Ahhhhh, it’s great to get a piss. Steam rising off that good warm hot pish, probably ninety percent beer coming out and washing those wee yellow cubes down towards the other end of the trough. Have to be careful not to chase them too far down to my right or I might cross swords with the man beside me and that’s a social no no. A 'faux pas' I think is what the posh ones would call it.
The door opens from the shitter and there’s a wee man sitting looking out at us. His eyes are sad.
‘Is there any bog roll?’ He wails.
‘Fuck off,’ shouts the first man to my right. He's angry at being disturbed in mid piss.
The wee man shuts the door. I can hear his arse farting and spluttering. Must have the shits. No bog roll too, mustn't have checked when he sat down, maybe he was close to shitting his breeks and didn’t have time. I wash my hands and dry them on paper towels. Then, in a moment of compassion, rip out another two or three paper towels and walk over to the shitter. I knock on the door. It opens hesitantly. The wee man peers out. He looks at me, I look at him. The others are watching, their piss streams are almost slowing down to see what will happen next.
‘You want some paper for your skittery arse?’
‘Yes, please,’ he says.
Pathetic.
‘Ok. Here’s some for you.’
I take a couple of steps back and drop them on the floor.
'If you want them, get up and get them you miserable little fuck.’
The pissers all straighten with pride, and look back at their yellow cubes, and continue piss pushing them down to the trough defender, who in turn, is piss pushing like fuck against the powerful tide from the far right. The pissers are smug, because they know we have now got the power. The power of the shit roll and paper towels, and we will decide when the shitter can get it. I have given us that power, and I am the king of the pissers and the shitter is the lowest class in here, my kingdom, the toilet.
Then, the door opens and in walks the cleaner. Bastard. Mops, rags, yellow cubes, hundreds of the cunts, and horror of horrors, fuckin bog roll. The wee man in the shitter is delighted, and the cleaner and him are now the victors, the old man doesn’t know it, but the shitter - he knows, he knows he has us all fucked. He receives the two rolls of toilet paper and closes the door with satisfaction. Not just satisfaction, but a satisfaction of the kind where nothing else in that particular moment could better it, where money wouldn’t be as good, sex, drugs, Newcastle scoring a goal, nothing would be as good as getting some bog roll.
All the pissers are deflated, backs hunched, we are broken. We want to run out of there to avoid the shame, the humiliation of the loss. The toilet flushes. The cleaner lifts the paper towels with a sigh when he bends down and tuts at the untidiness of the place.
'Fuckin messy cunts,' he says to himself.
The door opens and out walks the shitter, glasses on, all tucked in nice like his ma used to do when he was a nipper, and whistling like a smug winner.
I kick him right in the balls and he goes down in a heap groaning.
Now he knows who's back in charge. The pissers rule. We rule the yellow cubes and the shitter. That’s the way it is, and the way it will be forever until there is a nuclear war, and then we wont be bothered about who rules the toilet.
Speaking of which, I must get back to the chamber, the PM is presenting an anti nuclear bill and he will need all of our votes on the front bench to get it through.
(c) Stephen Cooper 2009