Blue Reflections

The last post featured two gratuitous uses of the f-adjective in one sentence. What the f-word is wrong with me? I wouldn't care, but something happened today which brought the issue into a new light.

I was working the vendor desk. This means selling Real Change papers to street vendors for 35 cents each, so they can go out and sell them for a dollar plus tips. I've tried being a vendor. I suck at it. I thank the Great Whore Ananke that I don't have to do it anymore. Selling at the vendor desk on Saturdays for a fixed wage is better suited to my talentlessness.

Anyway, I was sitting there, talking idly with some vendors whose transactions were done. In comes vendor X, who is a tightly wound bundle of prejudice and bitter hatred born of fear. She tells me she wants 30 papers. I am counting them, and vendor Y walks in. Vendor Y is a tightly wound bundle of piss and venom born of fear. She is slightly better liked by the rest of the vendors than vendor X. Just slightly. Vendors X and Y often complain about each other but rarely come in at the same time.

Vendor X says something provocative on the order of "look what the cat dragged in." I can vouch for the fact that although she was insulting she didn't use any obscenities. Vendor Y, on the other hand, reacted by spilling forth a fine slop of crude language. She repeatedly referred to vendor X by a word which the online etymological dictionary defines as the "female intercrural foramen" (translation: woman's opening between the legs). It also says that 18th century writers called it "the monosyllable" and that it has been considered obscene since at least the 17th century.

My Mother never referred to her female intercrural foramen as a [c-word]. She used instead the t-word, a word which was once used by Robert Browning in a poem, who mistakingly thought it meant a kind of hat. Why my Mother would use the t-word to refer to it, or refer to it at all to her son, I'll be getting to in later posts.

Anyway, it so happens vendor Y also used the t-word. And the b-word. And the w-word.

Vendor Y's initial volley was all of maybe three clauses in one sentence. I listened raptly. This is what I've been thinking about. I wasn't the slightest bit shocked by the speech, and all I thought about the meaning of it was, why keep repeating [c-word] and [t-word] when they essentially say the same thing? I reacted to it as a writer. I thought, yes, repetition can be an effective device, but surely in this instance a variety of obscene insults would be most effective. I thought, [b-word] and [w-word] were a good start in that direction, but couldn't she do more?

At first vendor X took the high road and came back with psycho-babble jargon-based insults like "you're projecting." Then she passed into moral metaphoric language. "Your heart is cold and evil." But pretty soon she was firing off the same obscenities as vendor Y had started with, although she clearly didn't have the same mastery of the terms. I blame lack of practice, which I assign to her prudishness, which I assign to cowardice rather than ethics.

Vendor X also accused me of being remiss in my responsibility to rein in vendor Y. I didn't tell vendor Y to can it after her opening, but had waited until after her second move to do so. What was wrong with me?

Well, I already said it. I'm a writer. I wasn't thinking about the rudeness of the language. I was reflecting on the palette, the blue-within-blue.