Penis Revisited

My sister, Lisa, had a friend who had a peculiar idiosycracy of bestowing upon those in her inner circle a name of her own design. Once renamed, you would then only be referred to by that name regardless of the circumstances. She was an adult, not a child, so I found the behavior particularly fascinating. For instance, Lisa became "Tina," not privately, but to everyone in her friend's world, all of whom had pseudonyms as well. Even my mom and dad were given new monikers. Everyone would go along with the charade in her presence, and return to their given names in her absence. I found it impossible to keep track of who was who in this group of renamed friends. To my knowledge, I was never christened as such, though no telling who I was in the privacy of her mind.

Creative Ownership

I acknowledge that "taking possession" of others, of anything, is common to all of our behavior in so many complex ways. And while it is not specific to narcissism, and doesn't fall under the categorization of narcissism put out by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it is a foible common to the narcissist. It was a theme that I found throughout my research for AoaN.

Naturally, this was to become Tyler LePerdu's fate: to chronically claim creative ownership of the world around him, the people in it, the language used, concepts, paradigms such as psychology, and his own body. One way to capture this, I thought, was to exploit the preposterous cliche' of penis-naming, specifically the naming being done by the holder of the penis, so to speak. Doing so would both fulfill my needs for the character and indulge my hankering for the absurd.

Of The Celebrity

Imagine my elation when the following blurb from ContactMusic.com was brought to my attention:

Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin reveals his pet name for his penis in his new book Junior - he calls his appendage "Floyd." The actor is currently on a tour promoting the collection of stories, poems and personal observations. He explains, "I had to do a reading and I did a Q+A afterwards, and somebody asked me where I came up with the name Floyd. I didn't come up with it, if I was going to come up with something, it would have been "Kroll the Conquerer"... or something like "Enrique", something Latino...It was kind of bestowed upon me I guess you could say. If I could have picked something, it probably wouldn't have been that. Now the world knows, it's in print."