My favorite nickname was given to me by some boys in jail. I used to visit them once every 2 weeks my fourth year of college, trying to talk with them about school and family and all the things in their lives they could give another try once they were out. But the truth was, I was a middle class half white girl from the northeast who studied foreign affairs and medieval French literature, and they were boys from three Norfolk and Richmond gangs who had been charged with assault, drug offences, and statutory rape. One skinny kid with a stutter, Jerome, had even shot a cop. He told me the one French word he knew: pardon.

I was 22 and did not have a clue as to what I was doing. And yet, every two weeks, I did manage to get the room of 15 to 18 year old males talking about the mundane and the spiritual alike. We told jokes, admitted fears and failures, debated whether it was better to live wild or live long. I also learned their system of names – the names their mothers had given them, the names they had for each other, and the names they gave themselves.

After six months, I had apparently earned my own. Malechai, big, quiet kid who was head of one of the Norfolk gangs stood up and announced, “The boys and I, we decided to give you a name.  As a matter of fact, we all agreed on it,” waving his arm to indicate that the Tidewater boys and even Richmond were in. I said I was flattered, what was it? “It’s Sweet, Sweet Kim.” He paused before sitting back down. “Don’t sweat. We’re not ‘giving you a name’ giving you a name, you know what I mean? You are your own operation, you know that.”

It was soon May. I was about to graduate, leave Charlottesville, take a job in Japan.  I prepared to make my last visit to the detention center to say goodbye to the boys. There had been some turnover that year, and I had already lost some.

Malechai was there, though. He didn’t come to the table, just stood back against the wall. I wrapped up my visit and said my goodbyes. Malechai followed me to the door.

“Your folks coming down from New York for your graduation?”

I said yes.

Then Malechai spoke softly, said he was getting out in a week. He wanted to come by to my graduation party and meet my parents, tell them what a nice young woman I was and how I had given him and his boys so many important things to think about while they were away. He dropped his voice, asked quietly, “Do you think I can do that? Do you think I can stop through and say hello to your mom and dad, Kim?”

The jail-visit program prohibited sharing personal contact information with “the inmates.” But Malechai was looking me in the eye. Was I going to trust him enough to cross paths in the world outside? Or was I going to walk out, into safe anonymity?

I wrote down my address. I gave him the paper. “This is for you, Malechai. Just for you. I’m there until June.” Malechai held the paper in his hands, staring. He finally looked up and said, “I’ll be seeing you.”

Graduation weekend came and went. In two weeks, I would move to Japan.

The day before I left Charlottesville, I got a letter in the mail.

It was from Malechai. He wanted to apologize for not having come by for my graduation party and not having met my family. He was supposed to be released that Tuesday, but got into a fight defending Tyrone Walls from the Tidewater boys and he ended up “hurting one of the kids real bad” so his time was extended. He said he felt bad about that, but felt even worse about asking to meet my mother and father and sister and brother and grandmother, too, and then not showing up. He hoped I wasn’t disappointed. He wished me well in Japan. He would be home in Norfolk in no time and would say hello to his mother for me.

There was a PS.  It said, “Next time I write, I’m going to send you a late graduation present. It will be a bracelet that says ‘Sweet, Sweet Kim’ on it. Do you remember your name? It’s a long one, I know. So I guess I’d better make it a necklace.”

I never got a necklace from Malechai. But I keep the name close to my chest, all the same.

by KTS
San Francisco, CA

Names function to distinguish, to categorize, that is, to limit the referential power of persons, places, and things. For example, “home,” is a very dissimilar signifier, than is “234 Dusseldorf Avenue;” “Cave of the Machpelah” is incredibly unlike “outpost” and “clothes dryer” diverges enormously from “Mechanism for Funding our Repairman’s Next Vacation.”

Names not only distinguish specific cases from generalized examples and stand in for universals. In computer science, for instance, singular designations are given to entire sets of messages to save code creators the need to tediously reconstruct many lines of data each time those creators allude to a distinct function.

