So, in a less intellectual turn of events, I've been trying to announce the truth about the word "moist" since I decided to start this blog in the first place. "Moist" has come up in casual dialogue throughout the years; first, in--I believe--9th grade English with a certain fair-haired Mr. Van Hueveveln (now famed for his MSNBC expose, "How to kiss like a poet). With hormones raging, my entire 75-person all-female and all-zestied class gathered around our teacher as he announced such vocabulary words as "tender," "titilating," and "supple." But "moist"--even more than "pert," or "crusty"--seemed to be the greatest offender of our childish minds.
The sticking point (or shall I say, congealing?) for "moist," however, is that our aversion to the word moves beyond sixteen into the ripe age of 30 and beyond--transcending our cultivated vocabularies and personally solidifying sexual encounters. "Moist," in the words of a 26-year-old colleague, is immediately "the most disgusting word, ever." It is, single-handedly, the number one unconscious response to the age-old question, "what is your least favorite word in the English language?" As a blogger reported on BoingBoing in 2009, "There's even a Facebook group called called "I HATE the word MOIST!" with more than 300 members." Surprise! In the last year, said facebook group has ascended to one of those "like" pages. So, accordingly, 20,821 people "like" hating "moist."
But what is it about this word that so irritates our ears and tongues? It seems, from the thesaurus, inherently obvious. Moist, at its most archaic roots, connotes the aftermath of a fever: that clammy, dank, nearly moldly wetness that breeds such household pests as earwigs and silverfish. Moist, then, is often that middle ground of dampness that takes a previously dry surface into another zone. Perhaps that is why, more recently, the word has become associated with that mysterious inner cave medical professionals and clinicians like to call the vagina.
However, in pornography ranging from hentai to hardcore and in hallmarks of sensuality from Salinger to Nabokov, this moist is sexy; in fact, it is more than sexy--it's fundamental. And yet and yet and yet! Here comes my (admitted) twinge of feminist theory: even when moist can become the essence of a sexual encounter, solely produced from the vagina*, it retains the idea of nasty; of fluids; of the un-condom-protected penis dipping in the whorehouse in New Orleans. Further, even, the connotation of moist today moves us from the nearly morbid smell of mold to the pungent odor of female genitalia.
As a wise woman recently said to me, "It's not just moist that bothers me, it's moist package." The two words, as a unit, transcend moist's ties with the aroused labia. Allied with package, moist keeps its medieval magic to the fullest.
*Obviously, wetness comes from the mouth as well during sexual acts. However, the mouth retains a constant wetness, whereas the vagina physically becomes wetter just from arousal. Here, we make the distinction between wet and moist. If that makes any sense outside of my ramblings...
