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I had a roommate in college who shunned the usual terms of endearment—Baby, Sweetie, Pumpkin—and instead affectionately dubbed her boyfriend Pooper. He also called her Pooper. Did I mention they said it in baby voices?
Rachel, 34, a lawyer, explains that she called her ex Schnoogie, a nickname for her dog. “He would be like, ‘I’m not a fucking dog,’ and then laugh.” Jeff, 30, an editor, and his wife, Carina, 30, a doctor, call each other Chicken. “We started doing it because that’s what old man Karamazov calls his little prostitute in The Brothers Karamazov, so it’s totally highbrow,” he explains. “It was what we called our cat, until we had to give our cat back to my sister. We didn’t want to give up the nickname.”
Some couples use pet names to the exclusion of all else. “Nicole only ever calls me Nate if she’s angry, and likewise, it freaks her out if I call her Nicole,” says Nate, 31, a reporter. “My main pet name for her is Biscuit. Sometimes I call her Pickle, which she doesn’t like as much. When she’s PMS-ing I call her Crazylove, which she doesn’t like at all.”
“My dad calls my mom the Dead Vessel,” says Natalie, 25, an artist. “I think it means that they’re done having children. ‘Is the Dead Vessel speaking again?’ he’ll ask with this grin on his face. My mom calls my dad Sperm Donor. Yup, the love runs pretty deep in our household.”
Perhaps, the more pejorative the better. “My sister dated a guy she called Fish Boy,” says Brent, 25, a writer. “And a guy I used to work with called his girlfriend Dead Tooth Crack Ho.”
Not all are so creative. “I once knew a guy who called his girlfriend Honey,” says Jane, 32, a writer. “Which we all thought was so sweet until he admitted (not to her) that he did it when he couldn’t remember her name. She married someone else. He’s still single.”
See? Use terms of endearment blasphemously and you’ll be smote.
Check this out: Type your name into links2love.com/nicknames.htm and it will generate some creative options. I’m not sure how they derived Puppie Pot Chocolate Kisses Bon Bon from Julia Allison, but I suppose it’s, uh, imaginative. When I typed in another name, it came up with Butter Hot Pooh Peepers. I might just use that one.
E-mail her at jallison@timeoutny.com.
