Bastard Time

It comes to you in a flash. Well, maybe not a flash, more a kind of low-watt flicker – like one of those eco-friendly light bulbs you’ve been using to save the planet. Not that you’ll be bothering about the planet for much longer, ha ha!

You’d be furious with yourself for not thinking of it earlier if you weren’t so pleased with yourself for thinking of it at all. That’s the beauty of truth, perhaps: when it hits you, it wipes out your capacity for all those pointless impulses like regret, anger and altruism. The sheer simplicity of it leaves you unable to think about anything else. Which will be why since yesterday the only thought in your head has been:

BECOME A BASTARD

You’re pretty certain that your head doesn’t mean this in the “go-and-get-born-out-of-wedlock” sense: as objectives go, that one would pose rather more logistical difficulties than you feel you can deal with at the moment. No, what the grey cells have finally concluded is that you need to toughen up your act, forget about respecting others’ rights and feelings, and start doing whatever the fuck you feel like. It’s the only way. You look around you and the only people getting anywhere or having any fun are the Don’t Give A Shit brigade. Accordingly, you assemble a panoply (or whatever the collective noun is – pack? school? exultation?) of role models and set to work analysing just what it is that makes them the bastards they are. For legal reasons you are not allowed to publish the names of the paragons in question, but there is no law against writing down their guiding principles. Ergo:


Do what you want.
Do it for God.
Spout about justice.
Only drink blood.

Never feel guilty.
Lie and deny.
Piss on the wounded.
Never tell why.

Steal from young children.
Don’t share the loot.
Serbian hairstyle.
Smile when you shoot.


What fun there is to be had! Only you don’t know where to start.