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THE HUMAN COMEDY, Vol. 1, Issue 1
October 23, 2007
"Cursing and the Cursers who Curse Them"
Last night I stayed up late, drank wine and cursed. Not all by myself, I had a group. And while the purpose of our meeting was not solely to curse (it was to drink wine), cursing certainly played into it.
I'm a little obsessed with cursing lately, I like curse words. I even like the word "curse". For the sake of brevity, I'm going to focus from here to the end on the one that starts with "F" and for the sake of my family readers, I'll call it "fork".
Fork, in spite of its heavy use, still packs a punch. It's one of the most satisfying combinations of letters ever arranged -- the soft "f", the hard consonant kick, it's delightful to say. Hearty, like a thick steak.
Stephen Pinker got me thinking about fork. He's a psychology professor at Harvard and had a piece in The New Republic last week called "Why We Curse: What the F%#@?" An excerpt:
"When used judiciously, swearing can be hilarious, poignant and uncannily descriptive. More than any other form of language, it recruits our expressive faculties to the fullest; the combinatorial power of syntax; the evocativeness of metaphor; the pleasure of alliteration, meter and rhyme; and the emotional charge of our attitudes, both thinkable and unthinkable. It engages the full expanse of the brain ... "
On the heels of this, AFP published the results of a study suggesting that cursing boosts morale in the workplace. There's no one here in my workplace but I started swearing out loud anyway, and you know what? It forking does!
Last night we had a diverse group of cursors, I took note. It was a gradual thing, as I think dinner party cursing should be. We eased into it. The first fork didn't come until well into the soup. It was after 8:00 and it was barely discernible; it came from Deborah. Deborah uses forks like seasoning, to complement her thoughts, to accessorize. She's well-practiced, they rarely overpower. And her husband, a Frenchman, swears like butter. His accent makes "fork" sound like chamber music. A., on the other hand, curses like gangsters. It's entirely entertaining and he reserves his forks almost entirely to that end -- amusement, and driving. (Oh, and Rudy Giuliani. Want to see forks fly? Get him started.)
I remember my own first serious go at cursing, I was in sixth grade. I made up some lyrics about tetherball to the tune of "You're a Grand Old Flag," they were supposed to be clever. They were also intended to reflect the angst of being a certain age and waiting in a slow-moving line for tetherball, and I needed a swear word for that. The first line, the only one I remember, went like this: "Throw the god**mned ball, throw it high throw it low," -- it was scandalous. I felt all at once brilliant, naughty and powerful. The feeling of power, in fact, one of my first, was delicious. So delicious that I wrote the lines down. Which, of course means they were discovered and then my father (an able curser himself) and I had a chat. It was a long time before I got the courage to use fork.
As a parent, I think it's important to swear in front of kids. Judiciously, of course. A well-placed curse word is integral to their developing sense of the world. It's a peek into adult land, a delicious little shock, something to whisper about with their peers. (I remember the friend who told me in grade school that her mother said fork. It upended all of my ideas about everything.) I curse, sometimes, on purpose, to remind G. and A. that for all of the rules and broccoli and car seats, it's a jungle out there, and I have a secret arsenal they don't yet have access to. I want certain words to frighten and intrigue them, to possess mystery; like curse words do still, for me. It's not all milkshakes and lollipops to grow up. And on the other hand, it is. You get to say fork.
Cursing makes me feel grown up, it gives me a fleeting (however illusory) sense of power. Then again, so does wine. Here's to both.
Teresa DiFalco has authored numerous emails and bathroom walls. You can catch her cursing online at www.teresadifalco.com.
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Click here to read the Wikipedia entry on fork.
Click here if you're bored.
Last week I got a love letter from Margaret Atwood. Don't believe everything you read, we're not having an affair. She's promoting a book, it turns out; of letters.
I've always fancied myself a letter writer. I always dreamed I'd live a large and sordid life and have its scandals revealed through the Best Selling books of my Letters. Thousands of letters, both sent and got -- to and from lovers and the lovers' lovers, and assorted friends, veterinarians, and butchers. Letters to Kindergarten teachers, and to men mysteriously called "A." Letters to Italian pen pals found on Craigslist before I knew what "fottere" meant. (It doesn't mean "letter".)
Letters are important, which is why I write them. I do write them, really. It's the sending that gets me. Every time. I write them and leave them in notebooks, then wander off for years. Or I stick them in envelopes that don't get addressed and fall off the desk or into dark drawers. It's a disease, it's as serious as Restless Leg Syndrome and I'm waiting for someone to name it and give it a pill (one with four-hour erections, ideally; good material for letters).
