🫖 Hello, darling readers. Welcome, one, welcome all. It always tickles me to see my readership grow, and I appreciate every one of you for being here. This is my long-form essay and mixtape for all subscribers. This one explores swearing and linguistic morality. Read on for the story of how the derogatory usage of “gay” and “retarded” (i.e. 7th-grade slurs) have reentered my vocabulary and why I want to stop. 🫖
At a birthday party hosted by someone infamous in her dingy, poorly-lit East Village apartment, I asked a girl I’d met twice if I could join her in the bathroom. Not to do anything nefarious. Just to pee. There’s a distinct joy in the snap-intimacy this scenario creates. We’re all just little animals. It was nice to share a moment of innocence in a scene that felt use-and-be-used. People there for the story they would tell about it later. Here I am telling stories, too. I’ve gotten in trouble for this before.
As I held my tampon string aside from the stream, we watched a red spotted lanternfly crawling on the floor. Do we have to kill it? I frowned. I don’t want to. We left it in peace, figuring it couldn’t be wreaking ecological havoc there on the tile. It seems that this year, everyone has abandoned the supposed moral high ground of killing these bugs.
Summer is shrouded with relativity. Let beauty live. Let text conversations die. Judge gratuitously, and be judged accordingly. Wear ugly outfits that let your armpits breathe. Make a list of the worst things you’ve ever done to figure out whether or not you’re really bad. Happy fucking birthday.
//
I wonder why it is so easy to be cruel nowadays. Whether it be my age, location, or some other poison, I seem to be on constant destructive loops. Shit-talking. Fucking up. Getting fucked up. Screwing around. Screwing people over. Being pissed off. Pissing away my income.
When did I get this casually hateful? Saying things I don’t mean. Mean things. Mean words for a laugh. I often think if I saw surveillance footage of myself living my life, I would feel ashamed.
After a particularly slur-ridden night last week, I vowed to stop. Will I actually? My moral compass is a Dali clock, oozing like a wet slice of pizza perched on the edge of a paper plate.
For a long time, I was so careful with my words. Careful enough that I nearly never said anything wrong. Was I kinder then, or just more restrained? My pure heart has been corrupted. Or, perhaps, for years my evil was suppressed.
I don’t want to be like this. I want to do nice things, have nice things, be nice. I want to get clean again. I want to repent.
//
When did the sailor talk start?
One theory. Seventh grade. In the computer lab. I don’t remember what we were learning that day. It couldn’t have been typing: to this day, I only use my middle, pointer and thumb, roving nomadically around the keyboard. Our apathetic, red-haired teacher didn’t care for overhead lighting, so the only light in the room was what emanated through the windows and the screens of the twenty-or-so desktop Macs arranged around the walls, punctuated with blue, plastic school chairs. You know the kind. With the three vertical rectangular holes.
Carolyn approached me to chat. We never were particularly monitored amongst the monitors during computer lab. She exuded nonchalance in her navy blue hoodie, her hands stuffed in the middle pocket.
You want to know something embarrassing? she confided. Jillian is such a prude she won’t even sing along to the dirty version of “Fuck You.”
I nodded along, masking my confusion. I didn’t even know there was a dirty version of Cee Lo’s “Forget You,” and if I did I probably would have been too chicken to sing along, too. I threw Jillian under the bus to save myself.
That’s so embarrassing, I agreed.
We laughed at an innocence we deemed pointless. I learned that casual swearing could be like a good outfit, fashioning a cool exterior, while shrouding the tender bits beneath. It was time to step up to the plate.
//
Picking up words. Testing the waters. Fricking. Hell. And God knows, everything was gay or retarded.
We were en route to a concert. My mom was driving. My older brother and his friend Anthony sat in the back seat. I was in the back-back.
To Anthony, I was like the annoying little sister they did have. Their sister and I were good friends and we made a point to be perpetually churlish and antagonistic. As such, I always suspected Anthony didn’t like me. Being on my way to my first concert, I figured I would try to shrug off my obnoxious reputation for something cooler and edgier. One of the best ways to do this was to deride commercially popular things that were for stupid girls and little babies. Hannah Montana, One Direction, The Disney Channel, Taylor Swift. My pick-me-isms started young.
Justin Bieber is so gay, I remarked, expecting a shower of agreement and a trophy for being the premiere badass of the Chevy Tahoe backseat awards. What do you mean by that? Anthony responded. You know it’s not cool to use the word “gay” that way. It sucks and is actually really harmful for people who are gay.
I was mortified, flustered, and red as a beet. I’m sure my response was defensive and awful. Anthony was, of course, correct to call out my bigmouth. If I wanted to claw for insider points by casually shitting on celebrities using B-tier slurs, I had to be prepared to be called out for being a little cunt.
//
Through high school and college, I swapped my 7th-grade slurs for the universals that hurt no one in particular (and therefore, perhaps, everyone). Oaths, blasphemy, profanity, cussing, obscenity, expletives, cursing, taboos. To nab George Carlin’s 1977 list of the words you can never say on television: shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker and tits. Plus or minus a few. I learned to love four-letter words for their creativity. What fine, flexible words. They can say so much with so little. While I’ve always been cautious in certain contexts, my lexicon has been enriched by an unflinching stream of dirty language. I’ve read dozens of books about their legal, linguistic, literary and gender associations. I’ve sworn for fun, and rarely in malice. I’ve embraced a linguistic moral ambiguity that hinges on the belief that it can be productive to be a little offensive.
