August 6, 2005

pendeja

Chatting with Sue T the other day while waiting for take out food at Chevy’s (note to self to never do that again - the food was cold (my office was a mere 100 feet away), they forgot the tortillas for my steak fajitas (which meant my dinner couldn’t technically be called fajitas anymore, just cold strips of steak on top of cold (should have been hot) vegetables), and call me picky (PICKY!), but guacamole generally isn’t brown. Whew ... that's a lot of parenthesises.

Anyways, Sue T was telling me about her men woes and how she has decided to no longer fall for men who didn’t want her. She told Pete, who she’s had a crush on for the past 10 years, that she could no longer hang out with him if he didn’t like-her like-her ... he doesn’t. She was gonna tell another guy the same thing later this week.

I was so proud of her and told her:
“Good for you for deciding to not be a pendeja.”
“What does that mean?”
“You lived in Brooklyn, you should know.”

Ever since I learned to speak English, I’ve always spoken, thought, and dreamt in English, but occasionally, only the Spanish word will do. Pendeja (pendejo) is one of those words.

Different countries have different meanings, but we always used it to mean sucker. In some parts, it’s slang for the hair surrounding an anus (not that I’ve seen much of it in the gay world – for Pete’s sake (not Sue T’s Pete), please stop shaving your privates – some of us like it), so I can see where sucker can derived from that (hangs with an asshole). The further south you go, the cleaner the meaning; I think it means silly in Argentina.

Anyways, I’m sitting at the bar during the beginning of happy hour and was ever so grateful I wasn’t drinking at the time because I would have certainly shot beer out of my nose when Sue T said:

“Does pendeja mean easy?”

A loud and hearty laugh escaped.

“Honey, you haven’t had sex since 1988. Easy doesn’t exist in your personal dictionary.”

That girl always makes me laugh.

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