Vito's Goomah

If you've been watching The Sopranos recently you're familiar with the recent story line of Vito, one of Tony Soprano's captains, being gay. At first everyone was in denial. At least a half-a-dozen characters said, more or less, "But he can't be! Vito has a goomah!"

After a while I began wondering what a goomah was. Being of some vague European descent, myself, the only Italian I know is from watching The Sopranos and Rome on HBO. So I started asking around. Some people thought it meant grandmother but I said how would that prove he isn't gay? I even asked some third generation Italian-Americans but the only words they knew were "fugget-about-it" and "calzone".

I finally ran across a Mobspeak page on an HBO site that said goomah meant "Mafia mistress." It is pronounced goo-mar and can also be called comare or gomatta. It must be like toe-may-toe or toe-mah-toe in English.

So, now that I know, I naturally ask myself what did I learn? The first thing is that Italy is a lot like Steve Martin's observation about France, "It's like, they have another whole word for everything!"

And the second thing was something about human nature. Vito was trying to convince people he wasn't gay. So he was married, had kids and apparently a mistress. I'm thinking, "That's a lot of the wrong kind of sex just to fool people." But was it? Every comment from fellow mobsters was, "But he can't be gay, he has a goomah!" Not "he has a wife", or "he has kids" but "he has a goomah". So, it seems that Vito knew something that I just learned.

He could set up the illusion of being straight by having a wife and kids. But if he really wanted to convince people of it, it would have to be with a detail that he didn't have to lie about - but did anyway.

In other words, you can fool more people with the little lies than the big ones.