As usual I’m sure I’m behind on the news on this one, but Iron Lesbian #2 was kind enough to send me a link to the 2006 results of the Bulwer Lytton contest.
The winner for the romance division is especially funky:
“Despite the vast differences it their ages, ethnicity, and religious upbringing, the sexual chemistry between Roberto and Heather was the most amazing he had ever experienced; and for the entirety of the Labor Day weekend they had sex like monkeys on espresso, not those monkeys in the zoo that fling their feces at you, but more like the monkeys in the wild that have those giant red butts, and access to an espresso machine.”
Dennis Barry
Dothan, AL
There are few things more romantic than giant red-assed monkeys drinking espresso. At last I have found a Valentine’s Day gift for Hubby!
Now, I’ve never really been bothered by the opening line of a romance novel, but I am perpetually tormented by Rebecca Brandewyne’s idea of a man “bursting like a ripe melon”, and, from a romance I read so long ago I can’t even recall the author or title, the heroine feeling a “spurt of something warm and urgent between her thighs.”
A romance novel, for the record, should not make me think of pantyliners. Or Depends.
We’ve dished on describing the Big (m)OMent, and on the worst purple prose there is, but has there been a line in a romance so howlingly awful that it stuck in your brain, torturing you at odd moments, causing your face to pucker with horror, or the uncontrollable urge to laugh? And does anyone else remember the source of that described warm, urgent spurt that still haunts me?
I remember when my mother and I were still reading Temptations together (we’ve matured, thank gods), there was one phrase: “he rotated her breasts.” While I vaguely remember the book being good otherwise, all I remember about it was that phrase. Are we talking like a steering wheel, round and round and round on the nipple axis, or are we talking about like tires, taking one off and replacing it with the other?
So, that one’s stuck with me even though I have no other memory of the book it came from.
And the warm, urgent spurt sounds like premature ejaculation to me, because, you know, I don’t actually feel the semen when my partner comes inside me. I mean, if we’re not moving much, I can feel the pulse of the ejaculation itself, but I don’t actually feel the liquid itself. Until, like, it oozes out all over the bedspread. On my side of the bed, of course.
There is one scene, that will haunt me forever. Unfortunately it was in a unpublished manuscript that I read years ago, so I can’t/won’t give too much detail. But let me just say the word “spunk” and the phrase “face cream” were synonymous.
Richard Hell told us love comes in spurts. I guess he was right!
Mel, I don’t know what’s worse; the idea of using ejaculate as face cream, or the use of the word “spunk”.
And I always wondered about those heroines who felt hot liquid gushing around in them. I’ve never felt it either. I’ve never known a woman who has.
In my misspent youth I read some K/S erotica where Spock’s member was described as a “jade stalk”. It was hard to scrub that from my mind afterwards.
In one of my Creative Writing classes I had to read a story with an elevator sex scene in which the woman’s “juice gushed down upon their shoes”. Which made me wonder if she was holding a grocery bag of Sunny Dee that her love hit by mistake…
December,
That was exactly my problem. I wasn’t sure which to be bothered by the most. I think “spunk” finally won out though. I’ve never viewed that word the same since.
the woman’s “juice gushed down upon their shoesâ€.
Sounds to me like her water broke. She needs to get the the hospital, STAT!
The phrase that always jars with me is when the man has ‘emptied himself’ into the woman (whichever orifice) because my sister uses those words to let us know if her dog has done his business or needs to be taken another walk – the mental image the phrase conjures up is unpleasant to say the least!
I can’t remember the exact wording, but in The Dragon and the Jewel by Virginia Henley the heroine is attempting to lure the hero into her bed by brushing her hair, and then using the same brush on her pubic hair.
Just made me think, “Damn. Girl needs to prune that bush.”
The worst romance ever: The Honeymoon House by Patty Salier. It actually has lines in it like “Your sister Lisa, who as you know is my real estate agent, told me…” And “she could feel his tools press against her body”—which made me wonder whether he was an alien or what. Okay, he did have a toolbelt on, but the charge the heroine got out of those tools made me wonder… Then you add in pulsating breasts, “moist cavern” of her “feminine area” and of course that hot, erotic euphemism “masculine area”… Well…
For some reason I’ve been seeing a lot of the phrase “swollen groin” as in he pressed his swollen groin against her. Sounds like a hernia instead of an erection.
