Fuck Read online

  CLUSTERFUCK: A remarkably descriptive American term for a scene in which there are lots of people doing lots of unusual things with lots of other people, and none of them are wearing any undergarments. Fine as a fantasy, but actually rather annoying in real life, believe me. And so, by extension, it also applies to a situation that is extremely chaotic – but not actually that enjoyable.

  FACEFUCK: At the risk of turning this into a sexual guidebook, ‘facefuck’ is a way of describing oral sex, particularly fellatio; and even more particularly if the person doing the sucking is lying on their back with an open mouth. Someone who is ‘facefucked’, however, is more likely in the twenty-first century to be ‘off their face’ having ingested something smaller, but probably more dangerous, in the way of drugs.

  FINGERFUCK: A social activity in which a finger – or more: adjust according to taste – becomes an explorer, if you like, of dark caverns.

  FLYING FUCKLAND: A more modern and less poetic way of saying ‘Cloudcuckooland’ – a place of fantasy that could surely not exist in real life. Editor’s note: outside the pages of Erica Jong’s novel Fear of Flying, a flying fuck is rarely a good thing.

  FUCKAHOLIC: An alcoholic is addicted to alcohol; a workaholic never leaves the office; a fuckaholic will fuck you even if you’re an alcoholic and a workaholic, because they simply don’t care where they put themselves.

  FUCK-AROUND: The phrase ‘fuck around’ probably doesn’t need any explanation, unless you’ve just come out of a convent, in which case this book probably isn’t the ideal place to start. Don’t try Fifty Shades of Grey, either. The more jaded of you can read on. Someone who fucked around sometimes came to be called a fuck-around; and then, starting on the island of Fiji, the word was applied to anyone who happened to be hanging around in the streets, usually with criminal intentions.

  FUCKARSE: Someone who is a bit of a prat. As opposed to FUCK ARSE, which does exactly what it says on the tin.

  FUCKATHON: Someone who is a fuckaholic, or who takes fucking around to the extremes, might take part in a fuckathon. In commercial terms, ‘fuckathon’ has been used as another way of describing ‘gang bang’ pornography, in which a female porn star attempts to have intercourse with as many partners as possible in a specified period. The supremely unerotic film starring Annabel Chang, The World’s Biggest Gang Bang, is the best possible advertisement against the fuckathon, which makes a clusterfuck seem like afternoon tea at the vicarage. Like Boy George, I’d rather have a cup of tea.

  FUCKASS: An all-purpose term of abuse, which doesn’t usually have any specific connection to anal activities.

  FUCKBAG: Nearly as all-purpose as ‘fuck’ itself: it can be a noun, denoting someone with little common sense; or someone (usually a woman, surprise surprise) who is known for having lots of sex; or it can be an adjective; or an exclamation of despair or disgust. And you can use it as one word or two. Satisfied?

  FUCKBALL: Another derogatory term, familiar from the movie Get Shorty. Over to you, Harvey Keitel: ‘Fuck you, fuckball.’

  FUCK-BAR: An establishment in which fucking takes place, or in which one secures the vital connection to enable the same thing. A pick-up joint, in other words. Coined by the American gay community in the 1970s, it’s used for a bar with back-room reserved for all kinds of sporting activity.

  FUCKBEANS: I’d love to report that this is a slang term for Viagra, because it clearly should be. But disappointingly it’s a piece of youth-speak meaning nothing more than that the person who uses it is slightly cross.

  FUCK-BEGGAR: Originally, a man with a reputation for not being able to raise the mast when the, er, ‘boat’ is about to set sail. More widely, anyone who is so desperate for a sexual partner that they have to beg. Alternative term in the eighteenth century: ‘buss-beggar’ (not to be confused with someone who gets on a bus with a sob story about having lost their money on the way to the bus stop, like the woman I always see in the South Ealing Road).

  FUCK BOOK: A work of pornography, designed to provide sexual excitement. Unlike this book, which is strictly educational.

  FUCKBOY: A male, usually young, and presumably not already gay, who finds himself the unwelcome recipient of attention from other males when he arrives in prison. The female equivalent, ‘fuckgirl’, doesn’t seem to have come into such regular usage, perhaps because not all female prisons are like the ones in Hollywood porno movies.

  FUCKBRAIN: A person whose brains have ‘gone to fuck’, and not because they want to have sex.

