past, present and future of alternative sex and love.
I Can Fix Her by Rae Wilde (June 2025, CLASH)
One part psychedelic masterpiece, two parts revenge horror, this 120-page novella sizzles so hot you can read it in a late night’s sitting. Beginning with the classic scene in which our lead sees their ex with someone else, the book builds on the theme of trying to make an unhealthy, unsustainable relationship work in ways that I’ve never seen done before. With crescendos that include a dog morphing into a demon and sweeping tsunamis through the streets of New York, the blood and guts bits are done just as masterfully as the surreal. The freakiest part is at the end, in a standalone short piece entitled “Write My Eulogy on The Gloryhole Bathroom Stall,” in which a character gets hooked on a very horny and sadistic god who lives in a glory hole on 4th and Broadway. You may never look at glory holes in the same way again, and it somehow feels strangely cathartic.
The New Lesbian Pulp edited by Sarah Fonseca and Octavia Saenz (August 2025, Feminist Press)
This entire volume of multi-faceted erotic pulp fiction sizzles hotter than this summer’s climate-change sun. This collection will make your brain break in a good way, and many of these short stories are so vivid and engaging that you’ll be angry they aren’t longer. The one that will really knock your undergarments off is “Cottonmouth” by Ella Boureau, a tale of kissing cousins that turns into an unexpected threesome… I won’t spoil the surprise third, but this is by far the closest scene I’ve found to the one in my own Venice Peach that inspired this list and is reason alone to purchase this buffet of gritty, gutsy, bloody, and lusty sapphic short stories.
Silicone God by Victoria Brooks
Silicone God is a hot and heavy broken love letter to a past that may never be reckoned with; a feverish, frenzied, fragmented fun house of the highlights and horrors of the sex-obsessed. We are thrown into the dark and twisted world of simultaneously being both a mistress and a queer trying to come out. The mood sticks to you, as things with tentacles tend to do, wrapping around your insides and squeezing tight. If you’re into sea creatures—specifically tentacle-infused sex scenes—and phallic mushrooms, and silicone strap-ons that take on their own life, this book is absolutely for you. The main character, Shea, is a serial mistress from the future, a world in which there are many mistresses and their mission is considered sacred. Full of mystery and sexual prowess, Shea is a character we never fully get a grip on—and that’s exactly the point. Too slippery for any one genre, this is a vivid portrait of a seductive, silicone-based future.
Perfume & Pain by Anna Dorn
This book reads along the lines of a queer literary version of Bojack Horseman, and as someone who can claim that show as a reference for my own work, this book was at once beloved to me. A modern tale of an awkward and famous “femme fatale type” Eagle Rock-based lesbian novelist named Astrid Dahl—not related to Roald—this scent-drenched novel’s top notes are satire, edge, and darkness. Astrid was both writing and partying on her own trademark drug cocktail she coyly calls the “Patricia Highsmith,” but now she is trying (and failing) to cut back after being “cancelled” due to a misunderstood interview in which she claimed she doesn’t “vibe with dykes.” Astrid is a singularly original yet utterly relatable LA character: self-deprecating, self-obsessed, and witty as hell. She falls into a tumultuous toxic relationship with a red flag “metallic orchid-smelling” woman named Ivy from her Zoom writing group while simultaneously denying falling in love with her older, foxy artist neighbor who has an unfortunate proclivity for patchouli. Many sizzling sex scenes to be found here, but the hottest is one in which—are we surprised?—perfume makes it into the bed.
Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata
Sayaka Murata’s work has been making a lot of lists lately, and it is absolutely well deserved. Vanishing World will haunt you as much as it will make you laugh. A clever and prophetic combination of Handmaid’s Tale meets Twilight Zone, Murata paints a future centered around the disintegration of family as a societal concept. Nearly all pregnancies are by artificial insemination, society calls sex between married partners “incest,” and people who are not asexual primarily fall in love with fictional/manga characters. The sex scenes in this book are bizarre, unique, and seem to spell superdoom in their own queer ways: The main character Amane has sex with herself while imagining it to be actual sex with the anime characters she’s obsessed with. She also initiates strange and clumsy sex with multiple virgin men because “actual sex” is a “relic.” As the world she lives in becomes more insistent on doing away with all sexual urges, Amane increasingly loses sight of her own desires, culminating in her having the most dark and socially deviant form of sex at the end of the book, in a climactic tone much darker than that which the book began. Peppered with incredible one-liners such as, “Normality is the creepiest madness there is…” and, “Is there any such thing as a brain that hasn’t been brainwashed?” I will definitely be reading everything else available from Murata.
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor
This is one of the most truly kaleidoscopic sex-fueled books out there. Featuring a fantastic-yet-realistic human protagonist who can morph genders including sex organs upon command, we follow Paul all over the country, propelled by his seemingly-unquenchable lust for nearly everyone. Paul’s a true player whose sexual preferences stretch across every color of the proverbial rainbow, even bragging at one point about possessing the skill of being able to find anyone attractive. “I’m not a man,” Paul says when in discussion with a gay roommate in San Francisco, heartbroken from the throws of an intense lesbian relationship in which he changed into female form for almost a year in efforts to make it work. And it’s true that Paul does not know how to identify. We feel for Paul, unable to locate himself without better vocabulary, as it was in the nineties. There are plenty of wild sex scenes in here, but the most standout is when Paul is in his female form and uses a strap-on as a top for the first time, a true gender-bender moment.
The Sluts by Dennis Cooper
Ending this list with a big ol’ bang, we have The Sluts—a book not for the delicate—but then, none of Dennis Cooper’s work is. Labeled “the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction” by Bret Easton Ellis, Cooper’s ability to shock and compel you with a window into the savage hearts of horny, dysfunctional, and deranged men is at large here. Plunging immediately into the storyline with an online review of a potentially underage twink escort known only as “Brad,” we fear for Brad but never expect just how insane it will get for him. The novel is composed entirely of web-based reviews, discussion groups, phone call transcripts, and emails centering around this deep, dark plotline set in the early days of the internet. The Sluts is a tale of one escort becoming the center of vicious fantasies, lies, projections, and exploitation. The freakiest sex scenes are the ones for snuff films—and may cause more repulsion than appeal.
