The Unexpurgated Code

by J. P. Donleavy

  But often the whole nauseous spectacle of your digging around in your oral area can be pardoned by the slow removal of your gold toothpick from its monogrammed ebony case. This ceremony can often stimulate your onlookers to a moment of appreciative awe. As they figure you out to be a really hot social item. But beware this useful instrument doesn’t get hysterically jammed into a deep cavity where it ends up sticking out of your feeding aperture in the manner of a worn vampire tooth.

  In cases where your mouth can be opened like a mountain cave, it is permissible to reach in a hand and by neatly exerting a long fingernail, hook out foreign matter. Do not however screw up your face with loud sucking noises of pleasure following such engineering feats. All fragments so removed should immediately be very sprucely catapulted off the thumb by the index finger into an area hopefully free of people or polished antique surfaces. But most folk now, having seen you in action, will have enough sense to duck.

  Other Orifices Ears and Enemas

  Nose picking is a highly satisfying habit mostly practised by folk of high intellect whose further sterling qualities are indicated by what they do with the pickings. Although the eating of these is the quickest method of disposal it must be regarded as off putting to others. But nonetheless, your possession of superior brains is thereby demonstrated.

  As a practice it is worst regarded at meal times and least while on safari. But the practice of dirty little habits like this one only serves to entrench one class while severely demoting another much lower one. For nose picking by the haughty and particular during important board meetings, conferences and dinner parties will be looked upon as a not too unseemly eccentricity whereas for you it will undoubtedly result in your being stumped in a social strike out. And the corkscrew use of the index finger with the elbow upraised will further expose your humble origins and hopeless future.

  Nostril disgorgement by a gentleman should if outdoors be done at the kerb, bending over and placing the feet apart with the left foot slightly forward. Take a deep breath while holding one finger across the left nose hole and mightily explode the contents of the chamber into the gutter. Repeat with the right chamber taking care that the matter flies out and does not land on your fabrics or drip down the wrist where it causes discomfort under the cuffs. Upon both nostril barrels being discharged, stand upright again and take in several deep breaths of fresh air but make sure some son of a bitch isn’t about to roar by through a puddle in his roadster after a recent rain storm and leave you drenched in spatterings of mud.

  To rid olfactories of blockages indoors, a plant pot may be used. Both your aim and discretion can be improved by putting your head in under the plant leaves. If your host is one who wants you to feel really at home you could start hocking and spitting all over the place but it is only fair to confine yourself to using his table and bed linens. At other times, and especially when you’d like to signal your presence or make mild protest at a polite gathering, a prolonged noisy blasting away into a beige silk monogrammed hanky although unhygienic is effective.

  Sneezing is one of the best ways of widely spreading your germs if this is what the people around you deserve. And may explain the distinct suffusion of pleasure felt. It is also the moment when one is closest to death as most of the body’s involuntary actions are temporarily suspended. Your beige silk monogrammed hanky is again the rag to be brought forth here. This kept slightly secreted and gently scented beneath the shirt cuff will be a sign of your elegant particularity as it is whipped out to arrest your nasal tempest which suddenly makes you the centre of attention.

  Ear and arse holes are places into which people look after they know you well and want, somewhat earnestly, to know you even better. The condition of these chambers may indeed be regarded as an indication as to how folk’s other holes are, if this is something you want urgently to know without wanting to pry. Therefore these places should be kept up to scratch. Especially your arse hole which will often be referred to throughout your life, either as a place you are speaking from or where it is suggested something might be shoved.

  Enemas are normally taken to improve the buoyancy of the spirit and to render patently false that frequent accusation that one is full of shit. And there are far worse ways to spend a half an hour. Ideally the undertaking is administered by buxomly attractive smiling ladies and a penile erection at this time is regarded as an unavoidable reaction to internal water pressures and no apologies are necessary. Although some regard it as thrilling, the procedure should be taken seriously and giggling and risqué remarks avoided. Crested or monogrammed bathrobe and slippers are de rigueur. Under no circumstances should games of discipline be played at these times.

  Hocking, Spitting and Throat Clearing

  Although ladies object to these noisome operations first thing in the morning when you are bent double with lungs rattling like the shutters of a haunted house, nevertheless it is essential for you to void all dross, dottle and drast from your breathing system.

  Hocking should start with an inhalation of breath together with robust snoring sounds well back in the nasal passages. These acoustics when made with practised purposefulness will lose their normally disgusting overtones. With the phlegm thereby nicely rounded up and compressed, it can then be expelled by the puffed out cheeks with an explosive force which, along with the optimum angle of elevation, can send the missile great distances. Accuracy may be improved by the mouth being curved in such a manner as to resemble the rifling in a gun barrel. And a thrilling sense of personal achievement is felt when you can land spit in the most amazing places and spot hit various targets or narrowly miss others.

