I’m a swearer. Always have been, always will be.
I’m not sure where I picked up my sailor’s tongue but I’ve had it for longer than I can remember. My mother loves to tell the story of how I, her flaxen haired, bedimpled, shy and otherwise sweet natured three year old, would not stop saying “fuck,” despite numerous attempts to explain to me that that was naughty language (which should not be said loudly in a sing song voice). Apparently, after one too many displays of my ‘adult language skills’ in front of, well, disapproving adults, she had had enough, and made good on her threat to spank me. (Since I was almost never punished I certainly remember the spanking , but have no recollection of why I got in trouble, so I have to take her word on this one). The spanking certainly didn’t cure me of swearing, although perhaps it cured me of embarrasing my mother. The anti-swearing lesson was really only hammered home when, at the age of 6, I loudly called a bullying boy named Andrew an “asshole” – the other little girls fell silent and I felt, well, judged.
As a bolshy teenager however, I abandoned many things, including peer acceptance, and I graduated from classic swear words to beautifully grouped phrases (which did not always involve actual swear words but were still graphic and vulgar enough to make people blanch). I collected a veritable compendium of obscene turns of phrase, and I didn’t really care what others thought. One boy once told me he thought it was off putting when girls swore – I laughed in his face (and I still stand by that response – it’s fine to be against all swearing but to make it an issue of being unladylike or unfeminine will always get my dander up). Another aside, although I used to have a problem with the word cunt, somewhere along the line it slipped into my vocabulary, although I still dislike the way most men use the word as synonymous with ‘woman.’ Anyway, below are my favourite phrases and creative pairings (plus their origin, where I can remember), as well as a new and inspiring defense of the simple pared back approach to swearing:
* Like many girls who were sentient in the late 1980s, my introduction to creative swearing came from “Heathers” (I think I was 8 when I saw this film, and it had a formative effect on me in many, many ways, although my appreciation of the swearing only kicked in when I was about 11 or 12). Of course, “fuck me gently with a chainsaw” is the famous quote, but the casual and constant swearing, and lines like “you stupid fuck,” “mega bitch,” “shower nozzle masturbation material,” and “suck my dick” (said of course, by a female) all seemed darkly adult and aspirational and glamorous to me, and they set the bar pretty high in terms of future swearing efforts.
* “Eat my fuck” and “scumfuck.” These phrases, along with many, many other lines that I used to say when high/drunk/bored, come from one of my all time favourite movies, the vastly underrated “The Doom Generation”, directed by Gregg Araki, an American director who is often overlooked or sidelined but who I really adore.
Not only is the movie funny, violent, sexy, surreal, and nihlistic, but the three leads are fanfuckingtastic, the soundtrack is awesome, and it has blink and you’ll miss it appearances by Skinny Puppy, Margaret Cho, and Parker Posey. Plus, a horrifying scene that always comes to mind when I hear either the Star Spangled Banner or the Pledge of Allegiance (which in my field of work is fairly frequently).
* Blow me? No, let ME blow YOU!” Now while this isn’t a ‘swear’ I deployed it as a substite for “fuck off” or “go fuck yourself.” In retrospect, this probably confused people (ok, males) quite a lot because I, a surly teenage girl, seemed to be aggressively offering to give head. Oh well, it made sense to me, because it was a shout out to Crank, a webzine that I was obsessed by. Although I was a lowly teenager in Brisbane, I feverishly devoured that zine. It taught me about DIY trepanation, how to get away with drink driving and stalking, and had articles like this, which includes a description of fisting that has forever scarred me.
* Random couplings – who knows where they came from, but when stressed they come tumbling out – “fuck knuckle,” “fuck stain,” “fuckstick,” “fuck face,” “jizz junky,” “asspony,” “slurry,” “scull fuck,” “famewhore,” “douchebag,” and “assclown.” These are clearly the ones that have stood the test of time for me on a personal level (e.g. these are words I’ve used in the last month, unlike “maggot cunt” which I haven’t said since I was about 19).
* Sadly, this enthusiastic embrace of swearing as artform is now pretty much a thing of the past, and in the last year or so, as I’ve become more professional (read, ‘the man’), I’ve toned down most of the outrageous swearing, and can generally get through a lecture with only the occasional “damn.” However, when things do go wrong, I’ve developed the weird and almost unconscious tic of saying “fuck me” and saying it over and over again. This is problematic, because if you’re standing at the front of the lecture theatre repeatedly saying “fuck me” when the DVD isn’t working, it maybe sounds a little more porno than I would like. Only recently did I realize that I’d picked it up from “The Wire,” specifically from the glorious Bunk. Speaking of which, like all amateur swearers, I stand in awe of this scene from Season 1, which I think rebuts any/all arguments about how swearing is a limited form of expression and reassures me that although I may slowly lose my more colourful turns of phrase, there is a simple beauty in sticking with the classics:
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