This was in my inbox. I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe. Enjoy.
I’ve recently started to pick up on some rather….er……interesting
turns of phrase by certain authors and thought I’d share one with The
Bitchery.So after checking out both Smart Bitches and Dear Author for some new
reading material, I thought I’d try some Lisa Marie Rice. So far ok. Not
great, but a good way to distract myself while laying in the physio’s
office with a bajillion acupuncture needles stuck in my ass and lower back.
I guess that would be ass-upuncture. Anyhow, I’m reading Woman on the Run
(as an aside am I the only one that’s noticed that LMR’s Hero’s are kinda
creepy stalkerish, with great HUMONGOUS penises that basically become hugely
erect the first time they set eyes on the heroine and magically stay that
way through the entire story, and by entire I mean even while away from the
heroine for days at a time, washing their hair, eating lunch, walking the
dog ect, and her heroines all have little teeny weeny vaginas.) when I’ve
finally arrived at the moment when our hero and heroine are about to
consummate their lust for each other.It’s intense, emotional, fluid filled, gasping, naked hotness. While “probing” her magic hoo-ha to
prepare our heroine for his ENORMOUS wang, our hero muses that,“a woman’s sex is like a horses mouth”.
Ummmm…..wazat now? My transportation to fantasy land while my left buttock
is filled with pins has ground to a screeching halt. Er, lets just pretend
that never got written and move along. Nope, our hero is going to take a
brief mental detour while making hot love to his woman, to elaborate on the
finer points of horsemanship and bit fitting.I tried to continue on, but my brain was completely stuck with the comparison of a vagina to a horses
mouth. Her little teeny, tiny vagina – only like a horses mouth. Which are
kinda huge and gapey. with the green foamy slobber from eating grass.
Oh, holy night. No way. Horse’s mouth? Well, if you’re giving birth and the ob/gyn/midwife offers you a mirror to see what all is happening down in the valley, you know what to expect. It’s Mr. Ed!
This isn’t the first foray in to “WTF was THAT” when it comes to romance novel descriptions of sex or sexy bits. It’s a challenge to come up with new words for the dance as old as time and the Fred Astaire and the Ginger and the metaphor limping to the finish line. We’ve talked about orgasm metaphors, and bad lines in romance that make you howl. I might have to add “sex like a horse’s mouth” to that list.
Along with it? The timeless prose of Stephanie Laurens who wrote in “The Brazen Bride” that the hero sank…. Into the weeping furnace of her sheath.” When furnaces weep, you know it is ON LIKE DONKEY KONG. Because then you have to call the plumber, and everyone knows the plumber is like the pool boy who comes to clean the pool and then visits you in that sexy cabana tent by the pool, only this time it’s a plumber so he probably visits you in the shower or something, or in the basement since your furnace is weeping and that probably means a cracked boiler, and that’s so expensive that a righteous boning might make the pain of the plumber’s bill more bearable, and what could be more hot than that, right?
WRONG. The hottest thing ever? “He plunged into the weeping furnace of her horse’s mouth.”
There. I hope you weren’t eating breakfast.
@Aislinn Macnamara – That would work too.
What do you say, Smart Bitches? Can we have a “What Not To Write” feature at least once of not twice a month? Something to help out budding romance and erotica writers.
BWAHAHAHA! This is too funny!
My horses object, as *they* were eating lunch when I read them this entry. They also want to point out that every six months this guy shows up with a speculum, a bunch of rasps and a Dremel to neaten up their chompers. I’m just sayin.
OMG, the horse picture is too much! i am totally revolted now.
BTW, a few pages later i noticed “his nostrils flared like a stallion”. I guess we are all over the horse metaphors in this book!
I think I liked Woman on the Run hence I must like horse metaphors and analogies. Of all kind. But I must admit that I’d rather my hoo ha be a weeping furnace than a horse’s mouth.
If he’s hung like a stallion, the weeping furnace of her horse’s mouth is probably appropriate in some twisted, internet-friendly way.
If you want to send in What Not To Do examples to Ye Olde Inbox, I will happily add what I find in my reading and make it a regular feature.
OMG. Gasping. Can’t be real. Moving past how in the world any author would ever find that whole mind-bloggling analogy and weird-ass digression in the middle of sex a good idea, where was the editor???
