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Once, a few hundred years ago, I was a party-hard girl who would do anything loud and obnoxious if challenged by other drunken individuals to do so. I would take up the challenge if someone disagreed with me or stood in my way, or just dared me. Or maybe I would be loud and obnoxious because I thought what I said was funny. And smart. And that people had to hear it to be enlightened like I was. Because I had a gargantuan mouth on me.
I had this boyfriend named Chip who sold cars which I loaned money on from my company, he had sparkly baby-blues and curly blond hair, and we loved this Mexican restaurant in Portland on I-5. They had great Long Island Iced Tea's there.
One night after work, we were there at La Ranchera with about six friends. After my second LIT, along about the beginning of the third LIT, I said "fuck you" to Chip because--I'm not sure why (can't remember), but I know I used it as an endearment and as a curse; maybe he couldn't tell the difference. Not being as far into his liquor as I was, and us being in a crowd of yuppie friends, he objected to my loving fuck you.
He told me to be quiet. Uh-oh. I stood up from my chair, slapped him on the side of the head--hard--and said, "sit on it and spin." (This was later interpreted by another member of the party that night as delightfully entertaining, but very ill-mannered and deserving of all the boyfriend chose to deal me, yet he never harmed a single tooth of mine.)
The barmaid saw the commotion and hightailed it to our table, then snatched up the rest of my LIT and officially cut me off. I was so pissed. I wasn't even half-way as drunk as I intended to be.
I was also immediately ashamed of myself and felt rather sobered. I wanted to apologize and calm down, but I just couldn't. I said "fuck her" while everyone protectively sheltered their drinks when I looked around the table, as if I would steal their drinks. Huh.
But then. Then, I stood up and began a shout-out henceforth known in the annals of my history as Soliloquy on the Word Fuck.
Glaring at Chip I began: I will too say fuck you, I'll fucking say what I want to and when, you fucker!
FUCK IS MY FAVORITE WORD!
You can't live without fuck, fuck, fuck, in your universe!
FUCK is the all-time generic totally encompassing word that can describe ANYTHING.
(I paused for breath, barely glancing at anyone else, but I felt this hand tugging on my left wrist which I ignored.)
If you break your elbow or leg, yell FUCK when pain stabs you. If you fucking lose your boyfriend to your fucking girlfriend, scream FUCK in their fucking faces.
When your boss bitches you out, tell him to fucking FUCK OFF. If you win the lottery for a fucking million and cameramen come to film you and ask, "how do you feel?" Scream "I FEEL FUCKIN' GREAT, JUST FUCKIN' FANTASTIC."
(The tugging was probably on both sides of me by then, but remember my boyfriend is still reeling from the blow to his head and some of the other people are snickering. It is still kind of funny at this point.)
Whether you feel fuckin' joy or fuckin' misery, you can repeat FUCK FUCK over and over, because it can mean you feel fuckin' awesome or you feel fuckin' miserable.
If you want to quit something, all you have to say is FUCK THIS SHIT. If you screw up majorly, there is always fuckin-damnit-fuck! Let's say you see something cute, then it's fucking cute!
Don't say, "right on," anymore, say "fuck on!" FUCK OFF means exactly what it says, so fuck off. My boyfriend is a fuckin' fuck-up. FUCK covers all the other words like groovy, farout, awesome and totally--you don't need them when you have fuck! You don't even have to say "I love you" anymore, because "I fuck you!" will do. Yes.
I'm telling you fucking people here tonight, (in the story I'm telling you, not the present) that no matter what emotion you have, no matter what problem has occured, no matter what you think or don't think, no matter who you are talking to, be it slave or king, no matter where you go in the world, or what reward you receive, THE WORD FUCK IS THE MOST UNBELIEVABLY VERSATILE WONDERFUL USEFUL SAYING-IT-ALL WORD THAT EVER LIVED. IT'S UNIVERSAL SPEAK--IT'S EVERYONE'S LANGUAGE--FUCK IS HERE TO STAY!!
And don't forget it.
(I must have passed out after that.)
The soliloquy, eons old, ends here.
Fast forward to the future, the here and now.
I have to tell you, that I have changed my thinking. The whole fuck this/fuck that manner of speaking has skyrocketed to an unfathomably high level of use that bodes ill for teaching our children proper English. I often cringe inwardly when I hear it, and when I read it.
Mostly, I think how intelligent humans have become with their creativity and brains, and what we do today that we have never done before. We have an electronic device for every convenience or commodity that we might need or want. We shoot ourselves into space, tunnel the earth, and can bomb death to the masses instantly.
As a race, we have become more educated and advanced in the last century than the billions of centuries before that combined. We have virtual reality for anything we want 24/7. Just a click away. But we can't harnass "fuck" because it's unharnassable. It's a disease without a vaccination. Rampantly destroying the minds of formerly intelligent people. Who have no desire to be healed.
What has happened to us? Our vocabulary is shrinking down to one expletive, one adjective, one person-place-or-thing, one verb, adverb...you get the idea...we just ain't true citizens unless the do-it-all ubiquitous fuck is in our vocab at least once a day.
I feel exhausted.
What I tell myself is, that fuck is still a very apt and wonderful word, able to describe love or hate, crime or capitulation, the atom or the universe; you name it fuck will cover it. But then I look around me at who's using it (bear in mind I live in a small town in Oregon) and I know I have to do better than that; have to ratchet it up just so I know that I'm intelligent. Find another way to describe what I'm doing, feeling, having, considering. There are so many other ways to combine words into pleasant musical pieces--without placing myself at the level of cretin. Yet I fear there is no cure.
Then the other part is, what word could ever replace fuck?
I don't think it's replaceable.
Can I avoid it?
Hardly.
Still, I'd like to think that my imagination and ingenuity will serve me well in bad times and good and that "fuck" will be reserved for those instances where I'm utterly speechless, stymied, mystified or megafreaked, yet required or compelled to utter a sound. Oh fuck.
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