When the computer breaks I swear quite a bit and usually my wife comes along to ask me if I am ok or not. When I get to that point I am fighting the biorhythms of the physical world that cascade down into a seemingly endless rotation of dysfunction. I don’t particularly like it when my tools break and I let them know. I don’t see it as blasphemy as I’m not certain the connection of any particular suprarenal deity to our technological extensions. I usually see it as me against these damned toys.
In my environment of the vulgar working class I have often encountered quite foul talk that was either racially or sexually offensive and usually from folks who had no sense to think they were being offensive and when confronted would vociferously defend their right to free speech as if it equates with the right to bear arms... and in fact in most cases they were rather able to be creative in their use of words which for a word smith can be refreshing... but mainly what I found out was that the best way to shut these folks up was to take what they were saying and exaggerate it back at them 10 times over. From that they would think I was nuts, better than thinking other possible things (like wanting to beat the crap out of me for being a book reading sissy) and the next time they were inclined to sound off they would think to keep an eye on me and likely they would say less.
For example in reaction to the testosterone induced male penchant for talking about various oral sex practices I developed a story about my love to sneak into the Washington Zoo on Sunday nights to play with the hippos. A lot of detail about the scummy water and all of it delivered with a straight face. Rarely would I be asked to elaborate any more details when I finished with that riff.
I got onto this in part from one day on a rest break on a job site a few of us were joking about chickens and our colorful Sicilian friend went on quite seriously, and with absolutely no sense of self consciousness or embarrassment, telling us with great affection about his favorite chicken back home. She even had an affectionate name. He also had a way of driving that included hanging out the window and screaming at all the babes that we passed that he wanted to do it with them. His passionate chicken story though -- that shut us up.
And there was the mystery when I worked at the salt mine the day the otherwise inarticulate quiet guy whose job it was to load bags of salt onto the boxcars was arrested we were told for inappropriate intimacy with a local farmer’s cow. The farmer having made the complaint. It had never occurred to me up to then that such things happen and it seems to me in retrospect much less a sin to belch out a few offensive words here and there. What words does one use when one gets caught out in the night field doing that?
As to chickens I take note that the Ayatollah Khomeini put in writing strictures as to the edibility of chickens that one has had sex with. It seems you cannot eat the bird in your own house, neither in your next door neighbor’s house should they eat it, but it is ok for the house on the other side of your neighbor to do so. I suppose this is the Iranian equivalent of “No Chicken’s Behind Left.” So much for our modern global political climate. We should not be so much worried about what the Iranians are doing with nukes as with their chickens?
I also worked as a young adult for several years for a colorful stonemason, an avid white racist, who used some fairly original swear words and from that I got a desire not only to expand my foul vocabulary, but a lifelong ambition to improve upon it. When folks in my environment go for swearing... and the F word really does get kind of monotonous real fast (the image of eFing donuts is the one that always gets me laughing) I encourage them that I do not mind if they swear one bit as long as they make an effort to be creative and fresh about it.
I rarely use swear words in anger, though as I am in the construction business and in New York the old school of construction was to really tear into the other folks around, constant verbal whipping and as they say to tear everyone a new A-hole. I learned that art quite well and took to it with a hearty vengeance... enough to lose friends over it who did not understand the underlying violence and tension that drives one to build tall buildings. The gist of the practice is that when attacked, attack back harder and don’t hold tension, spread it around and make everyone be motivated out of a desire to get away from the BAD person as quickly as possible.
On the day that I quit smoking I threatened a hardware supplier’s life that I would come visit them with an axe and tear up their office, desk and furniture and whatever if they did not get the Effin hardware to the jobsite within the next week. He was an old man and I should not have done it, but I did. At that time and in that environment I was well rewarded for my efforts. It took me several years (like 20) to get over that and to get enough distance to understand it for the cultural environment that it is. [Watch out for the Effin upper West Side bred Irish in NY.]
I am reminded of a public television program about the building of a skyscraper in which the project manager tells one of the subcontractors that the subcontractor is his whore and will do what the effin project manager tells him to do. That abusive approach to the work environment in the construction industry is the tip of a very giant iceberg that looks very dark and brown underneath.
I was working on resetting the restored Carrara marble front of a fireplace at the oldest house in Hartford, Connecticut and as I fiddled with the pieces I was talking to them. I honestly do believe on a gut level that the stone hears what I am saying and that if I talk to them they will do what I want them to do. I was having a bit of a problem getting the very tight 1/16 to 1/8 inch tolerances on the joints that I wanted. The fireplace had been driven into by a young fellow who came to the T-intersection and jumped the curb and drove into the house shortly after it had undergone a full restoration. Hartford is the American capital of the insurance industry. The insurance companies paid for the first restoration campaign voluntarily, and they paid for the second involuntarily. To bad for them, they take it out of us all anyways which is a good reason to swear. The young fellow did not only not have a license he was not insured. Anyways, there I was telling the stone to EFFIN move over a bit would you sweet baby whatever when suddenly I realized that the pleasant female docent who was usually ensconced in another room was standing behind me. Oops. Nothing like getting into your work and blanking out the surrounding world.
