Serenading My Quoniam.
Mood:  flirty
If you must fuck up your life so that you spend your leisure time working your ass off, for God's sake do it alongside your best friend. Last night I was out in the yard bagging up terrarium substrate, and Ben, who was working around the kitchen, slid the window open so he could keep me company.

"Shall I sing Porgy and Bess to you?" he asked.

"Why?" I asked, a bit taken aback.

"Why not?"

Why not indeed. The guy slays me. There is nothing under the sun that can surprise me -- actually, that is not accurate; a lot of the goings-on in the world shock the shit out of me -- but no one has ever offered to sing Porgy and Bess to me before. He even offered to put on blackface. (I'm SORRY! Please, not with the hate mail! That opera was written in 1934. People used to DO that!) I demurred on the blackface, being pressed for time, and then surer than shit, my beloved husband proceeded to sing me an overture from Porgy and Bess.

I came inside as he sang the closing bars and we started talking about the Wife of Bath. Of course, The Canterbury Tales is well known for the dirty parts, but that's not why I'm rereading it; Ben and I quote the dirty parts to each other often enough that I don't need another reading. But the Wife of Bath is a piece of work -- conniving broad, and she usually got away with it, but some of those guys really had her number, and they told her just what a treacherous bitch she was. I like her because she's forthright and unafraid to admit she loves to fuck, even though she is also an aging, scheming, golddigging twat.

Can I say that word? I don't like most words for the female apparatus; I don't like the C word. The Wife of Bath (let's call her Alison, for that is her name) referred to hers as her quoniam or her belle chose. The latter means beautiful thing, which I find charming. I can't find the etymology of quoniam right off and don't have time to research it well, but Ben and I assume it was later shortened to quim, which is also a charming word. It's cute and friendly, as all good quoniams (quonia?) should be.

We're definitely going to use those. Doesn't effing quoniam sound better than fucking c___? Better, and incomprehensible. Ben and I have a sort of secret language, a verbal shorthand we use for talking about strangers in their presence, and the next time some female is behaving toward us in a particularly insufferable manner, I will just turn to him and say conversationally, "Quoniam." Unless Middle English as a second language suddenly catches on, we're golden.

Footnote: Speaking of talking about people within their earshot, we hit upon a stroke of pure brilliance over the weekend in the form of Matt's Magna Doodle, which is sort of a cross between a "magic slate" and an Etch-A-Sketch. In short, you write things and make them instantly disappear. We spent a giggly lunchtime at an Italian restaurant passing Magna Doodle notes to each other about the diners at adjoining tables. If you don't feel like learning Middle English, we highly recommend it.