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You can’t give yourself a nickname.
It’s one of the social laws of the universe. A nickname is something you earn, or is bestowed upon you by some great deed or personal attribute. Sometimes they can be quite funny, recalling memories of a childish escapade or prank. Often they can seem quite mean spirited, yet everyone will know that it was given in friendship and no harm was intended by it. Many people wear their nicknames with pride no matter how obscure or defamatory. Some loathe them.
Rimmer wanted one so badly. The trouble was that nicknames, at least the good ones, had to be given to you by your friends and Rimmer didn’t have any of those. Nevertheless he was still called many names in his childhood.
Stupid.
Big nose.
Loser.
Childish insults made to hurt, to put down, to push him away.
As he grew into his awkward years the idea came to Rimmer that he could reinvent himself. If a nickname was designed to be a reflection of how people saw and judged you then he’d think up something that’d make him sound cool and brilliant. Someone who you’d want to hang out with. Someone called Ace.
He’d spend time in front of the mirror scripting his introductions. Don’t stand too close, relax your shoulders, act like you don’t care. Practicing the addition of, “but my friends call me Ace.” Make it sound casual, an offhand remark. It didn’t work, of course.
You can’t give yourself a nickname.
The names they slung his way were heavy and sharp, able to pierce straight to his insecurities. If children can be cruel then teenagers could cut you to the quick.
Prick.
Virgin.
Bastard.
For a while Rimmer tried to hide behind the persona of Ace. Trying to be the bigger man, letting their words slide off him. He would be better than them. At least he tried to be. He gradually stopped trying to be like the fictional Ace and reluctantly accepted his place in this world as Arnold J Rimmer.
Arnold. He never really liked the name. It brought to his mind images of sad men in drab suits who worked vague soul crushing office jobs. His last name wasn’t an improvement and the less said about the imaginative things his schoolmates invented with it the better.
Sometimes he would try again. A vain hope when meeting a new colleague. A last ditch attempt when badly flirting with a girl. “My friends call me Ace.” He’d usually get an odd look or a laugh for his efforts and he wouldn’t try again for a while. He knew he didn’t look or act like someone who’d warrant the nickname Ace, and everyone else seemed to know it too.
Incompetent.
Self-centered.
Coward.
Rimmer stopped caring altogether. He fully embraced his faults, exaggerated them, contradicted himself, blamed others. He didn’t care what people called him because he’d give back just as good as he’d get and then some. Besides, Rimmer was a man now and the time for nicknames had well and truly passed.
And then he died.
A lot of other people had died as well but he was mainly concerned with his own death and subsequent hologramatic reincarnation. One person hadn’t had the decency to go out with the rest of them and of course it had to be Lister. Rimmer had only suffered the man’s presence in life because he was contractually obliged to. Now in death, with only the two of them to be the metaphorical stick with which the whole of humanity may be measured against, Rimmer allowed himself the delusion of being the better person between them.
Time, however, has a way of changing many things and they slowly changed one another along the way. What were once petty insults had morphed into something fond and knowing, like an inside joke. Little nicknames peppered in their conversations.
Then there was a more serious shift in their relationship that neither man nor hologram had anticipated. They’d started to care. Rimmer was reminded of Ace, of what he’d tried so hard to be, and was thrown that Lister had still chosen him, Arnold Rimmer. Insecurities long buried were unsettled by gentle touches and soft endearments.
Sweetheart.
Gorgeous.
Darlin’.
They dealt the harshest blows. When they were sighed in his ear, whispered against his lips, moaned into his skin. He wasn’t those things, he couldn’t be, no matter how much he wanted to be, yet he endured it.
You can’t give yourself a nickname, after all.