Turning A Phrase

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.