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[conuly]

I suppose I should've directed you all to the feed with the last post I made on that comm. Sorry.

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The Victorian Cards That Explained How to Use a Book to Flirt

My naym is pome / and lo my form is fix’d....

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Comments

[conuly]

I suppose it's not that you ask, but how you do it. "Hey, you gonna be at church next week?" is probably not flirtatious. "Ah, Miss Bennett. I was wondering if I might have the pleasure of your company next week at church" might be.

And that's assuming there isn't some opaque code we just aren't privy to anymore. There's nothing flirtatious about asking somebody to "come up and see my etchings" or "Netflix and chill" except that those are coded euphemisms for sex. Not that coded, but they might be completely obscure in 50 years.

[greghousesgf]

Okay, that makes some sense.

[nodrog]

What it reminds me of is the bad old days in the Soviet Union, where nonverbal cues flourished in that society of microphones and eavesdroppers.  You might be saying something innocuous, but a flicking hand-gesture or crooked fingers supplied your real meaning.

[Prostitution did not exist in the Worker's Paradise - just ask them, they'd tell you! - so ‘working girls’ would chalk their prices on their shoe, and coyly ‘flirt’ with that foot forward…  and rub it out against their leg when the cops showed up.]

[conuly]

That's quite a dystopian leap :)

I think every society has some things people prefer to say in coded, plausibly deniable ways.

[nodrog]

“Cigar flirtation” - why, yes, Dr Freud was quite familiar with this!  /ahem/

[nodrog]

Calling cards are a well-documented phenomenon of Victorian Britain and
the late 19th-century United States…  [They] were variously used to
announce a forthcoming visit, invite someone to your home, or denote that
you had attempted to visit someone at their home while they were out…


To this day, commissioned officers of the US Armed Forces are - or often are - taught social niceties of this level; upon arriving at a new post, the officer is expected to call upon the post commander to convey his respects, and if the commander and his wife are “not at home to visitors” (which is unrelated to whether they're there) he is expected to leave his card.  … His calling card, that is.

Business cards are still commonplace, last time I checked; they serve the same general purpose.

[nodrog]

Holding [book] between the teeth:  I hate you


Instantly I thought, “The thickness of the book indicates the intensity of the hatred.”

“I’ ’isloca’ed my ’aw.”

“Well, you sure told him!”