I like the edit--I'm all for word economy. In the end, it makes writing much more powerful.

In college I dated a race car engineer from England for a while. Now, the p-word doesn't have quite the same sting on this side of the pond as it does over there. When I casually used it in front of him and his friends, you'd have thought I plotzed right there on the floor. They were horrified! Silly me. He turned out to be kind of a jerk, anyway.