Word Up 


or, What are we? 

Over at Firedoglake (which is in my second tier of liberal blogs), Jane Hamsher had a riff on a recent post by David Ehrenstein about Gore Vidal and then his own relationship. And I quote:

As the years go by (and we're well into our fourth decade) it's become increasing difficult to describe my relationship with Bill Reed . . . save to say he is not my "partner." Law firms have partners. We are not a law firm.

This is a struggle for us here at Stonesthrow as well.  
• Boyfriend: too much like high school 
• Partner: too cold, too formal 
• Lover: too Anais Nin, too sexual 
• Husband: inaccurate, not true, odd 
•
• Odds are we use partner, and usually this is when dealing with random non-friend third parties (like the plumber or the salespeople at the bath renovation place who told us it would be $14k to renovate our downstairs bathroom. Yeah, I know.). With new friends of friends or something, we usually just use our name ("and this is Rick").
•
• What to do, what to do? For someone who loves words like me, it sucks. I wish I had a good word. However, perhaps owing to the social issues surrounding folks like us, there isn't a satisfactory term. Language fails. It's interesting when that happens. 

Posted: Wed - April 12, 2006 at 03:09 PM         |

©