Harlequin Romances

In Jr. High, my friend Bianca and I were avid Harlequin romance readers. To us, the stories were a delicious taste of the forbidden. Lines like "Todd's manhood throbbed with passion as he watched Tabitha undress" thrilled our pubescent imaginations. Is that what sex was like? A scene out of a Harlequin romance? I gulped the Kool-Aid and soon we were resorting to crime in order to get our hands on as many books as possible. At the rear of every book there was a subscription card you could mail off to receive four books at a discount every month. Well, since neither of us had a job or any money to pay for a subscription, we decided to send off for books under an alias. Samantha Crabapple, for instance. I was scared as hell but brave Bianca assured me that we'd be ok. We were minors, she reasoned. If the folks at Harlequin were dumb enough to send us books, they deserved to be had. And besides, they likely expected such a thing, given the ease at which it was to obtain these books free of charge. She was right. It was way too easy, so I went along. We got our four books per month and devoured them like candy, highly anticipating the looooove scenes. Then in stepped my fast and worldly, older cousin. "You really wanna know what sex is like," she asked us.
We did.
So she ripped a sheet of paper out of my notebook and drew a tiny little dot on it. "This is you," she said. Then she looked at us to make sure we were at full attention.
We were.
"And this is sex," she took the pencil into her fist and, with all of her might, STABBED the tiny little dot, ripping the page.
We were officially scarred.
Although, we continued to read the books until Harlequin got hip to our scheme and stopped sending them to us. That's when we graduated to magazine subscriptions - Elle, Mademoiselle, Vogue, etc. - and a whole new batch of drama ensued: Body image.