THE sweetest and most fluent cussing that ever cut the Massachusetts air is gone forever because the lovely place that spawned it has closed its doors.

"Kings Tavern," 30 Boylston St., the last men-only bar in the Harvard area, was locked up on Christmas Eve after 32 years as a haven for men whose consuming passion was to find a refuge from their women.

"I loved to go in there and swear," one old Irishman lamented as he guzzled a beer at Whitney's, across the street, as women lolled around. He is old and getting older, gray on the sides of his head, pate shining like a full moon on top.

"Now I swear a little bit and turn around to see who's looking over my shoulder."

Kings Tavern, which had a cheery sign reading "Men's Bar" hanging outside, has closed up and gone underground. The owner, Nick Harris, has opened a cabaret, spell it cafe, directly underneath the old location, where young girls and bearded students hang out. It's at 30B (for Basement) Boylston, and the old regulars at Kings Tavern feel there's no place there for them.

"I went down there once and that's it," said one grizzled gentleman.

The old Kings Tavern is being remade into "Minuteman Radio" by owner John Waugh, who will have a mod radio and record shop there. It will open about March 1 with a "Hi-Fi Happening."

There is no joy at these tidings among the elderly Irishmen who have been sampling the delights of Kings Tavern's draft beer since it first opened, as the "Essex Lunch," 32 years ago.

The most magnificent master of the swearword who ever inhabited Kings Tavern was a bricklayer who was also an accomplished artist, painting in oils and watercolors. He swore in multi-syllables, interspersed profanity between dictionary words, such as: "This is the most non-Goddamn-son-ofabitching-sensical suggestions I ever heard of!" Nobody since Joseph Pulitzer Sr., who invented multi-syllable swearing, had heard such poetic loquacity.

This same bricklayer-artist had a five-year-old daughter, a precocious lass who was already her father's equal and was bidding for the championship.

When they were invited to dinner at a friend's house one time, the father sternly warned the five-year-old prodigy: "Now you keep your mouth clean."

They all sat down to dinner and the daughter, after sampling the food, announced: "I can't eat this shit!"

The bricklayer-artist turned to his host and said:

"What did I tell you, it's this fucking neighborhood we live in."

THE MEN'S bar always opened at 8 a.m. and closed at midnight; it was most popular among harried males who needed a bit of the hair of the dog and no questions asked.