SUBTEXT

WARNING!  THIS POST CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE...

When the bell rang, she came out of her classroom, walked to where I stood in front of my room and whispered in my ear “Shit! Fuck! Piss!”  That was back in the early ‘70’s, over forty years ago.  I wasn’t shocked, not really; there was no context.  I didn’t feel threatened. Her demeanor was calm, her voice soft, with just a slight edge to it, a sort of precision.   I didn’t ask what prompted this trinity of curse words.  There was so little time for class change and I never followed up.  But, I have always wondered why this outburst—well, no, it wasn’t an outburst.  Just that emotionless, colorless series of nine sounds, in sets of three.  I can even write it in IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet-- [ ʃɪt  fʌk  pɪs]. With a bit of work I could even render it in different accents--Irish, Deep South, Scottish, Texan...

Anyway as the years rolled by I became quite enamored of this threesome.  I did manage to save it for special moments.  You know, when for instance, you stub your toe and the pain comes suddenly, grabbing your breath and if you don’t explode with something, well, you’ll explode yourself.  So I can point to any number of scars or burns.  The one on my right shin is when I tripped over a huge potted plant in the dark.  That warranted  an  Arrgghh!  Shit! Fuck! Piss!  In my defense I whispered; I didn’t want to wake up the kids.

And the time I got a flat tire in the absolute middle of nowhere --before cell phones.  And I’m the only one in the family who gets flat tires.  That one was a in tone of   inevitability, of matter of factness, OK no such word but something like -- Par for the course!  Why Me!  Fury!    Shit! Fuck! Piss!

Sometimes this trio of invective becomes a mantra.  There was the time I was backing up in the snow on a mountain road and a rear tire was suspended over a hundreds of feet of clear air.  Shit! Fuck! Piss!  Shit! Fuck! Piss!  Shit! Fuck! Piss! The air turned blue with my curses.  Obviously they worked.  I’m still here!

Then there was the time I went hiking with my son in Vermont.  There’s a place called The Wall.  It’s this huge, I mean huge slab of granite about 50’ high and a city block long.  It leans against the mountain and in the triangle formed are boulders strewn and lodged at all different levels, many the size of Volkswagens.  We came to one point where a gap between boulders required a leap across and up.  My son made it easily, but I was 47 at the time, more foolhardy than nimble.  He jumped across with ease while I stood rooted to the rock, peering down into the black abyss, gauging the distance, the height, the position of my son’s hand as he held it out and down to me as an assist.  It was the first leap off the diving board at the opening of the summer season each year.  That fear that wraps you tight, breath held, heart pounding until the tension begs to be released and you finally leap, screaming.  But this time I was in no kid’s body, but a middle aged, overweight woman who didn’t want to disappoint her son or herself. 

So, my game plan was Crouch, whisper Shit--this part is for the gathering of will, commitment-- then Up on a loud Fuck-- this is the 'Oh My God I’m really doing this' moment and then the Leap with a final  scream of  Piiiiiiissssss to propel me up to my son’s waiting hand.  It worked.  My curses bounced around the boulders while I hung onto my sanity or insanity perhaps, until my heartbeat slowed.  I was really appreciating the effectiveness of this string of imprecations.

And no sailor has it on me.  Years ago I was sailing in the Persian or some prefer Arabian Gulf—ah, politics.   I'd found a book on sailing and read it avidly or so I thought.  We bought a Laser from a guy leaving the KSA, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  Half Moon Bay curved around a section of the Gulf providing relatively calm waters.  It was a clear day.  Well it was always boringly clear unless there was a shamal, sandstorm.  My husband was off with the Boy Scout Troop and I had the beach more or less to myself.  

So off I went visualizing my moves from illustrations in the book.  All was working well until I decided it was time to turn around.  I did something wrong and dumped, a lovely word for the boat going over on its side, sail lying flat on the surface of the water; and the centerboard which normally sticks down in the water to provide stability suddenly became a convenient object to hang onto for dear life. I pressed down with all my weight on it to get the boat to right itself.  But every time the sail cleared a few inches, down it would go again.  I pushed until I was so tired I finally gave up, just clinging to it like a barnacle.   Shit! Fuck! Piss!—exhaustion.  After being rescued by friends who righted the boat, I went home and scanned through the sailing book.  Well Duh!  Every time I pressed on the centerboard, the wind being broadside to the sail, guaranteed the boat would never right itself.  I failed to read the part where you must turn the hull around so that the bow is into the wind, THEN press the centerboard.  Sigh of self deprecation—Shit! Fuck! Piss!

What I Should Have Done

Last Saturday I was just leaving the local farmer's market when I saw a friend I'd not seen in almost a year.  We did the perfunctory greetings; then she said she'd just returned from Germany where she had visited her grandchildren and discovered her breast cancer had returned.  She remarked that the return of the disease and the twelve sessions of radiation sucked--a word I used to find so awful but now found too apt.  Silently I thought Shit! Fuck! Piss!  Anger, Despair, Compassion.  

On November 9, 2016 at 3:00 AM all the potential biding in these three words found their reason for being—Shit! (Disbelief), Fuck (Negation) Piss (Horror).  We had jumped off the bridge, landed January 20, 2017  in a boat shot full of holes,  and finally sank into the black waters of a democracy on the ropes, the cement blocks of a reckless even disordered, ego-driven mind chained to our bodies. (I know-- so many mixed metaphors here one may well ask whose mind is disordered.)

And now, 

before we run out of air

we must find a way to infuse these words with

A Whisper of Hope.  

A Call to the Barricades.  

A Shout of Exultation.

Shit!     Fuck!     Piss!

Three words, three syllables, nine sounds, 
and a world of meaning to attach to them.

I still wonder why my colleague whispered them to me.

Post  Script

In my very first play over 55 years ago I played a grandmother and the only curse word she had at her disposal was the word ‘cabbages’.  So for my readers who are offended by SFP,  substitute

CABBAGES!   CABBAGES!  CABBAGES!