October 2, 2008
Adventures in Swearing
Can Women Be Assholes?
Swearing is generally an accepted part of comedy, and I certainly enjoy it as a hobby. Some people aren't so keen on it, though. Between my research on Lenny Bruce and my attempts to locate ancient swearing, I've been looking at a lot of legal definitions of obscenity, which usually arise when some concerned citizen gets upset enough to demand that a judge make one up. These definitions never work in the long run, however. It's funny how theory and practice don't always coincide.
I had an interesting adventure in swearing yesterday, due to someone else's road rage. In my town, the local drivers have an annoying habit of using the right-hand parking lane as a way to pass traffic, then trying to sneak leftward into your lane. I'm adamant about not letting them in, because they muck up the traffic flow so badly and it just plain irks me that they're not passing on the left--I don't know, maybe my Midwestern roots are showing. I'm in a minority, however, because the drivers here are overly polite and almost always bow to the will of these jerks. This just makes the bad drivers think their behavior is correct, and then they expect everyone to let them in. I stalwartly refuse, unless it's obvious that the driver is an out-of-towner.
So yesterday there's a middle-aged guy--in a little red sports car with a vanity plate, of course--pulling this stuff, weaving in and out of lanes, and generally driving like an idiot. He tries to do the swerve-in, and I don't let him. That's when the swearing starts. I think "whore" was the first line of defense, and "cunt" followed soon after. Then, after he got some dupe to let him to let him through, he pulled to my left and (keeping his car neck-and-neck with mine) proceeded to perform variations on the theme, throwing "bitch" in for musical interest and adding that (if I heard correctly) he wouldn't give me to his dog to fuck. This tirade went on for a good three minutes. On occasion he digressed from his main point to accuse me of being a bad driver--this, coming from a guy who's leaning across to his passenger side window to yell at me, and braking and gunning like a maniac to keep our cars parallel. I don't even know what he looks like, really, because I'm keeping my eyes on the road, like good drivers do.
Perhaps I should have been more upset on feminist grounds, but I was actually laughing. I mean, this was a middle-aged guy acting like a three-year-old, or maybe one of the kids from Superbad. And the thing about giving me to his dog to fuck? I don't want to fuck his dog, and I sure as hell don't want to fuck him. But my laughter obviously made things worse, probably because it only highlighted the impotentence of his male rage. As he kept going, I was trying to take the high road but eventually I couldn't hold out any longer and I made the univeral "small dick" sign at him--you know, when you hold up your hand with your finger and thumb close together.
