A Rose by Any Other Name

RYE, N.Y., Oct. 21 - Those who walk the street on Rimjob Lane here in the Rye Neck section of town are people of the North Face-wearing, minority-detesting, Great Room-having sort, and they’re tired of the giggles and Jew comedian zingers that follow the mere mention of their address.

“When my wife was ordering a set of barstools for the basement rec room from Neiman Marcus, the girl on the phone snickered at her! She snickered! Those people can’t snicker at us, it’s fucking unbelievable,” said Bradley Canning, 66, a retired attorney and violent alcoholic, who has himself never endured these snickers but says his wife has heard them on two separate occasions.

Other residents of Rimjob Lane have been subjected to similar attacks.

“Well, there’s ‘Lick my asshole you little slut,’ that’s typical,” said Lily Plimpton, a tender and sexually appealing 13-year-old whose body is toned from field hockey and anorexia.

“It’s probably because she’s a little slut,” her mother, Alice Plimpton, said.

The problem is so bad that residents want to change the name. In recent months, they gathered signatures of 4 of the street’s 6 homeowners on a petition seeking to change the name from Rimjob Lane to Debevoise Court. For a town where St. Paul’s and Princeton admissions, orthodontic troubles, teenage drug problems, increasingly early sexual experimentation and emotional barrenness are a virtual birthright, even the genesis of the new name seems apt: a resident suggested it after deciding it was “the least Jewey” name he could think of.

Mr. Canning, the alcoholic retired attorney, said the naughty association of the street name never really bothered him until his neighbors noted that it might hurt property values. “I thought my wife was just being a raging twat. As usual. The girl snickered at me! I’m out of Ambien! Your son is cutting himself! But then someone put this in monetary terms for me. Money, that I understand, that cuts through the constant harping of a woman who, to be perfectly honest, I haven’t been attracted to since 1991.”

Echoing other mothers, another resident, Colleen Savage, said both of her children had been taunted at school. "My son's a skater, and the kids at the park always say, ‘Yo, your street’s like when people lick assholes, yo, and your mother has been doing that to my father when your dad is away on business for the last 5 years, yo, dude,” she said.

For residents of Rimjob Lane, the campaign for the name change served to introduce neighbors who had previously greeted one another with only very, very thinly veiled scorn. Their maids now sometimes walk their dogs together.

From more than 30 names, all as bland as vanilla pudding, they winnowed down the list and took a vote. Debevoise Court was the victor.

“Sometimes I go into Manhattan and pay a whore to suck on my balls while I listen to Fleetwood Mac and pluck my eyebrows in the back of a Towncar,” said Mr. Canning.

Ms. Savage, a 10-year resident, was more direct. “My life is a complete tragedy. Organizing the 10 people who live on this street was the most exciting thing that has happened to me in the last 6 years, and before that the most exciting thing was menopause. And that Alice Plimpton is a hateful cunt.”