Keeping It Clean(ish)

I am old enough to remember when the prospect of having one’s mouth washed out with soap was a credible threat. Not that such a punishment was ever administered to me, but the one from whom I had learned all those forbidden words might well have reached for the Fels-Naptha if I had repeated them to her. This was in the era of George Carlin deconstructing and riffing on the Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television, but I grew up flinching and squeamish at the mere prospect of dirty words. My verbal landscape was Norman Rockwell Hell. Those fearsome monosyllables did not pass my lips. My friends mocked me for my fastidiousness—but my impulse was toward self-preservation. I do not know at what age I became fluent in profanity. It was certainly no earlier than my 30s. Even in my late 20s, in the throes of a long-term romantic relationship, I couched my intimate declarations in paraphrase and euphemism. I could not easily swear. Today, of course, in the proper mood (and in my own living room) I let loose long compound curses, veritable freight-trains of obscenity. I have been in that mood often over the past several years, and for solid personal reasons. My scat solos of scatology occasion physical stress and spiritual relief; the Universe and its ostensible Creator know I am displeased, but perhaps cannot help snapping fingers to my maledictory improvisations. What gets s