By any other name.

Vic, Kacoon and I went to see PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN last night. Kacoon and I had already seen it once.

It's completely ridiculous and very, very entertaining.

I pointed out all the times that Johnny Depp fondles the wheel of his ship like he's getting ready to fellate it, and Kacoon said, "Oh my God!" when she realized that I was right and that it was likely done on purpose. Also, I referred to one of the dreadlocked skeleton pirates as "Whoopi Goldberg's Ghost," which made Kacoon laugh much harder than she should have. For like 10 minutes.

The monkey's ghost and the parrot that says "Shiver me timbers" and a dozen other pirate cliches make me laugh.

When I got the tickets with Kacoon, I looked at the ticket booth and said, "Three for PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN ... ARRRRRRRRRRRR!" And the box office clerk couldn't stop laughing.

Kacoon said before the movie that she found it amusing that I never refer to anyone by their actual name. It's usually a nickname or a variation on their name. She recalled that, when she, Mike and I started hanging out together and would go to TGI Friday's, I would refer to this hot guy we always saw there as "Russian Tennis Guy." Because he was Russian and a tennis pro named Karel, though we didn't know his name for the longest time.

At one point, Karel started coming into the bookstore. Mike would see him, call me on my extension and say, "OH MY GOD, IT'S RUSSIAN TENNIS GUY. HE'S HERE! IN THE STORE!!!" The fact that my nicknames had entered the store vernacular was amusing.

All my, I don't know what to call them, former dates are referred to by nickname.

The Um I Don't Know Maybe I Guess So Guy. The Stepford Homosexual. The Real Estate Masseuse. Ejay Isn't His Real Name. Douche Bag. The HIV-Positive Drag Queen Arsonist. Welsh Guy.

So if I call Snapshot by the name of Scott, Kacoon doesn't know who he is. Jenipher, whose name is not really spelled like that, refers to Larry as "Grandpa Larry." If I mention a Carrie, Kacoon thinks I mean the girl who used to work with us in the cafe. But if I say Miss Gibson, she realizes that I mean the editor overseas.

Similarly, when I was dating Ryan the Teen, I told him that my friend Jessika really liked him.

He got this puzzled look on his face and asked me, "Who???"

"Jessika ..."

"Have I met her?"

"Yes," I said. "We went to dinner with her last month."

"Um ..." he said.

"Oh," I said. "Kacoon."

"What about Kacoon?"

"Her name is Jessika," I said. "Kacoon isn't her real name."

"Well, why do you call her Kacoon?" he asked.

"It's a nickname," I said.

"What the hell kind of nickname is Kacoon?" he asked.

"Well," I said, "it started when she was getting married. I used to call her Jessi-KAAAAAAAA because of the K in her name instead of the C. Then she got married, and her husband kept calling her Jessie. So I decided to take the other half of her name."

"Uh-huh?" he asked me, not really following me and thinking me some kind of freak. "So what's her first name?"

"Jessika," I said, thinking we'd been over this.

"What's her last name?" he asked.

"Coon," I said. "Her name is Jessika Coon. So I call her Kacoon."

"Oh," he said. "That's weird."

We broke up, I think, a week later.

I'm a weird one. I know that. But there are a lot of people and a lot of stories to tell. I figured that, using the Fink practice of last names and occasionally clever nicknames, it's a way of giving returning readers an immediate point-of-reference. (And I do let some people use their real names. I mean, some names are so soap-opera wacky that I don't need to make anything up. I mean, "Dax." Come on.)

Besides, I think Kacoon likes her nickname.