Sometimes names shield identities, i.e. separate public and private characteristics, as exemplified by writers’ pen names, or by the pseudonyms. Other times, monikers are meant to relay information to the public. For instance, while a kingdom might be well inhabited, only one resident is titularly “His Excellency.”

In the bigger world, we have “Associate Professors in Chemistry” and “sales associates.” In romance, we have “snuggle-umpkins” and “that-fatuous-person-who-wouldn’t-go-on-more-than-two-shidduch-dates.” Our children, depending on our available memory cells and on the rate at which they create chaos in our homestead are: “Hey You,” “Fruit of My Loins,” or “The-Miscreant-Who-Hid-the-Lizard-in the-Dryer.”

Essentially, names help us, as dictated by collective sensibilities, cope with “semantic interoperability,” with getting beyond the confusion that arises when a message’s recipient doesn’t get the gist intended by a message’s source. Beyond bridging incommensurabilities, names can also function as semantic projectiles used to convey sentiment.

by KJ Hannah Greenberg
Jerusalem, Israel
This piece is excerpted from a larger essay formerly posted by The Jerusalem Post in “Old/New World Discourse.”

The pseudonym Nickie was bestowed upon me by… I have no idea actually. There wasn’t much use of my given name, Nicole, in non-official circumstances until some time in junior high school. Official referring to a large array of situations ranging from botched boarder crossings to an agitated mother who uses the entire tri-nomial in extreme cases. Upon giving your child a handle doesn’t it seem prudent to stop and ruminate on the implications of said name?

Rhyming is the most basic - applying the term basic in every meaning possible - linguistic escapade that trickles in from the dark corners of the mind. Does Nickie rhyme with anything appealing to a pre-adolescent Homo sapien? Roll it over a few times and see what you come up with. I’m wagering a red shoelace and half a pack of cigarettes that there’s nothing complimentary to a pubescent individual that comes to mind in the first five seconds. Upon hearing a name we automatically run it through our own mental relational program to shape and attach it to something that we can remember whether it’s via flattery or humiliation.

The taunting was minor among my cohorts until vocabularies expanded and launched into new realms including words that relate to anatomy, sexuality, texture, and any combination therein. It just so happens that when a concept is new we try to apply it to as many aspects of life as possible. I must have had some grasp on that from an early age since, in the name of minimizing the possibilities of mockery, it became clear to me in the first inklings of adolescence that I needed to revert to my given name. Besides, only strippers are named Nickie.

Nicole “Nickie” Rane Edmison
Oakland, CA

As Emily Rivens had wanted, the stories that were spun, the explanations as to why why why was media and journalist speculation Bibled into truth. They had jobs to do and that’s what they did. They took meager scraplings of fact and wove them into a comprehensible tapestry with an enticing and fashionable skin-driven photograph. The truth behind the matter remained time capsuled, buried under blogs, op-eds, and special features. Even if Rivens wanted to tell the truth she wouldn’t have been heard amidst the whirring noise of publicity machines, printing presses, and stock footage.

Sadly, Emily Rivens died in a plane accident over the mountains of Chile while she toured South America as a United States ambassador of good will to the ailing continent. Winston Graham had been long out of the public eye, resting in the rural outposts of some French countryside but the eagerness for blood was still threatening and the book was published, per Emily Riven’s instructions, a month after her enormous and CNN Live covered memorial service. Simply entitled The Beard.

The book’s biggest seller was the audio version. Emily Rivens herself narrates like you and her are sitting in her study, smoky bourbon in one hand, the smooth curve of a leather armrest in the other while she orchestrates the telling of her very personal and very Technicolor life. There was no need to interrupt her to ask questions because there were no questions that were required to be asked. The Beard had everything covered.

Turns out Rivens needed to wait for this book to be published not for the accusation of libel but, more importantly, for threat of purposeful defamation of character, back alimony and earnings from a divorce incurred forty years back and many other horrific financial burdens that would’ve rendered the Queen of Queens bankrupt.

