Fun With Words

I am now a fan of “mawkish,” which replaces “corny” for the stuff I like. Maybe the Norse chose “maggot” because they felt that maudlin sentimentality was disgusting. But for me the sickly-sweet flavor of an over-ripe banana is associated with the best things, not the sickening ones.

As a child, I upchucked in the parking lot of a movie theater from excitement over the pleasure to come. 

And on Aunt Allye’s shoes when she told me "the sea dogs were coming to get me" during my first visit to a wild and stormy Atlantic ocean. She was my favorite aunt because she was loving and kind-hearted and embraced her mean streak.

That paragraph was a double digression.  Neither fear (and revenge?) nor admiration for a family role model has anything to do with the theme. But I’ll keep it for now because an iconoclast can’t help but break the rules.

In my adolescence, sexual excitement registered in the stomach as the beating wings of stoned butterflies. Naturally on my wedding night I threw up ... an obvious reaction if you think about it. 

My psyche has been gifted with visceral stirrings in anticipation of bliss.