The Title Dilemma

I'm still tossing around title ideas for a book Loose Id will be publishing.

This is unusual for me. Bastards and Pretty Boys, The Prayer Waltz, Jude in Chains, Mobry's Dick, and Fugly all came to me at the same time the stories did or, in some cases, before (with the kernel of the story embedded within them). So this indecision is making me a little crazy.

The new book, still technically in the WIP stage, is a friends-to-lovers tale that spans forty years (1970 to 2010), although the vast majority of it takes place during the most critical week in the main characters' on-again, off-again, ever-changing relationship. It's also a story that entails many "comings out." (What is the plural of "coming out," anyway?) And it's quiet and introspective, like The Prayer Waltz, except for one foursome scene.

The working title is Electric Melty Tingles. I believe I mentioned it before and posted a snippet from the first chapter. Melty tingles a phrase the POV character dreamt up in his youth to describe how he felt when he first kissed a boy (hence, the juvenile ring to it). The "electric" gets tagged on later. This phrase crops up throughout the story and is still relevant at the very end.

But . . . there are other possibilities. One of the men sometimes teasingly calls the other "Schnickelfritz," a term of endearment, German in origin, that roughly means little rascal or scamp. But is that too doofy for a title?

The POV character's father uses the term fruit when referring to homosexuals (as, I'm ashamed to say, my own father did), and I think that word has a lot of potential for being massaged into something sensual or gently comic (one of the protags puts his own spin on the term) rather than perjorative. However, it also has the potential for stirring controversy, like Beautiful C*cksucker. Hmm. Do I want to go there?

So . . . I don't know. There are certainly other possibilities, but since I have an aversion to blah titles, I'm studiously avoiding those that sound generic or are derived from common phrases. I might just stick to the working title. But I'm obviously still undecided. (More to the point, why am I even babbling about this? I suppose because it's preying on my sleep-deprived mind.)