keyword "portfolio" title "fighting words" in misc. flash fiction

I’m astonishingly lucky that my favorite curse word “damn” is considered a relatively tame one. You may not want to say it in front of a child or in church unless you’re quoting from the Bible verbatim but it’s a PG-13 kind of word at worst. You even say on network television after nine o’clock at night. Oh, I know the whole portfolio of oaths and swears and profanities, the f-words the s-words and the p-words and so forth. Pinballing between performances at comedy clubs and family-friendly cafes, I’ve learned how to tone down my language without violating the heart of whatever I’m doing, just swapping down the f-words and the s-words for the hells and damns.

What I will never understand, however, is why my most favorite of the cusses is considered one of the least offensive. The conventionally harshest ones, the ones you would get fired for saying on the nightly news or in an elementary school, all seem to be the most common things, actions and ideas as ubiquitous as the air we breathe, as common as the water. The most banned of the words all seem to be about the simple bathroom actions that everyone must do at least every few days or about sexual things that are happening in ten million places every second on this earth. Even weirder are the supposedly-awful swears that aren’t even about the ordinary actions of our urination, elimination or copulation, the swears that just name off the parts with which those businesses are done. Body parts, some of which roughly half of all the people living have and some of which come equipped standard on nearly everyone on Earth. Those are considered the truly naughty words by the people in the fancy houses.

While my humble “damn” is considered, oh, unpleasant but more or less acceptable once you have gotten into middle school, despite the fact that “damn” does not simply describe some odd body part or life-sustaining function, no. To damn someone, to damn a thing, is to conjure up for them a supernatural omnipotent monster and then wish that monster are tortures them forever. It hopes that they will suffer long beyond their mortal death, that they’ll be burned and poked with tiny sticks by imps from now until the very day that all the stars themselves blink out.

I can’t understand how making love or pooping could be considered so much more terrible to give voice to than wishing an eternity of fairy-tale torment on a person. Of course, I mean, that’s why I like “damn” so much more as well, the depth of implication to it far beyond the vulgarity of mentioning that pee exists. I suppose I should not question it and just enjoy the fact that my beloved “damn” is considered mostly acceptable despite its gravity of meaning. At the end of the day, getting to say “damn” in mixed company is as far as I’m concerned simply bad-ass, really.