When you think about it—after the sting has subsided, and you can settle your heart into a survivable rhythm, and get your stomach turned right-side-up—being called a ‘fucking bastard’ isn’t the worst epithet that might be hurled at you.
Not that you’d want it repeated to your children or ballyhooed up and down your street, Buddy thought, contemplating the Matrix’s padded ceiling. But it was a notch up on the pariah scale from labels like: murderer, rapist, maybe even thief. He supposed he could take some small comfort in that pinch of redemption.
“So, after thirty years, you decide to go and discover yourself, without so much as a word of warning, with a crappy little note left on the dining room table. Well, go and discover what a prick you really are, but don’t come back here to tell me about it. You shit! Coward! You fucking bastard!”
After that, dead air. She ended the call. Buddy imagined her in their kitchen, could tell by the shape of her voice that’s where she must have been.
He’d dropped the phone into the cup holder behind the gear selector, tilted the seat back as far as it would go, and exhaled into oblivion, letting things settle.
Shit, coward, fucking bastard. What did all that mean? In a way, although he wouldn’t permit it to coagulate into a recognizable shape, he was disappointed in her. Could she really have been quite so stupid as not to have known? Or worse, was she prepared to go on pretending otherwise when she knew their marriage had as much life left in it as a gutted fish?
He’d actually done an op-ed piece on fucking bastards once, a snide rejoinder that got spiked because it might have offended more readers than it amused. ‘F***ing bastard!’ is an insult launched like a guided missile out of car windows, sent blistering down telephone lines, and shouted in kitchens with enough vehemence to rattle teacups.” it began. “But what do those angry words actually mean?”
His sarcastic, analytical epistle had been tossed off in a vengeful fit, intended to rankle a reader who had been riled by one of Buddy’s stories…
Who’s the illegitimate fornicator in the room?
We all know what f***king is, but what’s a f***king bastard? The phrase can be understood on two levels: it’s a sort of snarl, the kind of threatening spasm you would expect from a rabid dog, expressing its violent anguish; it’s also a statement about the lineage, upbringing and character of a perceived enemy. It’s often the final stage of communication before words give way to blows.
Like most vehement expletives, the term says as much about the one who shouts it as it does about the object of that person’s wrath.
But there’s a special tang to the f***king bastard insult. When someone calls a perceived enemy a f***king bastard, he’s also claiming to have been injured or betrayed, very often by a person he (or she, for that matter) trusted. The husband who cheats on his wife can suddenly be summed up in a handy phrase: He’s a f***king bastard. Similarly, the business partner who swindles his friend can be described as an FB.
Note: We don’t call these despicable specimens ‘illegitimate fornicators’. Aside from being too clumsy to be hurled in a single expletive outburst, the phrase would be too clinical for the purpose. The misdeeds of an FB don’t have to be analyzed, weighed from multiple perspectives, or subjected to any kind of forensic science; the words f***king bastard come to hand as readily as a stone or knife during a fit of rage.
In fact, that’s the cruel beauty of the epithet. It can inflict damage without the often tortuous necessity of self-examination. The person who uses that term is claiming the role of victim in the drama. That may or may not be the case; all we can say for certain, without an intelligent discussion of the facts, is that the circumstances and events in question are being framed that way by the ‘injured party’.
So what should we do when someone accuses us of being a copulating illegitimate son or female dog—as the case may be? Hard as it is to restrain ourselves, we shouldn’t seek quick gratification by reciprocating in kind—the equivalent of pouring gas on a fire. We should first ask ourselves if we have somehow earned the abuse. Then, even harder and more saintly in the accomplishment, we should try to understand our accuser’s fury and look for a pathway through the smoke and devastation toward reconciliation.
Not being saints, it’s okay—for a moment or two—to think of your detractor as the sphincter at the nether end of a digestive tract. But don’t say so out loud. Clamp your jaw shut and back away. Go somewhere and have a hard think, until you’ve got something intelligent to say.
Buddy allowed a quick smile, remembering the piece. Then came to, looking through the Matrix’s windscreen at the car park’s concrete wall, where he imagined the obscenity might be spray painted someday. Then his view floated up to the car park’s cement ceiling. Falling’s easy, he thought. It’s natural. Flying’s hard. It defies the laws of gravity and the forms of human architecture.
He twisted the key in the ignition and backed out of his stall. He had just enough time for the drive to Chemainus for his interview with Bernice Sanderson. Whether that meeting would prove or disprove his status as a steaming piece of excrement with arms and legs remained to be seen, but whatever the outcome, he couldn’t deny that he felt like one.
Next: In the Kitchen