"PRURIOSITY"

I am holding in my hands a copy of a book entitled Slang and Euphemism, by one Richard A. Spears. This edition I picked up in a used bookstore for pennies on the dollar. It was printed in 1981, and I know that more current copies exist.

But I'm still completely fascinated by the book.

I like words. I especially like knowing the origins of certain words. Not all words-- I didn't learn Latin or any horseshit like that. If I confess to having a word jones, I guess it would help to learn Latin, but life is too short to waste on a dead language. English, the mongrel successor to so many previous and current languages, is alive and vibrant.

And slang is something that I have a deep interest in, simply because it is gutterspeak and dwells on the prurient. My curiosity for the prurient can be called "pruriosity", I suppose.

Oddly enough, the entries with the most listed synonyms are words like smockage or occupy. No shit-- running a close second are words that deal with the male and female genitalia, and drug nicknames as well... but occupy beats them all, with almost three pages of hysterical phrases and slang terms to describe the act of sexual inetrcourse. For that's what occupy meant during the 1400s to 1600s in America and the U.K.: fucking. It was impolite to say you were "occupying" someone or something.

Here's the entry as listed in the book:

occupy to coit a woman; to take sexual possession of a woman. This word was avoided in polite company during the period when it was used in this sense. The following synonyms and related terms refer to males or both males and females except as indicated. Both transitive and intransitive senses are included...

And then the motherfucker goes on for half the frickin' book, listing hundreds of like-minded words and phrases. Here's just a sampling:

BLOW OFF ON THE GROUNSILLS
BUZZ THE BRILLO
CHUCK A TREAD
DANCE THE BUTTOCK JIG
DANCE THE MARRIED MAN'S CATILLION
DANCE THE MATRIMONIAL POLKA
DO A BOTTOM-WETTER
DO A RUDENESS TO
FEED THE DUMB-GLUTTON
FOREGATHER
GET A BELLY FULL OF MARROW-PUDDING
GET A PAIR OF BALLS AGAINST ONE'S BUTT
GET HILT AND HAIR
GET HULLED BETWEEN WIND AND WATER
GET JACK IN THE ORCHARD
GET ONE'S LEATHER STRETCHED
GINICOMTWIG
GO BED-PRESSING
GO CUNNY-CATCHING
GO LIKE A BELT-FED MOTOR
GO LIKE A RAT UP A RHODODENDRON
GO TWAT-FAKING
HAVE A BIT OF CURLY GREENS
HAVE A BRUSH WITH THE CUE
HAVE A GAME IN THE COCK-LOFT
HAVE A NORTHWEST COCKTAIL
HAVE GIVEN PUSSY A TASTE OF CREAM
HAVE LIVE SAUSAGE FOR SUPPER
HORIZONTALIZE
LERICOMPOOP
LOSE THE MATCH AND POCKET THE STAKE
MAKE FEET FOR CHILDREN'S SHOES
MIX ONE'S PEANUT BUTTER
NOCKANDRO
PALLIARDIZE
PLAY AT COCK-IN-COVER
PLAY AT COUPLE-YOUR-NAVELS
PLAY AT ITCH-BUTTOCK
PLAY AT THE FIRST GAME EVER PLAYED
POCKET THE RED
RIDE BELOW THE CRUPPER
SHAKE A SKIN-COAT
STABLE-MY-NAGGIE
TAKE A TURN ON SHOOTER'S HILL
TAKE NEBUCHADNEZZAR OUT TO GRASS
VARNISH ONE'S CANE
WHAT MOTHER DID BEFORE ME
WORK THE HAIRY ORACLE
YENTZ
ZIG-ZAG

That was merely a small portion of the number of synonyms listed under occupy. And smockage was no different-- it is defined here as "chasing women; copulating with women; copulation" and dates back to the 1600s in Britain. Synonyms include such gems as "BLANKET HORNPIPE" "FOUR-LEGGED FROLIC" and "TWO-HANDED PUT".

