Country Matters

Once upon a time, well, 2008, I wrote a book that aimed to illuminate the stories that lay behind what some might term ‘dirty words’ and others dignify as the obscenities. It was entitled Getting Off at Gateshead and, once published, vanished almost wholly without trace.  One reason might have been the title, which was not mine, but a marketing decision. It is one of a number of synonymous references to alighting at the station ‘before the terminus’ and thus, somewhat ham-handedly, refers to coitus interruptus. That, wholly forgetful of the title, I had completed and submitted the manuscript prior being reminded that I might, perhaps, acknowledge this fact in my text may suggest my own attitude to such phrases. Hubris indeed and we know where that must lead. The book ran in alphabetical order. So if A was primarily for arse, and B for ballocks, C was for…and so it was. I offer, I hope for your delectation, a small excerpt; it covers a selection of derivatives, and a short, but unarguably focused story:

There is cunt, and then there are its derivations: cuntstruck, obsessed with sex; cuntish, either stupid, unpleasant or effeminate; the insults cunting and cuntless; cunt-eyed, used of one with squinting eyes; and the unashamedly misogynistic cunt-bitten, a sixteenth-century term meaning syphilitic. Cunt’s many blends stick firmly to the genital. They are, one might say, merely descriptive, but not since the fifteenth century. Thus the penis is variously a cunt-buster, cunt-hook (though cunthooks are also fingers, as are cunt-scratchers), cunt-plugger (hence cunt-plugging, intercourse), cunt-rammer, cunt-stopper or cunt-stretcher. The female pubic hair is a cunt-curtain, cuntfringe, cunt-rug, cunt-wig or cunt–hair (and a cunt’s hair is an infinitesimally tiny distance). A cunt-chaser, cunt-hound, cunt-hunter or cunt-man is a womaniser. A cunt-teaser, the male equivalent of the better-known cockteaser, excites a woman but – albeit implausibly – stops short of intercourse. A cunt-rag is a sanitary towel, while a cunt-swab is a pair of knickers.

As for the rest, it’s the same sad old story. He fancied her younger sister, and tried talking cunt (nudge-nudge, wink-wink) to her but as they say, that’s not cunt it’s peehole (she’s under-age) and it all went cunt-up. Too cunted to see straight he’s caught in a cunt-collar, trapped by the elder’s overwhelming sexuality. Back in his cunt-wagon, a flashy car designed to ensnare the impressionable opposite sex, he can tell she’s turned on by her cunt-stand (the antonym of her partner’s cock-stand – even if both seem irretrievably Victorian) and her stimulated vagina exudes cunt juice, moistening her cunt-lips (the labia), especially after attentions from his cunt-tickler, his moustache. But he proves to be a total cuntprick and indeed a cunthead, neither to be admired, and what’s worse, a cunt-pensioner, a pimp. Not only that but he turns out to be a cunt-starver, in other words denies her maintenance payments as proscribed by Australia’s Deserted Wives & Children’s Act, known in that land of directness as the Cunt Act. ‘Stick it up  your cunt’ he sneers, coming the old cunt, and she finds a new life with her girlfriends, a pair of cunt-sucking cunt-munchers, who initiate her into the delights of mutual cunt-lapping. Alone, wearing his cunt-hat (a trilby, and so called either from its distinctive crease or from its being made of ‘felt’; a similar pun underpins the uses of hat to mean vagina, both being ‘frequently felt’), and bedevilled by his foul cunt-breath he has a single recourse: the cunt-book, a piece of porn.