morrigirl | Captors and Duellers

Okay, if I read the following words one more time I'm going to find a blow torch and start lighting shit up all along Allerton Avenue.

He captured her lips.

Contrary to popular belief, couples in romance novels don't actually kiss. No, they take each others lips hostage. Actually, that's not entirely correct. The men take the women's lips hostage, never the other way around. The phrase makes me imagine roving bands of alpha males invading small towns, ripping the lips off the faces of all the women, and depositing them all in a dungeon.

"How many did you capture today, Sawyer?"

"About twenty pair. And you, Dante?"

Again, I flip through my mental repository of sensual and erotic memory and can't find a single instance in which my lips were "captured" by anyone. My lips have been kissed, licked, sucked, bitten, slobbered on, but never captured, and you know why? Because real people just kiss.

After a romance hero "captures" the heroines lips, their tongues usually proceed to "duel." No, I am not shitting you. I could cite at least a dozen examples if I felt like getting up and retrieving my notebook. I would never think to call what tongues do in the midst of a french kiss "dueling." Makes me imagine each tongue armed with its own little neon colored plastic sword like the kind you get in fruity alcoholic drinks, stabbing at each other like conquistadors. Not really the stuff of romance. More the stuff of a very bad acid trip.

I think smoking a large blunt must be a prerequisite to sitting down and writing romance. It should probably be required before sitting down and reading it, too.