Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Fetish Words, part 4 of 4

   The most interesting thing to me when I wrote "Unspeakable" was the discovery of a number of websites devoted to fetish words and the apparent prevalence of certain words on the 'fetish' list. For example, I found an entire forum where people wrote about their inability to utter the word 'sneeze.'  Something about the sound of a sneeze perhaps? The ejaculatory quality of sneezing?  At another site, I found people writing about their profound embarrassment at hearing (or worse saying) the word "tissue" (although Kleenex, several people pointed out, was not a problem.) "Stuffed up" was mortifying; "allergies" was okay. For one poster, the phrase "I have a cold" was taboo, but "I'm sick" was acceptable.
      Anybody out there have word fetishes? I'd love to know.
      And by the way, except for the one character in "Unspeakable" who reveals her fetish words during an embarrassing newscast, I never had any idea what the other characters' fetish words were. Not even the ones that eventually get carved into someone's very private extremity!