I have a big box of letters unsent. Notes to aunts and uncles and grandmothers, rent checks to landlords, letters to you. I have another big box of letters saved. There are jewels in this one. Jodi Bohnenkamp got her braces off, for instance, in 1981, the year she also liked Doug "and always will". Paula, in 1978, thought my Valentine card was "neato". After Christmas Break of '88, Robert got written up for throwing a beer bottle off the 4th floor of his dorm, he announced it to me on a napkin. And for the first few months I knew him, A. misspelled my name. (Though he wrote great letters.)
At Christmas my box overflows with things unsent. I make a list of everyone I've ever known and make grand plans to write them, then I usually mail about five. I keep all the no-sends, though. I have them, come see: Cresty Witten, Kelly McDonald; my Aunt Beattie, and Cousin Rick, all repeat no-senters. It's a disorder. I'm taking steps. I'm writing (then sending) one letter a day, starting now, for 365 days. You should, too. Then we'll all publish books.
Emily Post said the hardest parts of a letter are the open and close. To make it simple, my 365 letters will all start with "Dear", close with "Sincerely," and my first line will always be "How's jail?"
Teresa DiFalco is the author of "Dear Grandma," (1989). You can read her life in letters at www.teresadifalco.com.
If you'd like me to write you a letter, click here.
To claim your old letters from my Unsent Letter Box, click here.
To see a "Lady Writing" (a letter), click here.
THE HUMAN COMEDY, Vol. 1, Issue 3
November 16, 2007
“The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose – for example, the dinner party of more than two …”
Mencken also called “epic poems” and “metaphysics” bores. I won’t disagree, but I beg to differ on dinners. Dinner parties are the soul of wit. They’re both necessary and evil and I adore them.
In dinner party literature, much attention is paid to place cards and settings and what to serve with the lamb. Everyone’s missing the whole point.
Dinner parties were meant to be remembered and embarrassed by, they were meant to be raucous. Food should be just a diversion. I don’t think guests should be excused until at least one of them has fallen down, one’s passed out in a car, and another’s run off with the host’s wife. Bottles should be emptied at an alarming rate, people should confess things they’ve never told, and someone should always be stabbed with a pen.
If James Spader is a guest he should eat the bowl of ornamental pistachios that has collected dust through three different presidents, and then throw them up into his salad plate. If there is a divorced actress at the table, she should turn up naked later on, with the hired barman, in the pool. These things are critical to a successful dinner party. You get the idea.
At one dinner party I had with A. in New Jersey, the neighbor – a freelance butcher -- had bloody deer carcasses strewn all over the walk which our guests had to step over. It was Christmas, so it was festive in a way.
Last Friday I went to a dinner party with A. in Portland. There were pomegranate martinis, a baby grand we almost played, a soccer player a heart surgeon and a woman who designed patterns for McCalls. Our hosts couldn’t have been more charming, but that could be the third glass of dessert wine talking. Still.
When it appeared no one was going to pass out on his plate, I focused on conversation. Conversation at dinner parties should start off soft – What do you do? Who do you know? Have you seen Michael Clayton? – but then barrel right into politics and sex (and The Beatles’ best album, if there’s time). I led off with dog boners. Not just any dog boners, but my dog Scruffy’s which are abnormally large. This, for the man on my left, named Glen. When the boners dried up, I walked in on a woman in the bathroom. She was very sweet about it. Showed me how I might jam the door shut with my leg during my turn.
There was a New York Times Best Selling author in attendance, too, but as she neither ate pistachios nor had sex in a closet, I don’t see the point here in giving her space. What one should strive for is to be published in someone’s diaries in 10 years.
Tomorrow I’m having you for dinner if you call. We’ll have a big red cut of meat. (Vegetarians at dinner parties are fine, but there must still be a red hunk of meat and preferably someone who drinks enough vodka to take offense to the vegetarian, who then stabs someone else in the leg with a pen.)
There will be the usual assortment of wines – white with salad, a big red on its heels -- but I’ll also have something sloppy out. A bottle of cheap gin, maybe, with tonic and limes, and as the night wears on we’ll bite the heads off the limes like they’re bats.
We will also smash dishes. I’ve surveyed my dinnerware and it’s too neat and purposefully mismatched. When you come over I promise we’ll break things, we’ll smash them right on the ground -- though not in the dining room, I’ve just had the floors redone.
The women should wear lipstick and something gaudy, guys in jackets. At the end A. and I will pretend we have a grown son when we actually don’t, ala Taylor and Burton in Mike Nichols’ harrowing version of this.
RSVP by noon.
To see a picture of my dog, Scruffy (sans boner), click here.
To view an instructive video on dinner party etiquette, click here.