Emily Rivens knew the young man who was documented cavorting with her husband. She met him on the set of Jane Eyre where he was a simple pastry caterer and she recruited him, as she usually did, for her husband. You see, Emily married Winston knowing full well the secret he kept. For connections, money, a bank account that grew faster than could be spent all she had to do was keep the secret with him. And pretend that she was blissfully married. For years she adored this arrangement especially after Ganymede was born. She even began entrapping young men to relay back to her husband which he was grateful for. Slowly he grew sloppy and rumors abounded. Gossip blogs began to call her names, or speculating on her own sexual orientation which she found disconcerting because it was lies. Once she was even referred to as “Winston’s beard”. She became enraged by the term, found it ugly and hurtful. She took that inner disgust and brought it with her to the humiliating screen-test audition of Jane Eyre and the whispers of “beards” turned to whispers of “Oscars”. All in all, there was little she could do to counter the incessant babble of celebrity commentators because most of what they claimed was true. As boys dove their suntanned bodies into the pool while her husband fawned over them with gifts, vacations and affections, she carried their newborn baby, her skin growing pasty, her arms flabby and stomach sagging, she turned down offers to star in sequels of poorly attended and reviewed movies. After the wrap of Jane Eyre her publicist suggested she look for “alternate representation” because the potential “approaching bombshell” was “too threatening” to her own “professional career.” She was afraid that this “beard-thing” might not be the easiest thing to “recover from”. That evening she hatched herself a plan to disintegrate the marriage while still maintaining her quality of life and full custody of her son.

The prenup barred her from speaking any truths of their arrangement while in or out of the marriage. She alighted upon reading the word “speaking”.

Emily Rivens convinced her assistant Ursula to convince the young pastry chef that, for Ursula’s own kinky enjoyment, wanted to watch a session of him with Winston and would pay handsomely in weekly deposits of supreme and clean cocaine. He easily complied. The rest is history. At home she sat in front of her vanity mirror and, with the aid of a theatrical make-up artist and vexed former lover of Winston’s, she became the one thing she resented.

But in her resentment she shone and exalted in this new character. It became an emblem of her strength and wit, traits no one thought possible for a girl who played a tomboy turned model in a television series aimed at young girls; younger than the characters on the screen and much younger than the actors and actresses who portrayed them. Emily Rivens surprised everyone and everyone became enamored by her audacity. That was the high she lived on for fifty years, climbing to her legendary spot and staking her claim and hold on the throne of Icon, deservedly and with very little blood on her hands.

by David Morini
Hokkaido, Japan

The Beard (Part 1)
The Beard (Part 2)

Three days before Emily Rivens’ premiere of Jane Eyre starring herself as Jane and a young television heartthrob coated in make-up, wearing a padded suit as Edward Rochester, the internet was flooded with NSFW photos and video depicting Winston, her husband and longtime accused homosexual, of passionately indulging in what had been nothing but rumor and speculation. Until then.

The 20 minute clip showed Winston Graham and an unknown, handsome young Latino, filming each other on a yacht that was floating in the middle of an ocean. Some speculated it was just off the California coast while others believed it was shot during downtime in the Mediterranean while Graham filmed the third movie in the successful Spencer: For Hire franchise.

Within a day the boy was located and an exclusive interview was conducted but with his face shaded, his voice neutralized, expressing his fear of retaliation on the part of his one time lover. Why he bothered to shield his identity when, by then, hundreds of journalists stormed his numerous public education schools to gain access to yearbooks and school paper articles, was the idea of his face-time craving attorney.

Emily Rivens remained silent behind the ivy choking walls of her Frank Lloyd Wright designed home. No one came in or out and it was well known that Winston Graham was collecting his forces on the other side of the meridian, in Stockholm, for a barrage of lawsuits from his side of the fence and everyone else’s. His team was spinning illusions, smoking smoke and shattering mirrors, giving Silicon Valley too much credit for technology far from executable by saying the footage had been doctored. When he managed to contact his wife she, a personal friend suggested to People, told him she was humiliated and wanted no part in this double life he had been leading and told him to “F@ck off.”

