He had come across it in a book he read as a young man, Booth Tarkington’s Seventeen. Booth Tarkington was a writer for young men in the 1930s, my father’s era. His Penrod might have been the Philip Roth’s Portnoy of the ’70s. I am not sure. I only know that men now in their 70s remember Booth Tarkington from their youth. I remember borrowing Seventeen from the Maryknoll High School library just to find my nickname. The 17-year-old hero had a crush, called an infatuation then, on an unbearable young girl who spoke in baby talk. She sees a sweet cute dog (disgusting to describe a dog as "sweet" and "cute") and calls it a "tweetums tootums wittle dog."
My father must have been beguiled by the word "tweetums" because that’s the nickname he gave the "tweetums, tootums wittle" bundle they brought home from the hospital. It could have been worse. He could have called me "tootums," or even worse, "wittle," which would have been awkward when I grew up to be a "warge."
"Tweetums" is not an easy name to catch so people have come up with their own versions. One of my grandmother’s friends used to call me Chootums, a denture thing. I used to get mail addressed to Treetops Gonzalez. My American boss gave my nickname a nickname. He called me Chirp. My Gonzalez granduncle, Bienvenido, when he was president of UP, told my mother that an American professor on campus then was so taken with my nickname that he named his daughter Tweetums Gonzalez. Somewhere in the world there must be a Tweetums Gonzalez Smith or Jones. It was downhill after that. I would be told about pet dogs named after me. One day I found myself eating an empanada carrying the brand Tweetums.
I was baptized Concepcion Barbara, named after my maternal grandmother. The American nuns in Maryknoll where I went to school called me "Cahn sep see own." I can still hear them calling me to the blackboard to diagram a sentence. My mother was sending me to a European finishing school so I had a French tutor named Magalie who was shocked to discover that my real name was Concepcion. "It’s like being named ‘sex’," she told my mother. "If you will send her to Europe, try to change her name or the poor girl will suffer." So my passport name became C. Barbara Gonzalez.
Only my mother and I remember that. My grade school and high school classmates have a hard time calling me Barbara but are comfortable calling me Tweetums. As I aged and grew into a credible person, I wanted Barbara to take hold but people still called me Tweetums or, if they found that too long, they called me Twee or Ms. Twee respectfully. In the family I’m Mom or Tita Twee or Nannie to my grandchildren, who couldn’t say Granny when they were small. Lola Tweetums is too ridiculous for words.
Then Tweetums found its way into swardspeak or gay talk or whatever you call it. It became somewhat derogatory. If you were described as "pa-tweetums" it meant you tended to play coy. Every time I heard tweetums I flinched. It’s hard to adjust to the fact that your nickname is no longer just that. It has actually become part of the vernacular. It’s public property. I wonder what Booth Tarkington and my dad would have to say about that. They must be turning in their graves.
I opened the brown envelope a friend sent me. It held a new magazine, something like Playboy or Penthouse but a local version. On the front page the headline: Is Your Girlfriend Pa-Tweetums in Bed? I was shocked. "Whose bed?" was my mind’s initial reaction as I recognized my name, the name I respond to, the name that has consistently stuck with me, my identity. I am in someone’s bed not doing a good job? Wait, wait, wait! Don’t hyperventilate! This is not you. I feel responsible for bad performance. At the same time I feel betrayed but I don’t know whom to blame.
I think of my names’ long saga, how we changed from Concepcion to Barbara so I wouldn’t feel like I was named "sex," how Tweetums seemed to attach itself to me better than Barbara even if it sounded absurd for a grandmother. Now that I’m a grandmother of eight I see my name on the cover of a girlie magazine?!? Is this what my life boils down to. It’s too late to change my name, now over half-a-century old. Apparently my name has become part of the language, might even show up in a dictionary sometime. If this is the meaning – something coy and hokey – and the context, I hope I’m dead by then. I hope no one associates it with me the person. But how is that possible when it was/is my name?
So, what’s in a name? Would a rose by any other name really smell as sweet? I don’t know. I’ve just discovered there are feelings attached to a name and when you see that you’re rated as not doing very well in bed, even if you know they’re not talking about you, you want to either change your name or do much better. Performance anxiety. That’s what’s in a name. Someone should have told Shakespeare about that.