Sentient Object Summer
By: Graciella Delgado
As we enter the long-awaited heat of summer, it only felt right to keep things on theme and explore two seasonally appropriate (or in this case…inappropriate?) sentient object erotica novellas: SPF Me by Holly Wilde, the story of one woman and her unforgettable poolside experience with four sentient sunscreen bottle men, and My Date with Water by Unfortunate Reads, the story of a woman seeking out a mysterious section of ocean water that causes spontaneous orgasms for all who swim in it. These are two novellas under 100 pages that lean heavily into the absurdist nature of the sentient object romance/erotica genre, and both preface that they are all smut with no plot. They don’t take themselves seriously at all and feature women on vacation and in need of a journey towards a very specific form of relaxation and chaos. Regardless of how ridiculous they are, though, they do feature a valuable lesson to be learned: the importance of self-care.
SPF ME by Holly Wilde
These works manage to overlap so distinctly in drawing forth simultaneous feelings of confusion, humor, horniness, and a bit of fear. And just like how you must always remember to apply your sunscreen before participating in outdoor activities, we’ll start with SPF Me. This novella took only a few minutes to read in its entirety and there is, unfortunately, no in-world explanation for why or how the sunscreens are all sentient. Those various forms of sunscreen, however, are extremely horny and stay ready to pleasure and punish our eager narrator at every opportunity. The four “men” featured are a spray-on sunscreen, a zinc sunscreen, a sunscreen stick, and a bottle of SPF 69 (affectionately referred to often as just “69”).
Our narrator begins and ends her story at a clothing-optional pool with a friend of hers, taking note of the importance of keeping her skin protected in the sun and re-applying sunscreen regularly. All is normal until her friend decides to take a nap, and all humping hell breaks loose. The four sunscreens our narrator packed call out to her while she swims like a reverse siren situation, flirting brazenly and without any questions as to how they’ve suddenly become sentient. The five participants jump into action very quickly, depicting unique sex positions and humorous dialogue that had me in awe from start to finish.
There’s an undeniable charm to the sunscreens, which is much more than I can say about the water featured in the other novella. My Date with Water is genuinely, lowkey scary, which I’ve found happens more frequently than expected in this genre. I have to wonder if finding new ways to seek bizarre and twisted forms of humanity in mundane, everyday objects through the horniest scenarios imaginable primes an author to be an excellent horror writer. Suddenly Chuck Tingle’s successful horror career makes much more sense… hmmm.
My Date with Water
If SPF Me gave a barest smidgen of a crumb of explanation or context behind why the central sentient object is alive in the first place, My Date with Water manages to leave us completely in the dark. In fact, the cause is actively being investigated in the world of the story. We open with our narrator watching a news report about spontaneous orgasms occurring in swimmers in a specific area of the ocean alongside a particular patch of beach. Our leading lady was laid off from her job recently and moved back in with her parents, losing all sense of privacy. This, combined with her lack of sex for a year and established interest in erotic romances involving monsters and sentient objects, leads to her choice to rent a beach house alongside the notorious oceanfront.
She is the most un-chill, total opposite of the “I don’t chase, I attract” mantra I’ve ever seen. And quite bold, too. She steps into the water shortly after arriving at her weekend getaway destination, and the rest of the book is her having these wild experiences with her ocean lover to the point of exhaustion before waking up face down on the sand. Twice.
We don’t get much personality or direct communication from the ocean beyond a slightly mystical dream, fish being thrown at a window, and a particularly rough response to being taunted. All we know for sure is that it’ll give and experience hours of orgasms at any given time.
For both of these works, however, there is no goal in mind beyond chasing pleasure. Here we see two women trek bravely and with purpose into the unknown, being rewarded greatly on the other side in her commitment to taking care of herself either physically or emotionally.
And this unwavering message of self care is truly… something.