Though, there were still words I didn’t want to touch. I couldn’t and still won’t fuck with racist slurs. Faggot and cunt felt harsh for my taste. Smaller offenders also remained on the list—namely, gay and retarded. Perhaps I didn’t want to hurt people. More likely, I was afraid of being called out for being bad. For being inconsiderate and othering. I’ve always been a bigmouth, but I’ve never cared to be a misanthropic free-speech goblin. I never felt censored or like I couldn’t say certain words, I simply felt as though I didn’t have to, and didn’t want to suffer the potential social consequences. The risk outstripped the reward.
New York is not Berkeley and 2023 is not 2017.
Years of virtue-signaling has provided poor sustenance and I have been tantalized by the salty pleasures of the anti-woke nihilism du jour. This year, more than ever, 7th-grade slurs have crawled back. For a while, it felt like a naughty and fun departure from so many years of conscientiousness. It broke the ice of people’s coolness and solidified my reputation as funny in new scenes. For a while, it was cheeky and moderate. A sprinkle here and there for shock value. But, as time passed and these words got more normalized in my day-to-day speech, it stopped feeling like a-little-bad-for-fun and started feeling more like I-am-a-little-bad. I think of myself as a person who wants to do no harm. It’s shitty to contend with the fact that this impulse is decidedly weaker than my thirst for acceptance.
It’s ridiculous to associate individual actions with universal value judgments. Calling someone a gay retard won’t make me a bad person, just as crushing a lanternfly on the bathroom tile won’t make me a good person. These discrete moments don’t have the rippling effects we’d like to attribute to them. Though, there is something about using these words that feels dirty and misaligned with my personal values.
I think that the reason the pleasure of 7th-grade slurs has curdled is because they remind me of being small, insecure, and mean toward others to attempt to lift myself up. All of the fumbling, flailing folly of growing up that I cringe to look back on. They force me to admit that I am still immature and desperate to fit in. It’s a shame to regress.
So, I’ve decided to quit 7th-grade slurs. Perhaps not cold turkey, but I’d like to find a little more balance. Figure out how to speak from the heart. Reassess the value of being kind and not hurting people. It might not matter in the world, but it does matter to me.
8.13.23 Mixtape
What if I just came right off the bat, recommending “Ur So Gay” and “Let’s Get Retarded?” Lmao. I love a tasteful, effective swear word in music. And fuck is probably one of my favorite words, for its versatility. Here are four songs with the word “fuck,” and the namesake of this post. // Last week, I saw Indigo de Souza perform in Prospect Park. She exceeded my expectations by far, delivering heart-shattering raw, earnest tunes in the open air. My lovely friend Lucas was visiting and we audibly ooh-ed and ahh-ed at the line in Smog: 🎶 I talk too much when I'm nervous. I give too much away. And you may think I’m trying to fuck, but I’m really just trying to bang. 🎶 // Up next, we have Post Break-Up Sex by The Vaccines, with another classic, denotative usage of the word “fuck.” 🎶 Leave it ‘til the guilt consumes. Fucking in the nearest room. While our friends were unawares. Most had just passed out downstairs. 🎶 I love how those four lines paint such a great picture of youthful, inconsiderate party culture. Tragically, the music video is the clean version (“I found you in the nearest room”) but it’s still pretty cute to watch those grubby boys play their instruments in a sepia-tinted 2011 living room, so you may want to watch it anyways. // The Magnetic Fields have been an unlikely blind spot for me until recently. I’ve known (and liked) a handful of their songs, but only just started working my way through their albums. “69 Love Songs” is ridiculously good, and How Fucking Romantic is one of its many gems. If you’ve been here for a while, you know I’m a sucker for short songs, and this one clocks in at FIFTY-NINE! SECONDS! A one-minute wonder. 🎶 How fucking romantic, must we really waltz? Drag another cliché howling from the vaults. 🎶 Here, we see “fuck” as an intensifier. // Range Life by Pavement contains one of the best digs in indie rock lore, and is also (I sheepishly admit) one of my favorite songs of all time. 🎶 Out on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins. Nature kids, I, they don't have no function. I don't understand what they mean, and I could really give a fuck. 🎶 Pavement’s nonsense will always just make sense to me. Plus, we get to see “fuck” as a devil-may-care noun. // Lastly, today’s post is named after Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word by Joan Baez. The song is free from expletives, but what a great concept. For the uninitiated, it was written for Joan by her good friend Bob. My favorite version is the live one linked here. In it, she begins by gently plucking her guitar and saying 🎶 There’s a number of ways to look at what I’m doing. The best one is that I’m having a vacation. And I have not really had a vacation in about 10 years. So, I decided to do it musically. 🎶 And, isn’t that a beautiful thought?
🫖 Happy Sunday! Go clean your mouth with a bar of soap—I’ll be doing the same. See you next time. 🫖
I laughed out loud both times I read the end line of your story about your naive young self being shamed by her big brother - brilliant shock transition. "I had to be prepared to be called out for being a little cunt."
Wasn't clear if you were going to become ms cleanmouth or just stop using the slurrywords?