2 Texans Down Under

An English-speaking American living in English-speaking Australia gets the chance to learn a lot of new words. Today I learned “pashing.” I encountered it for the first time ever in the book review section of the most recent “The Weekend Australian.”

A literary critic named Stella Clark began her review of two novels by saying, “Spontaneous sex-change may be less alarming today than a man pashing his mother but many of us would, presumably, have trouble empathising with either sensation.”

Word usage here, for the non-native, requires some caution.

Despite the fact that there is a street not far from where we live called “Fanny Street” (and no others in all of Greater Brisbane), I have learned since moving here that one should not say, in polite company, f—y because f—y is a slang term for a very private part of human bodies that are female.

In addition, I have learned that “root” is, according to my Australian dictionary, a “course colloquialism” for an act of sexual intercourse. Not surprising, perhaps, but new to my ears, just as “pashing his mother” was new to my eyes when I read it this morning.

I suspected the worst, of course, even before I read further and saw Stella Clark’s reference to Sigmund Freud’s belief that beneath the surface Read the rest of this entry »