This week we're taking a look at queer books that focus on drugs, sex and addiction. From explicit East London chemsex parties to a deep-dive into the history of poppers, slutty memoirs and Japanese BDSM, here are 15 LGBTQ+ books with a focus on chemsex, drugs, addiction and screwing:

Note: All of these books are explicit and tackle difficult themes - please check trigger warnings before reading these books.

100 Boyfriends

Brontez Purnell

Filth, punks & sex stories

Queer Rep: Queer Men

Transgressive, foulmouthed, and wildly funny, Brontez Purnell's 100 Boyfriends is a filthy, unforgettable, and brutally profound ode to queer love in its most messy of variations.

From one-night stands to recurring lovers, Purnell's characters sleep with their co-worker's husbands, expose themselves to racist neighbours, date Satanists, and drink their way out of trouble, all the while fighting - and often losing - the urge to self-sabotage. A horny, punk love song full of imperfect intimacies, 100 Boyfriends takes readers on a riotous journey through dirty warehouses and gentrified bars, from dysfunctional houseshares to desolate farming towns in Alabama.

Drawing us into a community of glorious misfits living on the margins of a white supremacist, heteronormative society, iconoclastic storyteller Brontez Purnell gives us an uncompromising vision of desire, desperation, race, loneliness, and queerness that will devastate as much as it entertains.

Horny & High Vol. 1

Ed Firth

Chemsex in East London

Queer Rep: Queer Men

Do you enjoy graphic nudity and the firm seductive grip of self-annihilation?

Horny & High is a dark, raw and moving collection of stories from breakout artist Ed Firth, including The Nightbus (printed in WIP's Success 2020 anthology), and Chillout, shortlisted by Myriad Editions' First Graphic Novel Prize 2020.

The Chillout story continues, in the second volume of Horny & High, the adults-only graphic novel series prising the lid off the London chemsex scene in the 2010s. Stu hooks up with a group of horny guys just trying to get high on a long wet weekend. But he soon finds he's getting in over his head again... Prepare yourself for chemsex, cruising and heartbreak in these adults-only hand-inked stories.

Acts Of Service

Lillian Fishman

Toxic relationships & messy affairs

Queer Rep: Queer Women

If sex is a truth-teller, Eve - a young, queer woman in Brooklyn - is looking for answers. One evening she posts some nude photos of herself online. This is how Eve meets Olivia, and through Olivia, Nathan - and soon the three begin a relationship that disturbs Eve as much as it delights her.

As each act of the affair unfolds, Eve is left to ask: to whom is she responsible? And to what extent do our desires determine who we are?

In the way that only great fiction can, Acts of Service takes between its teeth the contradictions written all over our ideas of sex and sexuality. As incisive as it is exhilarating, this novel asks us to face our ideas about desire and power: what sex means to us, the forces that shape it, and how we find - or lose - ourselves in intimacy. At once juicy and intellectually challenging, sacred and profane, it might be the most thought-provoking book you read all year.

Deep Sniff

Adam Zmith

A history of poppers & their uses

Queer Rep: Queer culture

3, 2, 1... inhale, deep. From the Victorian infirmary and the sex clubs of the 1970s, poppers vapour has released the queer potential inside us all.

This is the intriguing story of how poppers wafted out of the lab and into gay bars, corner shops, bedrooms and porn supercuts. Blending historical research with wry observation, Adam Zmith explores the cultural forces and improbable connections behind the power of poppers. What emerges is not just a history of pub raids, viral panics and pecs the size of dinner plates. It is a collection of fresh and provocative ideas about identity, sex, utopia, capitalism, law, freedom and the bodies that we use to experience the world.

In Deep Sniff, what starts as a thoughtful enquiry into poppers becomes a manifesto for pleasure.

Boyslut

Zachary Zane

Sex, manifesto & polyamory

Queer Rep: Bisexual Men

A sex and relationship columnist bares it all in a series of essays - part memoir, part manifesto - that explore the author’s coming-of-age and coming out as a bisexual man and move toward embracing and celebrating sex unencumbered by shame

As a boy, Zachary Zane sensed that all was not right when images of his therapist naked popped into his head. Without an explanation as to why, a deep sense of shame pervaded these thoughts. Though his therapist assured him a little imagination was nothing to be ashamed of, over the years, society told him otherwise.