And, I’m still trying to figure out how the vajayjay could be teeny, tiny (in and of itself a horrid description) AND be like a horse’s mouth. I’m pretty sure exhibit A, that hiliarious grinning horse image (TYVM for that, BTW), disproves the analogy.
The old phrase “rode hard and put away wet” keeps running through my head. Seriously, I can’t stop it.
So I had to go back and do a word search on that phrase and I recall that Cooper, well, he was really into horses.
Was he “really into horses” or was he really ‘INTO’ horses? Because that would make this MUCH MORE GOODER. Is all I’m sayin’.
The situation is not helped by the hero’s need to self-congratulate about his awesome loving skills and how other men just don’t have any idea what they are doing. Sort of a little break for a sex ed lesson right in the middle of the scene.
Maybe he can guess the heroine’s age by looking in her…well, ya know.
Thanks for the horse laugh of the day (though I’m a little late to it!)
And may I just add…dear God, what was the editor of this thinking?!
Okay, even KNOWING the author was trying to draw a parallel between a horse’s mouth as a sensitive, delicate thing that needs a kind hand and a knowledgeable rider to work with so that they’re receptive to the ideas the rider wants to transmit… I’m STILL creeped as hell by that turn of phrase in the middle of a sex scene. It’s not bestiality icky, but it’s now “woman as subhuman thing to be controlled—skillfully” nasty Alphahole idiocy.
Her metaphors aren’t mixed, she ran them over with a lawnmower and mulched them.
I’m apparently one of the weirdos. Not only do I ride, I love the way horses smell, and wandered to the barns on campus in college just to stand there and be surrounded by the ambiance when the stress of class was too much.
spamword foreign58: the idea of a horse’s mouth as vagina dentata will be the most foreign concept in my life for the next 58 minutes I’m on the internet (it’s a scary place. I just got over Montana Moonshine.)
@Flo – I know right? I rode for years and did grasp where the author was maybe trying to go with the analogy. But still just so very, very wrong.
@jayhjay – Haha……what makes the self congratulating even worse is that were told how awesome a lover he thinks he is, but the reality of what we are shown – and by our own hero’s admission is he is incapable of foreplay with this woman cause apparently he needs her so bad. And pretty much last about a second and a half…….oh, crap. Why did I go there? More horrid equine parallels. Horse coitus last about 5 seconds.
Just started “To Seduce a Sinner,” in which Viscount Vale says to his man (after comparing his current fiancee to “that long-necked chestnut” a fortnight ago and being told “the chestnut came up lame”) “Did it? No matter. One should never compare ladies to horses, in any event.” ha! quite.
OMG LOL. I read this book but don’t remember that line.
The prose is typical of LMR though.
I am never having sex again.
Eating breakfast, no. Drinking tea, yes. Excuse me while I wipe off my computer screen…
LOL! “A woman’s sex is like a horse’s mouth” is right up there with “you remind me of my jeep.” Also, weeping anything makes me think of pus, not the sexy.
One description for lady bits that always takes me right out of the story is “her mound,” because I can’t help but think of the candy bar jingle. Sometimes you feel like a nut/Sometimes you don’t/Almond Joy’s got nuts/Mounds don’t
Mentioning Laurens also brought to mind that she, too, has a thing for horse metaphors. Esp. w. reins. I think they’re second only to seizing lungs, to be honest.
Huh.
And ewww.
@ SB Sarah and Mel B
Between that picture and this:
well, let’s just say I’m glad there was no beverage involved or the PC would be very damaged.
What a great way to start my day! Thx ladies!!
Is anyone else making disturbing connections between “a woman’s sex is like a horses mouth” and the movie Teeth? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780622/
Seriously….how do things like this get published…someone should have said “talk to the hand” because that isn’t going into a book…it makes the author look stupid, the publisher look idiotic and just makes me want to throw the book at a wall…
So, instead of a vah-jay-jay, the heroine has vah-neigh-neigh?
(sorry, couldn’t resist after the Mr. Ed song parody…)
ha-ha!! she said vagina dentata.
