The word cunt can get you into a lot of trouble in America, but man, the British love it. There are a lot of things the British love that I don’t understand- fish pies, serving every dessert with dried fruit, closing everything except for pubs at five o’clock every evening- but suddenly, as if I’ve just read the Rosetta Stone, the word cunt makes sense. I find myself yelling it in my head numerous times a day.

put down the cell phone and just walk to the fucking escalator, you silly french cunt! or why can’t you just connect me to the customer service cunts?! or you grand shower of fucking cunts, just tell me the truth when i ask you if you have cunting monterrey jack cheese!

This is healthy.

It’s a much less offensive word in British English. There isn’t really an equivalent in American English that I could offer- something vaguely obscene and vulgar, but also fairly gentle. fuckhead, maybe? fuckface? Perhaps fucknose? There isn’t an exact translation. You don’t have to be angry to use it, for sure, though it’s best as an expression of comical anger… And I try to avoid using references to the feminine as an attack, but it’s so utterly devoid of any of that context here that it doesn’t even come into it.

And the reason I’ve grown so fond of the word is simple- it’s so accurate.

So, remember last month when I did that research study, taking drugs in exchange for a big check? Get this- i can’t cash it. No bank will cash a check for someone without an account, and you can’t open an account without an employer or university reference; I haven’t got either, and signing it over to someone who does have an account, like, say, my wife, is laughed away as something that maybe happens in the United States of cunting America, but not here in England. Numerous phone calls to numerous sources, from the bank to the company that cut the check to the cunting post office, as well as a rejected application to be added to Kat’s bank account, have all confirmed that my only option is a check-cashing service.

I’m quite familiar with the check-cashing services. I like to live as off-the-grid as possible, and so I had no bank account until I started screenwriting professionally and needed one to be paid via wire transfer. My last regular job, I took my paycheck to the Ace Check Cashing every other Friday and exchanged it after giving up a 1% commission. It seemed a fair deal.

Here, the baseline is around 10%. On a check for £900. I found a place that will give me a 5% rate, but even that is absurd- five percent on that comes out to nearly $100 yankee dollars. To cash a check, which I can’t cash anywhere else.

cunts!

It’s stuff like that. The people shuffling slowly on the street, lined up four-wide on the sidewalk. The man whose job is to stand outside the tube station when it’s closed, informing you that for no good reason, you have to walk a mile down the road to get where you’re going, because it’s a Saturday and sometimes on Saturdays the train just doesn’t run. The guy at the supermarket who has no idea what you’re talking about but answers your questions with things he just made up because he doesn’t want to be rude and say that he doesn’t know.

The English have a special lexicon for situations like this. They must- they have had to deal with it for generations. And thus, they have grown to love the word cunt. After six months of dealing with this, so have I.