I swear I think I read the “spurt of something warm and urgent between her thighs” book too (and thought “time to see a GYN) but I can’t seem to remember anything more.
But the thing that’s stuck with me has to be use of “hoo-hoo” for vagina in a Cherry Adair book. (God I hate that womans books. I hope she lurks here and reads this. There is no other author on earth I would say this about but – I hate her writing!!)
Okay so LKH (yeah I read Mistral’s Kiss) recently had Merry keep referring to her vagina as “her opening”.
Her opening….and she kept using it throughout the whole two hundred page fuck fest that it was!
My favourite was “weeping throbbing member”.
I kept thinking about my MP* at the time, Preston Manning. Boy did that turn the heat down in a quick.
*MP = Member of Parliament
Laughing my fucking ass off!!!
I can’t remember the exact phrasing (mostly because I was howling with laughter at the time), but in a Secrets anthology, a heroine learned about masturbation in the first chapter. And promptly proceeded to hump everything in sight.
Mattress? Humped. Skirt? Humped—to the point of bunched-up material insertion into the hoo-hoo moist cavern of love juices. Wall? Humped. Hero’s leg? So, so humped.
A very good author friend and I read this one night at the RWA Conference—was it in Reno?—and were laughing so hard, my copy of that book still has tearstains on it. The next day, sitting in a boring seminar, I passed her a note.
“Hey Cat—humpty humpty hump hump hump LEG! Hump humpty hump hum humpalicious humping WALL!” And so forth.
We almost got thrown out of there for pre-teen worthy giggle fits.
Two that haunt me at the moment.
1. A reference to the hero’s manhood as “the prow of his proud ship” (Don’t ask me where I read it, some Zebra historical.)
2. A recent excerpt, again can’t recall, but it said something like “Her kitty was aflame.” Yes, kitty. I pictured a cat on fire….NOT sexy.
As to juices, I am sometimes amused at the quantity women are written as producing, soaking everything in sight. I can hear the squishing of the bedclothes. Unless you’re a female ejaculator or you peed yourself, it gets a bit extreme.
Darlene, speaking about the “Jade stalk” (which always made me think of asparagus for some reason), I read a similar fiction that referred to the male organ as “His Jade Pagoda” (with bells on the corners?), and there was a western series (Longarm or Lonestar, I can never remember which) which referred to the man’s penis as a “love candle”. And that only made me wonder if it was prone to melting, and thinking about hot wax in the vagina… not a pretty image!
The best worst way to talk about a woman came out of men’s adventure fiction. A book called “The Crime Minister” by Ian Barclay which included the immortal line “Her center of gravity was her twat.”
I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. I wonder if it is merely a lack of imagination.
“Male member flaccid with spent passion.” That one haunts me in my sleep. It’s from An Improper Bride by Sara Blayne – a Regency Historical with some mind boggling purple prose.
And Darlene: “jade stalk” rears it’s ugly head (tee hee) repeatedly in The Blonde Geisha by Jina Bacarr, along with my personal favorite, “honorable penis.” Copyright 2006. Le sigh.
“Her heart flopped around like a fresh-caught fish in a bucket.”
At least it was her heart and not his…ah…
Oh God, I hear you on the juices… the hero is literally “drenched” in Foley’s _One Night of Sin_. Who the hell needs to have sex in a slicker?
And Brenda Joyce’s Massive Loins have go to go.
My first and almost last Blaze by Harlequin had the hero “deftly slipping both Benwa balls into her vagina” in a crowded elevator. Good writing evokes mental images, some squickier than others.
The worst line I ever read was in a clueless gay romance, where the virgin of the pair of men gave heartfelt thanks at the crucial moment because ‘he was self-lubricating’. Um, er. With what? I am still squicked by that one.
Ewwwwwwww. Sounds like he needed some Immodium or something.
And I’m so with you all about the over-juicy women. Whenever an author describes the heroine as having juices dripping down her thighs, or sopping wet pubic hair, or soaking through her jeans (in one I read, she soaked through LEATHER PANTS)—that is such a turn-off. Chick needs to see her gyno, STAT.
Ah-ha! Found the one I was looking for:
And the tiny hole he loved best of all […] the way it gasped like a little mouth, aching to be ripped open…
Um. Ewww. And ow, too.
Another goody from the same book—“The ripe, almost-bursting bud of her clit”
Again with the eww and ow!