But seriously, IS a Va Jay-Jay like a horses mouth? I’ve never been an equestrian. Does the author at least elaborate? The OCD part of my brain is now working feverishly to chart out the parallels to no avail…. Then again, maybe some things are best left UNKNOWN. The comparison is odd, to be sure – but even with most odd references, I can at least empathize the meaning in most other cases – where now, I’m just left clueless… and grossed-out.
Spamword:
material62. I’m thinking on he list of sexual allusions, the “horse’s mouth” analogy was #62 on the list of material.
Ha! I’m so glad even dinner was over. Cracking up.
The horse’s mouth simile was pretty awful, but who else read the rest of that scene? The heroine thinks about how Cooper, the hero, didn’t look “like a lover about to have sex” but “like a warrior about to kill.” Then he mounts her with a grim set to his mouth and despite all of his time mentally waxing poetic about how some men just don’t know how to handle the goods, he totally just rams in and then is all, “You’re not ready! But I can’t stop, sorry!” and goes about his business until the heroine feels “like she’d spent her entire life with Cooper’s penis inside her.” THEN after they both come, he just starts over again and the heroine is all, “Oh, God, not again,” but in the next sentence she’s thinking about how this was the most exciting sex she’d ever had.
Lordy. I was laughing so hard while reading that scene. Definitely memorable…though not in a good way.
LOL I suppose it beat comparing her with a horse’s vag—cuz that would pose OTHER questions—like how the hell would he know? 😉 I still haven’t recovered from reading Passion and her amazing relocating womb and now this…where’s the damn fainting couch and smelling salts:lol:
I want to know why the editors let these weird and semi revolting phrases get published? I mean if they are supposed to be keeping the dreck from being published shouldn’t they also be keeping the drecky words from also slipping through?
And until last week I had not once come across weeping genitalia and then THERE IT WAS! And believe it or not it was one of the newer Stephanie Laurens books.
“neigh”
Um, sorry to put a damper on the snarkery, but first of all, I gotta question a comment by anyone who chooses to read an erotic romance during an acupuncture treatment. To be fair, I’m a big fan of Lisa Marie Rice’s erotic romances (and I’m hardly alone). Her heroes and heroines are pretty similar (very alpha males, very sophisticated heroines). I know what to expect from one of her books—suspense and lots of heat. LOVED the Midnight series. “Woman on the Run” was one of the first of hers that I read. I don’t even recall reading the horse’s mouth comment. Maybe the context worked for me because I have a horsey past, I don’t know. But in any case, I wasn’t laying on a table in a doctor’s office with a bunch of needles in my ass—um, maybe the subgenre of BDSM might have worked better for her under the circumstances, something by Claire Thompson?
I’ll drag my vajayjay to the vet next time it weeps, or the dentist?
Confused and going to bed, but first—I must gird my loins.
All i can say is, it is a very good thing I put my tea down before I started reading this
(spam) than 72 reasons, not to read this book!
I read a paranormal romance recently where the hero “lathed” the heroine’s nipple with his tongue…
Oh thank God. I always knew I couldn’t be the only one, but to have it confirmed….
thank you Sycorax (/sob)
I hesitate to say what I’m about to say, because my words might come back to haunt me if I’m not careful, but…I think maybe one reason so much hilariously bad sex writing makes it into print or pixels is because it’s read by romance professionals – the author writes it, her crit partners – also authors – read it, it goes to her agent, who reps romance writers, it goes to the editor, the proofers, etc., all the way down the line. The manuscript is handled, beginning to end, by people who spend way more time in Romancelandia than readers—i.e., normal people—do. Romancelandia professionals become desensitized to bad sex writing.
That’s the only explanation I can come up with that explains why no one slaps the author and says
Snap out of it!
I don’t have a crit partner or a crit group. My sisters in law and a couple friends read everything I write. This has its downsides, and I know I probably need to get a crit partner, but I like to think that if I came up with a really bad metaphor, an atrocious simile or gag-inducing euphemism, one of my SAGs (Sisters and Girlfriends – like WAGs, but it also implies age, and…never mind) would say “How many times did we tell you, no drinking while you’re writing and no writing while you’re drinking!”
