The correct use of the word
In my late 30’s things weren’t going exactly as planned, so I returned to school. I took Journalism and Photojournalism at my local Pasadena City College.
Every year there was a Journalism Conference.
Now, in my second year, I went to my second Journalism Conference.
I was entered in two competitions, one taking photographs at a sporting event, the other, listening to a speech and writing an article.
I arrived at the speech with thirty or so other students, I took a seat near the side and eventually a man walked to the podium and began speaking.
I don’t remember who the man was, or what he was talking about, but there was one memorable part.
He was talking about something that wasn’t very exciting, to the students with their heads down, writing furiously, when he, um, threw in an interjection.
It went something like this “in the beginning of the nation building, they were all fucked, all of them screwed.”
My head came up from my furious scribbling, and looked at him, then looked around at all the other students staring at the speaker.
He continued on with the speech like nothing had happened.
Three or four minutes later, he did it again, in a normal sentence, but wonderfully sprinkled with fuck and shit.
By this time I wrote with one eye on my paper, one eye on the speaker and one eye on the students.
He did it again, and I watched all the students heads come up in one smooth movement.
I smiled to myself, and thought about speaking and watching the eyes of the audience glaze over. When that happens, throw in a fuck, and maybe a shit.
Because everyone likes a gratuitous fuck.
I continued writing his words, but all I could think about was his boring-speech adjustment techique.
After the speech we had 45 minutes to write an article, which is when the panic attack kicked in.
My heart started going and my hands felt tight. Everything in my body was clocking at twice the speed, but the world around me was moving in slow motion.
I knew that my words were wrong.
I knew that I was a failure.
There was no point in even trying.
And I took deep breaths and tried to slow my heart, to calm my hands.
But this was a repeat of last years conference.
One year ago,
trying to write an article in 45 minutes I had panicked,
I had stared at the screen,
I had looked around the room.
I had written down the Who What Where Why and When.
I had tried to form a led.
But I wrote this instead:
What the fuck is wrong with you? It’s just a fucking story, it’s a stupid fucking story in a stuping fucking conference and it doesn’t matter, no one cares, There is no fucking reason for having a fucking panic attack for writing a story, what the is fuck wrong with you?
Deep breath.
Deep breath.
I tried to create a first paragraph with all the salient facts.
And I sat there deleting and writing and deleting and writing and deleting and writing and tried to not look like I was panicking when I looked around the room at everyone else writing.
And I did this for 35 minutes.
In the end, I wrote something in 10 minutes, because I had to turn something in, and went outside and had a cigarette to try to calm down and stop the flight in my body.
Now it was a year later and the same thing was happening.
I tried to write the led.
And it was horrible.
I tried to write the first paragraph.
And it was pathetic.
And I tried this again and again.
But my head kept spinning with how the speaker used fuck.
And I wanted to write that story.
But that’s not a newspaper story.
They wanted the speech, the historical record, the important facts.
Not how the speech was presented.
I tried to write the first paragraph again.
Fuck what the fuck is wrong with me.
Maybe I could just write fuck four hundred times.
Fifteen minute left.
Ok, fuck it.
I wrote the article that I wanted to write.
‘The Correct Use of the Word Fuck in a Speech.’
I wrote about looking out over a sea of glazed eyes and waking them up.
I finished the article and turned it in.
I actually liked my story.
It was the wrong story to write, and I would never work in a newspaper writing that type of story. But I liked it.
On the last night there was an awards ceremony. Tables and chairs scattered across the conference hall. The eight or ten of us from Pasadena sat together. We chatted and discussed what lectures we had seen, what we had learnt, and the competitions.
I laughed and said I might win something in the photo contest, but definitely not in the speech writing contest.
They began handing out the awards, and eventually announced the Speech Writing Award. The table looked at me, I shook my head and smiled.
…and the third place award goes to … Benjamin Simpson.
Polite applause around the room and my colleagues cheered and I quietly said ‘fuck’ and went up and got my award.
I got back to the table laughing to myself,
and they looked at me with slightly confused looks.
So I laughed and said, “I won a newspaper award for writing an article about how to use the word fuck in a speech.”
Many, many months later I was sitting in traffic.
I lived in Los Angeles, and it feels like all you ever do is sit in traffic.
On this sunny day, looking up Los Feliz Boulevard, past the fifty or so cars in front of me, to the traffic lights.
Green, yellow, red, green, yellow, red, green, yellow, as we slowly inched upwards.
One thing that made sitting in traffic easier was audio books.
Thirty or so books, downloaded onto a thumb drive, stuck in my stereo.
Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, William Gibson, Phillip K. Dick, Arthur Conan Doyle.
I had them on random, so five minutes of the Diskworld, eight minutes Sherlock Holmes, seven minutes of Ray Bradbury.
I’d read them all before, so it was like chatting to a friend.
On this day, five minutes of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy played.
It was the scene where Arthur Dent finds himself on a strange planet, in a flying house party.
He’s talking to a man holding an award. Arthur doesn’t ask the man about the award. The man becomes angry and yells at Arthur “Win Awards.” and stalks away.
Arthur asks a nearby lady:
<quote>
“Why did he tell me to win awards”?
“Just show biz talk,” answered the girl. “He just won an award at the Annual Ursa Minor Alpha Recreational Illusions Institute Awards ceremony, and he was hoping to be able to pass it off lightly, only you didn’t mention it, so he couldn’t.”
“Oh,” said Arthur, “oh, well. I’m sorry I didn’t. What was it for?”
“The Most Gratuitous Use of the Word Fuck in a serious screenplay. It’s very prestegious.”
I sat in my car, and laughed without noise.
I looked at the ceiling to thank Douglas Adams, and laughed slightly as an atheist was looking up at heaven to thank another atheist for planting that thought in my head.
That forgotten but unforgotten thought that was bouncing around in my skull that came out as a newspaper article.
Thank him for overcoming my panic.
Thank him for helping me write the story.
Thank him for helping me win third place at the Journalism Association of Community Colleges Southern California Regional Conference.
I laughed that nothing was truly original, and was maybe fine with that.
I sat in the car, watching the lights cycle, with a small smile.
