The Shortlist of Erotic Audiobooks
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When I was a kid, I watched Bewitched and practiced wiggling my nose, hoping that something magical would happen when I did, and then Elizabeth Montgomery would have something snappy to say in support. One Saturday, my grandmother asked, “What are you watching?” and when she saw it was Bewitched, she said, “I thought I recognized her voice.” She asked my mother, “Isn’t she the one that did those erotic books-on-tape?”
I was seven, so I didn’t know that erotic audiobooks were a thing, and my mother had to explain it to me. In case you didn’t know, erotic audiobooks are a thing: they are narratives about a sexual relationship that ends, more or less, with everyone happy…pun intended. Below is the shortlist of erotica audio stories from classics to new, for the readers who are done with Grey, but who aren’t done with their interest in erotic audio stories.
This book is about the nonfictional affair between Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, two literary authors, during the 1930s. It reads like literature, but the book itself—which is part of her unexpurgated journal of the time—is definitely erotic in nature. In the book, Nin explores the nature of her physical and mental attraction to Henry and his wife, June, as well as her relationship with her own husband. Nin is often quoted as one of the sexiest writers of all time, both in style and content. Her books of erotic audio stories, Little Birds and Delta of Venus, are also worth visiting. Many recommend Henry Miller’s writing as erotica as well, although the definition of the genre has to bend somewhat to include them.
This one is my personal favorite. It’s equal parts spooky and sexy. The first story, “The Husband Stitch” fits our definition of erotica best in that it retells the urban legend of the girl with the velvet ribbon around her neck. (In case you missed that story from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark when you were a child, Jenny wears a green, velvet ribbon her whole life. A boy falls in love with her. He marries her. His whole life, he wants to take off the ribbon, but Jenny won’t let him.) In the erotica audiobook version by Machado, touching the ribbon is the only thing Jenny won’t let her husband do…until she lets him. In this telling, the narrative is a love story that focuses on the development of a horrific tall tale into one of erotic fulfillment.
