Jennifer

This is the honor my parents gave me: to be so common among my generation that from kindergarten through PhD, teachers qualified me with a final initial. No one recalls why my family broke from their biblical, saintly taxonomy—Deborah, Theresa, Mary—to baptize me

in such a quotidian font, to opt for what was popular. What I got out of it: taunts from boys—867-5309, a scrawl on a bathroom wall. Or, post–J. Lo, folks who would scoff, You still from this block? At last, I took a razor to it, cut it down to its crux: J. Curt, flinty. Not so vanilla, so

girly. Still, some refuse this abridged me. They crowd the air with syllables that evoke model qualities: lip gloss, highlighted hair, some jock’s letter jacket. Chipper, perhaps a bit ditzy. Before we meet, they dream me: local, relatable, always white. After, they recast me as exotic,

ask what I’m really called, back home. They guess I must be desperate to be part of their domestic clique, must have rephrased some cryptic gibberish from my birthplace so I might better assimilate. If I say I’m from Jersey, they fall speechless, perplexed, try to visualize

me among boardwalks, crazy for the Boss. They can’t locate me on that map. Others have embarked on a quest to chart me anew, to expand my borders through terms of endearment: FerFer, to underscore an overlooked end, or Snake, after a janky tattoo from my youth.

What ecstasy to become a purr, a lowly serpent, to be blessed with sobriquets that ring out over a bar’s jukebox, over Muzak at the mall, and turn no heads but mine. How sublime to belong to this private club, to not have to share, to not care that I’ve been reduced

to a cartoon: fluffy kitty, badass in combat boots. But such glitzy honorifics won’t do for official forms. I can’t apply such lax shorthand to contracts, to visas and passports. If I shun my humdrum autograph now and again, if I jilt it for a passing affair with its quirky cousin,

still I am wedded to this name. It always comes waltzing back, despite this lack of conjugal fit. And yet we’ve come to a settlement: we don’t need to be exclusive. If I cannot be known as I wish, cannot be unique, I’ll keep a whole host of appellations. Beloved, call me by all of them.

Read more from Issue 20.1.