Read Online Worst. Person. Ever. by Douglas Coupland - Free Book Online

Africa.”
    I blinked and we passed a moment in total silence.
    Then she laughed. “Come on! I’m totally fricking kidding. Look! You’ve got
me
swearing now! Pass me another Tia Maria.”
    Phew.
    “I was sitting next to Mr. Bradley when it happened, you know,” I confessed. (Actually, I was bragging.)
    “No!” She was unscrewing the next mini bottle’s top.
    “Seat 1K. Twelve inches away.”
    This sank in to Sarah’s mind as she guzzled the bottle. “They put
you
in business class?”
    “I … yes, they did.”
    “You must have friends in high places. I would have thought they’d put a B-unit cameraman in a cage with the goats.”
    “Well, that makes me feel great.”
    “It’s a food chain, Raymond. Get used to it. There are a few things you need to know about this show and how it’s run.”
    “Such as?”
    “Such as, it’s a temple of lies built on fear and cocaine.”
    “I suspected as much, but hadn’t dared hope it was the truth.”
    She laughed at me. “I’m messing with you! It’s actually more like a church or a cult. You can’t make any mistakes or it’s …” She mimicked slicing her throat. I honestly can’t think of any other point in my life when I’ve fallen so hard and so fast for a woman.
    She patted my arm then—contact!
Please, dear God, there has to be a broom closet we can use nearby. I don’t think I’ve ever troubled you much; just making a small request here.
    “We’ve got to be flying to Kiribati soon enough,” Neal interjected, wrecking the mood. “Any idea where our plane is?”
    “Follow me.”
    We followed her with pleasure towards an exit surrounded by GIs or commandos or whomever it is the president hurls off to face certain death in whatever goatfuck war his country happens to be waging.
    “We have to go to another terminal,” Sarah explained, as we stepped out into the tropical night. “And there’s our van and driver.”
    We hopped into a minivan and drove past a bunch of generic airport buildings—pleasantly scented airport buildings, but still, it was an airport. I tried to remember where I was, or what time it was, and just kind of gave up, happy to be like the cartoon character Snoopy, dancing his happy dance atop a cumulus cloud laced with dog bones.
    A thought occurred to me. “Why is it Americans are socially permitted to say ‘fricking,’ ” I asked, “when, infact, everyone knows the word they’re actually saying is ‘fucking’?”
    Neal mulled this over. “That’s a real conundrum, Ray.”
    “I know! I mean, here you have some bland ho-bag telly presenter saying, ‘I’m so fricking mad’ about whatever, while you, the home viewer, know she’s three millimetres away from saying, ‘I’m so
fucking
mad.’ But instead of being outraged because she basically said ‘fucking’ on TV, everyone giggles, like she’s being cute.”
    Sarah gave me a contemplative look.
    I was on a roll. “And then, later on, when they’re masturbating to the mental images of that bland ho-bag—not me, mind you, the public in general—the masturbators get turned on by the tiny fragment of difference between her saying ‘fricking’ and ‘fucking,’ like it’s a little tiny sliver of porn.”
    “Right,” says Neal. “It’s subtle, innit? But it’s like ten times worse because the public is thinking,
fucking, fucking, fucking.
They’re so full of shame or so socially conditioned that the mental effect of saying the word ‘fucking’ is technically amplified. By actually saying the word ‘fucking’ in real life, instead of ‘fricking,’ you’re doing American society a favour.”
    “Exactly,” I said.
    At that point, the minivan’s driver—some bearded chunk of chewed-up-and-spat-out social debris—pulled to the side of the road, turned around and started screaming at us, “Shut up! Shut up, both of you! I have a nephew in
Iraq
!”
    Neal and I genuinely had no idea what on earth was going on.
    “Iraq?” Neal