Rivens’ first public appearance was impeccable, transcendent and legendary. Entertainment news rocked back and forth that week, never having so much fodder to gorge upon. Two wild stories in the space of a week, the later trumping the former.

When asked if the rumors were true, she responded, “What rumors?” and smiled. When asked if there was to be a divorce, she responded, “I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask.” When asked what would happen to her infant son, she responded, “Ganymede’s only concerns right now are when he gets to suckle from my breast. Other than that, I worry about his regular diaper changing schedule. Please, enjoy the movie.”

Years whirled on; The Beard became an icon for homosexual men everywhere. Her grace and poise in stepping around being viciously lied to and trodden on, even by gays themselves, led her to rise like an Airbus 360 into their rainbow skies triumphant and sexy. Rivens went from mousy teenage soap star to haphazard and lukewarm actress to Halloween costume worthy, remarkable in the literal sense, and queen of telling it like it is with the wit of Mae West and the audacity of Rosie O’Donnell. She was trumpeted as the prophet of the return to the nitty-gritty, not so nice Golden Era of Hollywood.

Near Rivens’ retirement she was interviewed for Barbara Walter’s 10 Most Intriguing People of the Year hosted by Ruby Galaouix where she stated that she had written a memoir but was unable to publish it because of truths that would be contested to the point of exhaustion and she didn’t have it in her.

“Are you saving someone? Winston, perhaps. Some undue embarrassment?”

“Saving? Undue? He’s had his embarrassment and he’s past due. No, Ruby, I’m not interested in inflating the egos of judges or enriching the soil of our civil dispute judiciary system. They don’t need my legacy buggering up their tubes. This book deserves an unchallenged release and it will have what it deserves. It’s going to have to wait for me, or everyone else in it, to keel over.” And she looked into the camera, stroking her cheeks with her diamond ringed hand. “Either way, it’ll get out.”

Queens all over the country placed bets on who would kick the bucket first; The Beard or Winston Graham. Las Vegas casinos got in on the action and added a category for the two celebrities on their gambling boards. But the looming question remained: What could be more damaging than what had happened nearly forty years previous? Turns out quite a bit.

by David Morini
Hokkaido, Japan

The Beard (Part 1)
The Beard (Part 3)

Loretta Gail Morris was born in 1957, two months premature and small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. She was carried in a cardboard shoebox and slept soundly in a dresser drawer. I imagine day and night passed in irregular hours as the ceiling lamp sun and tan papered walls opened and shut periodically above her peach-sized head. Tiny fingers reached out, curled and reflexively retracted to avoid being trapped in the sliver between light and dark.

How large her parents must have seemed, a Mount Rushmore of towering new faces, their liquor breath as familiar as her mother’s skin. How loud they must have sounded, their familiar voices no longer muffled by the womb, and then muffled again when the drawer was shut. I wonder if the dark corners and wood smell calmed her, or if she waited in infant terror for them to return.

Loretta Gail’s mother and father raised her in rural West Virginia until she was removed from their home in the early 1960’s.

Loretta Gail McGlothlin became the least-valued new sibling in a family already containing two natural sisters, Patsy and Peggy. I imagine that as the house where she became fiercely religious, a Pentecostal Southern Baptist. She developed a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. In one hand she held Him like an encyclopedia to explain all that had come before and in the other He was a shield she wielded to protect her against all that was to come.

Mama became Loretta Gail Shelton when she married in 1977 when she was 20, my father 22. They met in Virginia at a church group at which my father was the only man in the entire room with blonde hair and blue eyes. They courted for some time with frequent interruptions of military service until finally, my father asked Mama to marry him. Later he informed her that he had been prepared should she have said no. A date with a redheaded woman was broken by Mama’s affirmative response.

