Song of Solomon, Chapter 8: All good things...

Our heroine wishes her lover were her brother so she could kiss him in public. Do you kiss your brother in public? That's creepy. It gets worse: then she'd take him home and let him drink her pomegranate juice (v. 2) while hugging her. Yup, that's beyond the level of contact I'm comfortable with from my brother.

We find out they had sex under the same apple tree as where the hero's mother gave birth. Whether that's a real apple tree or a bed, I don't find it hot. She asks him to seal his heart and possibly get a tattoo of her to ward off jealousy.

Love is all-consuming. Only if you do it wrong. Then there's some bizarre talk about marrying off pre-menstrual girls. They decide that if she's a virgin, they'll seal her up, and if she's not, they'll seal her up. Our heroine is one of the virgins, which is why her lover takes such great delight in her. Ugh. I'm reading a book about this virginity fetishisation called 'The Purity Myth' and some of the stuff it describes is every bit as gross.

Then she's describing one of Solomon's vineyards that he lets out for the princely sum of 1000 pieces of silver. She says he can till her soil for free, and she'll even pay the keepers of fruit 200 pieces of silver for their labour. Then she commands him into the garden for some more loving.

Song of Solomon, Chapter 7: Are your boobs more like grapes or Bambi?

Our hero continues his weird compliments streak, telling his mistress her feet and thighs are like jewels. What, he doesn't like her calves or her knees? Her ankles aren't sexy enough? Her navel is like a goblet filled with wine and her belly like a heap of wheat surrounded by lilies. Huh? And again with the Bambi boobs. Also, her neck is like a tower, her eyes like fish ponds, and her nose... is also like a tower? I'm thinking he's operating on the 'keep her self-esteem low so she'll sleep with you' principle. He does like her hair, though.

The complements get even weirder: she has the posture of a palm tree, and her breasts are like bunches of grapes. Wait, did they have implants back then? Then he talks about climbing up her so he can fondle her breasts and smell her breath, which he imagines is like apples. I'm totally lost.

He can't wait to kiss her, or for her to go down on him, you decide which.

Then she starts talking about another outdoor tryst in the vineyard. She also mentions mandrakes, which can either mean paganism or fertility.

Song of Solomon, Chapter 6

Our heroine is still seeking her lover, who has gone down to the garden to pick some herbs. He starts talking about how hot she is, with her goat's hair and full set of teeth.

But wait! He tells her that of his 60 queens and 80 concubines, she's the hottest, which makes this not so much a sweet poem about first love (if you can ignore the beatings, which I can't), but a ploy to add yet another woman to his harem, and if you remember that statistics, there are another 859 to come.

Not only that, our heroine is an only child, which is going to doubly disappoint her mother. But if it's any consolation, Solomon's other 140 wives all agree that this new one is the hottest of all of them.

He goes down to the garden to look for her, but somehow she has gone home, so he begs her to come back. Right. To being one among 140.

Song of Solomon, Chapter 5: Did you poop before sex?

Solomon is sitting in the garden, eating a bunch of 'sexy' foods like honey, wine and milk that would actually make most people's stomachs turn, and perfuming himself with myrrh. The woman is asleep but hears him in her dreams asking to come in. She's not really in the mood at first, and doesn't want to put on her robe or re-wash her feet to open the door, but then she hears him fiddling with the lock and her bowels move. I'm pretty sure that's an expression that hasn't kept up with the time. Then again, Snooki recently admitted that she poops before sex, so who knows?

Anyway, once she has uh, defecated, she puts some more perfume on and opens the door, only to find her beloved has gone. She chases after him, calling his name, only to be found and beaten by the city watchmen. God, that's depressing. Unfortunately, it only makes her more lovesick and she asks her friends to tell him she's looking for him.

Like any good friend, they ask what makes this guy so special, and mostly it's his looks: ruddy cheeks, wavy black hair, nice eyes, kissable lips, good breath, strong hands, six pack, swimmer's legs. Mmm, swimmers' legs. Oh, and apparently he's also her friend. Yeah, the kind of friend who gets you beaten up while mind fucking you.

