Mr. CS

[I am on my roommate's computer, which so I can't type Chinese, so I will use English for now.]

Today in a junior 1 class--of course--one of our most... delicate boys was making squeaking sounds--as usual--and his classmates jeered at him--as usual--calling him a name I'd never heard.

"Joe C.S.! Joe C.S.!"

I giggled at their sheer exuberance and at what that name could possibly mean. It's always a gamble with junior 1 students. It's virtually a given, of course, the jeers and jokes will be... genitalistic in nature, but they have such precocious creativity that one can only marvel, timorously, at what comes out.

And so it was today.

I squinted at them. "Joe C.S.? What does that mean?"

As one voice they replied, "Call Spring! Joe Call Spring!"

"Call Spring?"

It turns out jiaochun is the sound of cats in heat. As soon as I heard it, I knew what it meant. Chinese, for better or worse, has sunk that deep into me. Because I knew maichun and chunmeng, I surmised that jiaochun meant, basically, feline sex howl.

And so I broke into guffaws of bashful astonishment.

Joe Sex Howl seemed unfazed.