Opinion

Normally in spring this young woman’s fancy
does not tum to thoughts of romantic encounters
with Regency gentlemen or desert sheiks: it turns
to books like Be Your Own Chimney Sweep. But
when I organized the Book Sale at my daughter’s
school Spring Fair, I found more romance than I’d
bargained for.

“Did you know,” I asked my husband during
what I thought was a lull in the hockey game,
“that if placed end to end, Harlequin books sold
last year could run along both sides of the Nile,
both sides of the Amazon and one side of the Rio
Grande?”

“Shoot, you fool!” my husband responded in a
double-over-time glaze, face full of potato chips.

I went back to sorting through boxes. For weeks
parents had been donating books which Id had to
lug home to price.

There was the odd manual on small engine
repair and septic tank maintenance, but I had
enough romance novels in my living room to
brick my driveway.

I picked one at random and was three pages into
it when Vancouver scored. My husband let out a
roar, punched the coffee table and threw kisses at
the television screen.

For a moment I, too, felt myself crossing the
blue line into the male fantasy world where power,
wealth, cunning and the ability to score against
the Kings really count for something.

But I caught myself, just in time, and escaped
back into the feminine priorities of To Tame a
Vixen: true love, security, fidelity, and marriage as
a woman’s ultimate goal.

By page four I'd lost interest. I went through
more boxes and found a series of “bodice-
rippers” for men.

Thumbing through one I found bodices being
ripped open by 9mm projectiles and breasts
turning to fine red mists. There were no entry
wounds, only massive exits.

“Yeah. Nam. The jungle.”

Action, read the subtext, was more liberating
than falling in love. I put the male series aside and
combed my junk drawer for gummed price tags.

I had an important decision to make. What was
a fair price for a second-hand romance?

A Harlequin heroine has no head for figures.
She constantly wishes her hero would physically
impose himself on her body to relieve her of any
decision-making burden.

I looked at my own hero, who was still
munching. Would I really want those lips to

Love’s swee? return

“plunder” me?

After a bench-clearing brawl the hockey teams
were facing off again at centre ice. I turned my
back on the game and made an executive
decision, a sign that said, “ROMANCE NOY-
ELS: 10 cents each. $2.00 a dozen.”

Later, when my husband had passed out in front
of a blank screen, I lay awake thinking that if a
person wanted romance these days she was going
to have to, the same way she cleaned her own
chimney, do-it-herself. Write her own love story
and live it, vicariously.

My heroine, spirited with firm thighs, would
have a name like Flair; she would visit a foreign
place and meet Blair, a man,of steel and velvet.

Blair, breathing huskily, would say, “I can see
by your passion-darkened eyes that you want me.”
And Flair, sighing deeply, would reply, “Please
bring that self-righteous male libido over here.”

The night of the Spring Fair came. An hour
after it had begun Id sold two used copies of Do
it Right the First Time but not a single Second ~
Chance at Love. Booksellers, like publishers, have
to find a gimmick to sell their romance so I made
another sign: ROMANCE REDUCED DRASTI-
CALLY — ONLY 5 cents.

No takers. Half an hour later, I scratched that
message and wrote: ROMANCE. FREE WITH
ANY PURCHASE OF 25 cents OR LESS. This
brought fewer customers than before. =

Towards the end my husband came to spell me
so I could grab a coffee and chili dog. When I got
back to the Book Sale a crowd had gathered
around the romance bins. A new sign, in bold
lettering, read: ROMANCE. $1.00. FIRM.

I pushed my way behind the table and resumed
my place at my husband’s side. “SuperRomance
tonight?” he was enquiring of his next customer
“One dollar fifty, please. Cleavage costs extra.”

When he’d flogged every bodice-ripper, we
went home happily ever after for the evening.

“People expect to pay for romance,” he
teminded me, as I opened his bag of potato chips
and screwed the cap off his Coors. “Flair had
learned her lesson; from now on she would hand
over all business matters to her husband, leave
him to sort it out. Deep down that was what she_
had always really wanted — to give herself utterly
to a man and let him have complete mastery over
her.”

My nostrils flared daintily as I breathed deeply
of my husband’s potato chips and beer.

Yeah. Romance. Love it.

TheReview Wednesday, April 17,1991 — A16

THE ONLY
CHOICE

Saanich North &
The Islands

Team snaich

A purse was snatched from a
shopping cart in the Sidney Safew-
ay store after an accomplice dis-
tracted a shopper, about 6:45 p.m.
Thursday, Sidney RCMP said.

The thief was chased out of the
store and followed by store
employees but escaped, police
said.

The suspect is described as
being six-feet tall, about 160 Ibs.

"BOB

with long brown hair and wearing

dark clothes. : BOWCOTT
Sidney RCMP. are investigating PROVINCIAL

and ask those with information to INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE

call the detachment or Crime
Stoppers.

Shoppers are reminded to keep a
close eye on shopping carts while
shopping in Peninsula stores.

Reduce clear cutting and
reform forestry policies.

658-1232

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