I hate the word “lover” and the strange thing is that I know for a fact that almost everyone else feels the same way. It’s strange because I know this despite having never once discussed the matter with anyone. What is the deal with authors who go ahead and use it anyway? Surely they know what I know. It’s not like I’m the most perceptive individual. Some things are just obvious. I guess the problem is that in English we have no comfortable yet literary word for a person you have had sex with more than once but to whom you are not married. The standard terms are boyfriend and girlfriend and seem to be fine for most people regardless of age. Literature, however, has a huge fucking problem with those words.
You never hear about Constantine climbing the stairs of a Parisian flat to see his girlfriend. No, that woman is his lover, whether or not she actually loves him. Now that I think about it, calling her a lover is probably a sure spoiler alert that she doesn't love him and will probably betray him. Talk about a Chekhov’s gun, amiright? Lover my ass. We both know all that means is that you are temporarily okay with my naked body and right back at yah. Anyway, I get it Cormac. There are no boyfriends because we are men and not boys. At least you are, McCarthy, as you keep reminding us whenever you get the chance. Also fuck you and your cowboys. Sorry. Cowmen.
I don’t know, maybe the problem isn’t that we dislike calling grown people girls and boys when we’re trying to be arty. After all, the term “lady friend” used to be common. There is a strange memory from my childhood that stuck with me for god knows why. I used to watch the 1950’s “Superman” program. (“Great Ceasar’s Ghost, how old are you Candid?” No, this is thanks to Nick at Night). Clark Kent drove a Nash-Healy sportscar that I learned was gift from his lady friend Toni Mannix. It turns out this isn’t true - Mannix gave him a Jaguar because holy shit that is what you do if you’re spending your husband’s money on goddam Superman. Anyway, at the time I did not understand what was meant by the the term lady friend. By the way, neither does spellcheck and that is why I have to write “lady friend” as two words but “girlfriend” is okay. As for the Superman factoid, I had just thought they meant nothing more than a friend who also happened to be a lady. I didn’t know it was a 1950’s term for doing truth and justice the American way.
The real reason why we don’t like these words is that they don’t sound romantic enough. A lover is someone who buys you Jaguars and probably drinks Dos Equis and almost certainly will, as previously established, kill you with your blow dryer in a fit of jealous rage and/or by accident. A boyfriend is a guy who’s in your shower because your place is closer to work. He will also probably kill you with a blow dryer, once he is done conditioning his hair, but it will have less to do with jealousy and more to do with being an asshole. Is there really a difference? No, and there is no difference between boyfriend and lover. That is my point. Words are the new coat of paint on our pathetic lives. Lives that end with a blow dryer cords wrapped around our necks.
That’s fine. Can we still try our best to come up with another word, in that case? How about “Netflix and chill friend”? I know it’s probably too long, though still better than the equally clumsy “significant other”. We’re not speaking German so there’s no way to turn that into a single word that is borderline unpronounceable and vaguely threatening, which of course would be perfect for our purposes. Maybe “cat replacement”? Let’s be honest, we don’t get pets because they are a poor substitute for people in our lives. We date people because we have to at least be able to say we tried. If you find a person who is both good in bed and has the same enthusiasm for pets, what you have is not a lover but a soul mate. Or soup snakes. How about “BFF with Benefits?”. That can be a BFFB, which is not much fun to say but it does turn a stupid word into a palindrome, which I guess is a moderate improvement. Another idea is to save time by combining your name for your special person with some other term you often use when speaking to them. Examples: “move over”, “turn up the heat”, or “I don’t want to make you do it. I only want to do it if you want to do it. But I still want to do it.” I call my lover “are you sleepy?” Of course, she is now my wife so I’ve escaped from the need to play the name game. Wait a minute - is it possible that on some level, my primary reason for getting married was to have a name for this unnamable thing? Meh, it’s as good a reason as any.
I guess this is an unsolvable problem. Now I understand why we’re in such a tizzy. How could coming up with a suitable word for something so common be so hard? Is psychology trying to tell us something? I don’t know, but maybe we should all just agree to stop hooking up until we can get down to business and figure out what the hell we’re supposed to call each other.
Image courtesy of pixabay. Thank you, Pixabay, my life would not be the same without you. Don't expect me to pay for anything though. That's really asking too much and I feel like I do enough around here already.
