Filth

by Irvine Welsh

  When I fuck her she’s giving it all the Ooohh baby, I’m so wet . . . oooh this is so good . . . and all that shite, which I enjoy. Again, it’s good that she takes a pride in her work and makes the effort. It’s definitely the hooring capital of the world is old Amsterdam. With this one though, after I’ve blown my muck into the rubber, her dead hoor eyes chill over mechanistically as she’s already preparing for the next customer and I head out to get a bite to eat.

  I go to one of the nondescript pizza places on the Damrak which are largely unspectacular tourist rip-offs. After eating I head back to the room. I still have her panties in my pocket. From last night. I couldn’t ask that hoor I was with to wear them. I pull them over my head and sniff, filling my nostrils with her scent. I’m aware of the thudding sound of sobbing and a high, ugly moaning in the room.

  I pull off the pants but the room’s empty except for me.

  The Rash

  The next morning I shit on the hotel’s traylike bogs. A pile of chestnuts faces me, foul of Dame Judi, but yielding no signs of the alien monster. I know it’s up there though, inside of me, twisting and growing, biding its time, like an Arthur Scargill in the healthy body politic of eighties Britain, the enemy within.

  I get out and visit another couple of hoors, one Thai, one black. The black one looked at my balls as if she had never seen white meat before. Maybe it’s the rash, it’s definitely getting worse.

  Worse.

  I put in another shift of afternoon drinking, Heineken and geneva, before I scored some good, gum-numbing cocaine fae a guy in a brown bar. Then I was back out on the piss. That’s the thing aboot charlie: gies ye superhuman drinking powers. No that I need them.

  In one bar I have a bottle of Grolsch and I see that they are daein that space cake. I take one piece, then another. A wide cunt behind the bar tells me that I should watch that stuff and I just laugh and have another piece. I’m getting a good buzz in my head.

  When I leave the bar it hits me and I feel really sick and nauseous.

  The hippy cunts’ve tried to poison me, me a fuckin polisman. I’ll get ontae the Dutch polis and close the cunts down. I’m staggering around, too scared to cross the road cause these trams are coming from aw directions and the cunts on the bikes as well, and I’m too close tae the edge of the canal in this condition . . . these Dutch cunts . . .

  . . . the EC should shut this fuckin place doon . . .

  I get off the Damrak but I’m staggering down a narrow street and I bang into someone who shouts at me but I keep moving, it’s like a fucking nightmare where ye darenae look back. I’m hyperventilating when I get back to the hotel. Bladesey’s lying on the bed in his room, watching the telly. I head to the bog and shit again and I see that there’s something in my stools. I can’t look at it. I sit there for a while and calm down before I go back and face Bladesey.

  His face seems to reverberate against the wall and all I can hear is that fucking actually voice. I don’t know how it happens but Bladesey’s giving me gyp. He seems to be three sheets and tells me that he met some Londoners and they got wrecked. The conversation seems to drift to music. I mention I like Motown; Marvin, Smokey and the like, or I did before I destroyed my albums realising that it was a sign of weakness to have coon music in the hoose.

  Bladesey’s voice is a high, incessant squeal through drink. – How can you be a racist and like Motown? he’s whining, – I mean, how can you be a racist and like Marvin Gaye?

  – Marvin Gaye was not a black man.

  – How can you say that?

  – He wasn’t a black man to me. The cunt that shot him, that was a black man. That was a fuckin nigger.

  – But that was his father!

  – Yes. A black man.

  I can’t feel anything, there’s no sense of me standing up and moving over to him, but I have some sense of grabbing Bladesey round the neck and him shouting: – What are you doing Bruce? It’s me! It’s me!

  But I know it’s him and I want to choke the living shite out of the cunt, just turn off his gas for good cause I detest the bastard and he’s just one of the cunts who’s got it in for me.

  Can’t fuckin save them

  The boy up the Bridges

  You can kill them casually

  why can’t you fuckin well save them so casually

  stop them

  stop him

  The walls are reverberating and it’s out of my hands . . . his neck . . .

