Swear words in the figment of imagination
I don’t swear, at least I try not to; even in my dreams. But my characters do. Doctor O, I see you in a new light said one of my earliest and longest lived patients (no causal link intended), shock on her face at finding the f word on the first page of “Deadly Conception,” my first novel. As if to sanitize the expression or justify or cushion or explain my fall from grace, or to titillate, she breathlessly proceeded to explain the provenance of the word (something about female under the counterpane of king), without mouthing the crucial syllable itself. At the end of her story I had to remind her why she came to see me.
Which flushes us out on to another four letter word. It starts with s and soon ends in t. You cut your finger, burn the dinner, or forget to lock the front door, out it comes. Some make more use of it than others. It is used as a noun, as in “I need to get my stuff together” or to express disgust, delight or wonder.
Imagine that you are a wizened old hidebound billy goat like me forced to attend yet another brilliant presentation of coherent nonsense by a well-rewarded managing consultant talking his book. You sit at the back, near the exit and toilet, checking your watch, shifting from one numb buttock tuberosity to the other, wondering if the money would not have been better spent on a stand up comic. You may even swear. Anyway, you wilt, your eyes have just closed when the consultant asks you a question. You know what you want to say but you lack the temerity of a Feynman or the bank balance of an evangelist TV pastor to call what you’ve heard and seen and smelt what it is. So you say you will adopt his interesting ideas immediately and sit down, giddy with shame.
I have a solution. Next time you come across material that you think more worthy of the commode than the Tate Modern and you can’t bring yourself to use the apposite four letter word, try saying to the purveyor – you are full of the figs and mints of your emerging motions – then sit down and wait for the pins to drop.
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