January 23, 2022: Salutations!

I polished up my red boots. I was striding down Hawthorne, gleaming away, and a nice young Black woman stopped me and admired the boots. I suggested she admire the polishing job as well, and as a benediction upon parting, she said, “Get it, Queen!”

This is why I mentioned that she was young and Black. “Queen,” from one of my sixty-year-old white girlfriends, however cheery, would have been put on, performative, slightly jokey. It wouldn’t have been precisely like the years when I’d wince, hearing the white teenage sons of my friends greet each other with, “Yo, dawg, what up?”

But it would have been a bit like that. Fakey, funny, layered, self-conscious…. something.  

About a year ago, I somehow joined a Facebook group dedicated to (and I quote) Empowered Women Empowering Women Supporting a Woman. It was, I believe, inspired by Kamala Harris becoming VP, but it now has more than half a million members, and it is mostly selfies (plus numerous pictures of adorable granddaughters and regal ninety-year-olds). The vast majority of women who post are Black. The comments are positive (the moderators boot trolls right away), and many, many comments read, “Beautiful, Queen!” or “Get it, Queen!” or “Love all you Queens.”

This is generally not offered in the Yaasss, Queen drag-race, “Work it!” spirit, and the recipients of the affirmation are seldom in full glam, dressed to kill, though they are often dressed up for a job interview (Get it, Queen!) or a retirement party, church or a wedding. It’s more: You, a grown, middle-aged or even elderly Black woman, are truly regal. It’s nice, and I’ve been enjoying it for a year now.

Because it’s a majority Black group, I have learned some new lingo, for instance, the term “homegoing,” rather than memorial, funeral, or celebration of life. So I’ve become familiar with “Queen” as a complimentary yet respectful address to a mature woman, but I haven’t adopted it. Nor have I appropriated it. It would be a slightly curious look on me, is all.

(Ooh, Appropriating something is taking something that it is not APPROPRIATE for you to take. Whoa.)

However!

If a nice, young Black woman chooses to send me off with, “Get it, Queen!” I accept with pleasure. Sure, it might have been the drag-race version, offered in jest and appreciation of my red boots, but it might have been the You are just a cool older woman version. My boots don't even have heels to speak of. Either way, it felt warm and welcoming, coming from her.

It’s all context: where, when and who is speaking. In this context, I liked Queen more than I would have liked “Dear,” which ...

Okay, revised version. I had to excise the rest of that paragraph, because of protests from a nurse friend. Let's do this: If at some point you hear a medical professional calling me "Dear," and if I am infirm of mind but very hostile, try saying, "You know, she once told me she disliked being called 'Dear" in a medical setting, but she thought it would be fun to be addressed as 'Comrade.'"

It's worth a try. 

I liked Queen more than “Ma’am,” though I don’t get all huffy about Ma’am, like some of my friends, who think it is a “you are old” insult. (I have terrible news for them.) I figure Ma’am  is some vestigial childhood “respect-your-elders” thing.

I will take “Ma’am,” over “Miss,” any day. “Miss” is deeply stupid, a bizarre, “I’m flirting with little old you, because I bet THAT doesn’t happen much and I’m going to give you a vanity thrill.”  Bleah.

“Honey” has been good a few times, especially from a gay male waiter who consoled me when my luggage got lost in St. Louis, during a snowstorm, and the special of the night was, I swear, hamburger soup. He brought me a drink, my new friend Randall, and said, Oh, Honey.

I can’t think of a good time for “Toots,” but I’m open for the surprise success, should it happen.

There was one time when I went to a bar, alone, in Nashville, because I thought it would be wasteful NOT to go hear music on the one night I would ever be in Nashville – and also, I didn’t want to be too chicken to go out alone. I sat next to a very old man on a bar stool, and he called me “Baby.” Made my day. I wouldn’t recommend other strangers call me “Baby,” but coming from him it was great. The music was really good, too.

A social worker, having tried to make headway with my obstreperous, demented mom at a bad moment, once took me outside and said, “Sister, you’ve got your hands full.”  It was an excellent moment for “Sister,” which neatly telegraphed “I’m an ally, not a critic.”

In more contemporary usage, I’ve never called another woman “Bitch.” Neither in affection (current usage) nor in anger. I grew up when it was purely a misogynist insult, and I don’t want to reclaim it. But even if I were more in tune with the times, I think it would be a curious look on me, an attempt to appear hip. (You may recall that I was recently described by a younger friend as a warm-hearted person who was somewhat with it. That role has been working for me for a long time.)

I was playing cards, a few years back, with a whole bunch of twenty-something women who’d been on a rugby team together, and who were funny and raucous and uninhibited, and one of them was losing, losing, losing, and they were all deeply competitive, and the tension was mounting, and it was hilarious, and then the tide turned, and the former loser wiped the floor with the rest of us, and threw down her cards, and said, “Suck it, bitches!”

I was a tiny bit envious. If I had wiped the floor with all of them (I’d been losing too, more quietly), the most I could have pulled off with style might have been, “Take that, you nest of vipers!” Right? Her line would have sounded angrier, coming from me.

Thinking about never saying bitch-in-anger, I suddenly flashed back to my most heated work exchange ever. A new hotshot had undercut me in a meeting, and I went to her office afterward, expecting to have a minor airing of differences. I hadn’t realized she was furious. I knocked on her door jamb, and she  looked up, eyes narrowed, and said - struggling not to say something worse - “YOU … are… SUCH… (inhale, exhale) a … BRAT!”

We should pause here, because there was a pause. I flared up, searching for something to say back, something really cutting, but I could not find a mot juste, and time was wasting, so I just launched into it, not knowing where I was headed. 

I ended up replying, with suppressed vehemence, “Well….. YOU…. are…. (inhale, exhale)… TOO.”

Cat fight!

I actually thought “brat” was a great playground move. I had a whole generation on her, but we both acted like six year olds.