News for penises: a friend request

(Well, yes, men’s bodies, sex talk, and man-man sex. Not for kids or the sexually modest.)

A friend request on Facebook, from someone using the name Nick Petersucker (some time ago, FB obviously ceased to care a great deal about its policy of insisting that posters use their real names; now, all sorts of remarkable names come past me on FB). His profile picture, a selfie of someone, first posted in 2012:

(#1)

The information he provides (some of it obviously invention):

Worked at dildo sucker
Studied at Princeton University
Lives in Miami, Florida
From Dildo, Newfoundland And Labrador

with a birth date of  6/13/90 (for what it’s worth, I have no friends on record with a June 13th birthday). Princeton might be right, or it might just be a reference to Princeton as a fabled site of gay male sex. Miami might be right, or it might just be a reference to Miami as a hot (in several senses), fashionable place with a big gay scene. Dildo NL is a real place, but petersucker Nick probably has no connection to it. I’ll get to it in a moment.

A few of his messages from 2012 (with d for dick):

[6/22] Don’t let the d be hard to get, let the d be hard to forget (;

[6/22] He sent me a (; HE WANTS THE D!

[7/8] they want this d fosho

In the last two, he appears to be solicting mouths, not dicks.

On to Newfoundland. From Wikipedia:

Dildo is an unincorporated place on the island of Newfoundland, in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. It is located on the southeastern Dildo Arm of Trinity Bay about 60 kilometres west of St. John’s. South Dildo is a neighboring unincorporated community. The town’s unusual name has brought it a certain amount of notoriety.

The place name “Dildo” is attested in this area since at least 1711, though how this came to be is unknown. The origin of the word “dildo” itself is obscure. It was once used to reference a phallus-shaped pin stuck in the edging of a row boat to act as a pivot for the oar (also known as a “thole pin” or “dole pin”). It was used as early as the 16th century for a cylindrical object such as a dildo glass (test tube), for a phallus-shaped sex toy, as an insult for a “contemptuous or reviling” male, and as a refrain in ballads. The name, then written as “Dildoe”, was first applied to Dildo Island, located offshore from the present-day town of Dildo. This use was recorded in 1711 and 1775, and the name was thereafter applied to the Dildo Arm of Trinity Bay and other local physical features. Social scientist William Baillie Hamilton notes that Captain James Cook [the famous circumnavigating Capt. Cook] and his assistant Michael Lane, who mapped Newfoundland in the 1760s, often displayed a sense of humour in the place names they chose, and were not above selecting names that might offend over-sensitive readers. Regardless of the origin, the name has brought the town of Dildo a measure of notoriety. In the 20th century there were several campaigns to change the name, though all failed.

(#2)

(All real places.)

The origins of dildo are obscure, but the largely metonymic origin of the sexual slang peter seems clearer. From the GDoS entry for its 4th noun peter:

(also pete, petey) (joc. use of proper name + initial letters) the penis, esp.of a young boy [first cite 1870 Cythera’s Hymn: For men must slum and women will try / To gain a small pittance by walking the High. / While Peter stiff is standing. Other cites from the early 20th century on.]

GDoS gives the (agentive) synthetic compounds peter-eater [1952, with rhyme] and peter puffer [1992, with alliteration] ‘one who fellates, cocksucker’, but not the transparent petersucker, peter-sucker, or peter sucker. Presumably petersucker is pre-empted by the older term cocksucker, widespread from the late 19th century on, though it can always be coined for playful usage.

2 Responses to “News for penises: a friend request”

  1. JackH Says:

    A Google image search of the picture reveals that he also goes by the moniker Pussyboi Cumdump. Versatility is important.

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