Lovey Dovey
LOVEY-DOVEY
(Or why two sensible adults can turn into Sweetcheeks and Papa Bear…)
(c) David Astle
Bloop Bloop loves Bleep Bleep. Floss has a thing for Snooks. Cavalier carries a torch for Sexy Boy, while Dumbass can’t get enough of Marla Pussycat.
Every romantic item, I swear, is the genuine item, lifted from this year’s Valentine newsprint. Stab a pin in any personal column and you’re guaranteed to hit a Sea Monkey, a Tessie Bear, a Xena. I’m warning you now, if you’ve just had your breakfast, maybe you should wait half an hour before reading any further.
On the surface, Sydney and Melbourne seem sophisticated places. Office towers stand above open plazas. Freeways weave from commercial sectors to the dormitory suburbs – yet it seems the dormitory is not all beddie-byes, going by the langue d’amour of Gucci and Tic Toc, Gherkins and Pookster, Foghorn and Jubbly.
Snugglebum, are you reading this? Or how about your other half, Boogaloo? That’s the eerie side of love-talk. Say your Subaru needs a new solenoid. So you ring a mechanic called Glenn, reliable guy, honest worker, never thinking for a minute he may well be Dimpleman who makes Vegemite toast for Cuddlechops on the weekend.
For all you know, Craig from IT could be Gumby after hours. Marianne, the art teacher, could lose her smock to become Turbogirl or Firefox or Hubba-Bubba-Mumma. Only her man – SpongeBob or Snake or Magic Hands – would tell you but thankfully he’s staying shtoom.
Because love-talk is spoken behind closed doors. Couples seem united in keeping the squishy business under wraps. It’s only a blip like Valentine’s Day – or an unguarded moment in the public domain – when such pillow-ese can escape their ruby lips.
So why do we do it? (And don’t you look all innocent, Chicken Legs.) How to explain this universal lapse of two sane adults into goo-goo land? Why does a harmless name like Fiona McKay, say, turn into Fluff, or Fee-Fee, or Macca Baby? My stomach lurched last week when I heard an educated Gen-Xer call his wife WOMYD, short for Woman of My Dreams. She, in turn, opted for SO, or Significant Other. Believe me, INACTAN – I Needed A Coffee To Avoid Nausea.
Alas, silly names are just a glimpse of the doe-eyed guff. Lovers don’t just re-badge each other in the throes of affection but regress into lisping, rhyme, mewing, inventing words and doing shambolic imitations of Sam Spade or Elmer Fudd.
Uttered by lovers, love is less love than lub or wuv or wub. Hugs are huggie-wuggies, while kisses can range from smackeroonies to smochie-coochie-coo. And don’t get me started on wedding tackle or the humpy-rumpy-thing they accomplish around the clock. Seems every piece of anatomy gets a nickname in this bedroom jargon, from lewd to ludicrous.
Okay, so love is a drug. Roxy Music taught us that. Love Will Turn You Around and Love Will Tear Us Apart. Over the years pop songs have schooled us in the whole love lexicon. If Kylie isn’t lost in Some Kind of Bliss, then Mark Seymour’s kissing you in four places. Fine. Let heady Cupid have his day. But why this call for cutesy-wootsy voices exchanging womantic dwibble?
Personally, I blame The Addams Family. What other show corrupted our homes with such rampant romance? Un petite scrap of French – spoken by Morticia – would turn Gomez into jelly. Raining kisses on those Mortician arms, the poor sod would swoon “Cara mia” and “Mon cheri”. If it wasn’t a sitcom I would have turned it off.
Meredith Fuller, a Melbourne psychologist, believes the madness pre-dates television. She puts the lovey-dovey dialogue down to hard wiring. “To encourage our species to continue there are these universal themes we respond to. A lot of us – when we see a puppy, or a baby, or something like ET – go into that baby talk. We get this sort of smile and that awwwww feeling.”
So Bloop Bloop, in this case, sees Bleep Bleep as joey-like? “At that deep intimate level we are interested in nurturing what seems helpless and vulnerable and needs us. It’s like a glue that keeps us together and doing what we do.”
Evelyn Field, a counsellor who specialises in relationships, calls it “the cooing of doves”. “It’s the tone we get from our Mums, all this cot talk, and it’s what we give to our lovers, our babies, our cats and our dogs.”
Whoa, let’s back up a little. I can countenance a baby called Bubs or a lover called Babe but where does Mutley fit in? “There’s a book called Walkies for Dogs,” says Field. “An interesting title especially since dogs can’t read. It’s about the way we talk to dogs – how we express affection and closeness.”
Field herself lives among two Papillons, those toy spaniels with spiky ears. The elder is Buffy, the other is Harry, though Field seldom uses their given names, preferring Sweetie-pie, Gorgeous, Baby and Puppy. Pets, babies, fiancées: it seems anything in need of our protection and loyalty, we’re there, talking the talk and walking the walkies.
In a gonzo bid at research I skulked the anteroom of a local baby clinic to overhear the following expressions: “Quick sticks Lockie, up you pop.” “Awww, did you fall over sweetie?” [singing:] “Lucy, Lucy, Mummy’s got your juice-y.” After an hour I was half-expecting: “Who dat funny-wunny man writing every-ting down over dair?”
