Eat My What?

Being the end of the year, I thought I'd clean out some old articles that have been hanging around, but never got published, mostly for good reason. I believe this one fits that description. Good times. - The Ed.

Years ago while I was working for Sobstad, Sailing World had put out a contest of sorts that had asked people to list sailing phrases that they used. You know, like "facial" or "getting rolled" or "slam dunk" and the like. One of the employees at Sobstad at the time, a Snipe sailor named Craig Leweck, had started to fill out his list of phrases for the contest. I think there was room for a couple of phrases, and Craig had listed one, "To Geek it", which meant to screw up in some way. He left at least one entry line blank.

One of our other co-workers for a very short while at Sobstad was a very funny and good-natured troublemaker named Pete Formica. Petey and I were true cohorts at the time, both with equal affinities for racing sailboats, race cars, and doing drugs, and not necessarily in that order. Petey never much cared for Leweck nor his demeanor around the loft (he used to refer to him as Himmler), and he took a look at Leweck's half-filled entry and thought it would be a good idea if it was completed more to his own liking. Being the ever-willing compatriot, he grabbed the form took it to my desk for a little creative input.....

Back in the punk rock heyday, there was a particularly snotty band named Fear (an all-time favorite of mine, btw). During one of their live recordings in San Francisco (which can be heard on The Decline of Western Civilization soundtrack - a classic documentary on the LA punk scene), the band was trading insults with the audience (as was their wont) when somebody yelled at lead singer Lee Ving, "Eat my fuck, asshole!" Lee yelled back, "What does eat my fuck mean? Fuck you!" Then just before launching into the next song, Lee yelled at the NoCal crowd, "Eat my fuck, we're from 'Frisco!"
The phrase was so disturbing and wrong and therefore by our twisted definitions at the time, great, that we immediately shortened it to simply Eat My Fuck (EMF), adopted it as our own, and used it at all times when appropriate. That is if you can consider any time appropriate to say Eat my Fuck.

Instead of telling somebody to fuck off, "Eat my fuck" had such a more colorful bouquet to it. Poetic, almost. It became a staple amongst our particular band of idiots.

...Back at the loft, the light bulbs went off in Petey's and my drug-addled brains, and we couldn't think of a better phrase to share with Sailing World! So without Leweck's approval or even his knowledge, we dutifully filled out Leweck's form, and submitted it.

It was just a few days later that the call came from someone at Sailing World, looking for Craig Leweck. Turns out they were most unimpressed with Leweck's entry. The humor of "Eat my Fuck" had somehow escaped them, and they were none too happy. And neither was Leweck when he figured out what we had done. That of course made our joke all the funnier, and we laughed our asses off for days, which did little to smooth any hard feelings.

That devilish good time, in addition to a number of other incidents of stupidity and fuckery, and Leweck has never really liked me since. And in truth, I've always thought he was an uptight dick head anyway.

I wonder, is there an appropriate phrase for that? - The Ed