  How did it make you feel?

  He’s still on the bed as I leave, rubbing his scrawny pigeon-neck, gasping for air.

  I don’t believe I attacked Bladesey. My mate. My travelling companion. Brother Blades. A stalwart in the craft. A brother.

  I’m down the narrow stairs, staggering past the pouting blond guy on the reception. In the street, a ragged junkie hoor smiles at me from under a streetlamp, a remnant of a t-shirt Amsterdam which seldom resembles the more sanitised and regulated real life. I get into a bar and order a Heineken. I’m thinking of Bladesey, that sad little cunt who needs very little and who can’t understand what a grievous rage his attitude and manner induces in the rest of us for whom everything in the world could never, ever, be anything like enough.

  My chest throbs as I sit on the barstool. My hands are tingling and voices are ringing in my ear, speaking a language I can’t understand, but there’s no mistaking their murderous intent.

  Bladesey. I’ve got to get back to Bladesey.

  Bladesey.

  The longer our friendship has developed, the more the destruction and humiliation of this sad little creature has grown to obsess me. He needs to be confronted with what he really is, he has to feel, see and acknowledge his inadequacy as a member of the human species, then he has to do the honourable thing and renounce that membership. And I will help him.

  First I have to drink off those fuckin hippy drugs.

  Goals

  – You were in some fuckin state last night Brother Blades, I tell a furtive, shaking Bladesey at breakfast. He looks terrible, there are bruises on the side of his face and on his neck.

  – I . . . I . . . can’t remember . . . I woke up feeling . . . he hesitates.

  – I remember alright, I say wryly. – I came back to the hotel blissed out on this hippy dope and you came back three sheets after spending the day on the piss with these London guys. Anyway, you insisted on going out. . .

  I look at his bemused face.

  – . . . Do you remember Hunter’s Bar? I ask.

  – No . . . I don’t actually . . .

  – We got into a ruck with these German cunts. Then when we got back to the hotel you fuckin well went for me!

  – God . . . I don’t remember . . . I’m terribly sorry Bruce . . . I was so drunk I . . .

  I raise my brows and lower my eyes disapprovingly. – Fuckin well should be, I tell him.

  I look at his wretched, uncomprehending expression and leave the cunt in his misery. I play at being in the huff and swan off to get a paper.

  One of the brilliant things about Amsterdam is that you can get the Sun at the same time as you would in Britain, if you go up to Centraal Station. I bought a copy of the Sun for the football pull-out ‘Goals’. It’s a habit. Football is a habit. I think it’s a sex substitute for most men, admittedly not as blatant as rugby, because the guys actually fuck each other up their holes in rugby clubs. But that’s more to do with social class, because they’re rich pricks who went to all-boys schools. But football’s like that as well. When you think about it, most guys get into football when they’re too young to get their hole. When you go to the fitba you can always tell which of your mates has a bad or non-existent sex life. They always seem just that bit too much into the game. I’m sounding like fuckin Bladesey actually, with all this actual psychological analysis, actually. That wee cunt has to wait for his poxy Independent or Guardian or whatever commie shite he reads. I always buy the Sun on Monday back at the work to have a wank to page three and read ‘Goals’. Sim
ple pleasures. Not that I really give that much of an Aylesbury right now. Out here I’ve been far too preoccupied with the Roger Mooring to be bothered about the fitba.

  Anyway, I hit a bar to mull over the results and tables and I’m astonished to note that Tom Stronach’s got on the scoresheet in a two-one win at East End Park, which lifts us into third spot in the table, ahead of the fenian scum. Kiss Europe goodbye Leith motherfuckers. It’s there in black and white, Stronach (74). At the next table, these scousers have got the Mirror out. I’ve never been partial to scousers; those cunts ooze criminality. The Irish influence, no doubt. Same rules.

  – Don’t know how you can read that shite, one of them says to me.

  – Easy, I smile at him.

  – Nobody who’s alright on Merseyside reads the Sun, the nosey scouse git continues in his preachy manner, – Not after Hillsborough, not after Souness, not after Bulger . . .

