One day in first grade I, having picked up the phrase but not understanding its meaning, repeated “darn it” repeatedly to my best friend. The maturity I felt ceased when she informed me she was offended.

This has and still consciously and unconsciously affected me. I reject vulgarity. For the euphemisms for religion, excretion, and reproduction now have only shock value; which, ipso facto of their use, they lose. Whatever power such utterances might once have had are forgotten in their ubiquity. They have become unconnected to their actual meaning: increasingly harmless interjections tossed without regard for context. To use a vulgarity is to eschew the delicious subtleties of cleverly crafted language, to choose to be defeated by mixed metaphor, to surrender to generic triteness. Not for me.

I want my first *fuck* to be memorable.

(I still consider “darn” harsher than “damn”.)