  FUCK BUDDY: A friend with whom you have sex. In theory, this sex is wildly enjoyable, and totally free of complications and commitments. In practice, it usually buggers up the friendship. Though there was this one occasion I remember when [continued on page 316].

  FUCK-CHOPS: See FUCKBRAIN. Proof that you can add almost anything to the word ‘fuck’ if you want to call someone a prat.

  FUCK-DUST: A multipurpose word, which originated in the 1950s as a description of stuff that simply wasn’t up to scratch. By the 1980s, it had been transferred to people who were annoying, and in the modern century it is used as an exclamation in mildly upsetting situations. A hammer on an exposed finger merits the full ‘Fuck!’; missing a bus when there’s another one due in two minutes might deserve a token ‘Fuck-dust!’.

  FUCKEE: Someone who is being fucked, not necessarily in a sexual context.

  FUCKERWARE: At a Tupperware party, the aim is to persuade gullible housewives to purchase household goods that they don’t need by disguising the sales pitch as a social occasion. With Fuckerware, the principle can be the same, only the clients are being offered sex toys. Be wary of accepting an invitation to a Fuckerware party unless you know your host very well, however: the phrase is also applied to a swingers’ gathering where men and women gather to experiment with a box of sex toys and partners who are not their own.

  FUCKERY: The nineteenth-century term for a brothel has mutated in recent decades into a description of any kind of nonsense – no sexual activity required. It is used especially in state or corporate attempts to mess with our minds and our daily lives. Remember that the next time you’re on the phone to a call centre.

  FUCK-EYE: If you give someone the ‘fuck-eye’, you’re employing what used to be called, in more romantic times, a ‘come-hither stare’. If your ‘fuck-eye’ looks like your FUCKFACE, you probably won’t be getting any.

  FUCKFACE: The gurning expressions pulled by every man and woman when they’re experiencing an orgasm. If there’s no gurning, they ain’t feeling it. Similar expressions can be achieved by other means, such as plunging into hot or cold water, punching someone in sensitive places, or pretty much every activity seen in the Jackass film series.

  FUCK-FEATURES: Abusive, of course, and pretty much guaranteed not to get someone into bed if you try to attract their attention this way. It suggests ugliness, presumably because someone looks as if they’ve become stuck in their FUCKFACE.

  FUCK-FEST: A glorious cavalcade of sex, which can involve as many people as you like. Sounds more fun than a FUCKATHON, doesn’t it?

  FUCK FILM: A film in which fucking occurs, usually in a more explicit fashion than you’ll see in your local multiplex. Also known as a FUCK-FLICK.

  FUCKFINGER: From the nineteenth century, this describes someone who was able to pleasure themselves with their own fingers: also known as a FUCKFIST. Not to be confused with the noun FINGERFUCK, which usually involves more than one person.

  FUCK-FLAPS: Another way of saying ‘cunt-flaps’. Which is another way of revealing that you’re a young man who probably isn’t ever going to get anywhere near anyone’s labia.

  FUCKHEAD: This isn’t a sexual practice, but a description of someone who’s such an idiot that he (and it usually is a ‘he’) isn’t going to find a girlfriend.

  FUCKING MACHINE: Someone who is a great lover – a stud (if it’s a man). Or the habitual cry of anyone trying to use a computer, an automatic check-in at the airport, a ticket dispenser, a DVD play
er, a coffee-maker …

  FUCKHOLE: The place where … look, you’re going to have to work this one out for yourselves. First used in the Victorian era. And you thought they were all too busy covering up the legs of tables in case impressionable youngsters became over-excited. Like almost every other sexual term in the twenty-first century, this has been transformed into a term of abuse aimed at young women. The worldwide web has a lot to answer for.

  FUCK-IN: We can thank American cartoonist Robert Crumb for this term, first identified in his 1968 illustration of the ‘Grand Opening of the Great Intercontinental Fuck-in & Orgy-Riot’ (published in the underground mag Snatch Comics). See FUCK-FEST.

  FUCK-IN-A-FOG: Chroniclers of English slang would have us believe that gardeners with foul minds use this term to describe the fennel flower – or, more poetically, ‘love-in-a-mist’. Do not use this in any garden owned by the National Trust.