  I feel an uncontrollable urge to laugh in his face. – You know something about scousers? I’ll tell you something about scousers, I snort.

  – You don’t have to tell us anything about scousers mate, we’re from Liverpool, he pulls himself up to his full height.

  – I noticed that alright, I bellow in a jocular way, pointing straight at him. – Scousers are a bunch of fucking sad drama queens. It’s like the whole fucking cess-pit of a city is auditioning for Brookside. Cannae be denied.

  – You’re fucking out of order there mate, the big guy says, looking harshly at me.

  – C’mon lads, says his mate, trying to calm him down.

  – Cannot be denied. Same rules, I shrug cheerfully.

  – C’mon Derm, don’t get involved, his pal’s saying. – C’mon mate, you’re a Jock, we’re from Liverpool, we’re just the friggin same for fuck sake. He tugs at his t-shirt, a red one, which has a quote from Bill Shankly on the front of it.

  – No, we’re not the same. I’m not the same as you, I shake my head.

  – We’re having a crack here, a drink . . . fuckin hell . . . the guy says. – You can read which paper you want mate, we’re only pulling your fucking leg, he tells me. He’s very upset which is good, because he should be upset coming from a shithouse like that. But he shouldnae be upset at me. The wanker should learn not to shoot the messenger, he who reminds one of bad tidings.

  – Listen, you’ve obviously been thieving or fiddling the dole to be able to afford to come across here. That’s the way it is with you people. Same rules apply. I’m telling you what I think, I say. – I bring bad tidings.

  – We don’t wanna know what you think!

  Nearly Christmas. Santa Robertson. Yo ho ho ho ho! Bad tidings!

  – Lerim speak.

  – All I was saying is that when something bad happens in Liverpool, youse cunts go fucking do-lally. You take it as an excuse to parade banners at the football . . . illsburgh . . . i-sell . . . I put on an imitation gasping scouse nasal bleat. – Why can’t you just sit in the fuckin hoose and mourn quietly, why do you have to turn everything into a tasteless audition for Brookside, to show who can be the most fucked up by tragedy?

  – Because we care, that’s why. Because we stick together! The t-shirt spits out.

  – Stick together! Ha! Youse cunts are in and out of each others’ hooses with each others’ property all day long. Show the fucking professional ghouls in that city something to mourn and they’ll be out in force. That Boys From The Blackstuff shite . . . you bastards are glad that there’s nae jobs, n that, cause it gives you something to act so fuckin tragic and hard-done-by! The biggest tragedy though for you cunts was that the Lockerbie disaster happened somewhere else. Imagine the fun youse cunts would have had if that plane came down on some shitey Liverpool slum estate! It would’ve kept youse greeting and snarling in front of the camera for years!

  – You’re a fuckin sad case . . . I’m out of here right now. If we weren’t on friggin oliday I’d have you outside you fucking toss, he snaps, throwing back his drink.

  – Oooohhh, I’m scared shitless.

  Bad tidings

  Santa Robbo

  Yo ho ho ho ho

  – Leave im Derm, he ain’t friggin worth it. Leave im to his fun-packed life, the sad, lonely cunt. I knew what you were like straight away. I thought, naw, we’re on oliday, chat to the poor sad case on his own, this wide cunt smiles sarcastically. – We’ll just leave you here then, with all your mates. C’mon lads.

  I’m not taking this from a piece of shite, this piece of fucking red scum. – Go back to your hotel room and fuck each other ya fucking scouse queers!

  One guy comes at me, but his mates pull him away and they go, uttering curses.

  – Inadequates, I shout to the barman. – Ah ken their type. They get their kicks noising up hoors and banging on windaes in the red-light district. Then they go back and screw each other. That’s scousers, big fuckin drama queens! I blame the Beatles, they’ve got a lot to answer for! We’re still putting up wi that auld troll that does the bag-off programme on telly cause ay them! Ever since these cunts and Liverpool FC’s success in Europe – a success built by Scotsmen: Liddell, Shankly, Dalglish, Souness, Hansen, etc. – scousers all think that they’ve got talent. They’re nothing! Nothing!

