Irvine Welsh - Filth

Lennox laughs and shakes his head. – You’re some man Robbo.

– Tell ye Ray, I say, – they wee lassies: like wee angels. Then they grow up, that’s the problem. They grow up intae cows and fuckin hoors. And a cow’s worse than a hoor. A least you ken where you stand with a hoor. A cow? You never fucking well ken.

Lennox is looking uncomfortable. – Well, aye . . .

Doesnae understand a thing, that’s his problem. Thinks he kens the fuckin lot. But what does he know?

He knows nothing.

Absolutely sweet fuck all. Too fuckin big for his boots, that cunt.

We stop in for a bite to eat at the pie shop on the South Bridge. Eddie Moncur from the South Side office is there with a uniformed spastic. I nod at them. There’s a slow, lazy, overweight cunt serving us, or who should be serving us, but he’s taking his time. – Who ate all the pies . . . I start up a slow chant, but Mister Cool Wanker Lennox refuses to join in. Above and beyond it all is he? I think not.

– A couple ay pints later but, eh Ray? No way am I gaun back intae that place this affie, that’s for sure.

Ray looks at me as if I’m mental. – You’re forgetting something. Gus’s surprise do.

Of course. How could I forget that. I get to thinking that there might be a surpise for Mister Ray Cunty-Baws Lennox as well.

Surprise Party

It was a good idea to throw a wee surprise party for Gus, as it’s the auld cunt’s fifty-fifth. Christmas is all but with us, so any excuse for a piss-up. Gus but: he should be thinking of early retirement, no fuckin promoted posts. What an auld spastic, spoiling things for every other bugger. Or trying tae spoil things. Think again, old man.

However, we’ve got a few cans and bottles in, and there’s a fair crowd here. Yes, even Drummond’s here: one gless ay wine, then making a big point tae every cunt about needing to get back tae work. Nae cunt takes a blind bit ay notice ay her though, even if the atmosphere lightens up as she leaves. Needs cocked badly that yin, for every other cunt’s piece ay mind as well as her ain. Anywey, I’m mair interested in real fanny. That big civvy piece, the Size Queen, she’s around. Lennox is smarming and getting nowhere. He’s smarming, but he’s no thinking. I am. We made a fifty-quid bet on who’d be the first yin to get into the Size Queen’s knickers, and that dosh is going in the Robertson coffers. I kid you not. I watch what I’m drinking and bide my time until every cunt’s three sheets. Then I start shifting the conversation round to the topic of a gentleman’s size, watching Lennox go all nervy and trying to change the subject.

– Mind back in Oz, at the New South Wales Police Department, I carry on, we used to play this party game . . . in our station at College Street. The Aussies . . . well, they can be a bit risqué .

– Aw aye, what was that? asks Karen Fulton. She’s a game cow. Known for it. Gone a bit snooty these days, but the alcohol and the festive atmosphere of the holiday period are just the ticket to pull a slag back into the fold. They just can’t help themselves.

– Perhaps I’d better not say, Karen my darling. Our colonial cousins . . . can be rather coorse.

– C’mon! Spill the beans, Fulton urges.

– This sounds intriguing, the Size Queen purrs.

– C’mon Bruce, don’t start something you can’t finish, says big-mooth Lennox, raising an eyebrow, blissfully unaware that he’s singing his ain death warrant.

– Well . . . okay . . . what it was, right, was that the guys would take it in turns tae go into the photocopier room and photocopy their wedding tackle on to a sheet of paper. Then they’d write their names on the back, and put them into an envelope. Once everybody’s been done somebody then tacks the prints on to the board.

– Get away Bruce! Lennox scoffs, but to the cunt’s embarrassment, everyone else seems captivated. I look at the big hoor, the Size Queen, whose eyes are like saucers.

– Naw, bit listen, I continue, – The lassies would then try to match the cock to the guy.

– Lit’s dae it! roars the Size Queen. I clock Lennox looking stricken, but there’s nothing he can do. Even auld Gus is up for it. Peter Inglis goes first, the fuckin animal. Fags are the biggest size queens of the lot and a repressed, inadequate closet case like him must be drooling at the prospect of checking out all that meat. Aye Inglis, ah’ll have you outed ya cunt. Promotion? That? Aye, sure. It might be some equal opportunities cunt’s idea tae turn the force intae a bastion of buggery but old values die hard here, especially in the craft. He’ll ken awright.

Inglis emerges with a sheet of paper in an envelope. He hands the envelope to Ralph Considine, who’s only a uniformed spastic and thus shouldnae even be here in the first place, and he goes in and does the business, handing the envelope to Gus. There’s whooping and cheering from everybody, except a tentative Lennox, when auld Gus goes in. Then Lennox reluctantly disappears, trying to brass it out. I’m next, but when I put my gear oan the gless plate, wiping it first after the rest of these cunts have been against it, I turn up the enlarger switch to full and take the copy, before sliding it back to its normal setting. I stick the name on the back of my enlarged dick. Thankfully the rash doesn’t look too noticeable with the black and white image and paper quality.

I emerge with the envelope. Clell and some spastic who worked with Gus do their bit, then we’re away.

The game is interesting. One cheeky cow marks me down for what’s obviously Lennox’s tackle. That will be fuckin right. Eventually they are all turned over and put in descending order:

BRUCE

GUS

ALAN

ANDY

PETER

RALPH

STEVE

RAY

PHILLIP

It turns out that auld Gus’s is almost as big as my enlarged one. Nae wonder the sly auld fuck was rarin tae gie it a go! The biggest shock though was that someone was smaller than Lennox, a uniformed spastic called Phillip Watson. I’d’ve thought that impossible without him having a fanny!

After the disclosure, everybody’s giving me loads of attention. I catch the Size Queen’s flirtatious eye. As time and drink pass she’s embarrassing herself over me, and Lennox has taken the hump big-time, the moosey-faced rat-bag. I’m playing it cool: just flirty enough to keep the cow on the boil, making her suffer, always the best way. I’m doing a James Bond here, firing out the suave double entendres left, right and centre, one or two of them across the bows of a certain Mister Raymond Lennox. The same rules apply.

I’m going to say fuck all to this big blonde hoor. I want the Size Queen off her high horse, I want her to proposition me . Which, after a while and more drink, she does. She sidles up to me and vampishly announces, – The winner deserves a prize. Let’s go back in there . . . and she takes off and I follow her at a discreet distance into the copy room, clocking Lennox with a wink as I depart. She leans back across the desk and I don’t even kiss her. I lift up her skirt and pull down her knickers. – Give it to me, she’s saying, just give it to me now, her eyes shut.

I push in and watch the Size Queen thrust and buck with an increasingly puzzled look on her face. She’s daein aw the work and that suits me fine. After a while I shoot my load and leave her wondering what’s been happening.

I collect my fifty quid from Lennox then I’m off hame, as high as a fuckin kite. Even the short drive gets me horned up again. It’s the rhythm of the traffic and the heat in the car, as well as the lyrical content of the Motley Crüe album Girls Girls Girls on the stereo, which has mair references tae hot pussy than a Dutch newspaper would if someone had torched the floating cat home in Amsterdam.