By Caro Cooper -
Fuck you, fuck work, fuck pants, fuck polite, fuck coffee (no, I take that back), fuck brushing my teeth (OK, no, not that either – but screw everything else).
I was raised like so many other girls in the ’80s: to be nice, quiet, polite. Even though age has worn me down, I still carry the burden of it all. I say, “Thanks, thank you,” to everyone – really, just like that. Someone holds a door open for me and I hinge at the hips in supplication as I squeak out, “Thanks, thank you.” Two thanks to make sure they really hear my gratitude. I laugh awkwardly when people insult me, then apologise for my inadequacies. I’m a frilly knickerbockerwearing jellyfish that never wants to upset the metaphorical universal apple cart. Or do I?
Iran has a public holiday to celebrate nuclear weaponry; Victoria takes a day off to celebrate the beating of horses pumped with more steroids than a UFC urinal; South Korea celebrates the alphabet; and Turkmenistan takes a day to marvel at their melons, not metaphorical. All solid reasons to take a day off, but they’re not what I want. The day I want, the day I need, is a Fuck All This Day
– a national holiday to flip the bird, toss the forks and pump your fists at politeness; at the mundane that drives us into the ground; at unpaid bills and passive-aggressive acquaintances; at gym instructors who comment on how long it’s been since they’ve seen you; and at the overwhelming pressure to get out there and make something of yourself. Fuck. All. That.
For one glorious national day, you can unshackle yourself from the societal conventions that stop you urinating in your seat at a restaurant when you really need to pee but don’t want to stop eating, especially when you know your friends will see your momentary absence as a chance to scrape your plate clean. It’s saying no when someone asks you to help them move house, when all you want to do is google “botox worst case scenario” and create an alphabetical list of your physical flaws.
I’ll use the day to order a single coffee and sit in a café typing for three hours, taking up a full communal table. I won’t race through my drink and scurry out when the waiter starts lurking. I won’t shrink and pack my things, only to have to type in a dark alley among the rats and skeletons of writers before me who also couldn’t handle more than one coffee in a day without their anxiety causing them to chew their own foot off, and who couldn’t afford $20 toast with microherbs. On this day, I would plant my pencil in that goddamn table and claim it, ignoring the waiter passiveaggressively wiping the surface around me. Keep on wiping, buddy.
Don’t like swearing? There are a million ways to turn your back on the world without lowering yourself to my level. And that’s part of the day – doing it how you want, doing what you want. Go naked from dusk till dawn; throw your phone in the toilet (intentionally this time); tell your friend you can’t attend her art opening because her work makes you question the value of arts funding; and put your work laptop through the paper shredder. You can tell people you’re not interested in their children, and no, you don’t want to hold the baby, because really, you’d rather stay in bed holding the genitals of the person you picked up the night before (or your own if your plans fall through).
How freeing and refreshing to get it all off our chests for just one day – one sweet 24-hour period of honesty and freedom, before we wake again to another year of keeping it all on the inside.