The Purist

James lived his entire life having the last word. This was one of his greatest, most misunderstood traits but it epitomized him through and through, even to the point of ending all his correspondence with the curt and cold, “Regards.” Sending off an email or letter with a closing like, “Sincerely,” or “With all my best,” left the proverbial door open for company. It meant the recipient of his correspondence had a chance to reply to him, or worse yet, engage him in even more correspondence that he felt would be entirely unnecessary, since James had already made his point clear.

James lived his life in pursuit of always making his point clear.

He employed this reasoning with women he dated as well, especially on the first or second date when he needed to make strict and fast assessments of the probability of sleeping with these women. He needed a definitive answer then and there, and thus one of his greatest sociological tricks was born. Truthfully, he’d began this experiment when he was quite young after a teacher had embarrassed him during a vocabulary lesson. He certainly couldn’t, at the age of ten, explain what exactly rhetoric meant. But at 25 he knew that rhetoric is the act of determining, in each individual case, the available means of persuasion.

So on dates when the evening was slowing to a lull and James needed to know how much more wine should be brought out, he would say to whichever woman he was with, “What are some of your favorite words?” She would giggle and say, “No one’s ever asked me that before!” He would take a swig of Merlot and wait for her answer.

“Uhm, gosh! I don’t know. I guess picnic is a good word?” she’d ask.
“Picnic? Sure, that’s a fine word! What else?”
“Oh wow, uhm. I do like picnic,” she’d say, concentrating on the rim of her wine glass and fearing her drink had drowned her own sense of reason. “Oh, and I like the word verisimilitude,” she'd drone emphatically. “I heard Tom Hanks say it once, on Inside The Actors Studio, a great episode. What about you?”

James already had his answer, he’d had it long before she mentioned Tom Hanks and his $2 word that she probably had to repeat to herself a hundred times before she made it to the bookshelf and scrambled for a dictionary to look up. Of course she didn’t know how it was spelled so she fumbled through the V section, passing veritable and versus and skimming back to valerian, which she’d learn was just a root. He thought of these things with a visible smirk on his face, staring deeply across the table through the dimmest of lighting as his eyes traced each and every flaw about her.

“James?” she’d ask, breaking him out of his daze of self-assurance. “What’s your favorite word, if you have one?”

He’d just say through his smirk, “Floccinaucinihilipilification.”

And she would reply, “Oh.”