Daft Wee Stories

Read Online Daft Wee Stories by Limmy - Free Book Online Page A

Book: Daft Wee Stories by Limmy Read Free Book Online
Authors: Limmy
Ads: Link
Some people like it because it creates a distance, which makes things a bit easier and less personal when complaints or demands are made, it makes it easier for both sides. But Stevie called me ‘mate’. Not because he feels I’m undeserving of respect, but because he knows I don’t need it. Nor did he do it to get familiar with me so that I feel uncomfortable making complaints or demands, but to make me feel like I can tell him anything. We’re mates, after all. Not real mates, obviously, but for the duration of this wee thing we’ve got going on, we’re mates just like any others.
    Stevie’s all right.
    He beeps the barcode with his laser gun and reaches under the counter to pull out a poly bag. He flaps the bag up and down to open it up, but in doing so he wafts a leaflet off the counter and down onto his side of the floor. I watch him as he bends over to pick it up, and what I see makes me like Stevie even more.
    It’s not that I like him even more because I’m watching his arse. I am watching his arse, but that’s not it, it’s the whole thing. It’s the way he’s bending over. He’s bending over in that bow-legged way, his knees slightly bent and pointed outwards, and his upper body bent right over. I don’t know what it is about him bending over like that, it’s like there’s something open about it. I know that ‘open’ isn’t the best word to use, because it makes you visualise him bent over with an open arsehole, but that’s the only word that springs to mind. Open.
    It’s the way you imagine people to bend over in the wild, or in the jungle. You sometimes see programmes with Amazonian tribes where the men wear nothing but a wee piece of cloth tied around their waist. And every now and then, there’s a shot of one of them from behind, somewhere in the background, bending over to pick something up. Cock, balls, arse, the lot, there it is, they don’t give a fuck. They don’t give a fuck because they’ve got nothing to hide. And that’s the same with Stevie here.
    I’ve sometimes seen guys like that in changing rooms, back in school, and in gyms when I got older. They’re not stressing out trying to cover up their genitals with a towel, they know the sky won’t fall if somebody catches a glimpse. With them, it’s a towel between the legs, drying their no-man’s-land with a heave-ho, heave-ho, right in front of you, mid-conversation. And I know they wouldn’t mind if I did it as well. And why not? No formalities, no pretension, no lies, no borders, no barriers. Open.
    Stevie’s all right.
    He picks up the leaflet, puts it back and goes to stick my thing in the bag. But then has a look at it.
    â€˜What is this anyway?’ he asks.
    â€˜It’s like a media streamer thing,’ I say. ‘You can put all your music and films on it and watch it from anywhere in the house. Hopefully.’
    â€˜Ah, right. I could do with something like that. I didn’t know we had it. I suppose I should, since I work here!’
    He has a wee laugh.
    I love this guy.
    It’s the way he just laughed at himself for not knowing what his shop sells, even though he should. It’s like he doesn’t care. Not in a bad way, not in a cocky or arrogant way, but in a way that helps me relax and makes me less uptight about how the world should be.
    Because there comes a point, I think, when you realise that the world isn’t as orderly and in control as you might like it to be, that it’s in fact held together with Blu-tack and Sellotape and the wheels are about to come off at any moment. It can be quite a scary realisation, that, enough to make most people panic. But here’s Stevie here, and he’s laughing.
    We need people like Stevie. We need him to laugh, so that we can laugh. If you’re ever stuck in a lift, or holed up in a loft to escape the zombie hordes, or

Similar Books

Broken

Mary Ann Gouze

Safe and Sound

J.D. Rhoades

Unnatural Causes

P. D. James

Scavenger

David Morrell

Shotgun Charlie

Ralph Compton

Fractured

Lisa Amowitz

Collected Stories

R. Chetwynd-Hayes

What a Bear Wants

Nikki Winter