Boyslut is a series of personal and tantalizing essays that articulate how our society still shames people for the sex that they have and the sexualities that they inhabit.

In At The Deep End

Kate Davies

Toxic relationships & BDSM

Queer Rep: Queer Women

A fresh, funny, audacious debut novel about a Bridget Jones-like twenty-something who discovers that she may have simply been looking for love — and, ahem, pleasure — in all the wrong places (aka: from men)

Julia hasn’t had sex in three years. Her roommate has a boyfriend—and their sex noises are audible through the walls, maybe even throughout the neighborhood. Not to mention, she’s treading water in a dead-end job, her know-it-all therapist gives her advice she doesn’t ask for, and the men she is surrounded by are, to be polite, subpar. Enough is enough.

So when Julia gets invited to a warehouse party in a part of town where “trendy people who have lots of sex might go on a Friday night”—she readily accepts. Whom she meets there, however, is surprising: a conceptual artist, also a woman.

Nether Realms

Tab Kimpton

Crazy-horny erotic sci-fi

Queer Rep: Trans & Non-Binary

From the PRISM and Lambda Award nominated publisher of Nectar & Ambrosia, comes Nether Realms: a Sci-Fi Non-Binary Erotic Comics Anthology.

The theme: star-hot sex that explodes beyond our Earthling understanding of body, gender, and self-identity.

15 strange, sexy tales from far across the universe, where each comic has at least one character who goes beyond the gender binary or explores gender in an interesting way.

Freed from the tethers of the nethers, or delving into them deeper than ever before, let’s hyper jump into Future Fucking, hand in [robotic] hand. Our mission? To boldly bang where no thems have boinged before.

Sluts

Michelle Tea

Fiction, non-fiction & lots of sex

Queer Rep: Queer Cast

Boyfriends masquerade as straight bros to have fun on an early internet porn site. Sex on Viagra; sex on acid. A lesbian bar sells out, turning barflies into doms for hire.

In Spain, an exchange student lets two young men flip a coin to see who will have her. A stranger on a train. A collegiate lesbian ‘it’ couple. A trans woman bashes back. Post-apocalyptic punk crushes. Slut eras.

Whether an insult or badge of honor, an identity or a state of mind, SLUTS engages some of the hottest minds of the moment to riff on the subject, exploring the nature of desire and its cultural consequences, creating a collection bound to become a classic of sex writing.

Just By Looking At Him

Ryan O'Connell

Sex, addiction & dark humor

Queer Rep: Queer Men

A darkly witty and touching novel following a gay TV writer with cerebral palsy as he fights addiction and searches for acceptance in an overwhelmingly ableist world. Elliott appears to be living the dream as a successful TV writer with a doting boyfriend. But behind his Instagram filter of a life, he’s grappling with an intensifying alcohol addiction, he can’t seem to stop cheating on his boyfriend with various sex workers, and his cerebral palsy is making him feel like gay Shrek. But after falling down a rabbit hole of sex, drinking, and Hollywood backstabbing, Elliott decides to limp his way towards redemption. But facing your demons is easier said than done. Candid, biting, and refreshingly real, Just by Looking at Him is an incisive commentary on gay life, a heart-centered, laugh-out-loud exploration of self, and a rare insight into life as a person with disabilities.

Diary of a Drag Queen

Crystal Rasmussen

Filthy, funny, frantic memoir

Queer Rep: Non-Binary

Life's a drag... Why not be a queen? Stories like the one where you shagged a 79-year-old builder and knocked over his sister's ashes while feeding him a Viagra. Or the time you crashed your car because you were giving a hand job in barely moving traffic and took your eye off the car in front. That's the kind of dinner-party ice-breaker I'm talking about. Northern, working-class and shagging men three times her age, Crystal writes candidly about her search for 'the one'; sleeping with a VIP in an attempt to become a world famous journalist; getting hired and fired by a well-known fashion magazine; being torn between losing weight and gorging on KFC; and her need for constant sexual satisfaction (and where that takes her). Charting her day-to-day adventures over the course of a year, we encounter tucks, twists and sucks, heinous overspending and endless nights spent sprinting from problem to problem in a full face of make-up. This is a place where the previously unspeakable becomes the commendable - a unique portrayal of the queer experience.

