I am all a flutter. I have finally contributed something to the global lexicon. Sure, it's just a humble definition (for UrbanDictionary.com), but I'm feeling accomplished. Finally! Immortality!
Guy Gravy
Definition:
In restaurants, it is "boy butter" mixed into the gravy on dishes for rude customers, or any other person the provider of the butter doesn't like.
In restaurants, it is "boy butter" mixed into the gravy on dishes for rude customers, or any other person the provider of the butter doesn't like.
Note: it can also be mixed into salad dressing, or dessert topping, or barbeque sauce, or condiments, or...
Example:
"Bonjour, Chef Pierre, comment êtes-vous?"
"Très bien."
"Bon. That woman at table 2 actually snapped her fingers at me and called me 'boy.' Can you believe that shit?"
"Then Chef Pierre will prepare some of his world-famous guy gravy!"
"Bon! Merci beaucoup!"
I love to curse. It's one of the many juvenille things about me that I've just learned to accept about myself. Sometimes, I just don't want to work too hard when it comes to making somebody uncomfortable. And people's response to my sailor mouth is a pretty fair guage of how uptight a room might be. If ya can't take, "clownfucker," my political and religious views are REALLY going to piss you the fuck off!
I'm good at it, too. I've had a lot of practice, after all. My parents were of the neglectful variety of wine-chuggin' suburbanites, the kind of people that they used to hype with a cover-story in Time Magazine, "Latch-Key Kids And Their Horrible Parents." Film at 11... But they weren't so bad. Just, um, distracted. And my desire to curse actually had a positive effect in that it made me want to learn the definitions of "big" words, to take my game to the next level.
Cursing 101: You fucking bitch!
Advanced Cursing: You fucking cretinous, myopic cunt!
So I spent a lot of time in front of the television. More specifically, my old man was a movie fan, AND he had cable. So for two exquisite weekends a month, I would fill up on movies and HBO comedy specials, returning to the playground with all the colorful language I'd picked up. In those days, I was prone to immitating George Carlin, Eddie Murphy, and Robin Williams. [Holy shit! Remember when Eddie Murphy and Robin Williams were the "dangerous" comedians??? Sigh. Me neither.]
I was pretty good at keeping it under wraps, at least in "official" settings. As strange as it sounds to me, I was really afraid of "trouble" as a kid. Strange how it didn't hold me back from doing a lot of stupid shit, but either way, getting sent to the principal's office was the sort of ignominy my parents simply couldn't bear.
Who'd have thought I'd be trying to turn it into a livelihood?
I have been "in trouble" for my fucking foul mouth a total of five times in my life:
1) In the fourth grade, a little girl kicked me in the nads. "Bitch," "balls," "shit," and "dick."
2) In the sixth grade, a boy punched me in the nads because my friends Lester, Ricky and I called him "goober." I guess on a level, I really deserved that. "Bitch," "balls," "shit," and "dick," were all there - but I'd added "cocksucker," and "motherfucker" to my repetoire. I got in more trouble because I laughed when the principal, Mr. Huling (?) was reading off the list of words my teacher had heard me say, which he now had to read back to my mother. He was a very dignified, stoic guy who kind of looked like Martin Luther King. But he also had a very slight speech impediment, making the really good words even funnier.
3) Seventh grade. The word in question... "fetus." That's right. Fetus. We were making banners in print class for Mothers' Day and, having gotten sick and tired of the usual greeting card shit, my banner read "Happy Maternal Parents' Day From Your Fully Developed Fetus." This is the one instance where I didn't catch it from both school officials and my parents. My mom thought it was funny.
4) Eighth grade. I hollered, "Shit!" after my friend Duane had slapped me in the back of the neck, as was the custom back then... Actually, this was the first time I pissed off a government official too. You see, if you scream fucking foul shit in front of George Slavefuckin' Washington's tomb (at Mount Vernon) - even if you've just been given a huge "pink neck" - it's perceived as being less than reverent. I wonder if Washington ever cursed. Well, if he didn't lie, he'd have to. Right?
5) College. The truth is that, to this day, I've got no fucking idea what I said. I know I offended an older woman who was doing costumes for a production I was in. I said something to another actor across the room, and she took offense. So I guess there were two times where my parents weren't called... Being the 90's, it's a fucking miracle that she didn't press some kind of charges. It was a little weird to me because, having spent a significant chunk of my childhood acting, everybody backstage had "Sailor's Mouth." Actually, I was more leary of the people who didn't curse a blue streak. And with good reason - they were usually motherfuckin' pederasts.
Actually, there's a sixth. And it was in a professional setting, so it's particularly embarassing. Still fucking hysterical, actually. I was working for SBC at the time, so much of my day was throwing on my headphones, "down periscope, silent running." I don't like to make too much "water cooler talk." I like to choose who knows things about me, and even one's taste in movies and TV does telegraph a little info about you. In this case, my screensaver was a Bill Hicks quote that I'd set to scroll, "Do you think I'm wearing all black in the summertime because I'm a #$%@&* ray of sunshine???" Seriously, I even blocked out the dreaded f-word!
Personally, I don't quite get it. Any of it. Shit, by now, it all just bounces off my ears. And it seems to me that most people are pretty good at code-switching. Everybody's got a grandma they don't want to curse in front of. But the comedians who make a point of telling you that they're above "working blue" are making up for the fact that they don't fucking have much of an act.
"You ever notice how hot dogs come in packs of eight, where buns come in packs of 10? What's up with that?"
I just keep thinking that a lot of censorship is unnecessary bullshit. Most people have heard the words, yet the conservatives act as if people would go apeshit if curse words made it on the air. For example, I always love AMC's versions of R-rated pictures. Gotta make sure that the "seven words" and boobs don't sully the delicate ears and eyes of the children who might be watching Sudden Impact.
So like I said, I'll cop to being just enough of a hack to take advantage of the wonderful gift the uptight people in the world have given me. If I'm really, really lucky, I'll piss the right people [or should I say "Right"?] off. See, cursing alone - feh. Eventually, everybody tunes out. Now when you have ideas that you get across with cursing, that's another thing altogether. You give them an easy "obscenity charge," and they'll holler about it for ages, which makes any intelligent person want to hear what you have to say. And you really can't buy that kind of press. Sure, it's a cheap tactic, but fuck it!
It's either that, or I'm going to have to develop a serious Blow habit...
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