Of all the shitty ways to say a woman gets around, this one may be the least shitty. Maybe I just want it to be true but a strumpet may include a hint of admiration in it. Like, a whore gets used but a strumpet gets to do some using.

If Fortune is a strumpet, then strumpeting must involve having a whole lot of power over a whole lot of people. Fortune wouldn’t sleep with anyone she didn’t explicitly want. Fortune makes all the calls. She doesn’t answer to anyone. She gets around because she likes to spread her gifts around. It’s fun for her to share. I want strumpet to mean something like Player or Casanova, or any of the vaguely flattering names for men who sleep with a lot of women. It probably doesn’t. But I want it to.

Some groups of students get antsy on the last day of school before break because they’re anticipating trips – vacations to nice places with their families. Others get antsy because they’re anticipating trouble – a week at home with their families means that they’re anticipating conflict and difficulty. Some groups are a combination of both things. But they pretty much all get antsy right before a break.

While Hamlet is pretty directly referencing Fortune’s lady parts, I think there are likely many other secret parts of Fortune. She is always veiled. You will never really know your future. You can guess at it, receive hints but Fortune is always obscured, always behind a curtain, under a table, inside a card deck, inscribed in a palm, you can’t ever really see her. Those that reveal bits of her truth tend to veil themselves also. They drape bits of fabric over everything and themselves, secret themselves away, in hushed, curtained rooms. Fortune won’t appear under fluorescents or under the eye of a microscope. She needs her secrets.

So many Hamlets steal the punch line from Guildenstern. They suggest that the middle of Fortune’s favors is between her legs. Now, I get that almost every Shakespeare actor that ever lived is constitutionally unable to resist a dirty joke (my non-Shakespearean boyfriend asked me, “Is there a law that says there must be exaggerated thrusting in every Shakespeare show?”) but if Hamlet makes the joke here – it is:

a) inaccurate geometrically

b) textually confused – he has just asked them if they live about her waist, which IS the middle, why would he then decide the ladyparts were in the middle? No sense.

C) stealing the thunder from Guildenstern. He makes this exchange a joke sandwich in which Hamlet gets the bread and Guildenstern gets the pimento paste in the middle. It’s also essentially the same joke three times in a row if Hamlet suggests Fortune’s middle is her mons pubis. If he is truly just following the metaphor they’ve set up, it makes the most sense that he’s truly trying to work out how they are.

They’ve said they’re not so great and not so bad and naturally Hamlet would have to conclude that they’re somewhere in between. He’s just continuing the metaphor. If Guildenstern’s “privates” line is a surprise to Hamlet, then his next line can be the surprise it seems to be, it can actually take on an exclamatory tone.

Hamlet is suggesting that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Fortune’s Belt, I think , and not her chastity belt. (Lord knows you wouldn’t catch Fortune in a chastity belt, not never, not nohow.) I’m not saying Fortune’s a strumpet but she probably gets around and there’s no one who could stop her.

Occasionally, even Fortune needs to bring her shoes to the cobbler to be resoled. She walks a lot and can wear out a pair of shoes like nobody’s business. Those unfortunates destined to be the sole of her shoes will find that their tenure in the position will be rather short but perhaps that is a mercy. After all, the space between Fortune’s foot and the road she treads on is a small one and one that involves a great deal of pressing. On days that I feel sorry for myself, I imagine I am under Fortune’s feet but then quickly realize how much further down Fortune could bring me.

This is the safest way to greet a pair of people. Refer to them together and neither one gets preference.

Lads, though, you gotta be careful with lads. Here, in the hills, lads pretty much just means boys. Like, actual boys, like kids. So a greeting like this could either be condescending or affectionately familiar.

In the UK, lads have their own culture. Lad has found its way into an adjective, showing many men to be laddish – which, sure, could mean boyish but not in the red cheeked, child-like way. We might call a lad a frat boy here in the States, also a word that would suggest childishness but tends to refer to a rather boorish behavior. Lads drink too much and make too much noise at the game. They travel in packs and tend to not be terribly respectful of women.

But you know – people use both boys and lads to show affection to a group of men. My grandfather went out once a week with the Boys – even once they became the Romeos (Retired Old Men Eating Out.) I think Englishmen hang out with the lads down at the retirement home but I’ve never heard an American man talking about the lads. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard an American use the word lad without some affectation – without pretending to be posh or English or some combination of the two.

A case could be made for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern being any variety of lads.

What has Rosencrantz done to make Hamlet say this? It’s not as if he’s not realized Rosencrantz is there; He just greeted them with “My excellent good friends.” Plural. So it’s not as if he’s suddenly surprised to see Rosencrantz. He’s just asked Guildenstern a question but he doesn’t wait to hear Guildenstern reply, his attention suddenly turns to Rosencrantz and then to them both.

Has Rosencrantz suddenly gestured in a “What am I, chopped liver?” sort of way? Has he pulled Guildenstern out of the way? Has he made a funny noise? Thumbed his nose and stuck out his tongue.

I do want him to have done something. It’s just more interesting than a generic “Ah.”

If I were Guildenstern, I’d be pretty pleased that my buddy. Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, asked how I was first. I’d be all, like, proud and ready to spill all my stories. I’d be preparing to tell him the story about my grandmother and the knitting club. I might even share some of my romantic troubles with him, cause you know, he cares, he asked me first. Right? I mean, Suck it Rosencrantz. I’m winning this one.

So many of my dearest friends have moved away. I moved to this city because it had the highest concentration of excellent good friends. It was its chief recommendation. I had some great years with those excellent good friends, years when the friends became more excellent and the friendships more good.

They didn’t leave all at once. Almost every year there is another departure until only a few remain. They left, almost universally, with husbands – or men who would become their husbands. They left and got houses and children. This year, I’m due to lose another friend, with her wife and they will likely get a house and a child.

Unfortunately, all these excellent good friends get their houses in different places. If they would only concentrate in one city again, I might move again just to be surrounded, once more, with excellent good friends.

I’m writing this on a brief pause from sitting by my grandfather’s deathbed. I read this line and felt my lips rise up in distaste. Today of all days, I don’t want to think of the old as tedious fools. Today is a day I want to honor the life of one is who is very old and who is ready to go, to honor all of those who somehow managed to hang on, tooth and nail, to their lives. It’s remarkable, really, and a privilege to sit by the bedside of one who is going. But I can’t lie. It is filled with tedium, as well. Not from him. The man is not tedious but the sitting in a room, waiting and not waiting and not wanting to be waiting but waiting none the less – that bit is tedious. But not like any other kind of tedium. It is different than a tedious Sunday afternoon before dinner when there is nothing but quiet in the house. It is a tedium full of potentiality, the way a film set can be tedious or the hours before the election results are revealed.
It is a tedium I better get quickly back to and a tedium to contribute to. I play the fool in this moment. It does help. And I’m the youngest.