Your Handy Guide To Erotic Reads Online

There exists, on the World Wide Web, some erotica that is kind of OK. No, seriously, I am telling you this as a grammar snob, onetime English major, and porn-skeptic (it is not normal to make that much eye contact during blowjobs, frankly). I’m not promising literary masterpieces, mind you — though, if you’re going to be a total snob about this, you should definitely give Henry Miller a go. For the rest of you (us) plebeians, here are a few online resources for reading sexytime.

1. Free Best Sex Stories

I am very into the title of this site; it’s very pleased with itself. FreeBestSexStories.com is a good one for beginners — it’s straightforward, with a drop-down navigation menu in the top left corner. Within categories, stories announce themselves with a one-sentence synopsis and a reader rating. Sure, you can’t necessarily trust Free Best Sex Stories regulars to know their Faulkner, but the higher-rated tales tend not to be wholly illegible. Oh, and if you find a writer whose style you like, you can click on her handle to see what else she’s written for the site. This is true of all of the sites listed here, and trust, finding a writer you actually like is the best possible thing that can happen to your erotica life.

2. Literotica

Literotica.com is sort of the big kahuna of free online erotica, and yet its website design could not be more reminiscent of your eighth-grade LiveJournal. (You will now surely waste 15 minutes trying to log into said LiveJournal; I did. Back? Good.) Even though Literotica looks uber-janky, once you’ve figured out how to navigate it, you can mine it for lascivious gold.

From the homepage, go to Stories & Pics. Of the categories listed there, “New” is always the biggest gamble; for better odds, click “Top Lists.” From there, you can either browse most-read stories (or poems, if you are kind of artsy about your erotica), or select a category (i.e.: celebrities, humor & satire, erotic horror… this is basically Vanity Fair).

Bonus: if you’ve got a very specific turn-on that isn’t covered by Literotica’s table of contents, the Stories & Pics page has a pretty solid search function. Whee, sexy research!

3. Lush Stories

Forget “Free Best Sex Stories”; “Lush Stories” is THE erotica website title champion, because, like all that is good on this Earth, it is vaguely British-sounding. LushStories.com is half sexy-story depository, half social media site, but you can read whatever you want sans username (although you do need to log in to access audio stories. KindleXXX!). It’s pretty, relative to its free-erotica kin, and well organized to boot. Tabs touting Lush’s most popular and viewed stories line the top of the homepage, while a sidebar lists editors’ picks, recommended pieces, and a healthy range of fantasy topics.

Like Literotica, Lush has a search function. Better yet, though, is the site’s detailed menu of its authors, complete with writers’ handles, bios, story scores, and covered genres. Also, if you click on these bios, some of them feature Facebook-style status updates and, like, cat videos, and yes, cat videos of actual cats. So, I guess Lush is the destination for steamy wordsmithing and cute animal videos. I believe the phrase you are looking for is “win-win.”

Image: notionscapital/Flickr