Language of the Living Dead

People don’t expect me to curse.

            It may partly come from the fact that I am never assumed to be my actual age. Working at a movie theater at 18, I learned many customers I assumed I was 14. Last year, when I said I was a junior people still assumed high school. I always have my ID ready at the theaters and, yes, I get the student discount without showing my card.

            But I really enjoy cursing.

            It comes first from a simple love of words and sounds. There are beats and rhythms in the English language that I follow even when I speak joubledy-guck. There are inflections and sounds that are simply more pleasing for a variety of reasons. It’s there in the blessed harshness and conciseness of the word “cunt”.

            “Cunt” is a fantastic curse word because it still has the power to shock. Most of the big curse words, your “fucks”, your “shits”, your “cocks”, and your “assholes”, are rather played out in our numb to existence society. You can do all but the first in some basic cable television shows. However, I have seen regular, sensible men and women gasp in horror at the word “cunt”. Not “cunt” directed towards anyone or anything specific, but just uttered for simple joy of the word.

            But I am not satisfied with your ordinary, everyday cursing. Sure, I can yell “MOTHERFUCKER” when I am halfway through peeling a potato when I need a parsnip, but most cursing has become casual enough to me that 40% of the time I call my roommate “hoebag” instead of her name. So I step it up and Shakespeare that shit.

            I retool my own curse words.

            It is a fantastic hobby, and relatively simple. All you have to do is cut and paste the parts of your normal inappropriate word, or use a curse word in a different part of speech. Fuck to causal for an interjection? Try dick. I regularly just curse, “Ah, dick!” to myself when I forget a textbook for class (people standing nearby who are unaware that curse words can be used interchangeably are often confused). However, interchanging part of speech hardly works for some of your major words. Fuck is a verb, interjection, noun, adjective, and adverb. And some people use it often enough to assume it has reached article status.

            So I make my own. It can be impossible to separate in my own head whether I first heard someone else use it or if I did copy and paste, but I am pretty sure I am the first one to call someone a dickbag. Or a cuntwad. Or I go on a long, windy addition of curse words precariously piled upon one another in a cursing rant. My roommate and I are also currently trying to bring twat back into the regular American lexicon because there is a goddamn “tw” sound at the beginning. That is the really beauty of curse words, I believe. Especially in English, all are pretty much four letter compact bites of tongue tingling fun time. The sounds are so brutal and sharp. All of the c’s, k’s, and t’s really spice up the place.

            Living in a college environment has not helped with my fascination. At least when I lived at home I would curb myself the majority of the time, but in my kid-free adult world there is no stopping me. Which I call my roommate a slutbag and tell her to, “Look at this goddam shit. Seriously, fuck”, I don’t scan the room to see who might overhear. And that’s why cunt will be the first world her parakeet will say.