Everyone has either heard about it, read it or denies ever going near one. Mills & Boon - that adolescent rite of passage from comic books to adult romance. A recent discussion on a yahoo group about Mills & Boon entering the Indian market - earlier they had local distributors - got me on a nostalgic trip to my last school vacation. It seems India is the only market where M & B has a significant male readership, elsewhere in the world some men may read it but wouldn't want to admit it.
I was around 14 when I discovered M&B at the neighborhood raddi wala. I remember being fascinated with those tales of damsels and of course, dark handsome men. I would choose the books based mostly on the front cover men.
It took about a year for me to get over the fascination with M&B – but not before it managed to add to my vocabulary the word ``tumescence’’. The sentence went something like, ``her hands slipped and touched his tumescence''. I can still feel the goose bumps that I got every time I read the word, but unable to explain the reason. The dictionary was of no help – it gave the meaning as ``a swollen part or organ''.
A late bloomer – I think it was only a couple of years later that I actually understood what had swollen up – lol
I was around 14 when I discovered M&B at the neighborhood raddi wala. I remember being fascinated with those tales of damsels and of course, dark handsome men. I would choose the books based mostly on the front cover men.
It took about a year for me to get over the fascination with M&B – but not before it managed to add to my vocabulary the word ``tumescence’’. The sentence went something like, ``her hands slipped and touched his tumescence''. I can still feel the goose bumps that I got every time I read the word, but unable to explain the reason. The dictionary was of no help – it gave the meaning as ``a swollen part or organ''.
A late bloomer – I think it was only a couple of years later that I actually understood what had swollen up – lol
