The Ginger Man - J. P. Donleavy [59]
"What would you like out of life, Percy?"
"Know what I want? I'll tell you. And you can listen to these bloody eejits who sit around talking bull shit for hours and they don't get anywhere. I'll tell you what I want and it's all I want. I want a woman with awful big tits and arse. Biggest tits and arse in whoredom. Get up on her—o the tits, the tits. Whoever thought of them. God knows a good thing. Just tits, a big arse so's I can come home of an evening and lash a sup of steak on the grill and fill me gut and then get up on her. I want some kids. Something to work for. Incentive is what I want. I sit around an oul' bleedy pub wasting me time. I'm coming to forty and maybe I could have been a big fella with cars and maids but I don't give two tuppenny turds. It's over now and no use shouting about. But if I had a woman with an awful big pair of tits you'd see me for the last time in a pub. Be as happy as sin. I'm married once but I'll never make the same mistake again. Wanting to drink every night and terrified of having some kids"
"Pregnancy first, Percy. Then the drink to recover from the insecurity that's in it."
"I know, I know. I was an awful eejit But she wouldn't hear of it Said she was too young to be slaving after children. I know better now. She wouldn't give up her job. Didn't have any power over her. I don't care now, any old whore will do now and lots of biddy to forget about food and rent"
"And where did you get that meat?"
"Sebastian, don't breathe a word of this. Now I'm telling you, it's confidential I had this bird who worked in the butchers. She'd get me as much as eight pounds of the finest steak of an evening. I'd flog three or four pounds and have enough to see me crawling from biddy and lash the rest raw into me gut. See me right for days. I'd give old Tony Malarkey a few pounds now and again for his kids. I was living with him for a while but he's like an oul' hen, clucking around and jealous when I'd come in of an evening laggards. Can't stand to see anyone else enjoying themselves. I bloody well moved out But my woman got caught"
"Where did you get the meat today?"
"Wait till I tell you. They caught her stealing the bloody stuff and she was fired on the spot And she wanted me to get up on her of an evening for nothing, and I told her did she think I was a stud bull wasting me energy humping her ould carcass. Imagine that, expecting me to act the bloody bull for nothing and her ould flat tits without a sup of meat behind them. There's no decency in some of these people. You're the only decent person I know, Sebastian. You buy a man a drink when you have the money and you don't do all this yelling about it I should have been a priest and have Morgan's van calling every week with lashings of drink and a housekeeper with boobs like pyramids. Then you'd hear some sermons. I'd lash some bloody decency into these people. But when I got no more meat from this ould whore, I looked up another bird in a butchers. Went in every day buying bones for a week and it wasn't long before she was sneaking the meat out to me."
"You're an awful man."
"And I've got an ould maid in the Iveagh House who's taken a shine to me. She says a pair of decent balls in the hand is worth a cock in the bush."
"You'd make a fine husband, Percy."
"Don't come the hound,"
"You would"
"Look at me. Losing me hair. Sleeping next to a bunch of newsboys at night and the bunch of them saying hello to me on Grafton Street. Me from Clongowes Wood College."
"Look at me, Percy."
"Look at you. More money than the president