Old Harlequins

On another trip to the Half Price Books store, I had to use the loo. They've cleverly used the covers from old Harlequin Romance novels from the 50's and 60's as a border atop the wainscoting, so they're at eye level as you wash your hands and such. There were bunches and bunches, but a few titles struck me as perhaps more... significant than others. Could our pre-Internet forebears have been more clued in to the variant stripes of sexuality than is commonly suspected?

Exhibit A: Gay Cavalier




Exhibit B: Master of Saramanca









Exhibit C: Citadel of Swallows








and finally, Exhibit D: A Night for Possums.

Comments

Meadow said…
Do you take your camera everywhere? :)
10:29 AM
V said…
Well, I take my camera phone anywhere, Renee. And if I can just slap some photos up, then I don't have to think of anything real to say. :)
2:05 PM
Meadow said…
lol Oh, I see how it works now. :)
2:39 PM
bloggin the Question said…
You have to read all these books now to finish the research project. I'm afraid I don't get B or C. What is Saramanca? and I'm a little frightened to ask for an explication of "citadel of swallows."
2:47 PM
V said…
I would, Helga, except they're only the covers pasted to the bathroom walls. The rest of the books might've been twined around the paper dispenser and used for other bathroom purposes back in the 60's for all I know. I get the impression they were just that foul.
3:33 PM
V said…
Saramanca could be a place, or it could be a transgendered person's name, I suppose. Citadel of Swallows, well that's just a big tower with a bunch of birds, isn't it???
3:35 PM
Gary said…
I remember a movie called "When our hearts were young and gay."
7:37 AM
V said…
That's somewhere in the mists of my mind, too, Gary.
7:57 PM
Azathoth100 said…
Heh. I like it. Actually I think my Grandmother used to read Harlequin and that we still have a few of these books at our cottage.
12:19 AM
Violet said…
what is it they say? every generation thinks that they invent sex?
11:34 PM
V said…
Maybe you should check 'em out, Aza! ;)

I know Gen X certainly thought we invented sex, Violet, but unlike Gen Y or Z, we did count blowjobs as sex. Own up for chrissakes.
11:08 AM
Latigo Flint said…
Okay, I really don't like the coy look on the "night for possums" girl. You aren't actually thinking what I'm thinking, are you Ari?
6:46 AM
V said…
Who can say what coy girls do with possums in the night, Latty? I just think possums are kind of suspicious in general.
9:07 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Le Jeu de les Livres (Book Game)

1. Grab the nearest book. 2. Open the book to page 123. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions. 5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest. Here's mine: They hadn't even known for certain (as the Witch did) that this is what would happen when Aslan came to Narnia. But they all knew that it was her spells which had produced the endless winter; and therefore they all knew when this magic spring began that something had gone wrong, and badly wrong, with the Witch's schemes. And after the thaw had been going on for some time they all realized that the Witch would no longer be able to use her sledge. BONUS POINTS: From what tome do these fair sentences hail? (p.s. I stole this from another blogger... find him at http://www.osbasso.blogspot.com/ )
Read more

Shredding, Slamming Fun

Image
Yeah, I'm closer to 40 than 14, but that doesn't mean I can't pretend to be in that band I always wanted to be in. And no, I can't play the guitar for real, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy the tar out of this game. In fact, that's the whole POINT. The second version of this Playstation 2 diversion, called Guitar Hero as you can see here, just came out, but I'm too busy woodshedding on a borrowed version of the first one to care about that yet. At first, I sucked so thoroughly the game kicked me out of the song and the crowd booed. Yet now, I can successfully hit 80-96% of the notes on average of tunes ranging from Boston's "More Than A Feeling" to Audioslave's "Cochise." The cool thing is, songs you don't even like much and dismiss as crap, you get new respect for when you try to play them. You also learn how Nikki Sixx must have felt when his fingers and forearms ached from the amount of rockin' he was doing, but...
Read more

Show Me Your Hooters

Driving in traffic today, I got behind an 18-wheeler semi truck with a sign on the back that stated simply, in red, capital letters: SHOW ME YOUR HOOTERS. This poses a few queries in my mind, even if in no one else's: 1. Does that work? Are there women out there who'll strip off their tank tops and let boobies flap in the wind just free for the asking? 2. If one was going to entertain such a notion, how do you maintain control of your own vehicle whilst freeing said hooters? Philosophical questions such as these boggle the mind, and will likely puzzle scientists and theologians for millenia to come.
Read more