  Indoors, firing into a silver or gold plated and crested hand-cup embossed with your usual or latest crest is to be preferred. A spittoon similarly decorated is not without playful advantage if filled with a ringing bell when used. But outdoors as a boulevardier it is de rigueur you aim for the gutter always and high over the heads of any pedestrians.

  Throat clearing is an excellent method of signalling your presence or demonstrating your impatience or boredom and invariably denotes a man of action. But concert soloists and stage actors abhor your attendance in the concert or theatre hall with a life endangering insanity. For your own safety and so that some temperamental artiste doesn’t come vaulting right at you over the footlights and orchestra pit to throttle you right in your pricy seat, wait till you’re back safely in the lobby where you can freely indulge your oesophagusical pontifications.

  Smoking

  This is the most laughable thing yet done to the innocent Who keep paying to do it And except for gentlemen in black tie with port, taking a puff of their cigars after dinner upon the ladies’ retiring, it is a most offensive habit. Smoking denotes a weakness in, if not a total collapse of character, which is enfeebled even further when you stop smoking.

  The desperate spectacle you present as a smoker may be countered by sporting stylishly elite smoking accessories, which can be popped dazzlingly from your person and flashed before folk, who, when eyeing the platinum, golds and embossments gleamingly enclosed by amphibious animal skins, think you’re really the very latest in human delectability not to mention hot shit.

  This agreeable aura, when discussing high finance, or even low, at least lasts till your opponent lights up, using his own old fashioned box of matches, which, if you have even a particle of sensitivity, ought to make you feel like the really awful snide person you are. But there can be propitious moments in the confines of a first class hotel with its first class staff which might redeem you when you take out your cigarette and hold it aloft a moment parrying in your conversation and which weed as you place it to your lips is instantly lit by a hotel servant’s match. When this happens it is permissible to blow your first smoke ring right around your opponent’s head. He will think you really frequent big time hotels like this one all the time.

  Even though you don’t look tanned, healthy or self assured the manner of your taking out, selecting and holding your c
igarette and disposing of the ashes can nearly make you so. Flicking the thumb up at the mouth end is less elegant than the discreet tapping of the forefinger on the ash end. But doing the latter when you feel like doing the former will turn you into a suspicious looking person. You should also beware where you drop ash or snub out your cigarette especially in the people’s houses who have their secretaries secretly taking down the names of people seen dropping ash or dinching cigarettes on antique surfaces, carpets or parquet floors. If you do this contemptuously it is a sign of small time shabbiness and you may find a nearby bombast taking you to task for it.

  ‘I say sir, you’ve snubbed your cigarette out with your heel upon the carpet.’

  ‘What’s it to you, you meddling old fart.’

  ‘Nothing except a gentleman uses his toe.’

  Plate and Knife Licking

  This is a satisfying ritual and is not only to be resorted to when one is not able to get a further helping. Although widely ridiculed as bad manners, it is permissible if delicately executed and demonstrates more than anything else your enjoyed appetite as well as your thrift.

  While holding the plate surface vertically in both hands well up to the face, licking should begin from the bottom upwards with long perpendicular strokes and never from side to side. Make sure not to cascade gravy all over the place and it is not done to take bites or allow your teeth to make clashing sounds against the crockery. Also do not attempt to talk to your dinner partner while lapping. Unless you are merely grunting replies to her long discourse on gardening. If your partner however, is wide eyed at your antic don’t panic. Your host and hostess, as formal etiquette requires, will, as the opportunity affords, also lift and lick their plates. Should less well bred folk show surprise at you and ask.

  ‘Where the hell were you brought up.’

  Come right out with it.

  ‘Sir I was raised in poor and humble circumstances and I regard your question as an insult to all those still in the sacred embrace of deprivation.’

  If you are still around at another meal time you will find the guests sneakily looking on all sides wondering who the hell should start licking first. And as an example for the hesitant to follow, take up your knife and making sure the cutting edge is blunt, wrap your tongue around it. This warms the blade for the easy cutting of butter.

  Shaving

  This daily repeated ritual of symbolic castration does help to keep chaps in their place who might otherwise become roaring out of control gorillas. Those who have the audacious vanity to let sprout side burns, moustaches and the like only call attention to their self advertised symptom of testicular curtailment. Pressing a sharp blade or other cutting contraption close over the facial and throat skin as well as across the jugular vein is even more hilarious than it is barbaric. Although the cuts and abrasions regularly caused thereby serve as a nice series of distractions of a morning.

  Being yourself a bellowing hairy ape accosted by some clean shaven rube who comes bleating at you with his bare face hanging out with the question.

  ‘Hey why are you growing that beard.’

  Always reply in pukka.

  ‘I say, you unpleasantly unfortunate radoteur, I’m not doing a thing. You’re shaving every day.’

  Baldness

  This shiny head top condition is highly prized by some ladies. However it is true natural baldness which counts. If you are not blessed with this it is abhorrent to fake it.

