Fuck.

Fuck you. Fuck me. Motherfucker. Dumbfuck. Fuckin' A. Get fucked; I got fucked. I got fucked over. Fucker! What the fuck? I don't give a fuck. Fuck off. Fuck yes; fuck no! Go fuck yourself! Holy living fuck. Jesus Fucking Christ. Fucking awesome, fucking terrible. Shut the fuck up. Absolfuckinglutely. What a clusterfuck. You fuckhead. Fuck it. I'm just fucking with ya.

Not one word in that paragraph was about sex.

"Fuck" is one of the most versatile words, and yet one of the most verboten; shy of some racial slurs or maybe "cunt" it's about the worst word you can say--hell, it makes national news every time someone says it on broadcast TV--but I say it every day! And I just about never use it to hurt someone's feelings.

Instead, I usually use "fuck" to denote privacy and honesty. When CC and I are dealing with someone professionally, we never say it; the instant we're alone together--"fuck, that was fucked up." Saying "fuck" to CC means that I see him as someone I can trust, that we're peers leveling with each other. It's a signal that our thoughts as well as our words are uncensored. (It's also kind of funny.)

When I was a kid, "fuck" meant freedom. My parents and teachers were pretty strict about swearing, and anyway swearing with grownups isn't much fun. "Hey Dad, I got a pretty fucking decent grade on that fucking algebra test." But I'd get together with friends and we'd swear like it was punctuation. I've got a pottymouth now, but in ninth grade it was fucking indiscriminate. "Fucking pass me a fucking can of fucking soda, fucker." We did it because it was naughty, of course. In other words, we did it to show that we were drawing our own lines--between things authority forbade because they were wrong, and things authority forbade because authority had a stick up its ass. Just as we knew that heroin was scary stuff but pot wouldn't kill ya, we knew that truly shooting your mouth off was stupid but a little "fuck" between friends was downright bonding.

I had a teacher once who said "you know, if a girl uses those sorts of words, people will think it means she does those sorts of things." I never understood the problem with that.

Maybe what "fuck" really means is "fuck rules." Fuck petty little rules that exist for their own sake, circular self-feeding rules that don't touch on reality--fuck holding back raw brutal sweaty human emotion because the best way to express it is on the no-no list. Fuck polite dishonesty, fuck arbitrary social conventions, fuck the Man. Our minds are free, our voices and bodies are ours, and we're going to "fuck" and we're going to fuck.