On Nicknames

“The Doog” explored this at length on his own blog, and in the spirit of compassion, community, and togetherness, I’ve decided to rip him off by doing the same thing here. The list below is far from all-inclusive because (a) I’ve forgotten a lot and (b) some of ‘em were so short-lived and inconsequential that they don’t merit discussion. Like “Little Brother” or “Blaine Vancouver” or “My African Prince” or “Uncle Goggles” or “Pumpkin” or “Amanda” “The Whitest Black Man I Know” or “The Urinal of Non-Sequiters” or “JJ” or “Battery Boy” or “Crabcake”; more than likely, I’m the only person who remembers the origins of those at this point, and they aren’t worth remembering anyway. Seriously, I haven’t really even started this entry and I’m already stuck by how uninteresting it’s gonna be; for sheer amusement value, I’d be better off rambling on about other people’s nicknames, though this would probably involve stepping on some feelings, so I dunno. Maybe later. Maybe not.

For whatever it’s worth, Doug, I never had a nickname for you, man. You – much like Amal – were so much, I guess, yourself in the moniker your folks gave you that conjuring up something extra just seemed unneccessary. So there.

BJ Lips: It was the summer before fourth or fifth grade, I think, and I was, again, enrolled in the Towson YMCA summer camp program. Someone – I don’t remember who for sure, but it might have been this brunnette witch named Dawn who I had a crush on – decided that it would be funny to call me “BJ Lips.” Being clueless and totally naive youth that I was, I had no idea what an unfavorable thing this was to call someone – or even what “BJ” meant – and was just happy that my fellow skate-gear clad campers, who heretofore had delighted in tormenting me emotionally on a regular basis, had for some reason seen fit to bestow upon me what appeared to be an affectionate nickname. Whenever someone in passing called out “Hey BJ Lips!” I responded with a big, happy smile. Fuck all those people, wherever they are today.

Crackpot: This one can be attributed to my largest and most despised (by the campus community at large) group of college friends, probably Kevin Hoffman or Bill Denton, and had to do with my tendency to spout what they considered totally bizarre and ridiculous ideas. In certain dorm rooms and student newspaper offices where Olde E was prodigously consumed and litigation-inviting news schemes hatched (sometimes simultaneously), it became fashionable for other people to shout “CRACKPOOOOOOOOOT!!!” in unison, often for no reason at all. Variations on the name – Chicken Pot-Pie, Carlpot, and so on – were developed for the widespread amusement of people whose own nicknames never spawned franchises. Really, “Crackpot” never bothered me all that much. It made its last known appearance on my wedding video. My in-laws offered touching, heartfelt wishes and luck...and then all of my pals gathered around a glass table to yell – well, you know. To this day, I remain unsure whether I’m bouyed or horrified by this.

Eightball: Hoffman came up with this one. It either had to do with the tee-shirt advertising Daniel Clowes’ Eightball comic books or all the malt liquor we were drinking. Wasn’t used much outside of Caroline or Kent Houses.

Faeray: So my mom and I used to go to wiccan festivals when I was a kid, and these festivals often doubled as markets where food and goods were sold. At one point I came across a hot-pink button that read, in black type, “Fairies of the World Unite!” I thought this was pretty cool; I thought scattered Tinkerbells were being urged to unionize or something, and by this I mean magical fairies from sci-fi, mysticism, Peter Pan, etc. As I mentioned above, I didn’t quite grasp a lot of stuff back in the late 1980s. Anyway, I bought the button but never wore it. Many years later, as a college freshman, I would share that story with Pearl Pham and The Artist Formerly Known As Jef Frank (a man who is, himself, no stranger to cruel, unbidden nicknames); subsequently, “Faeray” became Pearl’s nickname for me. I called her “Pixie.” We used these names in correspondence, e-mail, and telephone conversation for years, until she got married and dropped off the fact of the Earth.

Fingers: Ryan Bowerman, who I went to high school with until he got expelled for something (I think), found it amazing that my hands are huge. So he called me “Fingers,” which was annoying and uncreative in large part because Ryan Bowerman was annoying and uncreative. Not very compelling Horatio Alger stuff, I know. What can I remember about that guy? We were both in the choir. Dude was a troublemaker and crashed a lot of cars. Went into the military. Ryan, if you’re reading this, don’t take it personally, okay? I mean, as The Doog and I have oft remarked, just about everybody was an asshole back in high school – including us!

Ray Slut: I used to put out a zine called Slut, so naturally I became known as “Ray Slut” among that international postage-wasting coterie of entreprenuers whose hobbies included trading, selling, and buying homemade, awkwardly-xeroxed magazines – cf. also Buzz Yukko, Kevin Sissy, Davida Beyond Hinduism, etc.

Ray-Ray: This one’s all Alecia, and my favorite of her nicknames for me because it actually doesn’t apply to anybody else. I love my wife, but she has a tendency to recycle and redeploy a certain set of pet names for adults, dogs, and children with such frequency that they lose some potency over time: “fart,” “turd,” “dippy-doo,” and so on. “Ray-Ray” is cute and playful and simple; it conveys affection directly and effectively.

Sidekick: This one I actually share with Sanjeevani, we toss it at one another all the time – which is kind of amazing when you consider that just about every other handle in this post has fallen out of use. In one of my countless collegiate mass e-mails – circa. 1995 to 2000 I sent them out constantly, to offer updates on my so-called-life, to share bad poetry, whatever – I went off almost rhetorically about the absence of a Maggie to my Hopey, a Bill to my Opus, a Becky to my Enid, a Lars Ulrich to my James Hetfield. For whatever reason this was a Very Important Issue to me at that time. It didn’t seem fair that Kevin had Jef and Dave Labowitz had John and Bill had Matt and Jen had Eva, and so on, while I seemed destined to be a loner with plenty of friends but, like, no constant companion. (It hadn’t occurred to me yet that going solo most of the time was, really, a better deal all around.) Sanjeevani – who herself had, I guess, Amal or Karen at that juncture – graciously offered to be my sidekick. We never developed that symbiotic relationship where we were constantly hanging out 24-7, but our friendship did flourish, endure, and become something special, and for that I am constantly thankful – even if other people probably think it’s strange for two 30-year old adults to ceaselessly refer to one another as “sidekick.”

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Electric Dress review in Grooves Magazine