Excited, he held the virgin in his hands. She was covered from top to sweet bottom, but her purity was safe for the next moment or so. Anxious to explore her, he tenderly untied the ribbons entangling her form. He tore at the fabric around her, ripping at seams and discarding the refuse on the floor with the eagerness of a man half his age. He studied her, scanning her up and down, back and front. Without sentiment or fanfare, he opened her wide, wanting to enter, unable to wait. He would know her secrets.

Pretty torrid stuff, yeah? I was actually describing what will happen on Christmas morning when I unwrap one of the books I’m expecting to receive.

I wonder, though, did my words get you at all steamy? Or did you find it turgid and loquacious? I’m hoping the latter. Consider it my entry into next year’s “Bad Sex Awards,” bestowed annually by the editors of the Literary Review for “unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature.”

Tom Wolfe has won the prize, as has A.A. Gill. Even Norman Mailer. The award intrigues me because I love writers’ sexplorations, whether they read like Mills & Boon or Penthouse Forum.

My favorite author is Irvine Welsh, best known for the novel “Trainspotting,” and its lesser-known sequel “Porno.” He’s funny, angry, pervy and thoughtful, and writes an awful lot of sex scenes. I wondered how the Literary Review would judge him, so I emailed to ask.

“On the subject of Irvine Welsh, your instinct is good,” wrote deputy editor Tom Fleming. “He has been nominated for the Bad Sex Award for his last few books.”

Dammit. So what makes good sex writing?

“Your guess is as good as ours,” Fleming continued. “I think it’s less about writing good sex as avoiding some of the key aspects of bad sex — euphemism, schoolboy humor, explicitness for its own sake, grand metaphor, that sort of thing. Perhaps the problem is that sex is such an ineffably physical act that putting sex itself into words is almost impossible, like describing dancing.”

I can appreciate that. John Updike recently won a “lifetime achievement award” for his purple prose, including an oral sex scene involving an abundance of semen. It was equal parts majesty and pornography. And this year’s winner, Rachel Johnson, won for metaphors like her comparison of a man’s tongue to “a cat lapping up a dish of cream so as not to miss a single drop.”

Compared to that, my effort was sophomoric at best. Next to them, I am the virgin.