Switch: Isobel Williams

This week's blog is written by Isobel Williams, author of Switch: The Complete Catullus, which is published this month. Use the code AUGBOOKS for 20% off the collection and free UK P&P.

 Slang Bang

Catullus may be dead but he is still current – and a switch, flickering between dominant and submissive. Once he would have been called AC/DC (alternating current, direct current), a faded slang term for bisexual, even though the equivalent word (hence the concept) didn’t exist in ancient Rome.

Slang, though. What should I do with Catullus’s casual put-down, scortillum, in poem 10? The Latin dictionary Lewis and Short says ‘a little or young harlot’. That has a welcome tang of the King James Version but maybe I should move on.

Gems from the vanishing gay argot Polari wouldn’t feel right, even if I knew any. Slut, slag and slapper are amateurs. Sex worker won’t do when Catullus is camping about in the Forum.

I message an English friend.

Me: Modern language please: she's a brass, she's on the game, what? Prostitute too clinical. Prozzie too colloquial. Hooker too American. I should get out more.

James BL Hollands: Um, ho is the big one, depends on context, is it positive or negative?

Me: Neutral-to-negative. ‘He introduced me to his new girlfriend and I could see straight away she was’ etc. I think ho is too streety. Btw can you spell it hoe?

James: I'm in a motel in LA at the moment

Me: Can you see any hos?

James: Just ho

Plural? Hoes yeah

What class is the person speaking?

Me: Toff

James: Tart?

Me: Could do [I realise later I couldn’t because ‘jam’ is in the previous line.]

James: Whore

I would put whore

Me: Well push me on the dog bowl and break my necklace [This is a reference to Prince Harry’s personal trauma.]

James: Ho is too streety unless they're trying to be hip

Haha innit!! We need the transcript

Me: Does anyone except me say brass?

James: Whore is harsh and a big put down

No just you

A lot of those kinda words were amazing. I remember being taken around Soho by a member of the Chelsea Headhunters who was carrying a baseball bat and he said to me ‘redacted                                    ….]’ and I got a little frisson I did

Me: You have lived, James

James: I actually turned to him and went ‘You do know no one says that any more don't you’ and he was like ‘Not now, James’

This motel is a bit scary, knocking shop type thing. The guy in the next door room is a Blood and dresses all in red tracksuits and the maid shouted at him today

YOU WAN END UP ON THE NOOOOS? THEN GIVE IT BACK! GIVE IT BACK NOW!

And he was like NO

And then she shouted at him again and he was like sorry sorry sorry and went and stood outside

Me: Jeeze

Vacuum cleaner hose

James: And the gay way to spell it is heaux, for future reference

Me: Aha right!

Ask that Blood if he knows the heaux from Herstmonceux

Then run like hell or call the maid

James: I'm reaaaally trying to avoid him