The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books) Read Online Free Page A

unzipped at the urinal or de-bagged on the can. Messy but effective. And it was the doormen who had to clean up afterwards. Equally unpleasant was the mess left when too much partying resulted in a vomit fest.
    Escorting the ill and the infirm from the premises without getting a jacket full of sick yourself was tricky, if not impossible. It was definitely my least favourite task. Some people at least had the courtesy to wait until they’d vacated the building before shouting “Hughy!” One gent retched and heaved his way out of the club, sat down by a wall, threw up again and then proceeded to pass out. Whilst he lay unconscious in a pillow of regurgitated chicken korma I propped a sign by his head that read: “I bet he drinks Carling Black Label.”
    Druggies, similarly, used the multi-purpose space of the club loo to inject, roll, swallow, sniff and deal chemical highs. Occasionally, and disappointingly, those on the make were the doormen themselves , though, despite suggestions to the contrary – and certainly from my experience – this scenario is rare. A good door team would not be seen dead dealing drugs. They are constantly on the lookout for dealers and users, both of whom get short shrift and a fast exit from the club if they are caught. No moral crusade, I can assure you, just part of the job description.
    People are fixated by the evils of drugs and there is little doubt that for those who deal and those that take there can be no undamaged escape. But as an empiricist I would argue that if drugs are evil then alcohol is the devil incarnate. Not only is it more damaging and deadly than Class A drugs – it kills and ravages tens of thousands more per capita than any other substance – it is legal, socially acceptable and it doesn’t even carry a government warning. And the deadly trilogy of stress, booze and nightclub ambience is all the ingredients you need to turn even the nicest people into despicable creatures.
    Alcohol has always been linked with – and often blamed for – many of our societal ills, not least the burgeoning growth in unsolicited violence. No doubt there is a link between binge-drinking and bar-fighting, but the former is surely a trigger and not the root cause. Pubs and clubs are brimming over with angst-ridden folk looking to displace a bad day, a bad week or a bad life in a good night. Perhaps that would explain why the violence – often heinous, sometimes fatal – is completely disproportionate to the triggering stimuli. Accidentally spilling another man’s beer in a club rammed with bodies hardly justifies a cross word, let alone a broken glass in the neck and four pints of red on the beer-sticky carpet. But, in the buzz of a busy nightclub it is just one of the many reasons people will find to enact atrocities on each other. If a spilled beer is going to cost you four pints of blood, never make the mistake of chatting up another man’s date; it may well cost you all nine lives.
    After a decade of standing under nightclub neon and nearly losing my faith in human nature I had the growing realization that violence was not the answer. It is a cruel and ugly language, the parley of ignorant men, but a means of discourse none the less and, when you are dealing with the hard of thinking, sometimes a quick punch in the eye is better understood that a lengthy over-the-table negotiation. Some people – even despots and dictators on the world stage – will listen to nothing less.
    Witnessing man’s inhumanity to man is enough to turn even the hardiest stomach but my personal renaissance only began after I nearly killed someone in a car-park fight. I won’t insult your intelligence by glazing over my actions with the egg-wash of weak rationalization. The situation – one that should have found a negotiable solution – started innocently enough. A local man and martial artist of some repute was consistently and blatantly challenging my authority and testing my patience by refusing to