The Unexpurgated Code

by J. P. Donleavy

  Upon Doing the Decent Thing in the Face of Many Juicy and Shoddy Alternatives

  No matter how good this may make you feel, it always arouses the scepticism of others. So make sure your ulterior motives are worth it

  Upon Presenting Yourself before an Investigating Committee

  Dress soberly in the current fashion and always wipe the dirty looks off your face. Avoid hand wrenching, lip licking and eye darting. At the very beginning of proceedings apologize for any involuntary tremors, facial tics, quakes or quavers. And if you must chew gum to quieten your nerves be sure in disposing of it, to stick this well in under your chair or table. There is nothing worse than when squirming, your knee gets smeared with this viscous matter.

  Smile once in a while and don’t be afraid to laugh along with the committee especially when they are laughing at you. Remember fairness, if not forgiveness, is the hallmark of these sessions. When caught in a He retract and apologize immediately. Unless of course they keep catching you, in which case, absolutely avoid shrugging your shoulders. Instead at your next earliest opportunity demonstrate your eagerness to get at the facts by prefacing your answers with.

  ‘I’m really glad you asked that.’

  At all times be polite and respectful. When the committee have you dead to rights it is permissible, in order to gain their understanding and sympathy, to allow tears to well in your eyes. But don’t overdo this with outright sobbing. Above all, never stand up shouting and shaking your fist and accusing the committee of being themselves just a bunch of chisellers, frauds, liars and cheats who just happen at that point in time not to be under investigation. It is always appreciated that no one is free of human fault but that some happen to be at certain times freer than others.

  Upon Replying to Interrogation

  If the dirty bastard questioning you is sarcastic it is always sure damn proof that they haven’t got the goods on you yet. In which case be curt, crisp and monosyllabic. This allows your inquisitor little time to dream up any ad lib ways of trapping you. Which if he does, then semantically couch your words with other words, which although meaningful if attached to a fact, will mean nothing when woven into the incredible fiction you’re saying.

  Upon Committing Perjury

  First rehearse being honest in front of a mirror until you absolutely believe yourself. Then upon making sure no one can slam you with contrary evidence, get up there in your best toneless and expressionless manner and spiel off your bare faced lies.

  When caught, avoid the sickeningly mealy mouthed excuse that you were only telling the truth as you saw it for the time being. Instead, have ready a list of dire personal tragedies which were plaguing you at the material time of your falsehood and which made you tell such whoppers. Which you hope now makes you no longer sound like a liar.

  Upon Bad Mouthing an Enemy

  Limit yourself to about seven minutes’ continuous ranting and then finish off with about thirty seconds’ vituperative scourging. Flavour your scurrilous references, malicious rumours and gossip with a grain of objectivity to make the offending words more effective. This will also make your defence look better in an action for slander.

  Upon Being Published in a Debtors’ Gazette

  Threatening noises to the offending journal is always advised. Meanwhile demonstrate frugality about you. This lessens the bitterness of creditors. Further to combat this most awkward state of affairs, a posture of outrage should be adopted as soon as possible. There will be many non creditors perusing this broadsheet who will smack their lips together with delight and some who will callously get up on their desks and gig all over their bloody mahogany. Besides spelling ruin to your future and being a heinous insult to your good name it is of course also a diabolically unsporting aspersion, being as you are a man who will rise up fit and fighting after having been busted down broken arsed and thoroughly flattened. While nevertheless enjoying the equitable interest rates statutory debt affords.

  Upon the Bailiff or Sheriff Arriving to Possess Goods

  Although you stamp, holler and brandish cudgels, rarely can these hardened folk be put off the scent Therefore it is best to have the utmost compassion for their unpleasant job and to treat them with every courtesy. In this manner it is not unknown for the sheriff or bailiff who has come to remove your horses to sell at the auction ring, to instead end up grooming them for you to ride. But don’t count on this and hide your valuables.

  Upon Doing unto Others as They Would So Treacherously Delight to Do unto You

  Besides being accused of murder this would keep you awfully busy.

  Upon Being Unflatteringly Dressed in an Emergency

  Instantly assert your natural haughty particularity when you appear dishevelled without your usual trappings, decorations, insignia, tailoring and rank which tell folk who you really are. This will let people know that although for the time being you look otherwise, that you really are something. Should they remain unimpressed, burst into tears. Because this really is humiliating.

  Upon Letting Your Lawn Grass Grow Long

  Nothing starts the looks and whispers from the neighbours accumulating faster. And before they start harassing you, thinking you’re a radical about to sell to an undesirable, which of course you are, because you wisely already have, erect a small sign discreetly displayed.

  PLEASE DO NOT OBJECT

  THIS IS A BIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT

  IN GRASS GERIATRICS

  Upon Being Made Aware of an Insult to Your Hotel Companion

  When an employee’s opinion is heard as follows.

