Irvine Welsh - Filth

She holds my gaze and her eyes start to water and I think of all the injustices that have been perpetrated against me recently and I hope that I feel sorry enough for myself to make my eyes moisten as well and I hope that she mistakes this for some of my soul sliding into them and the spasticated cow does and I can’t hold this gaze for long without bursting out laughing so I pull her towards me in a tight embrace and listen to her sob, – Broossss Broooossss can we no work something out Brooosss, I love you . . . and I see my eyes in the mirror behind her, like the eyes on that Tory Party election poster about that Tony Blair spastic.

I fuck her, and I’m regretting it and regretting my stupid spiel even before I’ve blown my muck inside her. After I have to listen to her rabbiting on about her plans and ambitions for us. The sex with her is nothing like I imagine it to be prior to commencing it. I feel entrapped by my lust, but when I actually get round to doing it, it just seems so pointless and tedious. She’s jabbering away and I’m telling her about Inglis and his misfortunes.

– Bruce, she laughs, – why is it you have to savour everything bad that happens to others?

I think about this for a second or two. – It stems from a belief that there’s only a finite number of bad things that can happen in the world at any given time. So if they’re happening to someone else they ain’t happening to me. In a way, it’s a celebration of joie de vivre .

She wants to stay the night but I tell her I’m on backshift. She reluctantly leaves and I do some more lines before tanning a bottle of Grouse. This gives me the shits and I stagger through to the bogs.

Masonic Outings

It’s there! Waking up from a maddening half-pished sleep and seeing the fuckin thing! It’s slithering out of my arsehole, lying across my hips. I touched it. Its black eyes. Its hooked, sucker mouth. Like a stick of tagliatelle with a head. I went to grab it only for it to be sucked up my arsehole like you eat a piece of spaghetti . . .

. . . and we are awake. I am awake. On the couch. The video’s on: the ones that Hector The Farmer got for me. Vibrator Massacre : the dykes who do the young lassies in the woods.

I can’t fuckin well breathe . . . I’m falling apart at the fuckin seams . . . we’re falling apart . . .

These cunts are trying tae kill us with this OT cutback because they know we cannae kip during the fuckin night, never could. They know we need very little sleep and that all we do in darkness is think and think and think. In order to stop thinking we have to fuck and then you get the complications; financial in the case of hoors, social in the case of slags.

I’m sitting up and waiting, praying for the light. I get through by reading ‘Tam o’Shanter’. It’s an apt that I’ll be asked to toast the haggis at the Lodge Burns supper this year, especially after the mess auld Willie McPhee made of it the last time. I know he’s done it for over fifty years, and it’s the only thing he lives for, but it’s getting beyond a joke and it’s time the auld cunt left the crease and embarked on that long walk to tae the pavilion. Eventually the light comes and I sleep for a few hours.

Then I’m up and into work. It’s the Christmas Party the night. I take some more of Rossi’s laxatives. We’ll flush this fuckin thing right out of Bruce Robertson, every last trace, sure we fuckin well will. It’ll be an early start the day alright; I want the first bevvy sank before midday and nae fuckin nonsense aboot deid coons or any ay that shite.

At the station everyone’s in a party mood. Inglis has already had a few, probably been drinking alone in the sad way of the closet homosexual. That, an inspector? I don’t fuckin well think so. A bum inspector, maybe. He’s fuckin well gettin it, I kid you not. The graffiti was only a start. Soon everybody’s gaunny ken what kind of a nancy-boy’s been sharing their cutlery in the cannie.

Karen Fulton and Amanda Drummond are the only fanny around so the prospects aren’t looking good. That big hoor the Size Queen has apparently been transferred up to the South Side. Karen says something about Clell’s hip, and Lennox asks: – What albums does he have? What clubs does he go tae? It’s above every spastic’s heid though.

Drummond coldly says that Clelland has been taken into the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, the Arthur Dow clinic. Apparently he tried to top himself again, while in the hospital! Pills and voddy job!

This puts me in high spirits.

We leave the office and we go to the restaurant for the Christmas curry. – This is the only kind ay networkin wi the wog community that ah’m interested in! Gillman says, raising his pint of lager. Cheers!

– Merry Christmas everybody! I toast loudly, raising my glass and cutting off Drummond as she’s about to pull Dougie up about his comment.

After the meal, we head up the street on a pub crawl. A loud party of pricks in suits and similarly power-dressed fanny stagger out of a Cockburn Street pub, struggling to keep their footing on the slope and the ice. One fat-chopped wanker with an Arthur Scargill hairstyle throws up in the gutter, sending kidney beans everywhere. A horse-faced bird looks at us in embarrassment and another rotund figure chides the puker in a high, squeaky voice, – C’mon Hank! Too much Christmas spirit!

This is a right spastics’ convention. I thought that I was with a sad bunch, but there’s always somebody worse than you. I spot Drummond giving a disapproving Toalesque gesture and this immediately instils a surge of goodwill in me for those part-time seasonal drinkers whom I had instinctively hated. I pull some Kleenex out from my jacket pocket. I always keep them handy for wanking purposes as you never know when the tight-arsed cunts at HQ supplies will run short. I hand the boaking mess a couple. – There you go mate.

– Thanks, the squeakoid says on his behalf.

– Office do? I ask.

– Aye, Standard Life.

Ah, Standard Life. The citadel of spare fanny in Edinburgh. You dinnae qualify as a fully-fledged male native of that city unless you’ve fucked at least a couple of birds from Standard Life by the time you’ve hit your quarter century. Mind you, the fanny on display here looks far from impressive, probably senior minge. Forget the models-in-suits bullshit in they women’s magazines. Generally speaking, the further up an organisation’s hierarchy you go, the uglier the birds get. This isnae because tidy fanny have less brains than dogs, it’s just that tidy fanny wi real brains always take the short-cut by marrying wedge and getting sorted out with some plastic before heading off with a tidy settlement. I look around and decide that we must be near boardroom level here.

We head into the pub vacated by the Standard Life crew. I get them in, ordering myself a vodka and tonic water. I’ve got the horn set up and I fancy firing into somebody later on. Fulton’s the obvious candidate, but she’s taking things quite easy. No like last Christmas or Princess Diana’s funeral when I got her three sheets and rode her back at her flat in Newington.

– Not firing on all cylinders yet Karen? I ask, noting her nursing her drink.

– I’ve gone off the drink a bit, she says. Drummond looks approvingly.

– Mind after Princess Di’s funeral? We were three sheets then!

I couldn’t resist that one, and I drink in Fulton’s visible cringing.

– We ended up back at yours . . .

– Oh aye, Inglis laughs, – tell me more . . .

Fulton winces again, but Drummond interjects, – That was a very sad and emotional day.