We three children will be born at the dawn of the Reagan era to young, southern military parents. Mama will begin making babies when she is just a baby herself, and will be broken into a grown up world through her responses to her children’s lives.

Her favorite name to be called by her children will be Mama. We won’t use it. Instead I will call her Mom. As I grow older she will become Ma, which she hates because she thinks it is vulgar and disrespectful. When I get particularly feisty I will call her Mother. This is far too formal for her taste and rings patronizingly like the use of a child’s full name when they have committed a crime. I will call her Ma long after I leave home until finally, without warning and without trying, I will begin to call her Mama. By then it is too late. She will be suspicious of me, sensing that I am ready to let her go. In 2007, the summer before Mama turns 50, I will.

by Dene Shelton
San Francisco, CA

Kids say, “Hey Craphouse”
I’d respond, “That’s juvenile”
“But that’s who we are”

by Albert Krathaus
San Francisco, CA

One of the few lines I remember from Pulp Fiction is: “I’m American, honey. Our names don’t mean shit.” This is one of the first things Bruce Willis’ character says to his French love interest. I totally disagree. So does the writer; Butch is a boxer, which makes the line hilarious.

My first name is Lisa, middle name Jan. I prefer my initials and have since approximately 1996. No, I’m not transgendered. No, I don’t have anything against my parents. At this point, I’ve gone by L.J. for so long that some people don’t know what my full name is. But some people who do often resent my not using it on a day-to-day basis.

My parents, like most Jews, named me after beloved deceased relatives. My dad wanted to name me Jan after his cousin; Jan died at the age of 11 because she “had a hole in her heart” and besides this sad fact, she was rarely mentioned again. My dad wanted her name and her spirit to be continued. Suspicious family members considered this bad luck, so Jan became my second name. Lisa is for my Hebrew name Leah, after my great-grandmother, a small, tough woman who was nicknamed “The General” by her son-in-law, and possibly (shanda!) of some Italian descent. Her daughter, my grandmother, called me Leah-lah. Leah means weary. It also means ruler or mistress in Assyrian. Leah was a matriach for the 12 tribes of Israel. She had “tender eyes” and cried a lot, probably because she was a prophet. Maybe she was simply weary from having seven of Jacob’s kids. All sons, no less! People have asked me why Jews don’t simply give their kids the actual Hebrew names instead of Americanizing them; assimilation, I guess. I was this close to being Lena, or Lori, Lissette.

So, why L.J., after all this? After I graduated from college, I made an autobiographical 16mm film that was screened at NYU, on Manhattan Cable, and in the living rooms of my family and friends. Somewhere during the creative process that began as a music video concept and ended with my submitting the piece to festivals, I changed my name. Or rather, I reverted. My dad has always called me Lisa Janny and referred to me as L.J. when I was a very small kid. I associate the nickname with buoyancy and positive memories. When I sent the film out, I used my nickname to represent the part of me that is unfettered and creative. L.J. pursued what she wanted to without worrying about the consequences. After I moved on to new projects and jobs and relationships, I wanted to hold on to that essence.

What’s interesting, though, are the challenges that using a nickname presents. There are many people who will always call me Lisa and think L.J. is ridiculous, weird, or masculine. One ex-boyfriend says “L.J.” sounds like a truck driver. Another friend says it’s too southern for a girl from Brooklyn. (Although on Avenue X it made a hell of a lot of sense.) Plus, I’m not going to call my doctor and make an appointment for L.J. Not to mention I certainly don’t want to be called L.J. in bed. But now, Lisa sounds harsh to me. Incomplete, even.

Plus, nicknames are cool, let’s face it. I’ve worked in offices where there are 5 Lisas, but only one L.J. And, as crass as it sounds, in the competitive, narcissistic society we live in, having a brand for yourself is important. Our names represent us first and foremost, before any of our qualities can be assessed.

