You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
This query made me LOL like AOL and ROFLMAO like Chairman Mao. Enjoy A’s request with me, won’t you?
Let me start by saying I have NO idea why I want to re-read this book
because it just sounds awful, but that seems to change nothing because the
darned thing sticks in my head and I want to read it anyway, even if it’s
probably going to hit the wall 10 times before I finish it (so I’d rather
not use my e-reader). The book had to have been published prior to 2000
because I remember reading it in high school, but it’s very probable it was
published prior to that.
The main thing I remember is that the lead female (I want to say her name
was Kate) is the best friend of the hero’s little sister. The hero,
upstanding guy that she is, thinks she’s a big ol’ slutbag because of a
misunderstanding at the beginning of the book involving her being naked in a
poolhouse while changing clothes, when a snake comes in and scares the tar
out of her. Hero comes in just as Heroine is clinging nakedly to Random
Witless Male Bystander and of course Hero assumes she’s the afforementioned
big ol’ ho-bag. Wackiness ensues over the course of several years where
he’s attracted to her and makes her feel like a skank because of his
issues. Of course the heroine is actually a virgin and would never allow
someone who wasn’t the hero to approach her sacred love cavern with their
rod of steel, but the hero refuses to believe it and treats her like crap
for most of the book.I also might be confusing this part of the plot with another book, but it
seems like the main character is so much the Queen Ultimate Virgin of All
Things Unpenetrated that she has some kind of physical problem and there’s
this doctor who’s all, “We must surgically remove your hymen or this dude
and his purple-headed love stick are going to rip you a new one –
literally,” and the heroine is all, “But no, if you remove my hymen, how
will the douchebag I’m in love with know that I’m not a big ol’ slut
bag?” And there’s a big dramatic sex scene involving pain and the hero is
all, “Oh darn me and this freakishly giant penis! I could have hurt you.
You must really love me to do such a thing.”So does this ring any bells for anyone? Honestly, I have no idea why I want
to re-read this book, but it’s been driving me crazy for about 6 months
since it first popped back into my head. I want to say it’s a Diana Palmer
(and it sounds exactly like her kind of thing) but I looked through her
booklist and didn’t see anything that matched it.
Seriously. I hope that this book is found so that it can be read and reread by ALL OF US. Because OMG. WTF. BBQ.
Years ago Suzanne Forster had a storyline like that also—the hero ended up using some magic powder or something to numb her while he, um, fixed it.
@AgTigress
For the most part, I find those revirginification surgeries disgusting. Way to play into the virgin fetish! But I have read that they can literally be life-savers for women from violently traditional societies who have not remained virgins until their wedding nights. Of course, it’s not the best solution, which would be to work towards seeing women’s bodies as their own property, to do with as they please, but if it saves lives or psyches in the meantime…
You guys are absolutely right. It’s Betrayed by Love! I dont’ remember reading “The Texas Lawman” (although I must have read it at some point to get the ridiculous inpenetrable hymen storyline stuck in my head) but “Betrayed by Love” sounds exactly like what I remember. Thanks Bitchery!!!!
Wow, thanks Bitchery from a truly grateful recovering DP addict! I’m pretty sure this is, in fact, Betrayed by Love. I read the description for “The Texas Lawman” and it didn’t sound familiar, but I suppose I must have read it at some point to get the plotlines confused (unless of course, some of the above posters are correct and – ye gods – the woman has used the Impenetrable Vagina subplot in more than one book). I suppose I’ll be making a trip to the library tomorrow in hopes that they have this one. What can I say? I’m a glutton for punishment.
Thanks again to everyone! Glad I got to make people laugh! 🙂
@snarkhunter: yes, the concept of restoring a hymen is quite distasteful, especially in a case (which must occur) when its absence or generally dilapidated condition is not even due to sexual activity, so that the assumption of non-virginal status would have been false in the first place. But in some cultural situations, it is probably preferable to be stitched up, so to speak, rather than to brazen it out.
Surgical interference with the genitals of both males and females has a very long history, and is associated with much more than sexual rules, notably religion, ethnic/cultural identity and aesthetics. The Roman objection to the circumcised penis was based not only on the fact that circumcision was practised chiefly by Egyptians and Jews — that is, foreigners, and moreover, uppity foreigners who had ancient cultures of their own, of which they were proud, instead of being decently embarrassed by their ‘barbarian’ status — but also on a very strict and consistent aesthetic which regarded the exposed glans as ugly. Pubic hair was often removed (by both sexes), for the same reason, because it was regarded as unattractive: too ‘animal’ in appearance. The method used was plucking, not shaving.