  FUCK-IN-LAW: Someone who becomes related to you via sex. So if I have sex with your sister … No, of course I haven’t had sex with your sister. Honestly. I don’t know why I even mentioned your sister. I don’t find her attractive. No, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with her, she’s a lovely girl. Not in that way, obviously. I told you, I don’t want to go to bed with her. All right, be like that, leave. I can always phone your sister. What? It was a joke. I don’t even have her number. I can get it from your mum. No, I haven’t had sex with your mum, honestly …

  FUCKJOB: Something that is well and truly ‘fucked up’; and therefore also the means by which Person A ‘fucks up’ Person B, who may or may not deserve it. In the era of internet porn, almost anything sexual is a ‘fuckjob’, and probably just as mechanical as that term suggests.

  FUCK-KNUCKLE: Our Australian cousins get the credit for this mild alternative to the more abusive FUCKHEAD – the gentle nature of the insult presumably conveyed by the fact that the finger is only involved as far as the knuckle.

  FUCKLESS WONDER: Someone who’s a ‘chinless wonder’ is posh and stupid (remember Tim Nice-but-Dim?). Someone who’s a ‘brainless wonder’ doesn’t have to be posh. And someone who’s a ‘fuckless wonder’ doesn’t even have to have a brain.

  FUCKLOAD: Used in the phrase ‘a fuckload of’ on occasions when the more common word ‘shitload’ simply doesn’t capture the moment.

  FUCK-ME’S: American gay slang for a tight pair of trousers, though I would have thought that if they were too tight, they might restrict the blood-flow to vital organs.

  FUCKMOBILE: A car which the owner believes will enable him to procure a sexual partner; and also the venue for what happens when he does. This only works with certain cars, and certain sexual partners, despite what Jeremy Clarkson might think.

  FUCK-MUSCLE: As anyone will know who took biology in school past the point where they make you cut up rats, there is no bone in the human penis – despite the slang word ‘boner’ for an erection. But there is muscle, though it’s not the kind of muscle that you can make grow by exercise, otherwise teenage boys would be even more active in private than they already are. The growth is all about blood, so anyone tempted to use the word ‘fuck-muscle’ should actually be prepared to accompany it with an anatomical explanation.

  FUCK-NEST: See FUCKPAD, but cosier.

  FUCKNOB: Slang term for sexual intercourse meets slang word for penis: inevitable consequence is a term of abuse.

  FUCKNUT(S): See FUCKNOB, but replace ‘penis’ with ‘testicles’ (easier than it sounds). However, someone who is FUCKNUTTY is also a FUCKAHOLIC: nobody said that the penis didn’t have a mind of its own.

  FUCKOLA: Sounds as if it should be an X-rated slot machine, but it’s actually a right royal cock-up, and not in a good way.

  FUCK PAD: You’re imagining something unpleasantly intimate that might be hiding in a potential partner’s undies, aren’t you? It’s OK: the person with the fuck pad is merely a throwback to the 1970s, when the pad was where the dude hung out, and where he took his lovely lady with luurve on his mind.

  FUCKPLUG: A contraceptive device that seals up the FUCKHOLE to prevent pregnancy. Not recommended for use at intimate moments (the word, that is).

  FUCKPOLE: A straight-to-the-point, don’t-beat-about-the-bush term for the penis at its most extended. Incidentally, men don’t like being told they have a ‘fuckpin’.

  FUCK-PUMP: No, I don’t know where you can buy one … for the simple reason that this term is applied to a married man by those who are unfortunate enough not to have a regular sexual partner.

  FUCKRIES: A West Indian term – spoken more than written, I’d wager – to describe troubles that are disturbing someone’s mental equilibrium.

  FUCK-RUBBER: The male equivalent of a FUCK-PLUG.

  FUCK-SAUCE: The substance that is captured within the FUCK-RUBBER, or has its progress halted by a FUCK-PLUG. If you need any more help, it comes out of a FUCK-STICK when a peak of excitement is reached.

  FUCK-SHOW: What you hope you’re going to see when you go behind the curtains in a Soho establishment. What you actually get, I’m told, is a bar bill that would pay off the national debt.

  FUCK-SOCK: Another charming term for a FUCK-RUBBER – or, for the solo performer, a handy item into which FUCK-SAUCE can be directed to avoid staining the bedclothes.

