Talking Dirty

Swearing can be a hell of a lot of fun.

I was reading an article by Rick Riley the other day. He said we had a problem, that we "swear too goddamn much." Rick's right. We do swear too goddamn much. Sometimes it is called for, other times not. Asking your mom to pass the "fucking potatoes" is not cool. However, telling a man he's a "no good sonofabitch" after he sleeps with your girlfriend is completely reasonable. Swearing, like most things, needs to come in context.

My first memory of swearing comes in the seventh grade. I walked into Mrs. Foster's geography class and a friend told me that we had a quiz in five minutes. I wasn't a study bug back then, and I remember saying, "Oh, shit, I forgot." I looked up, and there was Mrs. Foster looking me dead in the eye. She had a grin on her face. Foster was one of those good and rare teachers: honest and fair. She gave me a ten minute detention, not necessarily because I'd cursed, but because I'd been dumb enough to do it in front of her.

My next fond memory comes from the father of a girlfriend, who told me that if it "floats, flies, or fucks, rent it." This turned out to be some of the soundest advice I have ever heard. I haven't always followed it, much to my chagrin. It didn't occur to me for a long time that a girlfriend's father probably shouldn't be telling me to frequent the local cathouse, but what the hell.

My dad swore a lot. He was handy with a "this asshole can't pitch" during the baseball game, and a "have you ever heard such shit in your life?" during the evening news. My mom didn't swear in front of me until I was well into my teens, and her swearing was of the type that can't be impeached: "Men always get in trouble because of sex. How can they be so fucking stupid?" You can't argue with that.

Next to the British (who break out the C-word with astonishing regularity) no one can touch North Americans for swearing. We'll swear at anything. No one is safe. If a guy cuts us off in the fast lane, we'll say whatever comes to mind, most of it starting with the letter 'F.' When I was a kid, I think about 12-years-old, I once walked across a guy's lawn. He was an old dude, maybe sixty, and he lived around the corner from our place. I was with my good friend Sandra. I said, "Hello." He said, "Get off my lawn, faggot." When you can call a kid a faggot, you know you're from a self-assured culture.

Swearing can make for defining moments. There's not a chance I would remember that old guy if he hadn't called me a nasty name. I wonder where he is now. I wonder if the old bastard's gone and fucked himself.

Another defining moment happened at a Mr. Submarine. I was in high school. Me and a friend ate a sandwich, and my friend talked to the guy behind the counter while we ate. As we left, the guy said good-bye, and my friend said, matter-of-factly, "Eat shit." I'll always love him for that. I pissed myself laughing the whole way home, and in fact, I am laughing right now.

Swearing can be trivial, or called for, or outright embarrassing. I was dating a South African girl once, and I went to visit her in Durban. They have a nasty name for every race under the sun in that country, but leave it to me to step over the line during dinner theater. There was a live band at this place where you bring your own food and eat on picnic tables. No waiters, you even had to get your own drinks at the bar. We're there with her mom, stepfather, aunt, uncle, sister that hated me as sisters do, more friends of the family, on and on, a regular clan affair. So the band is playing, and after an hour of them blaring out the tunes and me getting drunk, they strike up "Mony Mony."

I did not know that the Billy Idol cover hadn't made it to South Africa. So there we are, all dancing away, and during the little chorus part, I scream, "Hey motherfucker, get laid, get fucked." And a few of them look at me strangely, and I don't catch on, and my girlfriend is giving me an embarrassed grin which I interpret as a smile of, "Look how well my boyfriend's fitting in," and I go on to do the less well-known chorus of, "Hey motherfucker, she's fat but I'm drunk."

Not knowing the Billy Idol version, her entire family basically thought I made that stuff up on the spot and had decided to announce that I was drunk and willing to screw a fat girl.

That was a long night. Her stepfather told me later that he would never forget it and it was the best thing he'd seen in years.

Nobody beats Canadians and Americans for swearing. Let's face it, we're pricks and we love it. I knew a girl from Tennessee who got mad whenever we said "goddamn." She wasn't our friend for long.

Another time in South Africa I broke out the granddaddy of them all. Not the C-word you're thinking of, because it isn't a swear word at all, really. As far as I'm concerned, if it can't be used as a verb and a noun, it isn't a swear word. Shit is a good example. "You're a piece of shit," is right up the middle, and, "He was shitting me," gets right to the point.

No, cocksucker really has to take the cake. The imagery in that word leaves no doubt in anyone's mind what you really think. And, by switching the words around, you find the verb: you suck same.

So in South Africa I used it without thinking. Being from North America, sporting events involve a lot of good swearing, and I thought the rest of the world agreed. I was wrong. I've heard namby-pamby English guys say, "Well, this is good for football," when their lame soccer team gets beaten by some Third World country. And I've heard South Africans say that there has to be a sense of decorum in the stands.

Who knew? I hardly understood the rules of rugby, but even I could see that the ref blew the call. While the rest of the wimps in the stadium shook their heads and muttered, I jumped to my feet and told the ref, "You're a cocksucker." All right, perhaps I screamed it.

I don't think he heard me. But my ex-girlfriend's stepfather did. I think his words were, "disgrace" and "embarrassing." Behind me, I heard a guy say, "Bloody Americans."

That damn word cost me a bunch of money, too, because Norm was a season ticket holder and I stopped going to games with him. I knew he didn't want me around that seating area in case I got out of hand. But it was all right. I joined the guys in the nosebleeds and actually found some common ilk.

Swearing is our national pastime. It's not the best thing to be known for, but at least we're known for something. And let's face it, it does make us cooler than the rest. You can take chivalry, and politeness, and nicety any day. But when an Englishman tells you, "We send our warriors into battle. On the field, we're sportmen," you're suddenly proud of where you're from.

When a man with an accent who has never heard a shot fired in anger in his life hands you stuff like that, the first thought in your head, unfortunate or not, has got to be:

"Are you shitting me, cocksucker?"