Taint

By far, Frank's favorite word is taint. It gives him power, makes him smile, serves as his go-to conversational starter at bars. He uses it as a noun, verb, and adjective. When I call him and he picks up the phone, he answers, "Hey Taint, what's up?" When he talks about his baby nephew, he affectionately refers to him as "that little taint." When the song "Tainted Love" comes on the radio, he howls in delight.

Our large group at the bar has now dwindled to five -- me, Frank, Dave, Tiffany, and Shankar. Dave's like: "So what's a taint?"

And Frank nods expectantly and rubs his hands together in glee. "That area between your ball sac and your asshole? The most magnificent part of the human anatomy? It's called a taint."

"Otherwise known as the perineum, or more popularly, the gooch," I add.

"Exactly!" Frank says, and then he turns to Dave again to inform him that "taint" was his 2006 Word of the Year. Which I can vouch for, because that's the year Frank wouldn't shut up to me about three things: the White Sox winning the World Series, Journey's "Don't Stop Believing", and the word "taint."

Dave's amused, so Frank continues. "Know what a merkin is?"

"What."

"A pubic wig."

Dave laughs a little harder, Tiffany rolls her eyes, and Shankar, who's still learning the English language because he's only been living in the U.S. for two years now, he repeats the word to himself a couple times, stamping it firmly onto his memory. Merrrkin, he says. Merrrrkin. It's impossible to ignore the mental image of him returning to India and telling his mother about all of the great things he's learned in America.

I vouch for Frank again. "It sounds like an auto repair shop, doesn't it? Like Merlin, or Meineke. But it's a legitimate word. Google it for yourself."

And Frank, thrilled that we're all having this conversation, he says, "That was my 2007 Word of the Year."

"So what's 2008?"

"Smegma."

"What?"

"I came across this word when I brought carrots to work for lunch and discovered this white stuff growing on it. My coworker told me it looked like smegma, a filmy accumulation of moisture found under a guy's foreskin or a girl's clit."

And that, my friends, is Frank totally in his element. He's entertained Dave, alienated Tiffany, and corrupted Shankar. He's as giddy as I've ever seen him. But there's still something on his mind.

"I... I mean, I know there's still plenty of time left, ya know? I know it's only April. But I still have no idea what the 2009 Word of the Year will be."

Frank frowns a little and scratches his goatee. He dismissively waves his hand when Dave offers the term "duck water".

Minutes pass quietly, and then...

"I got your word, dude," I say, slamming my fist on the table victoriously. "DOCKING. That's your word. Docking."

"...docking?" everyone says, unimpressed.

"Brace yourselves..." I begin, clearing my throat. "You got two homosexuals, right? And one's cut and the other is uncut. They touch their penises together. The uncut guy pulls back his foreskin, and then folds the foreskin over the head of the cut guy. It ends up looking pretty much like a Chinese finger trap. I'm not sure what happens after they achieve this, but it is what it is. DOCKING!"

Frank grins in approval, Dave's about to fall out of his chair in laughter, Tiffany is face down on the table, covering her ears, Shankar is repeating the word several times and pointing two of his index fingers against each other illustratively, and it's at this moment that I realize that I have won, and Frank has lost.