Because it was published at the advent of the 1980s, many words that have since become associated with hip-hop and punk culture are missing, but some words that are now linked in people's minds as being "rap-related" were (surprise surprise!) around long before the first MCs took microphones up in their hands. One example: "ho" (spelled without the silent E) means what it means in most rap circles, and is designated as being heavily used in African-American communities as far back as the turn of the 20th Century.

It's like how people say Snoop Dogg invented that "izzle-shizzle" speak. Jazz players were using that slang as a code way back in the '20s and '30s. Frankie Smith had a hit song out around the time this edition of the slang tome came out; the song was called "Double Dutch Bus" and was sang almost entirely in "izzle-shizzle" speak.

But most people prefer to think that Snoop made it all up. And Snoop doesn't really try to educate people on that point, as if he is content to let people assume that he is the newest in cutting-edge linguists. I mean, Snoop got game, but he didn't make up no fuckin' language. He added to rap's vocabulary-- but he didn't make up no fuckin' language. Snoop has gone platinum many times over... but he didn't make up no fuckin' language...

Anyway, despite being outdated, this book has been keeping me in stitches for the better part of the last 24 hours. I will never wait in line at a Port-A-Pottie in quite the same manner ever gain, because I will smirk whenever the OCCUPIED sign comes up on the door.


**


All weekend I've been having vivid dreams involving ex-girlfriends. I wonder if they are sending me messages across the astral plane, messages telling me to stop thinking of them as I slumber. Maybe they want to be left alone, and tire of having to purge me from their mind constantly. But it is I who requests asylum from this psychic nocturnal onslaught.

I know that I am on their minds often, because when I run into them on the street or somewhere neutral, they don't seem very surprised to see me. They have a look on their faces like they are sick of seeing my ugly mug in their nightmares, in their daydreams. I have that effect on people-- either you never remember me, or you never forget me. There is no in-between. I demand nothing more or less than the opportunity to haunt you for a lifetime.

To get me back, these women torture me in my dreams, the only time when I have no psychic barriers erected, when my true emotions and feelings are revealed, when I have no defenses and I am vulnerable. They invade my sleep, and whisper terribly erotic aphorisms in my dream ear, as I float around like a mad Mary and lose all semblance of restraint and calm.

In my dreams, they forgive me, they take me back, they admit they were sorry, they admit that they wronged me, they confess that it was all their fault, and if I could only lend an ounce-- no, even a small gram --of mercy upon them, then it would all be better...

I awaken from these dreams, laughing at myself for having the gall to even conjure up such ludricous imagery. Of course, it was I who broke the trusts, it was I who ended the games before they evolved into deeper bonds, it was I who sabotaged the whole affair so that I could walk away and not feel fettered by unrealistic hopes and expectations...

Well, now I'm exaggerating. I wasn't that much of a cad...

Still, I keep having these visions in my sleep, visions of former lovers wagging their fingers at me, telling me that if I don't try to mend my ways now, I'll live the rest of my life in lonely exile, unsatisfied and unloved. But it's my dream, occurring inside my very own head, and what's more, I know this to be true. Thus, I cannot take the dreams seriously, because it's how I feel about myself and the shitty way I treat people who have half an interest in me. It has nothing to do with what my exes actually feel about me.

It is my perception of what I think they feel about me.

I remember Vera. Junior year, first real relationship that didn't have any of the adolescent drama that the average person tries to stir up... When we broke up, I thought she hated me. Years later, in Manhatten, New York, on the corner of 33rd and 3rd, I met up with her again, and she told me that it took her five years to get over me. Five years.

Five years.

That blew me away.

Five years.

In all of that time, if only I'd not been so hard on myself, I could've picked up where I'd left off with her, and maybe we could've made it work...

Yeah, right.

Who am I fooling?

The past is past, and no amount of dreaming is going to get me to look back on those times with the obligatory rose-colored specs.

I don't want to be afflicted with the Nostalgia disease, the one that makes fools of us and drives us to our knees, the one that traps us wholly, as we slowly freeze, as we let imagination fly high on the breeze, as we mutter to ourselves "Oh please God let me somehow get myself free of this glamorized look at my past, a perspective that if I am not careful will outlast me..."

That's all I ask-- to be left alone, to face the future without regrets.

That's all I ask, ladies... now let me sleep.