When you write historical romance like I do, you get to do a lot of research. Some of it is just fact-checking how long did it take to ride from Bath to London on a fast horse?… and some of it is technical – how did people remodel their houses 200 years ago?… and then some of it is just plain strange. For instance, when your characters approach an intimate moment, how exactly does one refer to Tab A and Slot B?

If the words throbbing member mean anything to you, then you probably know what I’m talking about. How to name that-which-women-rarely-know-what-to-call, because we don’t have one of our own to think with. I mean about. Men have no trouble naming it… they may have a little TOO little trouble naming it but some of those names are unromantic, indelicate, and downright weird.

I like to think I would have figured out the ‘one-eyed trouser snake’ on my own, however freaky it sounds, but freely admit ‘lobcock’ (19th c.) would remain a mystery to me. ‘Middle leg’ is pretty clear, especially after an episode of Coupling in which a woman tells her friend an ex-boyfriend was born a tripod. ‘Old Horny’ (18th c.) could probably only be one thing, but what about ‘plug tail’ (19th c.)?

Not that the modern terms are much more appealing. ‘Dick’ sounds too much like dickhead, and that’s not a good association. ‘Pickle’ makes me think of hamburgers, not hot dogs, wieners, or any sort of sausage. ‘Schlong,’ well, it rhymes with wrong. ‘Prick’ is what a needle does…a very thin, sharp needle. ‘Frank and beans’ is not what a woman should be thinking as she sinks to her knees, you know what I mean?

And honestly, I think the funnier a term is, the more guys like it. My husband, a mature, intelligent man with multiple advanced degrees, snickered like Beavis and Butthead when the baseball announcers said, “Randy Johnson takes the mound.” The pitching mound, that is. Guys ask if their buddies gave a girl a hot beef injection, or porked her (why is it both beef and pork? Men have some protein identity issues perhaps) when what they mean is, “did you make hot, passionate love to her?”

So what’s a romance writer in need of a historically accurate, socially acceptable, not-laughter-inducing euphemism to do?
A) be medically accurate, and call a penis a penis, not a manroot or the lance of love.
B) be oblique and concentrate on the motions and not the moving parts.
C) embrace your purple side and call it a gleaming, purple-veined, dewey-tipped throbbing member (if you’re gonna go purple, go Deep Purple); or
D) just admit to yourself that you like a certain word and go with it. It’s fiction, y’all! I’m not describing the chamber pots, am I?

Which brings me to the line Sybil’s been waiting for all along: I prefer ‘cock’ when referring to the ‘lovey-dovey pestle of passionate pleasure.’**

[Thanks to *Irene Peterson and **Jessica Trapp for making I“>me spit Coke all over my computer screen as I wrote this]