Solemates

Adam Zmith

A history of foot fetishes

Queer Rep: Queer Culture

Why are feet so hot? When Jesus washed his bros' feet, what kind of love was he showing? Why did feet show up in poetry written during a medieval outbreak of gonorrhoea? How did early sexologists convince us that loving feet is deviant? And what did Victorian lesbians make of all this?

These are the questions thrusting Adam Zmith into a history of toe-botherers who will guide the reader through the sex archives, the online forums and a millennium of art, with his trademark queer lens.

Solemates will bring to light the history of this peculiarly popular kink. From Tarantino films to Bible stories, from Renaissance paintings to OnlyFans, Solemates is the rich and messy tale of our obsession with everything below the ankle, and what it reveals about how we view our bodies and our sex lives.

Romeo & Seahorse

Nikolaj Tange Lange

Sex, drugs & STDs in Berlin

Queer Rep: Queer Men

Romeo has Hepatitis again. It’s no surprise, and when you haven’t slept for days staying awake is easy. And anyway, there’s the promise of more drugs, more sex. Leaving his boyfriend at home he heads out for hookups, getting abjectly high and pushing his body to grotesque extremes in an urgent but dissociated quest for romance. What follows is a delirious trip through squalid rooms, hospital wards, and nighttime parks, broken by memories of first loves, European travels, and meditations on what it means to be a Romeo.

With chaotic chemsex escapades and musings on romantic love, art and belonging, Romeo & Seahorse takes us to places not often explored in fiction. Written in a relentless, frenzied first-person narrative with moments of mind-bending wisdom and poignancy, this is a one-of-a-kind novel about addiction, desire, belonging, and want that’s destined to become a queer classic.

The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame

Gengoroh Tagame

Big bara men & BDSM

Queer Rep: Queer Men

The often violent, visceral, and always provocative style of Japanese manga legend Gengoroh Tagame, one of the originators of Japanese bear culture, comes to life like never before in The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame, a new edition of the artist's first English-language collection.

Known as "The Tom of Finland of Japan," Tagame is celebrated around the world for his groundbreaking work, noted for its masterfully crafted imagery and unbridled exploration of bondage, lust, passion, and romance. This first English paperback edition includes ten short stories dating from the late 1990s to the early 2010s, with an introduction by celebrated novelist and biographer Edmund White, as well as an essay and new jacket design by acclaimed novelist and graphic designer Chip Kidd.

Experienced

Kate Young

Hot women & casual sex

Queer Rep: Queer Women

A sexy sapphic romantic comedy about newly-out Bette, who is in love for the first time in her life. Finally, everything makes sense. Until it doesn’t.

Bette’s 30th year brought with it an unexpected the reason her dating life had been lackluster was simple. She’s attracted to women. And then she fell for Mei, who’s entirely perfect. Until, out of the blue, Mei suggests they take a break. She wants Bette to do all the exploring she missed out on in her twenties - to plunge into the queer dating scene and return clearer about their future, her desires, and herself.

So, reluctantly, Bette sets out on a date hot women and have hot casual sex, before returning to her loving girlfriend. Put that way, maybe it doesn’t sound so bad…Bette’s dating odyssey takes her to unexpected places, some cringingly disastrous, some heady and thrilling. And with her new friend, the gorgeous and self-assured Ruth, as a queer dating guide, Bette can’t possibly fail. Right?

The Unsinkable Ship of Fools

Jonas Goonface

Super horny erotic fantasy

Queer Rep: Non-binary, Genderqueer, Polyamory

Cum one, cum all! Jump aboard the Ship of Fools for your final ride. An ensorcelled train hurtles through the night, with no stops and no hope for its passengers; everyone is welcome, and no one can leave. Freaks, kooks, misfits, no one is too strange! No bosses! No brakes! Only thrills, mutual support, and carnal bliss.

These vagabonds only have each other now, and in a collection of magical erotic encounters, we get to meet them all - a ragtag group of castoffs who must find the answer: Who's driving this thing, and who's ultimately in charge of your fate?

The destination of this raucous anarchic locomotive is anyone's guess, but one thing is certain: The journey will be like nothing you've ever seen before!

Do you have a book recommendation you'd add to this list? Send us a message on Instagram @ProudGeekStore or email us at contact@proud-geek.co.uk ✌