Where He Learned to Say “Fuck”
Cape May Brewing Company, Cape May, New Jersey, USA. Visited on March 22, 2013.
When she chose the destination as a birthday surprise, she chose well. He used to come here as a child. To the town, not the brewery. In fact, to visit the brewery is a corrective. The childhood trips were fine – Cape May is where the extended family met, where uncles and aunts and cousins gathered — but they are part of his childhood, meaning that even the good and happy memories are like photographs in frames, and in this metaphor the frames are compliance. That is, he had no choice in the matter. As a child, he was told where to go. Given that association, he would never as an adult have chosen to visit Cape May, but what a mistake!
He drinks a beer and tells her that Cape May is where he learned to say “fuck” with liberal abandon. Not that he hadn’t heard the word before, but until his more urbane cousins egged him on, he would have been too terrified to utter the word with his parents in the same state, let alone the same house. He, his sister, and brother returned home with a whole new vocabulary!
Even now, “fuck” and “fucker” and “fuck this” roll off his tongue naturally around the people with whom he is most close. Around people he doesn’t know so well, he has learned to dial it down, ever since a coworker said, “You know what? You swear a lot.”
That was the same job where “Fuck this shit” was one of his trademark phrases, so much so that his coworkers started calling him “FTS,” for short.
It is difficult to say whether he has mellowed out in his 30s. Really hard to say. But he is happy going anywhere with his love, and this return to Cape May is a nice excuse to rethink the past without exactly reliving it.
He wouldn’t want to relive it, because of the association to compliance, but also it was the lack of privacy and the constant noise. Everyone crammed in one house, children sleeping on the floor, farts and snores. On the one hand, a great adventure. On the other, it was impossible to find respite. At home, he liked to sit in his room alone and devour a book. At the beach, that was difficult indeed!
Also there was this one trip when he was in the ocean and the waves were particularly rough, and he wondered if he was going to be swept away and drowned. Even though his father held him super-tight, he felt helpless and sure he was likely to die.
“Because it is part of my childhood, I appreciate that it shaped who I am,” he tells his love, “But I am not nostalgic for it.”
Then he drinks his beer while she tells him about her childhood.