The time i accidentally read an erotic novel

I like reading. Ever since I was a kid I’ve always loved reading, loved picking up a book and getting involved in a story. I would read just about anything I could get my hands on. This was both good and bad. On the good side I read my way through a lot of books I really enjoyed, and managed to form a cohesive idea of what I liked and what I didn’t – I developed my own taste for books. On the bad side however, I ended up reading a whole lot of crap. I’m talking pure, literary garbage, and a whole lot of it too. I read nonsense horror stories, dull thrillers, countless condescendingly simple ‘young adult’ and children’s books. But I kept reading anything I could get my hands on anyway, garbage be damned.    

And that’s how I came to accidentally read an erotic novel. And I’m not talking Mills and Boons type crap, I’m talking full-on hardcore porno in written form. This wasn’t a love story, this was horny idiots screwing each other in elaborate ways for two hundred pages or so before it just sort of ended. And I read it accidentally.

Why? Well, it really was a mistake. I actually thought it was ‘Murder on the Orient Express’. Honestly. I had reached that early reading phase where I wanted to try out books I’d heard were famous or regarded as classics, more because I thought that if I read them then it’d make me look smart. I was either twelve or thirteen and found it and started reading. I don’t remember what it was called exactly, but I do remember it definitely had the words ‘Orient Express’ in the title.

The cover had a picture of a woman lying down with an open blouse, exposing her lingerie. Some people would probably say that that should have warned me that it wasn’t the book I was after, but at the time I didn’t actually know what Murder on the Orient Express was about, so it wasn’t a red flag for me. For all I knew the woman was the person who got murdered on the Orient Express.

Instead it turned out to be an erotic novel following the adventures of Frannie, a slutty woman who married a rich guy and uses his cash to travel the world with her slutty maid and bulky bodyguard and fuck everything she comes across. I actually remember a fair bit about it.

In this novel, apparently part of an ongoing series, Frannie and co board the Orient Express for some vaguely defined reason. While on board she has a series of erotic adventures, by which I mean she sleeps with everyone that gets within reaching distance, regardless of gender, age or mental state. And since she’s on a train, that turns out to be quite a lot of people.

A lot of nonsense went into the sex scenes. At one point she goes to some foreign lord’s mansion where he reveals that he’s spent millions of dollars to develop holographic technology…that he’s using exclusively to make porn with. Frannie, the insatiable nympho that she is, actually tries to have sex with the holograms and then gets really pissed off when she realises they aren’t real. This is the sort of character she is.

Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly), for a slutty rich lady a lot of people try to kill her. Like, more than you’d expect. That’s the other thing that happens apart from all the boning, people try and murder her for ill-defined reasons. Not for money, mind you, mostly ‘just because’. The would-be murders all naturally screw her before they try to murder her, because of course they do.

At one point on the train she meets a handsome, rich gentleman who invites her to his mansion at the next stop for some boning. This isn’t the holographic porn rich mansion guy, this is another guy (she meets/screws a lot of rich guys who have mansions). When they get there he tells his sad sob story about how his wife was murdered by an intruder and that he’s all sad and lonely and hasn’t been with a woman since. Frannie is touched (or wants to be) and gets ready for some banging. Handsome rich guy asks if they can do some role playing and if Frannie will pretend to be his beloved wife. She says fine, sounds good to me. He says great, I’ll roleplay as the intruder who killed her.

Now this is the point where the flashing red warning lights should have switched on in Frannie’s mind, but the woman is a ridiculous slut so she doesn’t think it’s odd when the guy puts on a balaclava and ties her to the bed.

Luckily, thanks to bullshit, she’s wearing a ring with a built-in warning system that instantly alerts her bodyguard (who, otherwise, exists solely to add another cock to the free-for-alls). The bodyguard just so happens to be nearby, and saves the day by beating the crap out of the would-be killer.

At the very end of the story she meets another handsome guy and everybody has a free-for-all in their room on the train. Now in the thirteen or so years since I read the book I’ve actually been on an Orient Express train (in South America), and the rooms are not that big. Or at least not big enough for a six-way orgy. Handsome guy number whatever bangs her, then reveals that he’s an assassin and tries to kill her…by attempting to lift her up and throw her out the window. Again, I’ve been on an Orient Express train, and the windows are awkward and don’t open that much, certainly not to shove a person out. Also the bodyguard is like right there next to them, and he sorts things out pretty much instantly.

Frannie survives her self-inflicted ordeals, doesn’t learn any lessons and goes about her boning life as if nothing had ever happened.

From what I can tell, Frannie and her entourage get into a lot of stupidly dangerous sex-related shenanigans. One of the characters casually mentions that on one of their horny adventures they managed to get involved in an orgy with an angry death cult of massive, seven-foot tall black dudes who were planning on sacrificing them after the gangbang. Nobody seems to act as though this is a strange occurrence.  

And that’s that. I remember other vague details about the massive number of sex scenes that made up the book, but otherwise there wasn’t much for plot or characterisation (though that’s obviously not the point). I started reading it by pure accident, and continued due to curiosity. Young me was surprised and astounded by the ridiculous stuff that happened over the two hundred pages of smut.
It remains the only erotic novel I’ve ever read. After that I really don’t think I need to read another one. There’s no punch-line here. That’s the end.