Why I Curse So Much

Last night I was contemplating the reason I love swearing. Swear words just spill from my mouth like little poos out of the ass of an incontinent septuagenarian. I’ve heard all of the shlame-brained opposing arguments: You sound uneducated and uncouth. You only swear because you are too lazy/stupid to choose a better word. Swearing is hurtful. So I decided to address each of those little ditties to see if my challengers are right. (The fact that I know and use the word “uncouth” proves I’m not uneducated, bitches.)

Let’s begin by examining whether swearing is hurtful. Seriously? How is “Fuck you!” any worse than “My, you are looking quite bovine today!”? That last one sounds so elegant, yet it’s a deceptive little mo-fo. If you utter those words, you are using a prettied-up version of calling someone a cow. FU is so overused that it has the bite of a denture-less senior citizen on life support. And if your skin is so goddamned thin that words like asswipe, fucktard, and son-of-a-bitch actually  get to you, then fuck you, you fucking fuck. (Thank you, Lisbeth Salander’s t-shirt in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Again. So sue me. I like it.) 

You know, I don’t love everything Ricky Gervais says, but I do have to say that I agree with his recent comment that’s something like, “If I offend you, I don’t care.” I have many, many friends (a group growing smaller by the minute) who never read a word of anything I write because they are offended by my potty mouth. And that’s okay. I still love those folks, and I hope they still love me. One’s vocabulary should not be a condition of friendship. Plus, there are gazillions of readers who don’t find my swearing objectionable, and I am banking on the fact that one day they will also not find the price of my books objectionable. Meh. We’ll see. But the point is that if you are injured or insulted by my writing, don’t read it.

Moving on. Another argument against a colorful vocab is the old you-sound-uneducated-if-you-swear tack. Yeah. I earned a Masters of Fine Arts with DISTINCTION because I am a dumbass. I consistently score in the expert range on those Reader’s Digest “Word Power” things, so there. Mensa wants me. I’ve got a little thesaurusness going on. And I can be as erudite as many of my favorite wordsmiths. When I want to. And of course, that is the point. I know when to curb my language so as not to cause mass cardiac arrest at church. And I don’t tell my students that they have to be fucking kidding me with some of the shit they use for excuses sometimes (although I’d love to). But I love me some swear words, people. Sometimes only a shit or a fuck will do. And last time I checked, America still allows freedom of speech even if it is in Spanish.

Finally, my favorite argument is remarkably similar to the one above: You are too lazy to select a better word when you swear. But really, “You jerk,” doesn’t carry the venomous heft of, say, “You smeared-asshole smacking, dick-cheese eater.” The first one says, “I am a chaste choirboy.” The latter says, “I was repeatedly butt-fucked by my priest after choir practice, and you should see my therapy bills.” Now. I’m probably never going to be in a situation that requires the use of that hurled insult, but am I ashamed for having thought of and written down those words?! Yes. Yes, I am. In general, though, pretty anything that spools out of this brain of mine is fair game.

Look. Obscenities are the cayenne of our language. Some of us like more sprinkle than others. But does that make it wrong? Spiciness can actually be measured in Scoville units, but there is no way to measure whether more or less spice is right or wrong. And if you are still bitching about my salt-lick lexicon, I have this for you:

Twat you say? I cunt hear you. I must have an ear infucktion. (Thank you to my brother for teaching me that in elementary school. Is it any wonder I have a mouth like the sewers of New York City? No, it is not.)