Tonight is the season finale of Hell's Kitchen. It's a terrible network reality show, but I love it. I think mostly I love it because I love watching a ruggedly sexy British man having fits.
Much of the dialogue on the show is bleeped out, because every other word out of chef Gordon Ramsay's mouth is "fuck" or some variation on the word thereof: fucking, fucker, fucked. He also uses "shit" a lot, as the general lack of talent on the show means there is no kinder way to describe the substances being plated.
Fuck is a word I learned relatively late in life; I remember a second-grade discussion where we were comparing "cover" words we were allowed to use in place of swear words. Darn, heck, gosh, etc. You could easily figure out what "bad" words they were substituting for. Then one little girl shared that she was allowed to use "fudge." This made no sense to me; I ran through a mental tally of all the bad words I had ever heard and none of them remotely resembled "fudge."
I finally heard the word sometime in middle school while riding a bus with kids from a public school. It still didn't register as a bad word for quite some time; I simply had no knowledge of its existence and therefore no awareness of its social stigma. Eventually I caught on that some of the words being bleeped out in television could only be this word, and I also saw my first R rated movie. A whole new world of obscenity was open to me.
The first time I dropped the f-bomb in the house in front of my parents, it was indeed as if a bomb had dropped. I didn't even say "fuck you." I just said something like "I hate this fucking bullshit." They didn't ground me because I didn't have a social life and I preferred to stay alone in my room with books; there really is no way to punish a socially deprived teenager who has no interest in technology because what are you going to do, take away the library card? But I did get yelled at like I'd never been yelled at, and I was delighted to have found something at last I could do that would thoroughly disappoint and enrage my parents. In addition to being religious, I had no interest in cigarettes or drugs or alcohol or parties, and I was a timid virgin who had never been kissed and had no immediate prospects for sexual experimentation. I had perfect grades and a part-time job. So I became a connoisseur of cursing, eloquently foul-mouthed. I had found something I enjoyed that also drove my parents nuts, and was thus finally able to become something of a normal teenager.
I continued to take satisfaction in swearing, so I kept at it. I still appreciate it. It's one of the best expressive outlets I've found, and I think that if I cursed less I'd just end up throwing things more. Cursing has probably saved me hundreds if not thousands of dollars in broken windows and busted merchandise. Frustration has to find a way out, and I release mine in strands woven of blasphemy and obscenity.
Once when a coworker friend of mind heard me growling ever louder at my computer, she politely asked me what was wrong.
"Bloodyfuckinghell, this goddamn piece of motherfucking shit is being a fucking bitch-titted ass, that's what's wrong. Jesusfuckingchrist I can't even get this goddamn stupid fuck working long enough to get up and take a piss."
She was very quiet on the other side of the cubicle wall for a moment, and then she simply said "You are an artist."