  FUCKSTICK: They say that men don’t take kindly to criticism of their performance behind the wheel or in bed. So the ideal compliment for a Top Gear kind of guy is to tell him that he handles his gearstick the way he handles his fuckstick; or vice versa, depending which one he shows you first. NB: If someone uses this word in the plural, it doesn’t mean that he is a freak of nature, or that she has more than one man in hand; it’s merely a twenty-first-century expression of slight annoyance.

  FUCKSTRUCK: The state of mind you enjoy when you first establish a sexual relationship, i.e. before you get pregnant, pick up a sexually transmitted disease, or meet the in-laws.

  FUCKTRUCK: Certain members of the Australian population drive around in vans just large enough to hold a mattress in the back – flat on the floor, of course. They will then invite lonely souls to join them there for polite conversation. Also known as a ‘passion wagon’.

  FUCK-UDDERS: A term for ‘breasts’ used by young men who have only a very confused grasp of the mechanics of human reproduction.

  FUCKWAD: A small town between FUCKHEAD and FUCKWIT.

  FUCKWIT: A gentler way of saying FUCKHEAD. But not so gentle that you should try it out on the boss.

  FUCKY-FUCKY (or FUCK-FUCK): America’s involvement in Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s was not one of the more glorious moments in the nation’s history. But, say what you will about the political and military consequences, it did at least enlarge our language, and that of the unfortunate prostitutes who had to service US servicemen on their days off from bombing peasants and being shot at by the Cong. Being quick learners, the young-women-for-hire of Saigon quickly learned to offer ‘fucky-fucky’ or ‘fucky-sucky’ to their clients; and the phrase soon made its way back to America, where ‘fucky-sucky’ on a brothel menu means exactly what it says.

  HONEYFUCK: A sexual encounter in the United States that incorporates slightly more romance than one might have expected. Or one that involves a woman somewhat younger than her male partner: Michael Douglas and his lovely Welsh bride, perhaps.

  MINDFUCK: Anything that amazes or boggles the brain; and therefore, by extension, a process whereby a person is subjected to a form of brainwashing. Such as reading a book in which the word ‘fuck’ appears several hundred times.

  Is This the Way to Timbuktu?

  It does not take a massive leap of the imagination to conclude that when you combine the words ‘bum’ and ‘fuck’, you arrive at ‘bumfuck’ – a word that can mean exactly what you think it means. If you saw ‘bum’ and assumed that we were talking about a person who might otherwise be dubbed an ‘arsehole’, then you’ll have calculated that ‘bum’ + ‘fuck’ equals an extremely unpleasant ‘arsehole’.

/>   If, however, you took ‘bum’ as a ‘noun’ and ‘fuck’ as an activity, then you know exactly where you’re going, and you would have found yourself fully at home in the Old Testament city of Sodom.

  Or, finally, you might take ‘bum’ to be an adjective – substandard, unsatisfactory, as in ‘a bum rap’ – and decide, with equal accuracy, that ‘bumfuck’ is an act of sexual congress that was great, darling, honestly, the earth moved for me too, it really did; but at the front of your mind you really wish you’d been in someone else’s bed with someone else (not necessarily the same someone, of course).

  None of which prepares us for the newest and most obscure usage of that ‘bum’ and ‘fuck’ combination: the phrase that merges the two words as one, and then adds a geographical location on the end. Hence we arrive at ‘Bumfuck, Africa’ or, more commonly, ‘Bumfuck, Egypt’. (‘Bumfuck, Illinois’ works better for me, but as it was the Americans who came up with these things, maybe that was too close to home.)

  As a child, I remember being amazed when I discovered that ‘Timbuktu’ – which adults were always using to describe an impossibly far-flung destination of no redeeming value – was actually a major city in the African nation of Mali. Imagine growing up there, and discovering that the entire Western world believes your hometown is a joke. It’s a bit like being born in Essex.

  The point is that, in the collective imagination rather than on the map of what we used to call, both patronisingly and racistly, ‘The Dark Continent’, ‘Bumfuck’ and ‘Timbuktu’ are twin towns. The fact that one of them exists and the other (probably) doesn’t – not yet, anyway – is an irrelevance. They’re both symbols of being so far off the beaten track that there simply isn’t a track to beat. So being sent to Bumfuck is even worse than being sent to Coventry, which is almost certainly twinned with Timbuktu.