But like I said, that could be me one day…
So I take my son to the petting farm and the lady said to feed the horses with an open palm, but no, my sonny just holds the snacky right up to the horse who then proceeds to suck my son’s little arm right into his mouth almost to the elbow. well, i performed a quick ‘interruptus’ and the horse looks at me like, ‘what???’ so if you think about it, yeah, a comparison could be made. but it’s never gonna be a pretty picture. just sayin
You know, since I came into this late, it was already what my mother calls (appropriate to this particular entry) post time and I have my red zin beside me. Except I read this, snorted the zin out my nose, and now it’s running down the front of my white shirt. Did anyone ever try to get red wine out of a white shirt in a hotel room with no laundry products? Huh, did you?
I might add that it didn’t taste nearly as good coming out through my nose as it did going into my mouth, which is an odd comparison, I know.
Nay, whinny-whinny, nay.
“Straight from the horse’s mouth”??
If you’re getting it from the horse’s mouth, no way you can be considered straight.
The latest romance sex scene I read kept referring to “her sweet rain.” Rain? as in showers? drops? downpours? I think you’ve got the wrong tunnel again, author.
Just, uh, one question. Is her name Sally or Julia?
Because … in the chapter where he’s musing about horses and stablemen – and just what does that say about how much he wants her? – it’s all “Sally flushed” and “Sally gasped”. But, in the next chapter, when she’s doing the internal-icky-dialogue thing, it’s Julia who’s doing the panicing and whispering and grinding.
So…? Did her inner, hidden, second personality emerge to save her from the horrors of his weapon-like penis?
While not knowing the difference between laved and lathed is simple ignorance (and it was a VERY common error in 1980s category romances, presumably as the result of one ignorant writer copying it from another, without recourse to a dictionary), I think that unexpected and apparently ill-chosen metaphors and comparisons in sex-scenes are a very different matter. A fuller context is invariably required before a fair and balanced judgement can be made. A turn of phrase used in a sex-scene may be a direct reference back to another, non-erotic scene in the same book, and that may give it a very different impact and different connotations from simply coming upon it cold.
This is why I have always considered our notorious annual ‘Bad Sex Award’ in the UK intrinsically unfair. Even the most beautifully-written scene describing coitus can appear ridiculous or repellent when taken completely out of context, just as actual observed sexual behaviour can be highly objectionable in the wrong context, yet perfectly acceptable in the right time and place. Sexual intercourse, considered wholly objectively, is clumsy, ridiculous and rather unattractive: to appreciate its better points, you have to be there, so to speak, to experience the sequence of emotional and physical processes that make it pleasurable, even sublime. In the case of vicarious experience, the reader has to take part in that build-up along with the fictional characters, and if she does, things that might seem funny, ludicrous or disgusting when baldly stated out of context may appear very different.
I think it is significant that one or two of those who have read the book did not even remember the ‘horse’s mouth’ comparison; if they were enjoying the story, it probably would not have stuck in the mind the way it did in the reviewer’s, let alone taken on the major significance it has in this thread, where a harsh spotlight has been focused upon it. If (and I have no idea whether this is the case) the hero had spent pages teaching the heroine how to bit a nervous horse, and had impressed on her the sensitivity of the animal’s mouth, the importance of gentle handling and a well-fitting bridle, the need to understand the distinctive conformation of the equine jaw, with the diastema (gap in the teeth) where the bit lies, etc. etc., then that comparison in a sex scene, taking the heroine’s (and the reader’s) mind back to such a conversation, might not seem especially bizarre. I bet many of us here have private sex-talk habits, including ridiculous pet-names for the genitalia, that would not bear the light of day if baldly stated out of context. One has to know the background.
🙂
The hero in Woman on the Run is a horse breeder. He says he is admittedly bad with women. He correlates everything with horses. I think in the epilogue, there is a scene of him going on and on about horses and the heroine is like “enough.”
Julia is in a witness protection program and her fake name is Sally. Sally would be from his POV and Julia from hers until later when her identity is revealed.
As for the hero bragging on his own prowess, I took it more as he was initially astonished to learn that men weren’t gentle when touching a woman around her horse’s mouth.
I re-read the passage yesterday and had no problems with it at all but that doesn’t mean it still isn’t hella funny out of context or that it wouldn’t work for many people within the context.