‘And the tiny hole he loved best of all […] the way it gasped like a little mouth, aching to be ripped open…’
Was gasped a typo for gaped or what was really written? Either way, that is most disturbing. Only in childbirth have the words ‘ripped’ and ‘vagina’ been used together in my presence, and I can’t say that was a fun thing to hear about—or undergo.
I remember reading a particularly amusing/revolting line in some merman erotica I had to read when I volunteered to judge the EPPIES a few years back. I’m paraphrasing here, since I no longer have the text, but it went something like, “She wanted him regardless of the fact he wasn’t of her species.”
YIKES!!!!! The truly terrifying thing is, there are people out there who think that way.
I’ll never forget schmaltzly Nicholas Sparks for his description of female orgasms, especially the bonus ones:”…But the moment it was over, another one started to build again, and she started to feel them in long sequences, one right after the next.”
I’ve always wondered where he got that information 🙂 I gave him a pass for The Notebook, but stopped reading him after seeing that and other repeated tripe in Message in a Bottle.
Alas, Mistress Stef, gasped was what was written. Still, I don’t like to think of that as a “little mouth”. Does it have little teeth, too? Although, the possibilities offered by having a little tongue there are indeed intriguing…
The worst I could come up with was if the hero “inserts” something in the heroine’s “slit”. I’m a tech translator and it reminds me of my job. And of a post box.
This thread is wonderful. Thanks for making my day.
I still remember reading about our horny hero’s “tumescence.” I remember because I had to stop reading and look up “tumescence” in the dictionary. I thought I had never heard the word before because I was an ignorant teenager, but it’s been 15 years and I’ve never heard it used again…
Who says romances aren’t educational?
Bwahahahahahahahahah!!!
::::stop to gasp for breath:::::
Hahahahahahahah!
OMFG!
I love this stuff!
I once read a sex scene from the male’s POV that, after he entered her it was like “hot butter over corn”. Yeah, I know.
Thing is, this was in a book I had written. It sounded good at the time, but man, was it…corny.
:-O
I can’t remember the exact phrasing, but the line was something like “he had an erection so hard it could lift logs off a lake.” I kid you not.
I *so* wish I could remember the name of the book, because as I recall, that wasn’t the only gem in there.
Lady Anne’s Dangerous Man, I can’t remember the author but the entire book had everyone, even the heroine, refering to his doomer as a “cod”. Over and over again in almost every circumstance. I alternated between screaming and throwing the book and dissolving into tears of laughter, or just tears. Not only did the image of an actual fish get me going (not in a good way unless laughing so hard you just about pee your pants counts) I kept thinking of Peter Pan and Captain Hook. “Hook is a codfish!” Hah
I also read Aboriginal historical fiction, more so when I was younger. Though it’s historically accurate some of the words they use make me giggle. I’m paraphrasing here but it’s something like “His babymaker eagerly pushed it’s way into her sipapu” etc. Sipapu being a term for the underworld, kind of like Hades. It’s flows well in context, but every now and then I laugh about it.
You know, not enough romances refer to the hero’s Staff o’ Lurve as his ‘babymaker.’ Some author should do something about that.
Just remembered another one I’d read, in a Viking romance—the words were ‘manpart’ and ‘womanplace.’ “He put his manpart in her womanplace.” Sounded to me like he was putting something into her purse.
Regarding “spunk,” I think The Mary Tyler Moor Show has been ruined forever for me.
“Tumescence” makes me laugh, because it reminds me of a line from a loose, modern translation of the Lysistrata: “It’s not the heat, it’s the tumidity!”
It doesn’t sound that bad in comparison, but “grinding his obvious bulge into her back.”
I remember reading this line and thinking, “Why? Why has this happened to me?”
Two gems from LKH’s Danse Macabre
“the apex of his thrust climbed down my throat, and back out”
Micah of the the massive member “spills [himself] across [her] breasts, hot, so hot, the liquid thick and heavy, running between [her] breasts, down the side of [her] body, pooling trickling down [her] stomach.â€
From a Kathleen Woodiwiss novel, the phrase “bold blade of passion.”
Uhm…ouch?
“spills [himself] across [her] breasts, hot, so hot, the liquid thick and heavy, running between [her] breasts, down the side of [her] body, pooling trickling down [her] stomach.â€
That made me throw up a little in my mouth.