posted: undated
"You certainly have your banter down."
"No... this is an entirely different thing: It's spontaneous and it's called Wit."(Black Adder II)
I have to make a confession:
As a wordy-girl, I adore double- and triple-entendre, double-edged compliments, three-pronged phrases, obscure words and sexual innuendo. Which makes me a bad girl and dangerous to know, socially unacceptable and politically incorrect.
Once upon a time, a clever turn of phrase was an admirable thing. A person's entire career and reputation could be made or broken by a bit of witty repartee. Great feuds were once carried out in the fields of erudition alone, running on for years, even lifetimes. Winston Churchill's on-going battle of barbed comments with Lady Astor is legendary ("Sir, if you were my husband, I would put poison in your tea." "Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it."). Another favorite is the bitter verbal acid spewed by Dorothy Parker over the subject and person of Claire Booth Luce (meeting in a doorway, Luce: "Do go first, Dotty... age before beauty." Parker, sweeping through: "Yes, and pearls before swine.") Parker was noted for her sharp, acid-laced tongue and, when asked by an errand boy for a column her editor was demanding, replied to the poor lad: "Tell him I was too fucking busy... or vice versa." Noel Coward and Cole Porter both based their careers on wit. (Well, OK, Porter was a pretty good composer, too.)
"Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it...." (Cole Porter)
Where is wit, now? The height of clever these days seems to be contained in Julia Roberts films and commercials... bleh; a combination on a par with creamed chipped beef on toast: one doesn't know which of the tasteless things is actually better. What a pit we've sunk into. I can't even remember the last really funny thing anyone said in a film and I don't have a TV.
"Surely you're not serious?"
"Deadly serious... and stop calling me Shirley." (Airplane!)
Additionally, I miss flirting and not just because I'm married. I still flirt with my long-time friends, with whom I share a long and proud tradition of pointed and ambiguous turns of phrase, lifted eyebrows and crooked grins. It's difficult for me to resist a conversational opening....
He: Rats, foiled again.
Me: Must get rid of the foil. Have you considered epee?
He: I was thinking of saber, myself....
Me: Oh, I prefer whole-body target.... (grin)
He: Oh, well, with a body like yours, that would be a very inviting target....
"Well, there goes the original good time who was had by all...." (Dorothy Parker)
.... However, this sort of conversation is pretty much verboten these days and certain to be misconstrued by someone, more's the pity. One is no longer allowed to say funny things of a sexually-oriented color to anyone under the age of dead in public (or even in private) and it's become such a cultural no-no that many people I meet fall into a morass of confusion and discomfort when such a conversational gambit makes an appearance. Well, there go years of honing a dry, sly, insinuating wit down the tubes with one "I do." I mutter a sub-vocal "bugger that" and bite my tongue in company.
"I note that you enjoy the taste of shoe-leather. Tell me: how long were you a hobo? Or do you always conduct your conversations this way?" (My Man Godfrey)
Even a lack of delicacy can turn a good phrase. One afternoon, working on a long-winded and manual-labor-intensive project, one of the workers called for a break to, as he put it "go home and get laid." He said he'd be back in two hours. Three hours later, he had not returned. The rest of us looked at each other and speculated on his fate. "I don't know," I said. "Maybe he got de-laid." "Maybe he got re-laid," another of us suggested. "Well, I wish someone would relay his ass over here so we could finish this sucker." "Re-lay that? I wouldn't have laid it the first time." "Yeah... he's a bad egg." Which was when the bad egg rolled in and we all broke up. So much for being suave and subtle.
"Bart, Bart! They told us you was hung!" "... And they was right...." (Blazing Saddles)
"What's the female equivalent of a rake?" my step-mother once asked and I, unthinkingly, replied: "I don't know... a hoe?" We almost drove into a jersey barrier as she broke up laughing. I must remember not to make jokes while other people are driving too fast....
"I'm sorry.... Did I break your concentration?" (Pulp Fiction)
There is a subtlety between a leer and a laugh, a verbal slash and a slashed throat, that seems to have gotten lost somewhere. Maybe it's the oversaturation of mindless, adolescent-oriented entertainment or the boring sanitization of pervasive media. Whatever it is, the sophisticated, literate interaction of adults seems to be rare, now. Gone are the Parkers, Benchleys, Menckens, Wooleys et al and we have only, at best, Nora Ephron, a few smirking Clooney-clones and the blonde-of-the month.
To quote the noxious Mrs. Luce: "Pardon me, girls. I must go un-swallow...."
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