"Waiter? There's a slut in my sauce!"

Every Friday is Improv Friday at Said Panties. On Facebook, X and J take a poll of their friends for a topic (any topic) to write on. The most popular, ridiculous, or random is selected, and both X. and J must write about it. This week's topic, Puttanesca, comes from Michael Lahr.

My mom was always a fine, upstanding woman. She raised me with an iron apron, schooling me quickly in utter respect for women (to the point where I now torment her by saying she made me respect them so much that I just decided to go ahead and defile men instead). She also patrolled the hallways of my house with bar soap in one hand, liquid soap in the other. She was on profanity patrol.

My brother and I were not allowed to curse in the house. And if she what so much as heard a profane peep from us, we'd be snacking on that soap. Needless to say, we both had the cleanest larynxs you've ever seen. Go ahead, rub your finger on mine, I'm convinced it'll still squeak.

The only time it was okay for us to utter an inappropriate word would be whenever we were driving past farms where livestock would graze, in which case Mom permitted us each to say "Horse's ass!" until the farm had slipped behind our '89 Volvo.

With all of this female-focused respect and profanity-prohibition foisted upon me as a wee lad, imagine my shock and awe when my Mom told me one night we would be eating Spaghetti Ala Puttanesca.

"What does that mean, Mama?"

"Whore sauce, Justy. Mama's cooking whore sauce."

From that day I became infatuated with the concept of Puttanesca, which is ironic because it is one of my least favorite sauces. Comprised mostly of anchovies, olives, and capers, it's practically like layering macaroni on a salt lick and eating the whole thing at once.

Frankly, I'd prefer vodka or alfredo on any given day. But those weren't that interesting from an etymological perspective. Vodka sauce had vodka in it, and when I heard "alfredo" I thought of my fat uncle Alfredo, and that was enough to satisfy my curiosity on its inspirational source.

But whore sauce?

"Because the prostitutes were in a rush, my sweety," Mom told me as she stirred the morally bankrupt pot before her. "They had to get back to having sex for money, so they basically threw whatever shit they could find into the pot."

Apparently, once whore sauce was on the stove top, all profanity guidelines were off the table.

After that night, I just went on with my life with that bit of information tucked away in the back of my head, where I also store the lyrics to the songs from Jason Robert Brown's 13 and the quadratic equation (minus FOUR ac over 2A, BITCH!). On occasion I would truck out the knowledge while Italian dining with friends or dates, who had no idea what Puttanesca was.

"It's olives, capers, very salty. It means WHORE SAUCE."

This was always a popular story to tell, and my dates or dinner partners often laughed. Ice breaker delivered, thanks Ma!

But it wasn't until today, poked and prodded by Mr. Lahr and his Improv Fridays topic suggestion that I actually bothered to Wikipedia Puttanesca. And guess what? My Mom is a big dumb liar. And this isn't news, either.

I lived my entire life without a dog because my Mom told my brother and I that she was violently allergic to pet dander. Then, a few years ago while my brother and I were visiting, we sat with Mom in the living room and sorted through photos of her during her childhood. We came across one of my Mom and her whole family - our Grandma, Grampa, our Uncle, our Aunt, and a dog.

"Mom, whose dog is that?"

"Oh, that's Herc. He was our dog. We loved him."

"I thought you were violently allergic to pet dander," my brother said.

"Oh, I lied to you because I knew you both would have lost interest in the stupid thing and then I'd be in charge of him. Plus, they get shit all over the couches."

Apparently, approaching retirement also meant a green light to drop four-letter bombs.

But when it comes to Puttanesca, it seems my Mom is also a liar. Or, at least uninformed. Via Wikipedia:

"According to Annarita Cuomo, writer for Il Golfo, a newspaper serving the Italian islands of Ischia and Procida, sugo alla puttanesca was invented in the 1950s by Sandro Petti, co-owner of Rancio Fellone, a famous Ischian restaurant and nightspot.[4]


The moment of inspiration came, writes Cuomo, when near closing one evening, Petti found a group of hungry friends sitting at one of his tables. Petti was low on ingredients and told them he didn't have enough to make them a meal. They complained that it was late and they were hungry. "Facci una puttanata qualsiasi" or “make any kind of garbage,” they insisted. (In this usage, puttanata is a noun meaning something worthless or something easy to prepare even though it derives from the Italian word for whore, puttana.)"

This would be a sad fact. At least in my Mom's version, whores were given their due for creating a sauce that has found its way into the Italian pasta canon. In this guy's version, it's just a hearty joke between some Italian assholes:

"Eyyy Sandro, we-sa hungry, yah? Mi bambino, why don-a you make us up a nice-a spaghetti sauce?"

"Ere you go, amici!"

"Mamma Mia! This is a tasty sauce with-a the spaghetti! What do you call it?"

"Puttanesca! Because it's cheap and easy like a room full of useless hookers!"

"A-ha-ha! Buono mi amore!"

But, before your shoulders sag too far - listen up: My Mom's definition may not be completely off. There is a separate theory, also according to Wikipedia:

"To understand how this sauce came to get its name, one must consider the 1950s when brothels in Italy were state owned. They were known as case chiuse or 'closed houses' because the shutters had to be kept permanently closed to avoid offending the sensibilities of neighbors or innocent passersby. 

Conscientious Italian housewives usually shop at the local market every day to buy fresh food, but these "civil servants" were only allowed one day per week for shopping, and their time was valuable. Their specialty became a sauce made quickly from odds and ends in the larder."

Clearly I'd prefer this theory. It's more interesting than a pre-Billy-Joel scene from an Italian restaurant. And it gives the Italian whores their due. It respects their contribution to carby, fatty, salty, lovely Italian fare. And Mom always taught me to respect women.