Further Thoughts on Sex in Literature

Something a friend said in response to my previous post got me thinking a little more about this topic.  She said that she would love to read scenes that are realistic, "awkwardness and randomly inappropriate humour and all".  I guess the best example I saw of this was in Ben Elton's This Other Eden, in the scene where Max Maximus is engaging in break-up sex with his soon-to-be-ex-wife.  Ben goes into detail, and I always got the impression that it is deliberately awkward and that neither party is all that into it (I'd have to wonder about anyone who would have found it erotic at any rate).  In this instance it works perfectly, because it is what it is: an awkward, half-hearted, obligatory shag between two people going through the motions.  And if that was what I was aiming for, then I probably would do something like this.  Otherwise, yeah, generally best left to the imagination, unless one is writing erotica, in which case the awkward moments and so forth would have to go (as more or less stated previously).