  He turns away aw frosty as if it was me that was the fuckin freak. Cheeky bastard. I down my drink and head outside. Ambling down the narrow street in the cold I’m aware of someone alongside me and as I turn I feel a crack in my face and my head snaps to the side. I try to react, but another guy advances and boots me in the balls and I feel the sickness rise up inside me. I fall down on to one knee and throw up over the cobblestones.

  – You fughin twat! the guy shouts.

  Where’s the fuckin back-up here . . . I’m fuckin polis! Where’s the fuckin cloggie polis! Fuck sakes!

  – C’mon Dermot, let’s get friggin movin! I hear one of the scousers say, and they’re off down the road.

  I sit for a bit, my head pounding and my eyes watering. The sickness has abated slightly, remaining just under the level where you want to vomit. Eventually I’m helped to my feet by a smelly fuckin hippy. – You English, always you are causing the trouble man. Mellow out man, this is Amsterdam, he says.

  – I’m no fuckin English, I tell him, and move off down the road. I want to get out of here. – Cowardly scouse bastards, if I see those cunts again . . .

  I cross over the road and a tram just misses me. My nerves are shot to pieces. I’ll get these cunts back

  I’ll

  I go into a bar and smoke hashish and drink some beer. It’s a dimly lit touristy place. After a few drinks and smokes I feel better. The side of my face is swollen.

  – I got mugged by some fuckin scousers, I tell an Irish guy. – They took eight hundred guilders off me. Three of them.

  He just nods in a neutral way. I didn’t expect anything more from a criminal. All the Irish are like that, except the Protestant Northern Irish, our brethren.

  I buy a phonecard and call Bunty.

  – Awright Boontay loove? Ow are yaw?

  – Leave me alone! she shouts, slamming the phone down. I’ve got a stiffer, so it’s over to the red-light district.

  I try to get it on with a black hoor, but my nuts are so sore after that kicking that I can’t get it up. The scouse cunts have spoiled my day’s hooring; a few hours OT wasted. I go and do some more hash, but I hate this stuff. It’s powders I need. I get in tow with these Dutch guys who are going to a party in a houseboat. When we get there the place is full of scum, just like these Sunrise fuckers at Penicuik, but the cocaine I get is the best I’ve ever had. I tell this to one of the cloggites with skin so clear, so like a doll’s you just want to taste it and she just says, – But of course. This is Amsterdam.

  Anyway, I get fucking wrecked. I remember getting asked to leave. When I get home Bladesey’s still up. He’s been out and he’s bought a bottle of malt whisky by way of an apology for his shocking behaviour the previous night. We arse the lot and then cl
ean out the mini-bar in his room. I stagger back through to mine and crash out into a pulverising sleep.

  ‘. . . the essentially depraved nature of the creature that she married . . .’

  I wake up in the night with a shuddering spasm; it’s as if I’m falling through my own body. I’m sweating and trembling. There’s no hoor by my side but my baws are red-raw. Objects start to come into focus through the dark. It’s the hotel room in Amsterdam. I think of Carole and a crushing pain almost rips me apart. It’s only a reaction to my loss. My mouth feels like it’s been blowtorched and had the skin from my scrotum grafted onto it, but when I go to the mini-bar and down a soda water it only succeeds in turning my guts over. I lurch back to bed as the light comes up. The light. I’m safe again. I get a good bit of kip in.

  I wake about lunchtime. My calendar on my watch tells me that it’s the fifteenth of December. Christmas is coming. I get showered, the side of my face still swollen and tender, and I dress and head next door. Bladesey’s still asleep. The cunt sleeps deeply. He’s half-blind withoot his specs. There they are on the bedside table.

  I pick them up.

  Leaving the hotel I take a stroll over by the canal streets and I spot a likely corner café for a late breakfast. En route, I pull the specs out of my pocket. These lenses are so thick. I put them on and lean over the green balustrade and watch a distorted tug go down the canal. How could any cunt wear those?