Sex and Bacon: Why I Love Things That Are Very, Very Bad for Me Book

It’s said that how we eat is reflective of our appetite in bed. Food and sex: two universal experiences that can easily become addictive and all consuming. You don’t need to look far—The Food Network, billboards, TV spots to name just a few—to witness firsthand the explosive combination of food and sex.

In Sex and Bacon: Why I Love Things That Are Very, Very Bad for Me, Sarah Katherine Lewis is a seductress whose observations about the interplay between food and sex are unusually delightful, sometimes raunchy, and always absorbing. Sex and Bacon is a unique type of lovefest, and Lewis is not your run-of-the-mill food writer.

A lusty eater who’s spent the better part of her adult life as a sex worker, Lewis is as reckless as she is adventurous. She writes of eating whale and bone marrow as challenges she was incapable of resisting. With chapters that hone in on the categorically simple—fat, sugar, meat—Lewis infuses even the most quotidian meals and food memories with sensual observations and decadence worthy of savoring. Sex and Bacon is exuberant—a celebration that honors the rawness and base needs that are central to our experiences of both food and sex.

The Barnes & Noble Review

A bacchanalian celebration of food and sex, Sarah Katherine Lewis's second memoir is rife with brazen declarations ("Who am I trying to kid? My whole life has been an 'experimental' phase, both sexually and culinarily.") A bisexual former porn star and model in Seattle, Lewis, 36, now transcribes business documents, work she equates to living in a Cathy cartoon, but her passion remains the pursuit of sybaritic pleasures. "I have eaten well," proclaims the size-12 peroxide blonde, seen brandishing a skillet on the cover, "and I have loved well, and I will joyfully do every bit of it again, over and over, until I am consumed." In between X-rated accounts of male and female lovers, she encourages women to relish fattening foods, take pride in their bodies, and to love completely. One chapter declares her fondness for Britney Spears, demonized for craving junk food when "every single one of us fights the same war, attempting to forge a tenuous détente between what we want (everything) and what we're supposed to want (nothing)." The book's limitation, which she pinpoints, is its lack of plot; Lewis doesn't render a story, but a portrait. Luckily, her personality easily fills 300 pages, and even at her most offensive, she is a spirited narrator. It was poet George Herbert who wrote, "You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat," and 400 years later, it's Lewis, in between devouring family packages of bacon by herself, who describes wanting to bite into her boyfriend's lip "like a Ball Park frank." Her exuberance turns her musings into an oddly addictive, if lowbrow, polemic. In Lewis's company, it's hard to deny that her enjoyment of what she's eating looks awfully good. --Sarah Norris