Our neighbor is applying for a job as a professor and part of her job interview will involve lecturing to a class, so last night a bunch of us got together and listened to her practice her Salem Witch Hunt lecture (her expertise is in colonial history). It was quite good. She’s got a lot of knowledge and presents it well.
At one point she mentioned how the confessing witches described in lurid detail their covenant with the Devil which, along with several other intriguing details, involved kissing his butt. Literally. To make a deal with the Evil One they believed you had to apply your lips to his posterior.
And they described this in lurid detail. Lurid.
Being a lover of words, I immediately began to think of ways to allude to the act of kissing demon tush that would fall short of lurid but would nonetheless be evocative. I came up with three:
- giving the Enemy of All Flesh a hiney hickey
- kissing the heinous anus
- smooching the sulfurous sphincter (alternate ending: Satanic sphincter)
Coming soon to a sermon near you…
update: my neighbor has blogged about the evening as well. With a photo. And yes, I am the one who remains nameless. Also, I edited one of my wordplays because I felt a verb that I had chosen for variety was stronger than I had intended to be. There’s a distinction between humor and vulgarity, and I think my original verb was too crass.
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