(no subject)

[erastes]

Help! Ask your Dad?

Or - if you are old enough, give an opinion. Hell, give an opinion anyway.

My character is contemplating the delights of getting his grubby little mitts on his new lover's body. They haven't undressed yet but what would he refer to his arse as?

Bearing in mind that Edward is 35, and it's 1962 (e.g he was born in 1927). I don't think he'd use arse. I am sure he'd say bum, backside or bottom? Or something else. None of which are particularly sexy.

I need to read gay books of the era, if I can find any, I guess.

I REALLY don't want to ask my own dad. He says backside in public, but i have no clue what he thinks in his own head.

Comments

[semioticwarrior.livejournal.com]

Bwah! Go on and ask your dad. You can both have a good laugh about it!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Sadist.

[aunty_marion]

My dad's dead, so I can't ask him, but at the advanced age of 8 in 1962, I suspect I said bottom. Bum if I was feeling defiantly rude. Parents would have offered to spank me on my backside if I had dared to say 'bum' to them, I suspect!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I quite like bottom, I have to admit. It makes of "naughtiness" and Ed is feeling particularly naughty...

[reddwarfer.livejournal.com]

Mine(gramps) says fanny...but that's not the same term in England...*sniggers* He also calls it his caboose. Which is unsexier than anything. But we you get down to it, he calls it his arse, because he's a truck driver and talks like one. (he was born in 1931)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

and he's a yank. which simply won't work! But thanks to Gramps!

[reddwarfer.livejournal.com]

Actually, he's Swedish, but he's lived her long enough...

[eagles-rock.livejournal.com]

Posterior. Fundament. :-) Does he extend a tergo?

(Have just googled and realised this latter phrase is urban-speak for doggy-style. Blimey.)

Maybe he gets the chap's kit off and realises it's worthy of the title 'Arse'. Or would it only be a 'bum' if it's smooth? i.e. arse=furry.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

The things you learn in this LJ!! Thanks for all that, very useful!

[zoepaleologa.livejournal.com]

Bum, darling.

I once saw a dramatisation about the Cambridge four spies, which had the expression - "If he wants bum, let him have it."

See also George Melly's 50's version of "Rum, sodomy and the lash" vis a vis the English navy - "Rum, bum and concertina."

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Yes - and there was a play about Kenneth Williams and Joe Orton recently and he said Bum too...

I might go that way. Thanks!

[asphodeline.livejournal.com]

"rump" comes to mind but "bum" has been around a long time too.

[asphodeline.livejournal.com]

or "rear"

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Rear sounds good...

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

In the US it would've been 'ass,' as in T&A (minus the T.) But it isn't just the year. What kind of man is Edward? Working-class, upper-class with a dirty mind, or the kind of person who even censors his own thoughts? You'll be able to say a lot about the guy by showing how he thinks about this lovely lad's fine behind.

You could always ask your dad how he would refer to a woman's posterior in his hot-blooded youth. I don't expect that would be so different.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I'm just going to have to ask him, aren't I. The good thing is, as he has Alzheimers, he won't remember me asking!!!!

[liebesdammerung.livejournal.com]

No clue, since self was -26 in 1962. :D

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Silly!! *smooch*

similar problem

[queertext.livejournal.com]

hey erastes,

i've been lurking on your blog for a while. i just wrote a piece for the same baseball anthology you did, and told it in the voice of a man talking about sex in the 1920s, and was having the same trouble with a lot of the words.

i thought of bum and backside right off. rear, maybe? that is a little sexier than the two b-words. it is 1962, though, so maybe just go with ass (arse...sorry i'm a u.s. person). i'm always surprised at language in older texts that seems too new, but that's my own bias. language can move fast, but english doesn't move particularly quickly for things like body parts and sex.

-Joel

www.joelanichols.com

Re: similar problem

[erastes.livejournal.com]

*pounces*

I love lurkers. May I friend you?

I shall look forward to reading your story, any stories that aren't written in the contemporary era are of a lot of interest to me, as you probably know!

I rather like rear, myself. I will pluck up the courage to ask Dad, I think, but I might go with rear. My "hero" has spoken about backside a few times, but that was before he got the boy's clothes off - i think it needs something more than backside when its naked. The trouble with him is that - like your chap - he doesn't have the vocabulary. He is only just admitting to himself that he's "Queer", even though he's married with 2 kids....

Thanks for commenting, as I say, so lovely when people delurk.. *goes to check your site*

Re: similar problem

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Your character from 1962 may be having trouble coming up with the right word in his own mind, too.
There wasn't any distribution of books or knowledge about any of this stuff at the time, you couldn't go look things up, you were taking risks just trying to find anything out.
Part of the problem with being closeted is that there aren't any concepts or structures or words except hostile ones from the outside world, which you find you are rejecting wholesale, and that leaves you with...what?
They may invent new words and plays on words for things, which may sounds silly to anybody else.
"Flower!" as Bambi says.

Re: similar problem

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Oh - and I've just been reading your sales - very very impressive!

[themostepotente.livejournal.com]

I'd go with bum.

I hate rear. Now rear's an unsexy word, man :P

[predatrix.livejournal.com]

Although there's always that quote in Mansfield Park which always tends to confuse me about how much, if any, innuendo was meant: "Of Rears and Vices I saw enough. Oh, do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat!" The character is meant to be worldly, but were ladies in Austen's time likely to be worldly enough to make that joke? Surely not. Which always left me combing the back of my mind for any context in which the remark can be meant otherwise than an allusion to sodomy, and never quite finding one.