Has there ever been a word or phrase that, whenever it is uttered by some careless human somewhere (usually, but not always, by Sarah Palin), makes you want to vomit bloody rockets? Like, I don't know, "you betcha" or "nucular" or "supermajority"? Well, there are few words in the English language that set my teeth on edge more furiously than the word "fierce." This word is worse than cholera ever was. It's worse than dudes who put their hair up in a bun. And it's exponentially worse than the word "fabulous."
This word is beloved not by tedious posable Republican sex dolls, but rather by tedious posable gaywads across this great land of ours (and on the Bravo channel). And if there exists something more irritating than the use of this lisp-tastic verbiage (as Sarah Palin might call it) as a default way of describing something, it is the types of dreary items it is used to describe: a hairstyle; a shade of eye shadow; a belt buckle; a piece of fabric; a bracelet; a (usually stupid) song.
The only way I could hate this word more is if Sarah Palin used it at the teabagging orgy last weekend to describe Rush Limbaugh.
Anyway, I was hoping that this terrible word was gone from our lives, that it had played itself out in the arena of idiotic pop culture and had been mercifully laid to rest. Sure, after a few years maybe it would reemerge once again and be uttered drunkenly with wistful nostalgia at parties, like the lyrics to "I Will Survive" or "Oh Sherry." But I clung to the hope that it was gone from the here and now. Hell, even 30 Rock did a joke a few weeks ago about the word being well and truly 2006.
Alas, it was not to be. You see, I bought an awesome pair of shiny black gym shoes the other day at Shoe Mania in Union Square. (Bear with me.) They were sure sexy. And comfortable! It was an unusually successful purchase for me, and I wore them to the gym the next day well aware that the other boys would be absolutely sick with jealousy, this time not simply over my pecs and smooth, hairless legs, but over those things AND my shoes.
When I got home from shopping, I got out the box they came in to show Jimmy.
"So, you got some fierce shoes," he said, laughing at and judging me.
I promptly gave him the stink eye. (I may even have given him the stank eye.)
"It says right there on the box," he said, pointing to the shoe box I was cradling in my arms.
And that's when my world collapsed. Right there, on the box, printed clearly for all the world to see, was that f**king word.
So it's official. I'm gayer than I ever imagined was possible. I have [cringe, shudder] fierce [little vomit] gym shoes.
I prefer, though, to think of them as ferocious.