  Upon sporting a toupee always disclose the fact. Not only will the revelation overcome people’s desperate grabbing urge to see what you appear like without it but also will remind folk that the rest of you is indeed alive and living. Of course there are those perverse mummies whose phony hair is the most vigorous looking thing about them. And these obnoxious, as they sidle up, are usually attempting to find out if the conversation promises a profit

  In church and while changing motor tyres, the toupee may be used as a kneeling pad but in cases where a waiter’s sleeve pushes your custom made hairpiece down over your eye or it is knocked off into your caviar, always have ready your response.

  ‘Eureka, you’ve uncovered my gold.’

  Dentures

  These are awkward appurtenances often leading to embarrassment on wedding nights and sometimes fatal choking in folk who cannot control their amusement and swallow them backwards laughing. And to those who know you best with your dentures in, it is an affront to then appear toothlessly smiling broadly without these brightening up your mouth interior and puffing out your cheeks. Even though certain people delight in regarding naked gums while imagining the naughty antics that therein can be played.

  Although it is not too nice to use your tongue to lark loudly with your removable teeth, it is permissible for persons who are extremely comic in telling stories, to remove full upper and lower dentures and clack them by hand in order to imitate another mouth in an amusing exchange, the words of which are supplied by your own jaw operated toothless orifice. However, some acting school training here will help prevent your looking a real nut.

  When eating scaldingly hot soup be careful this does not make you spit out a denture with a splash. Should this happen the false teeth in question should be fished out with a dessert fork and dried in your napkin, as their poking up presence left in your soup dish can look positively evil. And always turn immediately to your dinner partner with an apology in case she has suddenly been ashenfacedly transfixed.

  ‘Do forgive me madam exploding out my fake masticators like that, but the soup is deucedly hot.’

  Dandruff

  Is the sign of indoor folk who through scruffy hair habits provide themselves with something to scratch while they are thinking. Although in plentitude this brightens the hue of dark fabrics across your shoulders it is not nice when given off in a choking cloud when someone claps you on the back.

  Promiscuous Pissing

  Piss pots, which previously afforded great convenience as one was able merely to roll just a fraction out of bed and pee without hardly leaving one’s mattress, are sadly disappearing the world over. And where less than splendid living conditions prevail, the abominably filthy English habit of using wash hand basins and sinks is often resorted to. In such situations, ladies, who as they climb up on these to squat, have often been known to bend many an hotelier’s and host’s toilet fixtures right off the wall.

  However there is some quaint pleasure to be had from convenient peeing and upon being interrupted by your host in taking such relief infelicitously in his sink or out his window, do avoid the conciliatory words.

  ‘Gee I’m sorry you caught me doing this.’

  Nor should your feeble reply be.

  ‘I sort of was bursting at the seams.’

  Rather come clean with the more charming.

  ‘Gee John, this is just a dirty little habit I’ve got left over from my unprivileged background and damn if I can correct it.’

  But as a host who may be long troubled by the secretive unpleasantly shabby habits of guests, it is prudent upon occasion not to mince matters when catching a visitor red pricked peeing in your inappropriate plumbing or in other areas not requiring such wettings.

  ‘Why you filthy sneaky son of a bitch.’

  Or in pukka.

  ‘How utterly thoroughly vile of you.’

  If he is anywhere near normal, your unhappily guilty guest will greet your spoken chastisement with nervous laughter, and may even, while still streaming pee, attempt to rehouse his penis. But as most of your indiscriminate pissers are usually colourful personalities and are disposed to believing their company highly valuable, they will consider you blessed if they piss anywhere they please in or around your house. To early dissuade him of this fervently held opinion, advance menacingly immediately. But if he foolishly remains in the throes of peeing do be careful that his flow does not go in a more damaging direction. Some folk’s urine can really be corrosive, especially those chaps of extrovert demeanour.

  Other perpetr
ators of urinating indiscretions are usually introspective insensitive guys who upon taking exception to their wives’ guests gathered at cocktail or dinner parties will, without preamble, pee in full view of all present and sometimes, should he also take disfavour with the music, visit his urine upon the gramophone turntable. Such pissing behaviour may also be witnessed performed by the aesthetic in spirit at office parties as a way of letting business colleagues know of one’s deep mercantile dissatisfaction. And if you have peed off or on to a high executive’s desk, will generally result in your being fired.

  Although relieving oneself upon a prostrate drunken friend with a view to restoring him quickly to a sobering upright position is permissible, and albeit that this method achieves remarkable effect, it also invariably arouses the pissed upon to an insane anger and you run the risk of being chased for miles with an unbelievable hostility.

  Pimple and Black Head Squeezing

  Upon inviting your companion to peruse parts you present for squeezing, it is not then done to cry out in pain attendant to these activities. And such satisfying pastimes should normally be confined to folk who know each other well although it is also one of the fastest ways to get to know someone better.

  Those who upon sizing another up, feel that with their applied effort, their opponent’s blemishes could be remedied, should never then and there encroach to start contusing the area with fingers without first asking.

  ‘Do you mind.’