So I read in a book one time...

One of the fun things about teen and young adult books is that graphic sexuality tends to not be allowed - or wasn't when I was in that age range; things may have changed recently. But some of the sexiest books I've ever read were aimed at that audience. This could just be due to a flawed sample group, but I've found that where most adult-aimed books would have a 'and then they boned' scene, teen and tween books would play and flirt around with the events, often stopping short of what most people consider sex. Kissing could be the most risque thing in the entire book, but would be handled in such a way that it was several peppers hotter than the more hardcore material.

There's a scene from a YA mystery novel that's gotten stuck in my head, more for its 'huh?' qualities than for any of the aforementioned eroticism. Victorian London, the reader is looking through a window into a bedroom containing a fourteen or fifteen year old girl in a bride's gown and a much much older man of the creeptastic leery variety. Older man proceeds to tear open a pomegranate, squash the seeds one by one against her delicate foot, and suck the dripping juice from her skin.

Admit it, the first thing you think when you see this is "I wonder how I can use this in a kinky sexual adventure?"

The first thing I thought, after reading that, was "this man has never eaten a pomegranate." Ok, the first thing I thought was, "What the hell, Mr. Pullman?" I think the book was by Pullman; either way, 'what the hell' tended and tends to be my first reaction to most of his work.

So skip ahead a couple of years. Dave goes up the road to post a letter, and comes back with a pomegranate, because he has poor impulse control when it comes to food and the Indian grocery shops up Wokingham Road are fantastic. Fruit of the dead gets ripped open on the table, we start crunching seeds, and I remember that scene. He wouldn't let me squash them on his feet, but I did take a seed and try to crush it against the bony part of his hand. And, much to my surprise, it popped. And the juice dripped. And it actually did work like in the weird scene in the book, and I had the weird urge to do it again, because tiny little explosions that go crunch and get red juice all over Dave's glasses are wonderful and addictive.

All this is a really long way of explaining why I - and a lot of people I know and work with - are so anal about details. People may remember the wonderful plot and characterization, but they're more likely to continue to be annoyed about that one bit you got wrong long after they've forgotten your name. (I still haven't forgiven someone I read in Senior Seminar of undergrad for putting Mount Etna in Greece.) Also, I wonder how Pullman knew that pom seeds go crunch in that way, because that's totally not something you'd assume from eating them.