One of my aims here is to demonstrate myself beyond
embarrassment. A couple of weeks ago, though heartbreakingly few read it, I
wrote at length about my hemorrhoid. But today I will go farther still, and
reveal the various pet names by which the women I have loved over the course of
my adulthood have called me, and what I have called them.
My first adult girlfriend, the first woman with whom I ever
cohabitated, called me Poon. I would like to be able to tell you that it was a
derivation of a Sanskrit word meaning one
of whom I am fond, but I would be lying. It just popped out of her one day,
and sounded affectionate. It became Our Word. In formal situations, I called
her Big Patti, leading people to expect someone much larger than she was. I
explained that she loomed large in my legend, which I’d gotten from A Hard Day’s Night. She called me
Poonificent at one point, but I later gave her ample reason to detest me.
Her successor called me Nuzzo, pronounced Nutso, a reference
to my mental health issues. Around three years into our relationship, she
decided that I needed a surname, and added Fuzzo, pronouncing it to rhyme with
Nuzzo. I, in turn, called her The Nib. The first several weeks after she left
her husband to take up with me, acquaintances of the formerly happy couple were
calling every 10 minutes to find out what had gotten into her. I took to
answering the phone, “Her Nibs’ residence,” which I later singularized for no
good reason. I think I’d gotten Her Nibs from someone referring Elton John as
His Nibs.
I famously called my first wife Lobsterhead, for reasons
that our families and acquaintances tried in vain for years to divine. The
problem was that there was no reason. I think I’d heard of a San Diego punk
group called The Lobsterheads shortly before we got together, and it just came
out one day, to the mutual amusement. She threatened at one point to call me
Cat Saliva retaliatorily, but never did. She addressed me instead as M’love,
which I think she’d gotten from a Daffy Duck cartoon.
My Bay Area girlfriend of almost 11 years, the koala keeper
at the San Francisco Zoo, called me Scooter. When we first got together, my
little girl Brigitte wasn’t yet four, and it gave me pleasure to imagine her as
a trapeze act, The Flying Brigitsky Sisters. Nancy changed Brigitsky to Brigitscu,
reasons not known, and then began calling me by that last syllable. I think she
added the ter part to make the name
same more American, she herself being a descendant of persons who’d come over
on the Mayflower. Her last name was Rumsey, and I called her Little Rumso,
which I thought quite splendid for a rosy-cheeked little scamp in a 1930s
children’s book. She was actually the tallest of my gals.
This has led to some awkward moments. When you become
accustomed to calling someone by a certain name, you lose sight of how the rest
of the world may hear it. You should see some of the looks we get on public
transportation, for instance, when she advises me, “This is our stop, The
Cuddlebear.” Of course, it’s nothing I didn’t go through with Lobsterhead.
One of our favorite little games is imagining how we will
perpetrate this or that bit of mischief, and then…run away! At those
moments, we’re a couple of little kids, in recognition of which I now address
her as The Little Dickens when we’re alone together, saving The Little Brit for
state dinners and other formal occasions. Sometimes, too, we address each other as Spousie because it’s
kind of nauseating in a way that amuses both of us.
I don’t think I could ever love a woman who addressed me as
hon or babe.