What has emerged is a tiered system. Naturally, my mom calls me Lisa. I tolerate certain old friends calling me Lisa and I don’t blame them; that was how I referred to myself when we met. With new friends I am L.J. but I always tell them what the initials reference. At work I always use my initials, which often requires support from Human Resources. I like close friends and men with whom I am or want to be romantically involved to call me Lisa Jan. It feels special and endearing. And of course, to my dad, I’ll always be Lisa Janny. (Or Munchkin Lady, or in honor of my long-gone pacifier, Nippis Pippis Van Flippis.)

Using my nickname makes me feel good about myself and differentiates me. But maybe more than anything, L.J. keeps my full name, and the meanings behind it, intimate.

by L.J. Fogel
Los Angeles, CA

The film premiere of Jane Eyre in West Hollywood starring Emily Rivens was to be the gold-plated medallion that defined her otherwise mediocre career.

When she stepped out from a black stretch Cadillac limo taking the breadbox hand of her body guard; when her red Hermes heel clicked on the pavement and she rose into the flooded photographic light with her limp and lucid Gaultier dress, her brown, tightly woven hair and her eyes sparkling with sobriety she sent a ripple of gasps followed by an echo of digital flash and the imitation click-n-whir tones of digital cameras.
Forever after that Thursday evening; in trivia, on game shows, or hair salon small talk, she was known as “that actress who wore the beard”. Or, more simply… The Beard.

Emily Rivens grinned in spite of the uncomfortable glue and crinkle of faux skin, a beard perfectly manicured and curiously attractive on her high cheeked and china bone skin. She smiled virgin white teeth and regally waved towards that inhale of documentarian breath which was exhaled in an onslaught of questions.
“Is divorce pending?” “Are the rumors true?” “What will happen to baby Ganymede?”
In fact, Baby Ganymede did follow in the arms of Ursula, Emily Rivens’ personal assistant and rumored cocaine addict, friends of Mary-Kate. His one and a half-year old cherubic face was alight with confusion and curiosity at the adults that paid him and his mother so much attention.

Rivens’ moment was a triumph, though personal in every way. To the dismay of her distributor and Jane Eyre’s producers, her stunt did nothing for critic satisfaction or audience turn-out. What her guerilla performance did initiate was a crack in the nauseous veneer of new millennia celebrity. Once it was established that Rivens was neither drunk nor mentally fatigued; that all her faculties were in as much of a row as ducks crossing the street to Boston Common; that her publicist was taking a backseat neither denying nor confirming that she assisted in this dramatic metaphorical press release; the weekly glossy magazine purchasers revolted and demanded more from their starlets. The bar had been raised. They wanted more guts. Suddenly, any boring, dull and playing-it-safe celebrity went under with the red carpet tide while those with the personalities of fireworks, cheetahs, and jalapeños took center stage. But in any uprising there has to be a sacrifice.

Emily Rivens was married to one of the most powerful men in Hollywood and two year consecutive winner of Sexiest Man Alive as told by Vogue 2007 and 2008. Every year, for the past ten, he starred in an action/sci-fi/thriller flick that internationally grossed more millions than China had people. He consistently brought home the goal of blockbuster. Some would say it had to do with his talents as an actor, his ability to bring human life and morality to roles intended to be gritty, action oriented, and militaristic. Others would say that his ability to adapt and then to quickly be forgotten saves him from viewer fatigue, that every year he’s like a new puppy because we inevitably forget that he already came around once before. Either way, he was huge. And his name was Winston Graham.

Strangely enough, as years weather The Beard’s story into legend, when people discuss her they often fail to know the reason for her facial growth. Little did Emily realize that her gesture would blind too well, get her point across too clearly, that her ripple would overshadow even the circumstances they were representing. The persona of Winston Graham made it out of the foxhole alive and well, reputation intact only after fifty years of gestation. Two years post-The Beard his career tried to hurdle the mass deception with a Christmas feel-good, track coach teaches the handicapped high school flick but fell flat with a face full of white marking chalk.

by David Morini
Hokkaido, Japan

The Beard (Part 2)
The Beard (Part 3)