The Art of the Dirty Word.

There are a few things in this world that I would wish on everyone: among those are good friends, Chinese take-out, and a Nana.

Everyone should have a Nana. I’ll just get that out, right upfront.

Ten dollars. Please. Thanks. Bye.

And everyone should go with their Nana to the doctor and spend the whole day eating ice cream sundaes, getting lost on the way to the doctor’s office, and making a sidebar trip to an outlet store for a new pair of Sunday shoes. This is but one important thing that makes a Nana so wonderful. To name another would seem like bragging.  And that’s just not necessary.

Chinese take-out, I think, stands alone. It’s rather self-explanatory. Even if it comes from the bad Chinese take-out place, out by Wal-Mart; somehow, it’s still good, I mean, come on, it’s Chinese take-out, for crying out loud.

But, good friends?

Oh, they could be a blog in and of themselves.

Take, for instance, the other night. I was sharing a bucket of beer with a couple of good friends: Thomas and Nathan. Despite the fact that I don’t care for beer, at all…when you’re with good friends, it doesn’t really matter, does it. Because it’s never about the drinking.

It’s about the conversation.

And the many myriad places that conversation goes.  I mean, it’s the real and sheer pleasure of having good friends, especially those who don’t always agree with you. That’s the kind of challenge I live for.  Nanas are great as Nanas, but aside from routine gossip and a few new tricks about your hand at Bridge, the conversation stays fairly down the straight and narrow.

And, of course, Chinese take-out doesn’t really talk…per se. Though, for me, if I get the spicy broccoli, and that’s always an accident when it happens, it’s bound to repeat on me, one way or the other.

That’s never the case at a table with my peers because there’s rarely a straight and narrow of any kind, and few things, if any, ever repeat…but if and when they do, it’s always the good kind of spice, so it’s ok.

Golly, I love me some good company.

Anyway, a couple of nights ago – I strayed off topic, sorry – as I said, I was sharing a bucket of beer with a couple of good friends, and naturally, we were talking about Shakespeare.  We’d just finished the run of The Complete Works […], and as tends to happen when discussing Shakespeare, the idea of language reared its poignant head.

I’m a lingophile, hands down. I confess it. I’m not quite to the point of irritation, yet…but nonetheless, it is a trait noted by all who know me. I mean why not love the language you’re in; hell, why not love any language? (And, let’s skip the obvious reference to the Sandi Patty song, shall we?)

It’s not just language I love, but the words themselves. The idea that I can arrange them, at will, and create new meaning is a hugely intoxicating concept for me.  I can describe, name, define, delineate, categorize…whatever I want, and whenever I want. I can even make up my own words, which I do, though only a handful humor me by letting me do it.

Still, as you might expect, I take Writing very seriously, as well as, Conversation. Think about it: when you measure points and purpose out word by word, you begin to realize that, technically, every waking moment of our lives is a form of art. The craft of cultivating dialogue, in passing or in plays, in creating sentences with which to discover the world around us, in devising a lesson plan, in responding to a question…my gosh, it’s amazing how much art we “draw” everyday.

This means nothing unless you can't read it.

Following this line of logic through, you should be able to guess that I’d also be highly interested in the idea of using lauguage defensively, as in an attack on another person.

It baffles me to no end, really, because we’re all guilty of it. 

That’s what “charms” me about it. First, that it would even be done (though I suppose, given enough time, all things will sour), and secondly, that it would be perceived so easily as an insulting act, and that those persons under attack would give in so quickly and weakly to what is, really, a simple construction of letters.

I don’t wish to misspeak, but the very thought that there are words I feel intimidated by, to the point that I don’t feel entirely comfortable writing them down in my own, personal blog, should stand as testament to the folly (and incidentally, the strength of such folly) that we’ve allowed words to amass, over time.  Why should a word intimidate me? I’m a writer, for godsake.

When I was in high school, I got called a lot of names. And why not? I was effete, still in the labor pains of self-awareness, and with a high tenor and curly hair, it should be no shock that one word I heard quite often was faggot.

Faggot: a cigarette to some in Britain; a bundle of sticks; a gay boy, specifically weaker by appearance than traditional masculinity allows, someone “obvious,” etc.

It never really hurt my feelings, to be honest.

Other than, I just felt that people were missing out on not knowing me. U.L. brought me up to have a kind heart, and it was hard to offer that to those who made fun of you. I had no knowledge then of language in all its glory and gore. I just wasn’t that affected by being called a faggot. I can’t say ignorance is bliss; I knew it didn’t make me feel good when they called me that, but I was terribly naive – for instance, I just always had something else to do. There wasn’t time to be depressed about name-calling.

Now, however, I stop and think: Wow! People called me faggot. How rude, and yet Who would ever let six little letters (5, if you accept that the “g” is repeated) dictate what their potential is worth? It isn’t nice to call people names, but ultimately, aren’t I the one who decides to what effect it will take over me?

I see now that it’s going to take a lot more than six letters, one so useless on its own it has to be repeated, to upset my balance.

