‘He that riseth late must trot all day.’ Benjamin Franklin
I’m very fortunate in that I’m not that easily embarrassed, which is a good thing as my behaviour has often not been up to scratch, this particularly being the case in my youth. I think that, over the years, I’ve become inured to the type of embarrassment that really fucks some other people up. I’m not sure whether this is a good or bad thing. Like most of us, the bulk of my cringe-worthy moments have come about through intoxication on drink or drugs. Now I’ve got to the point that I get somewhat red-faced if I wake up to find out that I haven’t made a complete tit of myself. It always seems a waste of a night out.
Of course, although it certainly helps, I don’t need drink and drugs to make an absolute prick of myself. Even sober, I’m the master of the faux pas. I blame this on the incredible arrogance of being so wrapped up in myself that I can’t be bothered to pay attention to what’s going on around me. Once, when I had taken a new job in London, after the first week my boss took me out for a drink. It was a relaxed, cordial affair although the alcohol was slipping down a bit quickly. He asked me if I was enjoying the job. I told him that it was fine. He then asked if I was getting on with everybody at work. I explained that they were all very nice, but there was one woman manager who worked upstairs. I told him that everybody hated her, thought she was a ‘poisonous cunt’. At this point I perhaps should have noticed the slightly pained, if thoughtful, reaction on my boss’s face.
The next day, suitably vulnerable and hung-over, I was having a lunchtime game of pool with a girl who worked upstairs beside the woman in question. She asked me if I’d had a good time last night. I told her that I did, but I’d had more to drink than I thought I would. She asked me about the boss and how I got on with him. I told her that I thought that he seemed a really nice guy. (It was very unusual for me to feel that way about any boss I’ve had.) She agreed that he was okay, but then she said, ‘It must be strange for him to be working so closely with his wife …’ Of course, I knew straight away whom she meant by this, experiencing what myself and a good friend called ‘the crumbling dam effect’. This occurs when you feel your face suddenly collapse in response to, well, mortification.
This type of embarrassment is intense, but relatively routine. The big problem in trying to dredge up a really mortifying memory is that there are so many and you suspect that you’ve repressed the best (or worst) ones. Anyway, one that always sticks in my mind was when I was ticketless at the Scotland v. England game at Wembley in 1979. I sat with two friends and a huge carry-out in the car park outside the stadium. We had been in a state of alcoholic oblivion for a few days and we wouldn’t have thanked anybody for tickets at that point, we just wanted to finish our session.
I farted and followed through. Despite the quickening of the pulse and sweating of the brow in response to the warm feeling in my underpants, I nonchalantly headed up and off to the toilets in Wembley Way. I thought that I would defecate, get cleaned up best I could, probably flushing my keks away if the damage proved to be too bad.
The problem was I found that the toilets had been so badly vandalized that they looked like the footpath at Edinburgh’s Royal Commonwealth Pool. Only they had a couple of inches of pishy water all over the floor, which you had to paddle through to get to the toilet traps, urinals and sinks. My hole-ridden trainers wouldn’t stand a chance, so I took them off, then my socks. Rolling up my jeans, I paddled along to a smashed up toilet-bowl. I then shat and wiped myself with the clean portion of my underpants. (There was no toilet paper.) I jettisoned the pants and took off my jeans and paddled my way to a wash-hand basin. As, naked from the waist down, I tried to wash out my arse, a group of Weedgies stood at the entrance, just pishing into the toilet and laughing loudly at my predicament. I carried on with as much dignity as one can muster in such circumstances, climbing up onto these boxed-in pipes and washing my piss-soaked feet in the sink. Then I scrambled along the ledge to the door and jumped out emerging into the car-park, where to the laughter of loads of drunken football supporters, I pulled on my jeans, socks and trainers.
I left the scene as quickly as I could and walked round the stadium to compose myself. On my return to our drinking camp, an irate pal asked me where I had been. I explained that there was a big queue in the toilets. At this point I really thought that I’d got out of jail. I had been embarrassed – brutally, shamefully embarrassed – but I’d never see those people again in my life. We’d get back to my flat where I’d change into fresh keks before going out again and this time I’d switch from lager to Guinness. Just as I was feeling a little bit pleased with myself, I heard a shout go up, quite close: ‘Hey, there’s Shitey-Pants!’ It was the Weedgies who’d witnessed my plight in the toilets, now laughing again and pointing me out to their pals. They gathered round and with great delight started filling my friends in with the details. For years, the story of my Wembley humiliation was a favourite amusement in several London and Edinburgh bars. Aye, that one still haunts me. One day I’ll write about it …