Thursday
I implied a bit ago that Dalrymple seemed to have lost some zing on his essays, but he appears to be back on track. He penned this excellent piece a few weeks ago, then followed it up with this: In a Word:
It used to be said that if you tied an Italian's hands he could no longer speak; it might now be said that if you prohibited the use of the word f*** you would reduce half of British youth to silence . . .
In the prison in which I worked until my retirement, I used not to allow the prisoners to employ the word–not that I had any means to prevent them from doing so other than suasion.
“I've got a f***ing headache,” a prisoner-patient would say to me.
“Hang on a moment,” I would say. “Can you tell me what the difference is between a headache and a fuck*** headache?”
As it happens, there is a condition known as coital cephalgia, a headache that comes on during sexual intercourse, but that is not what he meant.
“That's the way I talk,” he would say.
“Yes, I know,” I would reply. “That's what I'm complaining of.”
The more intellectually curious would then ask why he should desist.
“Well,” I would reply, “you wouldn't expect me to say to you, 'Here are some f***ing pills, now f*** off and take two of the f***ers every four f***ing hours and if they don't f***ing work, come the f*** back and I'll give you some other f***ers,' would you? If I don't use that language to you, why should you use it to me, we being equals?”
Having established beyond reasonable doubt that I knew the usage of the word, its cognates and declensions, thereby having also proved my normality and full membership of the human race, my interlocutor would never again use the word in conversing with me, demonstrating that it had not been an uncontrollable verbal tic, but a matter of choice and elective affinity.