One of my favorite passages in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria is where he says something like, “Ladies should not carry a goat around under their arms.” I was delighted by that wonderfully vivid description of unshaven armpits. Glad (?) to know it applied elswhere on the body. Of course, the thought of plucking it makes my skin crawl, but then, isn’t waxing just a more dramatic form of plucking?
Indeed! But at least it is faster. I imagine that a hair-by-hair removal of pubic hair is quite a lengthy process. I didn’t remember that reference in Ovid, but it is a vivid one. 🙂
I once read a writer who had the “hymen of steel” surgically removed. Her doctor gave her a CERTIFICATE so she could prove she’d been a virgin.
Authentication: seem95
The ‘certificate of virginity’ motif occurs (though not in connection with hymen surgery) in the novel The Postmistress, by Sarah Blake. Incidentally, this is a prime example of a book that illustrates perfectly the way in which ‘serious’ or ‘literary’ fiction can be much, much worse than those allegedly ‘trashy’ romances. The Postmistress has totally unbelievable characters, a pointless and unresolved plot without a clear story arc of any kind, and embarrassingly awful and obvious historical howlers in a story that is set within living memory, during the Second World War. I only read the damn thing because I was on a train, and there was nothing else (having hopefully picked it out because it had good reviews — hah! — and was set in the 1940s). It is the only novel I have ever troubled to write a really scathing review of on Amazon, because I was so irritated that I had spent money on it.
I bet the Romans real objection to circumcision is the fact circumcised men last longer in bed than uncircumcised ones. (It’s also been shown that being circumcised reduces the risk of getting STDs and HIV. And anyway, the foreskin is useless. Unless you have a weird accident that causes you to lose your eyelids, then they can use the foreskin to fashion new ones. Bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase “dick head.”)
I can’t remember what book it was – not a Palmer – where the heroine has all her hair removed by some lime-like substance. Let’s see – she happened to be so thin people often mistook her for a young boy, but was really a rich young English noble woman who slept with this guy who wanted to marry her for her money to see what sex was like. Not impressed, she ran away when he threatened to tell people so she’d have to marry him. Ended up part of some bombing plot where they dressed her like a boy. She somehow ends up separated from the bombers and taken to the Middle East where she’s sold to a sultan who’s a pedophile that prefers to rape little boys. He owns wives just for show.
She’s kept in a semi-drugged state, has this substance spread all over her to remove all her body hair. The sultan’s wives pluck at her pubic hair for a long period until I guess it starts coming off easily. So they bath her to wipe the rest of the hair away. She spends a lot of time in the bath for this portion of the book. While it’s never described there’s a suggestion that the sultan’s head wife has sex with her during these times because later the heroine thinks of the wife and her teeth on her nipples. At the end of the book the heroine runs off again with the hero to South America. And her pubic hair still hasn’t grown back in.
Isn’t it amazing what we remember even when we can’t remember the title? I also believe it seemed like she wasn’t really in love with the hero. He surely seemed to love her more than she did him. She was always so emotionally detached from everything.
No, their real objection was cultural and aesthetic. Trust me on this, JamiSings.
Though circumcision simplifies good hygiene, cleanliness is certainly not precluded by leaving the male genitalia in their natural condition. But the Romans were fussy about frequent and thorough bathing anyway. In fact, it was the social institution of the public baths that made it certain that men would see each other naked in social situations, and would therefore be concerned about the appearance of their bodies and the conclusions that others would draw from seeing them.
In evolutionary terms, the prepuce protects the sensitive glans. This function in humans now devolves onto clothing, but the physical structures common to most mammals long pre-date hominids starting to walk on their hind legs, let alone fashioning clothes. But in any case, I don’t think that the fact that some part of the body is apparently ‘useless’ is, in itself, a good reason for cutting it off. Earlobes? Men’s nipples?
This a Diana Palmer. One of the Tyler series.
I remember loving this one when I was in high school and then years later realizing just how amazingly abusive and horrible this guy is.
Steel Hymens = Most Excellent Band Name