But that isn’t even the basis of this blog, so let me stop before I go off on that tangent…no, it was something else entirely that I got hung up on, the other night, something even more tantalizing…at least, in the Deep South.

The idea of “cussing.” 

The Curse Word. The Bad Word. The Dirty Word.

I’m fascinated by the fact that such short, often one-syllable words, can inspire and maintain so profound an impact on our collective consciousness.

Cursing was one of the first life lessons I ever learned, how about you: “Don’t say that, that’s dirty.” Remember?

When I was very little, one of my sisters, much older than I am, had a tape recorder and she would follow me around all the time, begging me to say “bull-doodoo.” Why this was the dirty word of choice is beyond me, but I have it all on tape. And in the background, you can hear Nana say, “Now, stop that. Stop making him say that!”

I get a kick out of that tape, but in today’s terms, we’ve come a long way from “bull-doodoo.”

And the path we took to get this far away was the topic we eventually happened upon, the other night: me, Thomas, and Nathan, and that bucket of beer.

I said to them that I wanted to bring up in class, to my students, the nature of curse words, or swear words.  The history of this dirty part of language enthralls me to the core. It was taboo in my house to speak “filth,” and so, it is so beyond my ability to comprehend the pleasure some seek in using it…even though I myself was known to say a few choice words, from time to time…in secret, of course. It was a love/hate relationship. Sort of a real-life version of “If Loving You is Wrong, I Don’t Want to Be Right,” but a la Barbara Mandrell, not Millie Jackson.

Once, when I was upset about something, I can’t remember now what it was, but I was 10, and I was so angry I wanted to swear. I knew that’d get me in trouble, so I sneaked off to the bathroom and shut the door and stared in the mirror and said, “Damn! Damn! Damn!” over and over until I blushed.

How weird is that?

But, isn’t that the allure of the curse word?  That it, like Voldemort, is that “which will not be named?”

My students were appalled at my frankness. But, why? That’s what I posed to Thomas and Nathan, as I did to my classes. What’s really wrong with the word shit, or fuck, or crap, or asshole? There’s nothing inherently wrong in the linguistic makeup of the words, themselves.

So, it must either be a cultural thing (Yes!), a learned behavior (Absolutely!), or could it really be simply reduced to the collective sound the letters make in the order with which they’re spelled? (Huh?)

Where dirty words come from.

Is fuck a bad word, because it’s just a bad word: as in, it’s poorly spelled, poorly constructed? It’s not written to be euphonic, but caucaphonic? Had we spelled it fuch, or phuhkk, or some other deviation would it then become a good word, and by so becoming, be “ok” to say?

My students remained appalled. Granny So-and-So and the preacher just said Don’t ever say those words.

My grandmother, too, may she rest in peace until I get there, always chided us for using negative language, she called it. She didn’t necessarily hold some grudge against the word shit, but she felt that by using it, we were taking the easy way out. We weren’t using our minds to fully describe our feelings; instead, we were using a small-minded word to “sum” it all up in one breath.

That was a waste of imagination and creativity, she said. And, you know what, I concur.

That’s why it’s been my guiding rule, all these years. Well, that, and the fact that U.L. would have whipped me but good had I ever used such language in his presence, or anyone else’s. If nothing else, it just makes you sound uneducated, doesn’t it?  It makes you look bad.  Maybe, dirty language is dirty because of nothing else but aesthetics. Perhaps, it’s all cosmetic.  All predicated on the basis of appearance. (One of my friends has commented that sometimes a “cuss word” says all you need it to say. Can’t aruge with that).

Whatever the reason, though: I rarely cursed. And I never did it in front of people. In fact, I rarely do now…

I just developed a timid kidney instead, and began to spend a lot of time in the bathroom.

Which I do, even to this day.

Part Two: Aunt Lola

When and if I remember a dream it’s because it has some potent element to it; I’d like to think I made that point, clearly enough, in yesterday’s blog. And certainly, I would think so with the Billie Holiday dream; and those precious and upsetting few that have come true…all of which I’ve shared with you.

God is in there somewhere.

But the potency, when it’s there, is one that is, that must be, for me, necessarily Fascinating and Disturbing in its minutiae, as it invades my mind, my lobes, with its obsessive and small details; isn’t that where God is, according to van der Rohe? I make no bones about how my dreams are often too vivid and verbal, to the point of Hamletian madness; I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if I lose what little sense I have left by Christmas.  (But, I would imagine, we all have dreams like that…and that we’ll all be mad by Christmas.  That seems to be the universal deadline).

So, true to fashion, here’s the Aunt Lola dream, one that has bothered me and moved me in myserious ways, since I dreamed it a couple of years ago. It has a residue that I can’t shake from off my soul.

I dreamed that I was running late for class, for Kay’s class, (this was toward the end of my graduate degree). I got to campus and there taped on the door was a scripted note telling me that she’d changed locations at the last minute, to an abandoned nursing home, one that I’d driven by many times, and wondered why it still stood. It was such an eyesore.

