I don’t talk much about Alex_72. She asked me not to. She’s very private. But she gave me permission to tell you about this.

We were talking – messengering – the other night and it so happened that she mentioned that she had to go for her physical and that she wasn’t at all looking forward to it.

We decided that all the words for ladyparts were unfortunate. The proper one sounds like a punch line. Or a Canadian city. And the slang terms are dirty, really dirty; too dirty sometimes to be sexy. I said it wasn’t the same for men. For men, for manparts, the words are stridently sexual, fiercely, proudly, shamelessly sexual.

I told her about my freshman year history teacher. I hated my freshman year history teacher. He believed, and he told us often, that in order to get an A we had to come up with an idea that he had never heard of. Which, since he had been teaching for 30 years, wasn’t at all likely. That, and he had the personality of old steel wool. Of course to be fair, I didn’t have any fresh insight into Maurice Duplessis even though I forced my way through three books about him. One horribly dense and not terribly brilliant tome by Conrad Black. Alex_72 has learned to be patient with my tangents. When she messages me, her first question is almost always, “Hi Si. Got SS ready yet?” And if I say, “No,” she says, quite smartly, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

This tangent: we had to read a lot of nasty essays in my freshman history class. And I remember only one in particular. This person had decided to measure the social mores of a century by researching court records. Not the crimes, though. The foul language. And, quite unlike my history teacher, the writer was altogether hysterical – although, perhaps accidentally. The premise for the essay was a little flimsy but it was still a fabo idea for an essay. It went like this, in 1850 the word “whore” appears 220 times but in 1890, only 60 times. Therefore, fidelity, at least among the feminine gender was prized more in 1850. Yes, very flimsy idea for an essay. But still the most fun you can have in a freshman year history class with a history teacher not quite as interesting as old toast.

There is no female equivalent, not by far, for “cock”. That other four letter c word is one of the nastiest words I can think of in the English language. And the alternative, pussy, is used more often to question the masculinity of a man than to refer to ladyparts. Also, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds – I haven’t really got the inclination to work it out – names for a man’s bits. But I don’t know that many words for ladyparts. Perhaps it’s because they are internalized and not so obvious. It might just be, too, that men created and recorded and indexed the language. Perhaps it’s also because men, at least most men, talk about their bits quite freely, robustly, and, yes, often, while women, who, at least historically, have been kept from talking about their bits, haven’t got the vocabulary.

Regardless, we were talking about ladyparts. And while we were talking about ladyparts, we came up with our own lyrics to the tune of Ebony and Ivory: Mammary and ovary.

Perhaps not very advisedly I tried to convince Alex_72 that men must suffer physical exams too. A prostate exam is horribly unpleasant, I’ve heard. I haven’t had one yet. But I have had a Q-tip shoved up my urethra. Alex didn’t believe me. I described it in some detail which I will spare you. I tried to impress upon her that while the physical pain probably leaves quite quickly, there’s a memory of pain, a psychological pain that stays with you for days. The bid for sympathy was ill advised though because I’m quite sure women have it worse.

Meanwhile, Alex_72 and I came up with a great idea that I am, that we are, by her consent, giving away here and for free. Door to door mammogram service. No. It’s not what you think. Not accompanied by gloves and doctors and clipboards and squishy things. Rather, it combines two very marketable things: bare-breasted women and telegrams. Think singing telegrams with boobs. Or, for the more artfully inclined, and, well, for the larger-chested, messages written on the breasts.

Now, as a man, it’s a little tricky to say, but there can be no denying that there is an industry, industries, built rather high and rather precariously on that fleshy shelf. And everybody loves a telegram. It seems rather like a natural progression, like a charming blend of two things most people love: delivered messages and boobies.

Alex came up with a whole subdivision of the industry. If the messages, either written, sung, or recited, are funny: Tit wit.

I came up with the tag line for the company: Mammograms: Keep Abreast. We really spent quite a lot of time fleshing out the idea, massaging it, and, in the end, milking it for all that it was worth.

I am scared to look. I bet this idea is just delicious enough, just sick enough, to have been done already. And if it hasn’t, well you can have it. I just ask that you send me a message with your gratitude.

SS