Are you ever thrown off by historical inaccuracies in a book? They could be small and they could be large. Example of a small one…I recently read one of the books from Mark Roeder’s Gay Youth Chronicles (forget which one) and he mentioned that the character put a CD in the player…it was the early 80’s….a CD? He also talks about the characters worrying about safe sex, it’s the early 80’s and I’m not even sure if they used that term back then.

Here’s one that I would consider large…and I’m not even sure if it’s inaccurate, it just seems out of place. I started a book tonight called Ardennian Boy…I was warned it was graphically erotic but here is how it starts…

Hmmm…is that accurate? Did they use the F word back in 1887 Paris? “Sticking dick” would seem like a term for erection from the period. I’d imagine “boner” didn’t hit its stride until some clever high schooler thought of it in the mid 1940’s. Dog-style would seem obvious enough but I wonder if they called it that back then…were dogs popular enough in the average home to be observed enough to name sexual positions after them? I tend to think horses would have been more visible and therefore it was more likely you’d equate the doggy style position to them….horsey style.

But then sometimes a book is too accurate and it makes you think about things you don’t want to. In this same book on the first page one character says to the other…

I’d assume “cruddy” means poopy…I didn’t need to think of that because I always think that sex pre-1900 was a messy affair. I honestly don’t understand how straight men managed to do the deed with their women because hygiene was so different back then…just imagine the first wiff from her naughty bits as they are exposed to the open air. Yikes! No wonder lesbians developed such a reputation for being mean.