It seems as if she’d made this decision because of some research-oriented assignment – I vaguely could recall, I thought, her mentioning this, the research assignment, in a class the week before but in that announcement we were going to meet at the zoo in Jackson; no one, though, was upset either by the fact that we hadn’t gone to the zoo, as promised, nor by the fact that we were sitting on the floor in the large dining hall of this abandoned nursing home. Of course, being an Educator, we’re always striving to enhance the informational exchange rate, so to speak, so nothing really surprises us: zoos, nursing homes, a cow with a glass window in her one of her stomachs (this can be actually and physically viewed and touched at the Wise Center, the famous Vet School at Mississippi State University – look it up).  

Anyway, I’m late, and there’s the obligatory long hall that I’m desperately running down, (is that Archetypal? It seems so collectively Jungian) and there’s Kay, sitting crosslegged in the doorway of the dining hall. She’s motioning for me to hurry. We’re in the process of giving presentations today, and I’m next, she mouths. Did I forget?

I did, but I’m almost to the room when I realize that I’ve got to go the bathroom, immediately, and I mouth this back, in response, to Kay, who grins (in real life, I often have to go to the bathroom; I say it’s because I have a tipped kidney), but she’s also silently adamant that I not miss my turn to go. She appreciates order and routine.

I won’t miss my turn, I assure her. I just need a minute or two.

I come out of the bathroom and am on my way to the “class”room, to give my presentation, when a voice to my right calls my name. I turn and it’s my Aunt Lola, who passed away several years ago, at the age of 98. She’s the same age, now, standing there looking at me, but without any complications, and most notably, without that crook in her back that bent her toward the grave before the rest of her was ready. I’d heard her say that many times before.

She looks radiant, youthful, active, if you will. She’s wearing a blue nightgown and matching robe, and again, I can’t quite describe it, but she’s beautiful, a light. There’s a corona, edging beyond her, that I am afraid to enter, to approach, and yet, I’m delighted that this fear has put me at a crossroads, a carrefour, especially in the presence of a woman I loved so deeply, as a child. This must be what happens to the dead; they become a tendril to their corporeal life. I’m sure they do that just as an effort to put us at ease, but slightly. I’m not saying I believe in apparitions anymore than I’m saying I don’t.

I cry, “How can you be here? How can you be alive?”

I’m ecstatic that she is, and I want everyone to know that God must be real, how else could she have returned; its’s so natural a thing to believe, blinded as I am by her softness. I mean, there’s no other way she could be talking to me if not for the fact that all my life the faith I’ve held in Christ and God is actual. She’s proof, right?

So, I rush down the hall to the class because I want them to know the truth, this truth.

You've been here before, right?

I’ve rarely been this fervent in real life, about anything, but all of a sudden, in my dream, this is what I must tell everyone. I must bring them into the hall and show them Aunt Lola. She will prove all things. I know this, you understand, in the dream. But Aunt Lola refuses.

Kay looks at me, upset, that I’d interrupt her class at so crucial a time.

“We’re doing presentations, for chrissake, Kris,” she says.

Aunt Lola pulls me back into the hall of this abandoned nursing home, and looks up into my face. I’m now racked with guilt. I admit to her how sorry I was that I didn’t ‘do right by her dying.’ I was indifferent; I was immature; I was afraid to see her stilled, against that plush casket. I tried looking at her in the casket, at Nowell’s, but I couldn’t. I was too overwhelmed; I’d never before been flooded with such simple reasons to not want someone to die: her homemade meatloaf, those beds and beds of calla lillies, helping her pick up pecans from the front yard.

It didn’t make sense. How amazingly, these simple things made her great in my eyes. I should have looked at her in the casket, I know, I should have. She overlooks this weakness, “Forget that. I have to tell you something.”

I can hardly look at her, she’s so bright, and she says, “You almost died the other night.”

This is the residue part. It is a chilling thing to have someone tell you that you almost died.

“I’ve come to tell you that it’s ok; it’s not time yet. Soon, but not yet. You need to live, first.”

“I am living,” I argue. I’m upset now, not just that I almost died, but also because she’d waste such time on so old a cliche. I’m hysterical at this point. She remains gentle; the dead, in my dreams, are always so gentle. She won’t tell me what I almost died from, what almost was responsible for taking my life; instead, she implies that I am not appreciating the normal, the mundane, and the ordinary.

So, now, of course, I intend to be suspicious of everything plain.

This shoe closet is messy. Sadly, it's also mine.

She tells me that’s ridiculous, guessing at my suspicion. She implies that God has put in these plain things a necessary, if to me, rudimentary, exuberance that surpasses human understanding. She is telling me to slow down, to take notice, and to take a breath.

And so that morning, when I woke up, I let my initial disappointment ebb, and found that I was quite happy, content. I crawled out of bed, and that’s when I rediscovered, and rather accidentally, a lost pair of favorite shoes.

Would that work as something simple? I felt that it would.

And that meant the whole world to me.