Pondering Partnership

Before I get to my ponderations (I made that word up right now--it should be in Websters, no?), I need to give a shout out to Greg Rappleye, the guy from (I think) the Religion and Poetry panel I didn't exactly rave about in my recap of the AWP Conference. I keep the list anonymous, but he owned up to being that guy who gave the sucky presentation about iconography and I've gotta say that takes moxie. I like moxie. Kudos to Greg. Also, I'm sure there were people who enjoyed it, but from where I was sitting, there were people sleeping or looking around quizzically. My suggestion is to be more like the person you present on your blog, Greg. It's quite good. I should also probably make the disclaimer that I have no ill will towards anyone on the list personally. It's all business. Well, except for a few of em.

Now onto the ponderations. Also concerning something from AWP but not in the academic or writing sense. It has to do with coupledom.

As CJLi pointed out on her blog, Nicky Heartthrob Flynn discussed having recently become a father. His talking about how he made his handout at 3 in the morning with his infant on his chest killed the fantasy right there and then. He referred a few times to his partner with whom he had the baby.

Partner. A word usually reserved for business deals and gay couples. I'm not saying that all gay couples use that word or that it's the only word they can use, but it is quite typical. Since NHF was discussing a baby and a partner, I figured it wasn't a business thing. Must be a personal relationship. So NHF is gay.

Not so fast, Detective Deduction. NHF then mentioned going on a nipple guard run so his partner could breast feed the baby while fortifying her nipples like Knox. The partner must then be a woman. Or not, considering all the things I do not know about having children and my recent discovery of meconium. Still, I'm pretty sure there have not been any developments in the men giving milk category of parenthood.

That leads me to today's ponderation (good word still, right?). You have a child with someone and you call her your partner. --The "you" here does not mean NHF, but the general "you" that we use to mean the people who do such and such.-- Does she call you her partner too? Does that mean that there's no romantic relationship? Does that mean that you and some woman wanted a child and decided since you were otherwise unattached, you would have one together and make more of a business out of raising it? Or is this one of those no labels situations? You don't want to say girlfriend, fiancee, wife, significant other, true companion. It could be "the woman I accidentally knocked up" and so I would see why you wouldn't want the burden of saying that every time she and her guarded nipples came up in conversation. But in that case, she wouldn't then be a partner either. She'd be a fling gone awry. A one night stand ending in a pregnancy surprise perhaps.

Never have I heard of such a thing as a heterosexual couple referring to each other as partners. Partners in crime maybe, but not as partners with no clarifier, adjective, or other connotation. Maybe I'm behind the times.