Talking about young folks… I have a poem that uses the word shit in it – it is the only on-the-edge-word in the otherwise disgusting poem -- and a 16 year old poet has informed me that it is very difficult to say the word shit in a poem in public and that though he considers the poem an ok attempt that if I work at it a bit longer I might be able to get it shaped up into something worthy. His poems remind me of 18th century spinsters with the trots, but so be it. I suppose I could tell him if he works at it a bit he might be able to say shit in public without feeling any qualms about it.
For a few years I was working on a set of poems called The Crude Hymns of Neanthus. Neanthus is the dude stole Orpheus’ lyre and tried to play it but was so godawful bad at it that the dogs came and tore him to shreds. Too bad it is mythology and does not happen some days these days in reality which may say something to why poetry is not as socially relevant as it used to be... not quite as entertaining as a gasoline filled flaming tire around the neck while you run around in a football field to roars of applause at your demise. Yet, those poems are actually meant to be mildly unpleasant. Folks I find have trouble understanding this reversal and they tend to confuse the message with the personality of the speaker… as if I actually mean badly writ poetry unpleasant in contra pose to the stream of confessional poetry in our literature.
One of the more moderate of the collection:
PLAYING FETCH WITH NEANTHUS
Pouring out words,
barking spiders,
never thought to be safe,
forgetting to measure and weigh,
unguarded they clung
burrs, thistles, cacti spines
to the mitt of that bastard --
who backed off a safe distance,
porcupine breath that he is,
having less semen than his mother,
then suddenly struck a blow,
spit a fond kiss, out-of-sight,
from behind with a clump
of mud, stone, and swamp weed.
~~
I have a situation currently where an architect on a project is in the habit of calling the ‘more sensitive’ parties to the project and using foul language to berate them into thinking that they are more stupid than him and should therefore obey his lesser stupidity. I seriously consider that he does not take to calling me as he may sense, and rightly so if it is the case, that he would get something much more difficult in biting words to deal with back at him. I am not adverse to sarcasm, something I was weaned on (best served cold and to the jugular), and cutting to the quick of the emotional bone. For me it is a joyous indulgence that can easily lead to an outright addiction. What do they say about the art of discourse? The strength of that technique of verbal abuse, though, is in that for all general appearance I am a person of more than usually good spoken vocabulary and modest of demeanor and word. A phone call would never be on the record, as it would if I wrote what I think, and it would be an odd situation for him to complain to anyone as to what I had said. I would counter this by being very friendly to him when next I see him in a meeting and ask him if he got his little problem worked out yet.
I once had a project where the owner hired the largest law firm they could get their hands on to write a custom construction contact that the large law firm passed down to the most junior idiot they had on staff. Now, in construction there is a long history of contracts and for the most part an AIA (American Institute of Architects) contract is more than sufficient, everyone knows what it means and the interpretations have been grilled over umpteen million times in the court of law. So the need for a ‘custom’ made construction contract is a bit daft, particularly if the lawyer drawing it up has no experience in either construction or in law.
Though I could very well have interfaced directly with this young whippersnapper I ended up paying our lawyer approximately $10,000 to be in the middle because quite frankly I was worried that I might actually come off and say what I thought and skunk the chance of our getting the project. I would tell my lawyer – an extremely competent and experienced specialist in construction contract law -- what I wanted in the contract, and they would do the polite talk with the younger compatriot in their profession (I like NLP). In the end we got a contract that was very much in our favor… we don’t do business out of charity. It was a large enough project, $600,000 range, to absorb the cost and I put legal fees into the cost so in the end the customer paid their lawyer, and my lawyer, both, for what could have been done just as well for $5.00. It was a cost they paid that kept me from swearing.
I have a business associate that I work with closely and every once in a while we start out our phone conversations by calling each other, shouting at each other, as vile a set of sexually and socially unpleasant epithets as we can muster... after a minute or so we end with, "Do you feel better now?"
"Yes."
Obviously we are laughing the entire time but I fear for those, in this day of the cell phone, who get to overhear our conversations. Not for this reason alone do I try not to use the cell phone on the train, in book stores or at libraries. This swearing at each other does take out a whole lot of tension from our working lives. We have this shared bonding experience of quality time. It gets us to the point of the business of the call a whole lot quicker than pleasantry over the weather. As my friend shows various symptoms of ADD (in him it is one of the qualities that I admire and aspire to emulate) it also helps to keep him and me on point.
Lastly, I have a short story about a pheasant hunt that I feel is one of the best that I have written that I suspect gets rejected over-and-over by ezine publishers because of the foul language the two brothers use against each other. It is this 'affectionate' vulgarity that is in essence the bond of tension between two brothers. It took me two years to write the story, and it is two years now that it keeps getting rejected. I have looked at it several times to try to figure out if the vulgarity can be removed and each time I come away stronger in the conclusion that the intimacy of the vulgarity -- it is actually how friends or brothers on a pheasant hunt do talk with each other -- that is inseparable from the heart of the story.
My desire to pheasant hunt, as well as the story, was inspired by Tolstoy. I am not a hunter by any means, but having read Tolstoy's Cossacks as a teenager I have always wanted to go on a pheasant hunt. As an adult, and through business I have done it several times. Eventually I got a nut in my head to write a story about it.
Out of curiosity I did write a story one time in which I substituted the word WAFFLE for every time the character would say F. It has an interesting appeal and always makes me feel hungry for breakfast.
Let it not be said that I do not think about what I say. Thinking never seems to have prevented me from saying anything that later I wish that I had not.
