Irvine Welsh - Filth

But no. I restrain myself and I decide to go out.

The street is cold and grey, like so many streets in so many towns in this country. This wind surges through you, lowering your temperature until you’re too numbed to realise how sick and uncomfortable it’s made you. And the people: nosey, predatory, always ready to revel in the misfortune of others. One man is looking at me. I know the type. A sleazy middle-aged guy who doesn’t do it with his wife any more.

Repressed people; you have to pity them more than anything else. I know, because I was like that before I met Bruce. I still am in lots of ways, although he’s brought me out of myself. Bruce realised that I had to come out of myself, needed, even in spite of myself, to come out of myself. That was what our sex club was about.

Bruce knows that our wee games and flirtations only serve to strengthen a true love, by making it confront its true nature, making it feel the depths and heights of itself.

He did it for me , and it worked.

I’m a different person now.

A better person.

Infected Areas

A lazy weekend. I did get semi-drunk on Saturday night with Lennox who booted a jakey’s styrofoam cup into the gutter, spilling his coins doon the Walk. It was such good sport watching the cunt groping around for them. After this I gave him a couple of quid, solely to try and make Lennox feel bad. It didn’t work and I regretted the wasted outlay. I laid off the whisky though, which made me feel not too bad Sunday morning, and Sunday was a quiet day.

I thought of Carole a lot. I know what she’s up to. She’s playing a very, very dangerous game and she doesn’t even know it.

Let’s hope she comes to her senses soon.

For everyone’s sake.

I’m scanning the Sunday Mail and I jump as I see a picture of somebody familiar. Black and whi

Fuckin

A panic attack grabs me and shakes me. I feel like a psychic band in my body has been knotted to its tensile limit and twanged and my life-force is shooting for the stars. It reaches a pitch and then stabilises as I gasp and look again, trying to find clarity in the greyness of the newsprint.

I calm down as it’s no who I think it is.

It’s me.

An old picture.

An old picture and a new caption: HERO COP IN RESCUE BID by BRIAN SCULLIONA Christmas shopper tragically died in the arms of his wife yesterday, despite valiant efforts to save him by a hero off-duty policeman who came to his aid. STUNNEDShoppers in Edinburgh’s busy South Bridge were stunned when retail manager Colin Sim (41) – who has a history of heart trouble – collapsed on the city street. ‘We were shocked. He just keeled over’, said Mrs Jessie Newbigging (67). ‘I was just looking for something for my granddaughter’s Christmas. I couldn’t believe it. He was just a young man as well.’ Her daughter, June Paton (39) of Hawes Road, Armadale, added: ‘It’s terrible something like that has to happen, especially at Christmas. It makes you think.’ HEROWhile Heather Sim comforted her dying husband, a man in the crowd mounted a dramatic rescue bid trying both mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and external heart compression in a vain effort to revive the stricken man, who is the father of an eight-year-old son. ‘The boy was a real hero, he tried everything in the book to bring the guy back,’ said Billy Gibson (21). He added: ‘I was feeling a bit sorry for myself as I have just been made homeless and have been sleeping rough, but something like this makes you realise just how lucky you are. Now I’m determined to enjoy my Christmas.’ SHOCKMr Sim was dead on arrival at the Infirmary. The hospital spokesman said: ‘It was a severe attack. There was nothing anybody could do.’ The police hero, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson of Lothian’s Constabulary said: ‘I tried my best to save him, but he just went.’ Student Janet Onslow (19) added: ‘I think we’re all a bit shocked. One minute you’re here, the next you’re gone. It just goes to show.’

How did that make me feel?

It made me feel like watching one of Hector The Farmer’s videos, then going out for a pint and a bar lunch at the Royal Scot, and reading the rest of the papers.

In the Royal Scot they have a wonderful fire going, giving off a roasting heat. After a filling roast beef, mashed potato, carrots, sprouts and gravy, the oxygen leaves my brain and the heat and the flame and the clicking sounds of cutlery on crockery become mesmerising. I can see them in the fire, the demons; their flickering, mocking dances as I recline into the chair. I lift the pint glass of stout to my lips and break the spell. I down the pint.

When I get home I take some sleeping pills and within what seemed like half an hour of unconsciousness it was Monday morning again.

Monday again. The phone drags me out of a stupefying sleep. It’s Gus. He wants to make an early start. Yes, he likes to keep the credits rolling during the winter so that he’s flush when the weather breaks and the gowf becomes a possibility.

There’s a few messages on the machine, from people who read the piece in the Mail . – It’s Chrissie. Congratulations Bruce, if you know what I mean. Phone me. Chrissie. – Well done Bruce . . . it must have been harrowing. Bladesey. – Bruce. Bob Toal. I’m sorry, but well done anyway. Toal. – I’m proud of you. Call me. Shirley. – Whatever happened to, all of the heroes, all the Shakespearoes . . . a coked-up Lennox sings.

I go to the toilet and give my hands another good wash and scrub in the sink. It’s hard to get all the shit off them. I give the black flannels a chance to air, and put on a fawn pair. There’s an old curry stain on them, but I manage to get most of it off, using Stacey’s facecloth.

Then I head outside, taking the ice-scraper to the Volvo’s windscreen. Julie Stronach’s visible in her front window, straining to put a bauble on the Christmas tree she’s just erected. Just erected? She can come next door and see if she can get mines up! I’m getting a good decko of those full tits in that tight, white t-shirt. She catches me staring so I give a neighbourly wave, and hold up the can of windscreen defroster in one hand and the scraper in the other and let my shoulders rise. Julie smiles with cautious empathy. I get in the motor, sticking on Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy , and head for HQ to rendezvous with Gus who’s just getting out of his own motor in the car park. I wave and he gets into my passenger seat. His nose is red with the cauld. – Well done Bruce. That must have been pretty terrible, Saturday likes, he says.

– Worse for the boy, I say.

We’re off down to Leith, sitting in the motor outside yon wee Estelle’s flower shop and who should come in but Gorman. It gets us off the subject of the boy that died. – I spy strangers, I smile at Gus.

Gus decides to nick into Crawford’s while I keep shoatie. – Two sausage rolls Gus, one buttered roll, a portion ay chips and a vanilla slice plus coffee.

I start thinking about that graffiti in the bogs last week.

He returns with the goodies and we sit waiting for Gorman to depart. – Thing is Gus, that Karen Fulton, she wis a game cow at the start. The force bike she wis called, doon at the South Side. These fuckin hoors are ey on aboot equality. How the fuck did she git oot ay uniform? Ah’ll tell ye how: shaggin fuckin Toal. Now she’s above aw that, in wi that lesbo crew in Personnel. Every time they drop thir drawers they git a promotion, every time we do, it’s a disciplinary. What fuckin equality is thir in that?

Gus laughs and goes, – Right enough Bruce.

This cunt’ll never get a promotion. You have to spell things oot tae him. – Ah’m no saying that ah’d like tae shag Toal mind you, some price tae pey for a promo that, I grin, – but the principle’s the same. Fulton now though, just look at her: snooty fuckin cow, willnae mix it wi the likes ay us. Senior cock only. Thir wis a time when ye only hud tae paint three stripes oan yir willie and she wis desperate tae pack it between her thighs.