Existential Smut 1: Youthful Indiscretions

Hapax Legomenon

Mar 2023 · Ripe Mango Take Two

About this ebook

A young man writes erotic stories and shows them to a bookish friend named Lisa. After reading each one,  Lisa offers light-hearted critiques, leading to free-spirited conversations about love and sexual desire. These stories (and Lisa's critique of them) can be silly, sad, sensuous, sinful. One reviewer described them as "exquisite, thoughtful vignettes that individually by turns inspire reflection, evoke startled recognition and collectively offer considerable insight into the tragicomedy that is the constant human search for connection." 

The subjects of Volume 1 ("Youthful Indiscretions") are mostly about college life and slightly beyond. A college student spends an evening with his crush before she travels to Europe to study abroad. A college student's real-life encounter with a porn star causes his erotic imagination to go wild.  A masturbation video by an unknown woman  becomes an Internet sensation … and also an enigma. A man fails to seduce a beautiful woman and after he meets her years later, feels compelled to try again. A college girl invents a sexy game to seduce her boyfriend but in the process discovers unwelcome truths about him.  An overconfident lawyer tries to persuade his beautiful fiance to let him take nude photos of her. Two sex-obsessed high school boys trade sexual banter at a miniature golf park but are secretly afraid of the opposite sex. A young man's erotic letter to a married woman invites her to partake of forbidden dreams. A woman plays a practical joke on a man during a one-night stand.  The last sequence of stories, "The First Time, the Last Time" narrates the history of 11 relationships simply by describing the first time and the last time each couple had sex.   

While the goal of these couple-friendly stories is both "titillation and reflection," they should appeal to fans of Scheherezade, the fiction of Milan Kundera, Philip Roth, Mary Gaitskill, John Updike, Susan Minot, Alberto Moravia and  Candace Bushnell. As a bonus, this ebook contains sexy illustrations and two erotic essays (a "Pleasure Manifesto" and a look at the fiction of Marco Vassi).

Praise from Readers about stories in Volume 1:

"There's something addictive about your prose - I know what Prince Shahryar must have felt while listening to Scheherazade's 1001 Nights. Love the interludes too. Some of the conversations seem eerily like the ones I have had with my partner. "

"Wonderfully done. Dialogue, pacing, setting, characters, premise, everything. While in one moment I'm annoyed that I am so hooked that now I know I'll have to go read every single one written since then, I'm also hoping they're longer, because it's such a pleasure to read."

"These are exquisite, thoughtful vignettes that individually by turns inspire reflection, evoke startled recognition and collectively offer considerable insight into the tragicomedy that is the constant human search for connection."

"This has to be one of the more unusual serial erotic fiction offerings that I've come across. The basic story arc involves a young man writing about erotic fantasies to a woman named Lisa. He and Lisa are not involved, but she is reading his fantasies due to a deal that they struck one day after having an argument about privacy and fantasy. The stories tend to be cerebral stand alone meditations upon the erotic, or silly vignettes. They are not explicit in the least. I think that these stories will be most popular with those who enjoy literary titillation served up with intellectual debate." (Jane's Guide)

"Really well done and balanced with a great ending. Yes, love is difficult to happen because males and females have different rules for love. That is why the one who loves suffers till he is enlightened (if he is lucky)."

"I enjoyed this short story a lot. It really made me think about my own relationship with my wife and the feelings of trying to understand and appreciate even the things about her which are not as intriguing to me -- simplistic romance movies, shopping...."

Ratings and reviews

this is really very good, some may find this a very slow burning read but as a fan of literotica I definitely would recommend this.

About the author

Series editor behind the Existential Smut series  and primary author for Volumes 1 and 2. Volumes 3 and 4 (still in the planning stages) will include contributions by multiple authors. In the early 1990s, Hapax began writing a series of erotic meditations and in 2003 started posting the stories on an X-rated story website. He was born in New York and has worked in publishing, education and software development. During the 1990s, he also lived in Eastern Europe. He is unmarried and currently lives in the southern part of the United States. "Hapax Legomenon" is a pseudonym.