  ‘Gee look at that guy with that red haired tart he’s dragging to his room.’

  Immediately contact the manager and apprise him of your severe grievance and spiritual maim. Upon his continuing to offer his deepest and most elaborate apologies without undertaking that your stay, with full room and board and the champagne and caviar you and your tart are accustomed to, will be forthcoming with the compliments of the management, keep repeating.

  ‘I demand satisfaction.’

  Until such time as this stubborn chap does so undertake.

  Upon Paying the Bill in a Restaurant

  If the other sons of bitches have through their protestations against your paying, got you to pay, try to be urbane. Although your guests’ lip smacking pleasure is no comfort when you sit there ashen visaged and quivering over the bill, this apoplexy can be lessened by scrutinizing your dockets in the most detailed manner possible. And even if you do not wear glasses, have a special pair, or better, a monocle, to elaborately fish out to do this. As enough quarter hours go by in your diligent accountancy, your other sons of bitches will beg to pay.

  Upon Inducing Folk to Eat Cheap When You Have Invited Them to Dine

  It is amazing that right in front of your face there are some folk, usually those who proclaim it is not chic to talk too loud about money, who will order the most expensive items they can find on the bill of fare. Therefore it is permissible if you have lots of nightmare overheads with a town house on the best side of town and two or three former wives to support, to slam your high priced menu shut after a split second perusement and announce.

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  Before anyone else has a chance to order, request them to help themselves without stint to water, rolls and butter. Reach for these from nearby restaurant tables if necessary and upon the waiter’s appearance point instantly for replenishments.

  If the inevitable happens and guests start to mouth demands for real food of the kind listed on menus, allow your chest to heave in a manner suggesting a possible massive regurgitating. Should your ravenous guest take no notice and stuff the corner of his napkin inside his collar and signal the waiter, then don’t hesitate, take out your own brown paper lunch bag. Your guests will, if they have any sense of embarrassment at all, sit stunned, dumbfounded and momentarily sheepish.

  But if the crass bastards still keep vocalizing pricey orders at the waiter, then forthwith move to another tab
le. Being that much of a pathological tightwad not only will you have your guests wondering if you’re still paying but other diners sensing what’s happened should be glad of the opportunity of hearing your conversation shouted back and forth. And even some, when they hear of your abstemiousness, may invite you to dine with them. But beware you don’t end up with the tab.

  Upon Becoming Sick on or Objecting to a Restaurant’s Food

  If you have the strength and are not permanently doubled up, raise your right hand at once for the manager and clearly gasp out your symptoms. Unless owner run, most eating establishments will be covertly supercilious about your displeasure at the table. Knowing as they do that normally a few hours must elapse before food poisoning gets a real grip on their victims, who will then usually be some distance away yawking on someone else’s carpet.

  However, complaint, upon reaching a chef’s ears, is always instant incitement to these highly temperamental gentlemen who have been known to rush from backstage to slap a face with plaice or slosh antique sauce over customers. But count yourself lucky at such a forthright venting of feelings. For chefs, who remain in the privacy of their culinary castles, and to whom you have returned food, wiping their feet in your steak will be the least of it.

  Face Lifting and Plastic Surgery

  Contour changing should be done in the winter so that you’ll be blossoming in spring. Do make sure your choice of a new set of features befits your social station and also that your recent nose will remain in fashion for a while. Toning up the sloppy loose skin and smoothing over the wrinkles and bags and hacking off excess curvatures can change your expression dramatically. Therefore always steel yourself against an acquaintance’s most likely remark.

  ‘Hey what the hell happened.’

  And so that this does not make you look even more morbid, never try to explain.

  ‘I was looking for a new body.’

  Because your opponent will be tempted to suggest.

  ‘That’s not what you need.’

  Upon Suing Your Hosts for Injury in Their House

  If you still have your brains left having dived deeply into the shallow end of your host’s pool, also have the decency to wait at least until the ambulance has taken you away before contacting your lawyer. And when only partially burned and otherwise slightly contused by someone’s detonating oven, it is still essential you remove yourself from the premises and do not wait to eat the exploded dinner. When folk attempt to remain friends in the face of their legal action it is a sure sign they are wavering in their affection.

  Mischiefs & Memorabilia

  Upon Being Cuckolded

  After the years of wearing yourself out giving your wife the adoration the use of her assets required, some sleazy type now manages to forge his way into her favour by exhibiting much swaggering of his boyish hind quarters and showering her with a few second rate compliments. Don’t be civilized about this. It is a distinct time for peevishness.

