CORNA-CATION DAY 15: The Demise(?) of the Harlequin Romance.

“…And that's why birds do it, bees do it. Even educated fleas do it….” – sung by Cole Porter, 1928

I am a bit concerned about the demise of the Harlequin Romance.  Maybe that is exaggerated. Maybe it is fine and healthy, but HR really does play a pivotal role in child rearing. It is kind of the Playboy of the female puberty world, and I would hate to see what might happen if HR were no longer around.  My mom, rest her blessed soul, read HR when I was growing up.  She and my Aunt Robbie traded them like baseball cards.  “Have you read Passion in the Night?” “No, I’ll take that one and you can have On the Winds of Love.” I still remember my Aunt Robbie lying in her bed (she and my Uncle Fred shared two “June and Ward Cleaver-style” single beds in the front room of their home) beneath the window air conditioner blowing a summer gale, and the police scanner periodically calling out some police activity – whatever that might be in an Arkansas town of 3200 people.  She would hand over her most recently read HR to my mom, who was sitting on my Uncle Fred’s bed across from her.   There were literally paper grocery bags of used HRs in my Aunt Robbie’s closet.   No clue what she did with them.  There was a big HR black market in that town.  Every woman who went to bingo or got their hair done down at the beauty shop was a part of it. Think Steel Magnolias times 10!

 Every girl child grew up sneak-reading HR.  It was how they learned that some beefy, moneyed up guy was gonna come through town and have his car break down, stranding him in the local hotel, immediately across from the café where she was working, so that they would see each other several times a day until she offered to show him the “sights” while he was waiting on his car to be fixed and they would kiss on the lookout up on Mount Nebo, and she would marry him because he was so loved by everyone and he was super good to her parents…..and her cat.

Of course my scenario was a little different than that one, but we will save that for another time.

The entire black market HR gang also read these other romance novels.  They were like HR on steroids – thick, 7 x 10 paperbacks that should have been rated X, but instead were left lying around for anyone who was digging through her mom’s closet to find.   Unlike HR, which were just “PG”, there were lots of naked people in these XHR books.  Often the main guy was involved in some nefarious activity like Pirate Capitan or Highwayman that resulted in some woman being kidnapped, or the guy being shot and her caring for him, until she realized that he was just the unemployed guy that she had been looking for all her life. At some point this relationship would go from the woman being disgusted at the guy to the guy “taking her” in some bed of flowers or barn loft.  Which brings me to my point (I really do have one).  

The newer books certainly don't generate the nostalgia that the older ones do.  Some newer ones clearly are working with an "outsized" sense of importance, but let them have their day I guess ("I thought you said it was a TEXAS-sized secret??") 

If HR goes down, or, god forbid, we lose these X-HR novels, then how will girls learn about the birds and the bees (interesting phrase! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_birds_and_the_bees).  How will they plan for the future?  How will they recognize their moneyed up future husband when they see him at the Auto-Shop?  Maybe I am making a mountain out of a mole hill. There is still Game of Thrones, or better yet the Scottish Game of Thrones…Outlander.  

On Outlander, women from the future and present are ravaged both willingly and unwillingly a LOT.  They are clearly romancing with people who have not had a bath in several days, something that I have come to appreciate more and more. But the Outlander guy has a Scottish accent, which must make it ok.

Good luck with your own Corna-romance.

Mountain Pig out.