The F-Bomb

Jimmy Conway:  They whacked him.  They f***in' whacked him.

    Henry Hill:  Aw, f***.

                                                                               -Goodfellas

I love the f-word.  I love it when modified by the words "mother" and "me."  I love it when combined with suffixes like -er, -ing, and -you.  Because I'm Italian, I love the Italian version: f****la!  I love saying "f*** off" in Italian:  vaff****lo!

I'm confident EVERY Italian loves the f-word as much as I do.  It's is something so deeply encoded into Italian heritage that I'm sure it's most commonly an Italian baby's first word.

During the scene in Goodfellas when Tommy is incited to kill Billy Batts, I count about seventeen f-bombs.  It's only a couple minutes but the profuse usage of the f-word amounts to approximately ten percent of that short dialogue.  The Internet Movie Database calculates that the f-word occurs 296 times, half of which are said by Joe Pesci's character, averaging 2.04 f-bombs per minute.  Italians love the f-bomb. It's perfect with its crescendoeing /f/ and hard /ck/ sounds.

Fffffff***!

When I was five, I asked my mother to demonstrate for me the correct way to write the letter "f" in cursive as she lost herself in The Days of Our Lives.  Unsuspecting of her innocent young babe, she presented, I practiced.  Then, I asked her to teach me a "u" in script.  She presented, I practiced. Calculating my strategy so as not to give myself away, I inquired about writing "k," innocently skipping over "c."  Without breaking her concentration on the soap, my mother quietly but definitively stated, "Adam, knock it off."

I went to play with my G.I. Joe figures so I could pretend to have them say the f-word.

There is absolutely no word like it. No word relieves such anger or stress quite like "f***."  It is so versatile that not only does it sufficiently act as a frustration reducer but it conveys disbelief, disgust, hatred, and pain.  Add the gerund ending and you have a wonderfully illustrative adjective with which you may adequately describe someone you vehemently detest.  I love the f-word!

So, why have I censored it every time it occurs in this post, even when it occurs in quotation?

I have a two-year-old who magically repeats all the words she's not supposed to say until she is old enough to control the impulse to speak such language.  Apparently, the physical ability to demonstrate this restraint doesn't occur until between ages 21 and 25 when the pre-frontal cortex fully develops, thus activating impulse control.  Anyone not of age is prohibited from cursing.

I can't even say "shoot" without my daughter repeating it.  I could say, "I can't believe I just drove all the way to the stupid supermarket and forgot the stinking milk," and all she'll hear and repeat, despite the fact that she is more than capable of reciting that entire statement, would be the words "stupid" and "stinking."  For a time, I thought she was actually saying "F*** it" in response to my direction to stop playing with her Little People farm animal set.  I denied to my wife that I ever uttered such obscenities in her presence.  I handled it perfectly:  denial. 

So now, the one word I love, the word that relieves all stress, that sufficiently expresses my frustration, that facilitates the successful completion of IKEA furniture assembly, that accurately informs the driver in front of me of their actual speed, that notifies my wife that we don't have enough money to pay the fuel bill, that one single-most favored word by my people, I can no longer say.

Even if I say it in Italian, she'll try to teach it to her three-month-old sister.

F***!

Asterisks do not suffice... I want to yell it from my car as I drive down I95 in Thanksgiving traffic, out the window at the deer eating my hostas, at the f***nose who owned my house before me and allowed it to become infested with carpenter ants.

I suppose, however, sacrifices must be made in the rearing of a healthy human being.  I'll need to curb my enthusiasm for another 27 years, until my youngest is well into the age of majority.  I'll just need to not be Italian until then.  Either that or avoid stubbing my toe.

No more kids, honey... I'm not sure I can make it.

Am I Jewish or Italian? Wait, Jewish isn't a nationality? Oh,s*#@!

 

"Well I think it's been made perfectly clear that Jewish Italians have to decide whether they are Italians first or Jews."

-"The Duce," Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres

This quote is out of context.  It's actually from a chapter in de Bernieres' Corelli's Mandolin "spoken" by Benito Mussolini to you, the reader.  It's entirely fictional.

But, he's right.