This age-old baby connection to sweet-talk is emphasized by the glut of food images that crop up in our love rants. Professor Kate Burridge, head of linguistics at Monash University, spent a scrumptious day circling such names as Cupcake, Pumpkin and Stud Muffin. She even found a woman called Rosemary desperate to smother her Tasty Lamb!
“Even our ordinary, everyday language,” says Burridge, “reminds us of the link between eating and sex. Look in a thesaurus under ‘desire’ and the overlap of vocabulary is striking: appetite, hunger, craving, greed.” In a paper on the topic, the linguist impeaches us all with going to meat markets in search of crumpet.
“If Freud was right,” says Evelyn Field, nursing Gorgeous on her lap, “then the first year of life is the oral phase, when we put everything in our mouths. That’s how we explored the world, licking spoons, drinking and eating – and edible nicknames underline that period. In a sense, they relive it.”
“Baby-talk,” says Fuller, “replicates that very private world you had when you were in the womb, when you were a baby and given precious love, a sense of security, trust, a sense of being at the centre of the universe. When you relate that concept to having a relationship, it’s a continuum.”
So who’s babying whom here? If Floss declares his (her) love for Snooks, which lover is acting in loco parentis? “It’s a mutuality,” says Fuller. “Like a flow between nurturing and being nurtured. There’s a reciprocity.”
Fuller also links love-talk to a surge in oxytocin, a feel-good hormone that such primal bonding can release, the equivalent buzz a young mum gets when watching her newborn suckle. “And there’s a simple reason for that,’ she adds. “If we didn’t feel really good [as new parents] then why would we look after Bub?”
But bubs grow, just as love grows. You don’t hear parents calling their kids “silly billies” or “Eggs McMuffin” on graduation day. (At least I hope not – for your sake as much as theirs.) When does this doting dialogue wear thin?
Henry Lawson, our own bush poet, reckoned this sugary stuff had a shelf life. In his story, Mitchell on Matrimony, the title character despaired: “A man can’t go on talking lovey-dovey talk forever and listening to his young wife’s prattle when he’s got to think about making a living”¦”
Janet Hall, both a sex therapist and hypnotherapist, sees a couple’s cutesy phase (“where we declare our own vulnerability”¦as well as affirming each other as beautiful beings”) evolving into a more nonchalant mode: “After the romantic haze settles, we relax into tags. We have tried and tested our trust and don’t see things through that brand-new rainbow anymore.”
Not that affection (or nauseous nicknames) evaporate with time, insists Meredith Fuller: “As a relationship grows it develops a breadth and a depth. You may not be jumping each other every night but with respect and honour and humour and interest the love will become much deeper. And language reflects this, usually tonally, while many endearments will evoke that shared history.”
Or shared tolerance, in the shape of the low-watt insult. Observe the roll-call of Hammer Hands, Turkey Butt, Half-Job Harry and Princess Perfect – each with a stigma implied – yet unquestionably fond if cooed between respective partners.
“Terms of endearment based on someone’s irritating behaviour is a way of tolerating that trait,” explains Fuller. “So long as the other person accepts the name, the language is saying “we’re different but we don’t want to lose each other.”” In other words, our gentle snipes are a means of short-circuiting conflict.
Nonetheless, there’s a time and place. Tolkein fans, as one, aren’t having a bar of love-talk, no matter how pacific the words may be. A chatroom given to Bilbo Baggins and all his Middle Earthlings operates under a few rules, with the starkest reading: “The whole chat doesn’t want to hear your lovey-dovey talk with your e-girlfriend/boyfriend.”
Eighty-five years ago, songwriter Irving Berlin warmed to such a chorus of complaint in a ditty he penned for the show Easter Parade. Describing a lovestruck couple in Apartment 43, the song called Snooky Ookums finishes with the rousing cry: “All night long he calls her snooky ookums, snookey ookums/All night long the neighbours shout ‘Cut it out, cut it out!’”
LOVE BITES – Samples of Valentine messages, 2006
CHOCKLE-POCK! With you and Surf-o-Matic, my world is almost complete. Looking forward to topping it all off over the years. Much love – Your not quite Kosher Pumpkin Pie. XXX
AF – HOWAPPY Balentine Day! I nub u more dan wordth can say (eben when you’re nawty). Lots and lots of Lub always and foweba, your Cowatt (+ lewsh)
RATSCO, may your beady little eyes pierce the cruel fog of life, and like your combover may we never be a part. Love PF
DEAR PIGLET, I love your honey pot and I’d chase you across 100 acres to give you my wood. Love from Pooh Bear
Snugamapuss, I fell in love with you the first time you kissed me. My life is complete with you in it. Love Rellie Pellies Mwah xxx
DI, DIDEE, DIANA, DE, DEEDEE or whatever your name is. Happy Valentines Day. Love Hubby xxx
SAUCY, delicious, tender and hot”¦Bondi Burger, you’ve got the lot!
[Sunday Life, March 2006]