Hey-Hey

Don't I have a sweet pussy?

Yes, welcome to Euphemism Week here at Word-Whores.

My hair-dresser when I was a child told me a story once. He was a Brit and decidedly hetero - with a wife and daughter and lots of flirt for my mom. His nickname back in London had been "Puss," because of this pair of tall leather boots he wore. Hey it was the 70s. So his buddies dubbed him Puss in Boots, then just Puss, and he went by the name until he moved to the US and discovered that no man here goes around voluntarily called Puss.

One man's friendly nickname is another's humiliating euphemism.

I'm not really much of one for euphemisms for the naughty bits. It always strikes me as kind of heh-heh-heh humor that accompanies embarrassed wriggling and red faces. Nor am I much into naming body parts like some are. A friend of mine referred to her breasts as "blossoms," and I could never quite stop myself from rolling my eyes at that one. Never mind my friend who named her vagina "Sheila."

No. I don't know why.

I suspect distaste comes from my two faces: both the scientist and the lover of words. I like knowing the right word and using it. I have never found that there's any reason to dance around the proper names. I would not have done well in a society where "legs" was shunned as too personal and replaced with "limbs."

In college, I spent several years as a peer counselor. We spent something like eight Saturdays in a row, training to handle various issues. On sex day, we devoted four blackboards to listing words for female parts, male parts, intercourse and masturbation. This exercise served as an ice-breaker for the day, because by the time we were done brainstorming, there were no taboo words left. Everyone got the squirming and giggling out of their systems and were ready to talk about real issues.

But the most instructive part was how many terms reflected the male point of view. Inevitably each year, some trainee would notice this and point it out. Even the names for female parts are ones the guys use more. It becomes dramatically apparent with female masturbation: the boys aren't all that interested in our she-bop and the girls, curiously enough, just don't talk about it that much.

Go ahead, take a minute to think of some.

See?

At any rate, this becomes an interesting task for the female writer of sex scenes. There are a lot of euphemisms that dramatically fail to be sensual or romantic at all. Playing with taboo words can be fun and release a charge, but if the reader isn't completely on board, that can create the opposite effect. So writers often come up with new analogies. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. I won't mention any now, because I'm sure my sister-whores have worked up a whole arsenal to share with you.

Once, listening to Loveline on a late-night drive through Wyoming, I heard a girl refer to her "hey-hey." That one cracked me up. She was young, too, right at that teen age where a boy touched her where no one had and she liked it, but had many questions.

I like that one because it can go either way - a caution or a pleased encouragement.

Just wait until I trim all the mats off my cat. I'll tell you about my shaved pussy.