  Establish the chap’s social credentials straight off, making sure your opponent is not of an inferior sort, since for the sake of protocol you don’t want to waste dignified time sassing some fly by night greaseball. And instead of the usual ear fluffing with the usual chamois gloves one should prefer to deliver a good hob nailed boot up your shabby chap’s rear end as being the more astonishingly appropriate measure.

  Often your better class philanderer will have been your house guest upon occasion. Where he has been taking your wife for walks along your decorative bodies of waters and, would you believe it, spouting poetry. Your first signs of something severely amiss is when he is impatient with your story telling, and looks distinctly sour as you render your most genuinely uproarious jokes. Failure at the table to push the condiments your way is another sign of his increasing insolence. And when dining out the philanderer will make a big show of attempting to pay the bill. Don’t give him this sneaky satisfaction. Make your own impassioned insistence upon paying it. Your opponent will confidently retaliate with an equally firm determination. Then let him pay.

  Particularly distressing transgressions occur when this ne’er do well encroaches upon your more intimate territories. On no account allow your silk dressing gowns or other personal items to be commandeered. As you will find the bounder trying to wear three pairs of your most elegant town socks on his country hike. And it really is the god damn limit if this upstart starts reading your leather bound first editions in front of your dressing room fire. Especially after he has just rogered your wife in the next room. Together with the shocking thought that she could have, while thrilling, been heard by the house staff. Although, thank god, this is the kind of caper that goes on when you are distantly away overseeing forestry on the estate. Nevertheless the rapid accumulation of flagrant indignities can be quite appalling. But by playing your cards right, you can render the son of a bitch impotent.

  Be splendidly turned out for the moment chosen to confront the perpetrator of your cuckolding. This is of course a very tricky period if your wife controls assets upon which, for your own well being, you require to rely from time to time. And some strong line may be required. Which should always be conducted in pukka.

  ‘Look here, sir, you are cohabiting with my wife. How dare you.’

  ‘Martha and I are in love.’

  ‘Sham. Despicable sham. What are your assets dear boy.’

  ‘I’ve got as much as you have.’

  ‘Which is, I regret to say, fuck all. And therefore I call upon you in a major manner to desist.’

  In accosting this diabolical runt your little flourishes of impeccability will add to your chap’s growing inferiority. Particularly your liberal use of gentlemen’s talcum powder and the best snuffs. He quite naturally will be sporting some recent fashion craze accenting the casual, as well as his own glaring inanity, of that you can be sure. And hopelessly, he will attempt to imitate you, having been regaled concerning your personal habits by your unfaithful wife. Mostly while the son of a bitch was reading the serial numbers of her bonds over her shoulder. And by now he has settled nicely in.

  ‘Ah how are you and Martha getting on dear boy.’

  ‘Well we have our ups and downs.’

  ‘I understand it has not been up but down.’

  ‘Martha, that dirty bitch told you that.’

  ‘Yes as a matter of fact she did and while you are signally failing to roger my wife I’ll thank you not to refer to her as a dirty bitch.’

  And don’t hesitate to further play merry hell with this bastard by sending little reminders with suitable flowers to the many sneaky bookings into various hotels not to say motels with the accompanying note.

  Hope for the sake of the old bones of my wife that you may yet get it up. You wretched simpleton you. Martha is of course thoroughly used to being rogered in a major manner. In fortissimo spirituoso vibrato, as a matter of fact.

  Mirrors

  A chap who looks in these in public, thereby practising his phony smile, examining what he thinks is his best profile, or putting what he thinks is his best expression on his otherwise forgettable face, is unpardonable. Always upon encountering a mirror by accident, avert your eyes. But upon entering hotel lobbies there is a permissible moment for a brief glance to flatter the self lightly when a nervous touch may be made to the hair if the wind has been unduly strong outside.

  Upon Observing Folk Who Appear So Overly Sure of Themselves

  Depressing spectacle though this is, a sensitive gentleman must bear with this rampantly popular affectation. Most of these bastards have the unpleasantly pompous habit of being fully booked up at all times. And upon their rushing to meetings will often be seen referring to their schedules. It helps however, in combating your own forlornness, if you try once in a while to have somewhere to go or someone to meet.

  But it could do both you and your victim a lot of good to snatch your man’s diary right out of his damn silly fingers right in the middle of the hotel lobby and remind him of the world’s starvin
g and dying. Be prepared however for this to have little effect. So many people these days think their own importance is also a matter of life and death.

  Facial Expressions

  As these guide you through life, it is as well to keep them up to peak performance by exercising them every morning. Begin with glowering and growling. Followed by displeasure and pleasure, nonchalance and discomfiture. And before finishing up with tittering and laughing be sure to give cowardice and inferiority a good workout, just in case your bravery and superiority are not up to scratch that day. Strict privacy should be observed during practice sessions as regretfully these facial expressions in quick combination demonstrate certifiability.

  Displaying Your Medals and Decorations