One For The Nipper

For Marcy - caveat basiator

I have a confession to make. Okay, I have a lot of confessions to make, and this is the 279th of them, fine, just shut up and let me finish. I hereby confess that I am an occasional ear biter.

Now for the explanations and disclaimers: I only bite the ears of human females that I like to some degree or another; I am not now nor have I ever been a professional boxer; and I don't actually eat the ears that I bite. I am also a licker, nibbler, sucker and kisser of ears when said behavior is called for, but that's none of your business. I'm talking about biting ears here, and biting hard.

I wasn't born an ear biter. It was nurture, not nature. I had no concept of so many things, ear biting being the least of them, when I was growing up a young otaku in Iowa. It took a certain lovely young woman to initiate me into the mystery of ear biting a number of years ago. Ah, but that was another country; and besides, the wench is dead. [See? SEE? - The Management.]

I shall call this lovely young woman Alexis, not because that's her real name -- I can't remember her real name -- but because she was Alexisish. On that fateful day, Alexis and I were on a first binge. We started out at my place, which seems backward, but see the "no concept of many things" comment earlier. As we embraced, she bit my right earlobe - HARD.

"Fuck! Fucking OUCH! You just bit my ear, bitch!" I exclaimed hotly as I reached up to my right earlobe to check for blood. "Jesus Christ! Get away from me!" But Alexis just stood there and smiled evilly, looking for all the world like a hungry succubus for whom my earlobe was merely an amuse-bouche. By the way, a succubus isn't what it sounds like -- it's a demon in female form that preys upon men. Wikipedia: "Succubi draw energy from men to sustain themselves, often until the victim becomes exhausted or dies." Okay, let's see a show of hands among you men out there. Thought so. But I digress.

As I was saying, my reactions to having Alexis' incisors penetrate my earlobe were about what you'd expect: shock, disbelief, anger, acceptance, and get-the-fuck-naked-right-now. These five discrete stages of having your ear bitten were first codified by me in a paper I wrote for the New England Journal of Medicine and they are now commonly referred to as the "Hulles Model of Coping With Weird Fucking Date Behavior". But the additional reaction I had at that time, one that appalled and astounded me, was that I immediately looked at Alexis' earlobes and thought, "Yum." Thus was an ear-biter born. Apparently it's transmitted sexually.

Before I leave the origins story, you're probably curious how the rest of my first binge with Alexis turned out. This is from the same Wikipedia article on succubi: "After an incredible number of such bouts, the poor man at last sinks to the floor utterly exhausted and disgusted beyond belief." 'Nuff said.

You might have noticed that I mentioned "right earlobe" when I was talking about My First Bite. I have since learned that the seasoned ear-biter, while readily able to cope with either ear if circumstances warrant, tends to favor the ear on one side of the bitee's head over the other. I am a right ear biter myself, all things being equal. This allows me to be sneaky and bite some poor woman's ear as I'm giving her a hug. In the early stages of a relationship, a woman almost never suspects the bite is coming until it happens. Sometimes, if a woman is particularly trusting, she never expects it no matter how long she's known you. Grandma was that way until the day she died, God bless her.

By the way, I know that no woman who reads my blog is ever going to hug me again, but thank God no one reads me anymore since I went on hiatus for a year or two. Heh heh. That'll teach you to abandon me.

I did a fair amount of on-line research for this entry, and one of the things that I looked into was the Tyson-Holyfield fight I referred to above. If you are unaware of the reference, Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield were in a heavyweight championship boxing match in Las Vegas when Tyson bit Holyfield's ear in the clinch. Again, I turn the floor over to Wikipedia:

With forty seconds remaining in the round Holyfield got Tyson in a clinch, and Tyson rolled his head above Holyfield's shoulder and bit Holyfield on his right ear, avulsing a one-inch piece of cartilage from the top of the ear, and spitting out the piece of ear on the ring floor.

Now, that kind of shit gives us ear-biters a bad name. I mean really. For one thing, dude went for the top of the ear where the cartilage is. I hereby swear to you that as long as I have been biting ears I have yet to avulse a piece of cartilage of any size from anyone's ear, although honestly I should add that if I ever do I intend to spit, not swallow, just like Mike. But I suppose that Tyson is just a bad example we ear-biters have to live with, in much the same way that gay men have to live with Sean Hayes in Will & Grace. Come to think of it, I imagine that rich evil bitches aren't that excited about Megan Mullally either.

In the course of my research, one of the things that I was looking for was a five-dollar word for "ear biter". Nail biters are onychophages, for example; I just assumed that we ear-biters would have our own fancy name as well. Guess what? I didn't find such a name, and I looked very thoroughly. That meant that I got to make one up! I am something of an amateur neologist, so to me that was like stumbling across a new species of butterfly in the Amazon or discovering a new comet. So the word I came up with is "auriphage". I beat Greek and Latin dictionaries to death to do it right, and I stand by it. But now that I have the five-dollar word, I can form support groups and shit and get funding from NIMH. Hell, I might even sponsor a telethon. Note to self: buy a tuxedo and take sweating lessons.

Yet another thing I can do with my new word is give new dates a fair warning:

"Hey, Amber, I really enjoyed this evening; thanks for buying me all those cocktails! Sorry I left my wallet at home. Let me walk you to your door. But I suppose I should warn you first that I'm an auriphage."

"Oh, never mind what it means, I'm just an ass and I like to use big words to impress women, but in reality I'm shy and bashful and using big words is just a cover-up for my insecurities about...."  *CHOMP*

"Hey, whoa, Amber, didn't know you were packing, look at the time, gotta run!"

While I was searching for my five-dollar word, I went to the MedTerms section of MedicineNet.com to read the medical definition of "auricle", which means the external ear and has the same root as "auriphage". See, I told you I did my research. But here is what I found when I went there:

Definition of Auricle

Auricle: 1. The principal projecting part of the ear. Also called the pinna. 2. Something ear shaped such as the upper chambers of the heart. Also called the atria.

Auricle is not to be confounded with oracle. Neither the pinna nor the atria possess oracular powers.

No shit. Somewhere out there is my spiritual twin, writing definitions for MedicalNet.com and cackling quietly to himself or herself.

Before I wrap up this rather lengthy post, I also want to tell you about one more piece of research that I did. The title I am using rang bells for me, so I had to search in my own blog to see if I had used it before. I hadn't, but I did find two related entries: Children Of A Lesser Dog, and The Making Of Children Of A Lesser Dog, both from 2006. My challenge to you is to read "Children" first, then go back and just read the parts from the AKC reference, and see if that doesn't just make the perfect set of guidelines for selecting your next significant other. Move over eHarmony; make room for the AKC.

So -- finally done with this one. Thanks for reading, I appreciate it immensely. Come here, let me give you a hug.

- Hulles