The Callipygian Venus – disturbingly narcissitic!
It was just another Friday afternoon. The work-week was meandering to an uneventful end. Everyone had stopped being productive, dreaming about what beer they would order at the office-sponsored happy hour. Everyone, but me. I was dreaming about whether I’d order my usual – a Diet Coke with no ice – or Diet Coke with ice. There was also a part of me that was asking me to screw the conservatism and go the whole hog. Order a REAL Coke!
As I was wrestling my inner demons (diet Coke with no ice was winning, if you really want to know), BGJ interrupted with his “Yo, TM”.
BGJ is my cube-neighbor and more often than not, his “Yo, TM” shout outs are followed by some out-of-the-blue pronouncements. I turned around and gave him my go-ahead-with-pronouncement cue: “Wassup BGJ”
“Yo TM. I have been thinking about this for a while now. I know this is a huge decision, but I feel I am ready to make it. I want you to be the first to know.” Pregnant pause.
I am not very good with pregnant pauses. I can’t fill them in with some meaningful, soothing words that defuse the anticipatory tension. I am also not very good with being the first to know. It came with some nebulous form of responsibility that I can’t handle. I just let the pause play itself out and hoped it was not really a life-changing, big-ass “I have decided to break up with my girlfriend” kind of pronouncement.
“Syzygy. I have now officially decided that syzygy is my favorite word.”
My first reaction was a sigh of relief. This was not a pronouncement from BGJ the human being. This was a pronouncement from BGJ the word-nerd. But even as I was about to say something pat-on-the-shoulder supportive, I caught my nose wrinkling up in disapproval. Uh-oh, the word-nerd in me seemed to disapprove.
“Syzygy? Reeee-ally? I mean, I have nothing against syzygy. It describes a freaking cool concept and has a pretty sweet etymology. But I hate the way it sounds. Sy-zy-gy. It sounds like a snake moving. And I hate snakes. I hate all reptiles actually”, I finished quite emphatically.
Of course, I was bullshitting. My relationship with syzygy was much more complex. Much like BGJ, I had fallen in love with syzygy the first time I had encountered it as a freshman in college. I loved it so much that I recruited it to be my babe-killer-word. Now, the babe-killer-word is to the scrabble board what a friend, playing shotgun, is at a bar. A woman-snagging device that works by making you look good.*
I had it all planned out. Even as woman-to-be-snagged approaches scrabble board, I pull out Z, Y, Blank, G, S, Y. She looks perplexed, not seeing any possibilities with the tiles. I wait for the smile of recognition. She finally smiles, having realized she can actually spell out GYPSY with the tiles. And then I go berserk. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Pause. Make sure she sees that I am getting triple-word-score with the final Y. Bang. S Y Z Y G Y. And the rest, as they should have said, would have been history.
Of course, none of this ever panned out and I slowly fell out of love, in a sour-grapes sort of way, with syzygy. Obviously, I couldn’t go into my complex emotional issues with BGJ. But he was not too pleased with my reaction. He seemed stung, much like a man who has been told by his friends, that his new girl friend is one ugly ass bitch.
“Well, yes, I like Syzygy. And I will continue to do so. But what is your favorite word?”, he ventured, clearly hurt, but trying to deflect the conversation to less controversial grounds.
This was easy.
“Callipygian. The very thought that there exists a word that means ‘having shapely buttocks’ gives me the bejingles. You gotta love them Greeks.”
BGJ relaxed, “Ya dude, callipygian is an awesome word!”
“A word can tell you so much about a civilization,” I said suddenly throwing out some bad-ass linguistic anthropology. “I mean, can you imagine a civilization that has callipygian as a word but not callimammus. You know so much about Greek men and their preferences right there. But, I am totally disappointed that callimammus is not a word.”
BGJ was energized “Ya dude. Callimammus totally has to be a word. There is a word I would have used a lot of. You know what, you should submit it to unwords.”
Now I have always dreamt of leaving my mark on the English language and this ‘submitting to unwords’ seemed like an interesting idea. “What is unwords?”, I asked.
“Unwords. You don’t know unwords! Man, unwords is this awesome site with fake words that really should be words. It’s your shot at changing the English language one word at a time! My personal favorite is sarchasm – it’s the abyss between the creator of witticisms and the intended recipient who does not find the humor in it, from sarcasm and chasm. Kinda inspired me to submit my own entry, orchasm, you know, from chasm and orgasm” , he said chuckling at his own perverse creativity.
And so ended yet another week. BGJ and TM were still on talking terms despite their vastly different reactions to syzygy. They also decided to change the English language with orchasm and callimammus. Which leaves me nothing more to say, other than, what , my dear reader, are your favorite words – unwords?
* Yes, I had a babe-killer-word. I also had babe-killer-quiz-questions, babe-killer-JAM-objections and a whole list. So judge me:)
