What Did You Call Me?
"Stupid bitch," the miscreant on the barstool behind me muttered, fixing his singularly undesirable attention, once more, on the bourbon and coke before him on the bar.
My feet at once halted my egress of the smoky pub and my head began to grow tolerably warm. Slowly, deliberately, I turned to face the transgressor, and addressed him.
"What did you just call me?" I inquired icily, my left eyebrow raised and my mouth nothing but a lipstick-colored slash across my face. The low-life appeared not to hear my request, thus, I restated my demand more forcefully. He attended my question this time, and did me the great service of replying.
"I said," he began quietly, "stupid bitch!" The last two, offensive words slurred out in a shout.
"Were you referring to me, by chance?"
"Honey, I don’ see no more bitches ‘round ‘ere."
I smiled thinly, and answered, "In that case, I submit that you have misused the term bitch and, therefore, must be unaware of its proper use."
"Oh, I know what it mean," he retorted. "It mean a dumb whore, like you."
"Ah, ah, ah," I teased, waggling my finger at him. "I suggest that you are mistaken, and, in fact, that you are the only person to whom the word bitch may be applied here."
"Yeah, how’s’at?"
I settled myself on one of the flimsy barstools and undertook the enlightenment of the pathetic sot before me. "As you would find by looking in any dictionary, a bitch is defined as a female dog, but sometimes used as the female of other four-legged beasts, commonly, those of the fox and wolf. Plainly, there are none of those in this fine establishment."
"Plainly," the barfly mimicked the higher pitch of my more feminine voice.
"Furthermore, were you to search a more thorough lexicon, you would find that bitch can, indeed, be applied to a person, and, in truth, to a woman-- "
"No shit, Sherlock."
"But only," I continued, ignoring his crude interjection, "to those women who behave lewdly, sensually, or who are deceitful in sexual matters."
"Idn’at what I said, dumb ‘ores, like you."
"I think you will find, with little mental effort, or perhaps it will require more, considering your inebriation, that you are mistaken in asserting that I am stupid. At this point in time, in light of my sobriety and your painful lack thereof, my intelligence is superior to yours, as I am conversing easily and you cannot manage to add anything of use. Moreover, since I refused to accompany you to your residence for the purpose of sexual activity, or, for that matter, any other purpose, it is evident that neither am I a whore.
"In fact, you are the bitch here, since the word can be correctly applied to a man. Stevenson did so in Catriona: ‘Ay, Davie, ye’re a queer character, a queer bitch after a’, and I have no mind of meeting with the like of ye.’
"As for other noun forms of bitch, there is no mining tool for recovering lost or broken rods here. Nor is there a primitive lamp made of bacon grease and a rag wick. To address the matter of verbs, I suspect I may be guilty of bitching."
"Well, ‘at’s what bitches do."
I disregarded his ejaculation, "Just now I called you bitch, verily, I asserted it, and to do so is to bitch. Also, I am complaining, quite legitimately, of your poor word usage. To be perfectly clear, I am bitching about it."
"I’d say so."
"You, however, are guilty of all the other types of bitching. You have been spiteful, malicious, and unfair. You have hesitated to contribute anything of import. And finally, you have thoroughly ruined my evening; one could accurately say, you have bitched it."
"What’s yer point?" the wretch asked.
I extracted myself from the barstool and straightened my clothes, "Frankly, I’ve had enough of you, bitch, and your bitching. I shall take my leave, and I wish you a most unpleasant evening, with a bitch of a morning tomorrow."