When I was thirteen, I was much more interested in being Italian than Jewish, especially as I began obsessively watching Goodfellas on VHS. There's not a scene nor a line that I don't know from that movie because, "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster." Two other Italian friends and I formed our gang. We never got into a fight, never went to the "mattresses," never whacked any of the other seventh-grade boys, but also never sat with our backs to the classroom door. 

That year, as I watched Henry Hill weep over Karen dumping the coke down the toilet, I also watched the four other Jewish kids in my town getting bar mitzvahed and questioned whether I should be doing the same.  As I well imagined, all the shiksas would want to dance with me and I liked the shiksas.  But, ultimately and emphatically, I refused and further concluded the only reason I enjoyed bar/bat mitzvahs was the game of Truth-or-Dare that ultimately ensued. At the last bat mitzvah I attended, in order to transport us sweaty, horny teens home from catering hall, the girl's parents rented a bus for us to make out on.

I got to second base.

She wasn't Jewish.

And, I still wasn't getting bar miztvahed.

Now, as an Italian and Jew -a non-practicing Jew- I am always in the position of deciding whether I'm one or the other.  Immediately after the last posting, my father reminded me that being Jewish does NOT mean I'm ethnically Jewish.  It's not a nationality.  It's not an ethnicity.  It's not a religion that I practice. What the !*&@ is it, then?

Maybe this would have been easier to answer if I had been bar mitzvahed.

Being Italian is simple... I'm 50% Napolitan.  There's a street named after my great-grandfather in Calitri, Italy.  My grandfather and his brothers immigrated from Calitri on the S.S. Colombo in 1927. Fuhgeddaboudit.  

But, ask every Jew you encounter and you'll immediately learn that, by heritage, he or she is undoubtedly Jewish.  I guess I'm following the rules:  in Judaism, you're the religion of your mother.  That said, I went on a Christian retreat in high school, was married by a priest, and am raising my daughters Episcopalian.  I haven't sat down to a Passover seder in years and lost my dreidel when I was five.  

Perhaps, I like being different.  There are, after all, only about 13.5 million of us in the world.  Perhaps, Jewish Adam is a little more pushy than Italian Adam.  Perhaps, Adolescent Adam still lingers so he can say, "No, Dad, I'm Jewish!  AND, I'm taking the car out tonight!"

Maybe I don't need to answer the question. 

Maybe it's simply enough to know that somewhere deep in my family's past, about seventy years ago in Romania, by order of the Conducãtor, my relatives' voices were silenced because they decided they were Jewish before Romanian.

 

"You know, you're Italian, too!"

 

Yes, Dad, I do recall something regarding my Italian heritage.  And, I'll confess:  I certainly use the dichotomy of my heritage when it's convenient.  I'm not proud.  If there's an anti-Semite in the crowd, I'm Jewish.  If The Godfather is on AMC, I'm Italian.

I'm never both.

I tend to be Jewish more often.

It's not even a nationality.  Some think it's an ethnicity.  Some don't.  Yet, in this essay, it's powerful enough to obscure the fact that I'm writing about being Italian, too.  I have a manuscript describing this duality but were I to run a word count tracking text devoted to my Jewish heritage versus that of my Italian side, the Jew would win.

I'm a little embarrassed that I don't distribute attention to both more fairly.  Not to mention the fact that the Jewish half is equal parts Romanian, Russian, and Polish.  What about them?  It's as if Jewish Adam is the youngest born, Italian Adam the first, and Romanian, Russian and Polish Adams the ugly adopted, middle children. Don't misunderstand me:  Jewish Adam deserves some of the publicity.  It's just that Jewish Adam gets all the attention and his siblings are beginning to resent him for it. 

So, I begin this social media endeavor to pay each of my Adams his due respect.  Undoubtedly, I will fail miserably as already, six unpublished essays on Jewish Adam, including a page devoted entirely to the Jewish Guilt-Shame Complex, await posting on this very blog.  Italian Adam wants some of the glitz.  He's got something to say.  I think the two can share.  I hope the two can share. After all, I'm a little of both...  A little bit matzoh and a little bit meatball.