“We have to go to another terminal,” Sarah explained, as we stepped out into the tropical night. “And there’s our van and driver.”
We hopped into a minivan and drove past a bunch of generic airport buildings—pleasantly scented airport buildings, but still, it was an airport. I tried to remember where I was, or what time it was, and just kind of gave up, happy to be like the cartoon character Snoopy, dancing his happy dance atop a cumulus cloud laced with dog bones.
A thought occurred to me. “Why is it Americans are socially permitted to say ‘fricking,’ ” I asked, “when, in fact, everyone knows the word they’re actually saying is ‘fucking’?”
Neal mulled this over. “That’s a real conundrum, Ray.”
“I know! I mean, here you have some bland ho-bag telly presenter saying, ‘I’m so fricking mad’ about whatever, while you, the home viewer, know she’s three millimetres away from saying, ‘I’m so fucking mad.’ But instead of being outraged because she basically said ‘fucking’ on TV, everyone giggles, like she’s being cute.”
Sarah gave me a contemplative look.
I was on a roll. “And then, later on, when they’re masturbating to the mental images of that bland ho-bag—not me, mind you, the public in general—the masturbators get turned on by the tiny fragment of difference between her saying ‘fricking’ and ‘fucking,’ like it’s a little tiny sliver of porn.”
“Right,” says Neal. “It’s subtle, innit? But it’s like ten times worse because the public is thinking, fucking, fucking, fucking. They’re so full of shame or so socially conditioned that the mental effect of saying the word ‘fucking’ is technically amplified. By actually saying the word ‘fucking’ in real life, instead of ‘fricking,’ you’re doing American society a favour.”
“Exactly,” I said.
At that point, the minivan’s driver—some bearded chunk of chewed-up-and-spat-out social debris—pulled to the side of the road, turned around and started screaming at us, “Shut up! Shut up, both of you! I have a nephew in Iraq!”
Neal and I genuinely had no idea what on earth was going on.
“Iraq?” Neal said.
“Iraq?” I queried. Then we did it again.
“Iraq?”
“Iraq?”
Was he serious? “Sorry to hear that, sir,” I said, “but could we keep on going?”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“Not until you apologize,” the driver said.
For what? “For what?” I wondered.
“For using the F-word.”
“What is the connection between me using the F-word and your nephew being in Iraq?” I was baffled.
“Don’t make things worse.”
“Make what worse? I can’t apologize for something I don’t even know I’ve done, can I? I just don’t get the link.”
“Get out of my van!”
“No fucking way. Now you owe me an apology.”
Neal backed me up, as a good slave assistant should. “As opposed to the apology you want to extract from us, which doesn’t make sense no matter how one approaches it.”
“Thank you, Neal.”
“You’re welcome, Ray.”
Sarah said, “Driver, there’s an extra twenty in it for you if you ignore these pinheads.”
“No, ma’am, I’m taking a stand here.”
Insanely loud volleys of trucks stuffed with pineapples and bound-and-gagged whores destined for Dubai roared past us, shaking the van.
I said, “Okay, then, so on one hand you have Iraq, which is what it is. And then on the other you have the difference between ‘fricking’ and ‘fucking,’ which is basically the difference between the letters ‘RI’ and ‘U’.”
Neal added, “You could almost make it a scientific equation, like:
Iraq = U – RI
“I don’t think so, Neal. It would be more like a differential equation:
“I see,” Neal said. “Much more subtle.”
“I rest my case.”
By this point, our purple-faced driver (shades of Mr. Bradley) had opened his door, got out, come to the right side door panel, opened it and was screaming for us to leave. Talk about baffling. “Sarah,” I asked, “can you tell us what on earth this guy is on about?”
“You said it yourself, Ray. Americans don’t like swearing.”
“But Iraq? What the fuck?”
“It’s … complicated.”
“So there’s a relationship between fricking-fucking and Iraq?”