The Mural Gazer

Episode 8 - You illegitimate fornicator

When you think about it, after the sting has subsided, and you can settle your heart into a survivable rhythm, and get your stomach turned right-side-up, being called a 'fucking bastard' isn't the worst epithet that might stick. Not that you'd want it repeated to your children, or ballyhooed up and down your street, but it's a notch up the pariah scale from labels like murderer, rapist, maybe even thief.

"So, after thirty years, you decide to go and discover yourself, without so much as a word of warning, with a note left on the dining room table. Well, go and discover what a prick you really are, but don't come back here to tell me about it. You shit! Coward! You fucking bastard!"

After that, dead air. She ended the call. I had Imagined her in our kitchen – could tell by the shape of her voice that's where she must have been.

He dropped the phone into the little hold-all in front of the gear selector, lowered the seat-back and let things settle. Shit, coward, fucking bastard. What did all that mean. In a way – although he wouldn't permit it to take permanent shape – he was disappointed in her. Could she really have been quite so stupid as not to have known? Or worse, was she prepared to go on the pretending otherwise, when she knew their marriage had as much life left in it as a gutted fish.

He'd actually done an article on fucking bastards once, a snide bit of op-ed that got spiked because it might have offended the very people who were targeted by what was seen as the ultimate ejaculation of visceral rage– an insult launched like a guided missile out car windows, sent blistering down telephone lines, shouted in kitchens with enough vehemence to rattle teacups. The analytical epistle had been his version of revenge, meant to rankle a reader who had been riled by one of Buddy's stories.

We all know what f***king is, but what Is a f***king bastard? the write up opened. The phrase can be understood on two levels: it's a sort of snarl, the kind of threatening spasm you would expect from a rabid dog, expressing its tormented anguish; it's also a statement about the lineage, upbringing and character of a perceived enemy. It's often the final stage of communication before words give way to physical violence.

Like most vehement expletives, the term says as much about the one who shouts it, as It does about the object of that person's wrath.

But there's a special tang to the f***king bastard insult. When someone calls a perceived enemy a f***king bastard, he's also claiming to have been injured or betrayed, very often by a person he (or she, for that matter) trusted. The husband who cheats on his wife can suddenly be summed up in a handy phrase: He's a f***king bastard. Similarly the business partner, who swindles his friend can be described as an FB.

Note that we don't call these despicable specimen 'illegitimate fornicators'. Aside from being too clumsy to be hurled in a single explosive outburst, the phrase would be too clinical for the purpose. The misdeeds of an FB don't have to be analyzed, weighed from multiple perspectives, subjected to any kind of forensic science; the words f***king bastard come to hand as readily as a stone or knife during a fit of rage.

In fact, that's the cruel beauty of the epithet. It can inflict damage without the often tortuous necessity of self-examination. The person who uses that term is claiming the role of victim in the drama. That may or may not be the case, all we can say for certain, without an intelligent discussion of the facts, is that the circumstances and events in question are being framed that way by the 'injured party'.

So what should we do when someone accuses us of being a copulating illegitimate son or female dog – as the case may be? Hard as it is to restrain ourselves, we shouldn't seek quick gratification by reciprocating in kind – the equivalent of pouring gas on a fire. We should first ask ourselves if we have somehow earned the abuse. Then, even harder and more saintly in the accomplishment, we should try to understand our accuser's fury and look for a pathway through the smoke and devastation toward reconciliation.

Not being saints, it's okay – for a moment or two – to think of your detractor as the sphincter at the nether end of a digestive tract. But don't say so out loud. Clamp your jaw shut and back away. Go somewhere and think hard, until you've got something intelligent to say.

He allowed a quick smile, remembering the piece. Then came-to, looking up through the Matrix's windscreen at the car park's concrete ceiling. Falling's easy, he thought. It's natural. Flying's hard. It defies the laws of gravity and the forms of human architecture.

He twisted the key in the ignition and backed out of his stall. He had just enough time for the drive to Chemainus, and his interview with Bernice Sanderson. Whether that would prove or disprove his status as a steaming piece of excrement with arms and legs remained to be seen, but whatever the outcome he couldn't deny he felt like one.