Writers leave shame at the door, share bad sex stories

In “The Farting Rapist,” Alexandra Lydon’s eight-page nonfiction account of a night in Ireland gone horribly awry, the author alternately refers to the titular antagonist as “[her] very own Daniel Day-Lewis lookalike,” “a flatulent Trekkie” and “an assumed member of the IRA.” What she doesn’t do, however, is play the victim, despite her potentially traumatic near-rape experience while vacationing with her friend Laura Kindred.

“[It] was actually a dark moment,” Lydon said. “But when my mind now goes to that night or that man, what I see is a theatre full of people laughing and an almost cartoon-like recreation of the event.”

Forging smiles from tears and manufacturing laughter from misery, embarrassment and despair requires a complex narrative alchemy that is easy for no one and evades many would-be writers altogether, but with Worst Laid Plans: When Bad Sex Happens to Good People, Lydon asked her contributors to do just that by submitting brief anecdotes of the most intimate nature — personal stories of their sexual misadventures.

The collection of bad sex horror stories published earlier this month by Abrams Image represents only the most recent incarnation of an idea conceived by Lydon and Kindred in the aftermath of the events described “The Farting Rapist.”

“In an attempt to lighten the mood and shift our focus, we found ourselves telling each other stories of previous bad sexual experiences we both had and making each other laugh,” Lydon said. “It was simple but oddly effective.”

In a flash of drunken inspiration the following night as Lydon and Kindred were walking home from a pub, they had the idea of repurposing their morning-after stories as material for a staged show. Because of the pair’s ties to the comedy community, including college friends and future contributors Erin Pineda, Casey Wilson, June Raphael, Tymberlee Hill and Matt McConkey, the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre eventually came to house the show, which had been running for almost two years before Lydon and Kindred were contacted about adapting the show into a book.

The bulk of the material in Worst Laid Plans: When Bad Sex Happens to Good People came from an open call for submissions specifically intended for the book. Lydon estimated that only 30 percent of the book’s material came from workshopped monologues taken from the Upright Citizens Brigade show Worst Laid Plans: True Stories of Terrible Sex, which is still running in New York and Los Angeles and has featured the likes of actress Janeane Garofalo and Saturday Night Live alumna Amy Poehler.

Predictably, some of the contributors’ sexcapades transitioned from the stage to the page better than others, and according to Lydon — along with Kindred, one of the collection’s only two editors — the implicit humor in more than a few stories would’ve suffered a loss in translation had they been forcibly adapted into book format.

Lydon said she and Kindred enjoyed an unusually permissive working relationship with their publisher, Abrams Image.

“They allowed us to publish the kind of book we wanted to,” she said. “There really wasn’t any drastic censoring — thank God, because the raw details and uncensored truth is what makes these stories so appealing.”

Lydon cited the variety of stories included as contributing to the richness of the overall collection.

“There are some that take on more of a psycho-sexual (if you will) journey through an occurrence and are more delicate and narrative with their delivery, while others can be a little more … to the point,” she said. “That’s the beauty of this compilation, though. You can go from one story that talks about the emotional complications of being a virgin mime to a story of a drugged encounter with a little person to a crassly descriptive threesome with neighbors.”

Of the book’s 37 pieces, only 36 are of the short story ilk — a sonnet scribed by contributor Eric W. Pearson wraps up the text proper before a ridiculously funny glossary of lewd colloquialisms and sexual slang. The unorthodox inclusion of a crossword puzzle to test comprehension of the terms defined in the glossary only contributes to collection’s quirky charm.

Beyond their comedic value, Lydon recognizes the value of post-coital discourse as therapy. Even regarding contributors like “Security guard, female,” “The Flying Buttress” and “Jane Doe” who chose to remain anonymous, she doesn’t believe that they’re missing out on the full cathartic experience of owning up to their embarrassment by way of an honest byline.

“I think it’s cathartic no matter how you frame or sign it,” Lydon said. “I can understand the need that some of our contributors had to remain ‘pseudonymous.’ It’s one thing to perform a monologue one night in a small comedy theatre in [New York or Los Angeles], it’s another to have it in print for life, with your name on it.”

Lydon admitted to initial reluctance to credit herself for “The Farting Rapist” when the book went to print.

“I had my doubts about having my name on my story, but at the end of the day I thought ‘What do I have to lose? It’s the truth,’” Lydon said. “And it’s not like any of us are alone.”