Lesmorphication

As children, my sister and I would often confound friends and family who could not tell who was on the other end of the phone when they called. We inevitably had to tell the caller which sister was speaking. Apparently, we sounded exactly alike. It never bothered us, really. Two girls with only 3 years between us learning phone etiquette from the same source. How was anyone supposed to know who was who from a simple “Hello”?

Here I am in the same situation again with my lady-friend. When I answer the telephone, friends pause and I know that they’re flipping a mental coin and guessing which one of us might be on the other end. At that moment, I’m tempted to put them out of their misery. “This is Deborah,” I could say but don’t. We all know that lesbian lady-friends too often fall victim to Lesmorphication: when a girl-couple dresses alike, looks alike and picks up each other’s mannerisms. But I have no term or scientific data about the instances of two women morphing together aurally. That sounds a bit rude, doesn’t it? It does, and I like it.

Was it always this way? I personally don’t think that we have always sounded the same. I pride myself on my regionally neutral accent and impeccable grammar. I rarely infuse sentences with filler words such as ‘like’ and ‘you know’ and ‘um’. It was my Bubby’s dream that I become a news anchor because I could put my good diction to use. She also thought that female news anchors were the perfect combination of sexy and smart-without being too smart. According to Bubby, a woman could, in fact, be too smart. Back off. She was old-school.

Gabriella, on the other hand, is my principessa from Queens. She was 5 and her sisters were 13 and 9 when they emigrated from Italy. They speak Italian beautifully. When the family speaks in English, however, there is no trace of Italy in the Queens accents they’ve adopted. Pecatto. The Queen’s English and Queens English could not be more different.

While the use of the word “your” in one of the last slides of this clip offends, on balance, this is an educational and funny tutorial on the accents of New York.


When anyone confuses us, I bristle a little. Gabriella laughs because she is very familiar with my snooty undertones. Can’t everyone distinguish between news anchor perfect speech and Bridge & Tunnel twalk? If I’m being honest, Gabriella doesn’t actually have much of a Queens accent. It’s curious how her family speaks thick Queens while it is virtually impossible to identify Gabriella’s borough of origin. Every now and then, a word escapes that gives her away, but by and large, she shed the accent of her yute.

Perhaps we are, in fact, becoming the same person. It certainly doesn’t help that she’s been unemployed and home since December. We're clearly spending far too much time together. I still have no desire to cook, but Gabriella is getting quicker with the one-liners, and some of them make me laugh. Either she’s getting funnier or my expectations are getting lower. As soon as I pick up a wooden spoon and threaten to whip up some food instead of whipping anything else, we’ll know that Gabriella and I are no longer individual people. In the meantime, I’m going to try on different phone greetings to make life easier for our callers. Don’t be surprised if you hear me ask, “Hello, is this the party to whom I am speaking?” Let’s just hope that I don’t pay homage to Lily Tomlin’s Ernestine when a prospective employer decides to call.