Honesty and The C-Word

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

I tweeted a few days ago that in the near 15 years since I first came to UK, I’ve been directly called the c-word by only three people. I should clarify for American readers that don’t know, the word can apply to either gender over here. Since it has such a negative connotation anyway, I sort of took my hat off to the Brits for allowing that if the word is meant to be the most vile of insults, why should it just be confined to females?

I’ve only used that word directly to two people, both female, and I’m not going to sit here and defend saying it, more that my consternation at the time of saying it seemed to leave little room for any editing as far as emotions were concerned. But when you meet someone at a club, she invites you back to her place, then when you arrive there, there’s a guy sleeping in her bed, there’s not many words left to choose from. That’s the only one of the two incidents I’ll describe, since it happened nearly 40 years ago.

I was a bit surprised when I was first working in UK, and seeing that male comics could use the word on stage and the audience wouldn’t have the coronary that US audiences might have. Many times in the US, comics have been fired from gigs for saying it. Yet the more casual acceptance of the word here hasn’t tempted me to join the “mainstream.” There was one crowd a few years ago in Taunton (western England) that refused to let me continue until I said the word, after I’d told them I DON’T say it on stage. I tried to explain that I’ve said it millions of times in my private life, having been divorced three times, which usually gets a laugh, but these guys kept saying “WHAT word?” So I finally said it, and wasn’t overjoyed about it. Sometimes, “Give em what they want” isn’t the best credo to live by.

As I’d said at the top, I’ve been called the word three times since I’ve been here, with the third time coming this week in social networking. The first time was amusing, as it happened in one of the least likely places, a library! This was in Wood Green, London in late 2002. I was in a queue for the information desk, and thought I was next up when a window at the desk opened. I started to move toward the desk when I heard a whiny voice going “Excuse Me!” several times. I didn’t even know he was talking to me at first, but when I realized I’d accidentally cut in front of him and started to apologize, he was having none of it. I said I wasn’t sure he was actually in the line, which was true, and sure, maybe I should have asked, but his response was, “Well use your eyes, you thick c–t!” This guy was a lunatic anyway, as he seemed bent on having a confrontation with SOMEBODY, and as I let him go ahead, he immediately got into it with the librarian over some other issue. Really, you’re looking for a fight in a library? Definitely not a well man. When I got up to the desk, the librarian apologized to me for the man’s language, but I said, “No, it’s OK, I consider it a rite of passage!”

The second time was just last year as I was walking near my place. Some teenager walking by asked me a question which I didn’t understand, but because I looked quizzically at him rather than respond, he was prompted to say, “Ah, fuck you, you old c–t.” I still said nothing, probably because I was more offended by the “old” than anything else.

Those were arbitrary encounters with people I’d never met, and I’ve always held the notion that if someone doesn’t like me, it’s usually because they don’t KNOW me. That vain theory was put to test this past week, and though I’ve blocked the person in question, I need to be vague on some details while things are still unsettled. This was someone I’d met and befriended a few years ago after seeing how many common interests we had. We stayed in touch for a year, but drifted apart as he got busier. Then recently we re-connected via Facebook, which for about the 10th time has gotten me in some kind of trouble. There was a Vinyl DJ gig he had at a pub I knew (this was NOT a comedy or quiz-master gig) which I expressed interest in, and since he still travelled a bit and would be absent from this weekly gig from time to time, I thought it fair to ask if I could sub for him if he wasn’t around.

He seemed amenable to it when I first mentioned it. Then a few days later I went to his gig, met some lovely people, and asked the club’s manager, whom I’d met before, if it would be OK for me to sub once in a while. She agreed to give me a one-time trial at no specified date. When I reported this to the guy on FB a couple days later, I thought I was doing the right thing by being honest and saying I’d talked to the lady about it. My final statement in my message was “Just to clarify, there is no way that I would try to usurp your gig.” Somehow, that last statement was either ignored or at least disbelieved, as the response was “You’re a fucker, how dare you do that…..piss off from my life. What a fucking c–t you are!” By the time I’d gotten this message, he’d already unfriended, so I couldn’t respond.

Isn’t that lovely about show biz, that if I’d gone behind his back and taken the gig out from under him, so long as he didn’t know, I’d have still been aces in his book. But because I chose to let him know what was up, and that my intentions were honorable, I got pilloried for my honesty. I’d have made a pretty terrible lawyer, and an even worse politician. I went back to the club and told the lady I was retracting my offer. Would a real c–t do that??

April 12th, 2015



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