Song of Solomon, Chapter 3: All night long

Our heroine wakes up at night and reaches for her lover but doesn't find him. So she goes out onto the city streets looking for him, which is never a good idea. The sentries haven't seen him, but shortly afterwards she finds him and brings him back to fulfill many a person's dirty sex fantasy of doing in their parents' bed. Yes seriously into the chamber of her that conceived me (v. 4)

She asks her acolytes once again to let her lover sleep, and again while she's talking he comes out of the forest in a cloud of perfume. And he has... a bed? I don't know. With 70 men surrounding it, every man hath his sword upon his thigh (v. 8), which I like to think of as yet another extremely kinky sex fantasy because it's more fun that way and this book is drastically short of fun. We have Isaiah coming up, which is 66 chapters of hectoring misogyny.

Anyway, Solomon also has a chariot made of cedar which is decorated in his typical over-the-top style of a 12 year old girl: silver posts, gold bottom, purple cushions, decorated by the daughters of Jerusalem, who seem to have appallingly bad taste. He invites the girls to come and see him in his crown, which his mother gave him on his wedding day. The happiest day of his life. So happy that he did it 999 more times. Like a drug addict or something.

Song of Solomon, Chapter 2: Porntastic

Are heroine is so hot, she makes all the other concubines look like thorns next to lilies. She compares him to an apple tree in the forest and tells us how much she likes to sit under his shadow (v. 2) and taste his fruit. Nope, not about oral sex at all.

Afterwards, she makes him take her out for dinner, because that's all women want out of men, fancy dinners of cakes and apples, to replenish her stores.

Then we get into sex positions, although this one is pretty tame face-to-face missionary, which is excusable because this book represents the birth of porn as we know it and they're learning as they go along.

Now the woman is talking to the other daughters of Jerusalem about how important it is not to wake a man up after sex. But then while she's talking he does wake up and comes bounding down to the harem for more nookie. He pulls her away from her lecture, which, rude, because he wants to do it in the forest again because it's springtime. He begs her to take off her veil and... chase foxes from the vineyards? It's kind of incongruous. Then they have a picnic and an all night... prayer session, until he leaves again in the morning.

Song of Solomon, Chapter 1: sex poems in the bible!

Whoo-hoo! The book of sex poetry that somehow got mixed in with the rest of the bible and they can never, ever take it out because one of the apostles said so! Whee! Even Jerry Falwell admits that it's sex poetry, rejecting the theories that it's 'an allegory for the relationship between god and Israel' or some such bullshit, though he stipulates that it was written when Solomon was very young and he was legally married to the woman.

Anyway, let's get started. Solomon is a good kisser, and his love is better than wine. Damn, that is good. I'm not sure who would win if you told me I'd have to choose between my relationship and wine. Virgins are drawn to him by his manly perfume. She begs him to take her into his chambers so they can delight and rejoice in each other.

The woman describes herself as very dark, but beautiful. She got that way because her brothers made her tend their vineyards and wouldn't let her tend her own. I hope that isn't a creepy metaphor.

She wants to arrange an assignation and asks her lover where he'll be tending his sheep today so she doesn't have to pass by all his friends. He answers, telling her to graze her goats by the shepherds' tents, which is not likely to arouse suspicion at all.

Then he starts telling her how hot she is: she's like a mare in the pharaoh's chariot brigade, her earrings touch her cheeks (showing that nothing changes), she wears a lot of necklaces. He wants to make her some gold earrings.

She starts talking again, teasing him that while he's at dinner, he'll be smelling her perfume, which she keeps between her breasts, where he is also welcome to lie. He's also like henna. They tell each other how hot they are: she has dove eyes. Then the real-estate porn: they have a green bed, cedar beams, fir rafters. Either that or they're going to do it in the forest.