If you’re interested in whores, you owe it to yourself to track down Jacques Brel’s extremely disturbing song “Next” as performed by the already extremely weird Scott Walker.
You’ll doubtless never hear a line quite like “I swear on the wet head of my first case of gonorrhea” on the radio anytime soon, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so depressed and horrified after hearing a song before or since this one.
The lyrics (it goes to a strange flamenco beat):
Naked as sin, an army towel
Covering my belly
Some of us blush, somehow
Knees turning to jelly
“Next!” “Next!”
I was still just a kid
There were a hundred like me
I followed a naked body
A naked body follwed me
“Next!” “Next!”
I was still just a kid
When my innocence was lost
In a mobile army whorehouse
Gift of the army, free of cost
“Next!” “You’re Next!”
Me, I really would have liked
A little touch of tenderness
Maybe a word, a smile
An hour of happiness
But no no, “Next!” “Next!”
Oh, it wasn’t so tragic
The high heavens didn’t fall
But how much of that time
I hated being there at all
“Next!” “Next!”
Now I always will recall
The brothel truck, the flying flags
The queer lieutenant who slapped
Our asses as if we were fags
“Next!” “You’re Next!”
I swear on the wet head
Of my first case of gonorrhea
It’s his ugly voice
That I forever hear
“Next!” “Next!”
That voice that stinks of corpses
Of whiskey and of mud
It is the voice of nations
It is the thick voice of blood
“Next!” “Next!”
And since the each woman
I’ve taken to bed
Seems to laugh in my arms
To whisper through my head
“Next!” “Next!”
All the naked and the dead
Should hold each other’s hands
As they watch me scream at night
In a dream no one can understand
“Next!” “Next!”
And when I am not screaming
In a voice grown dry and hollow
I stand on endless naked lines
Of the following and the followed
“Next!” “Next!”
One day I’ll cut my legs off
And burn myself alive
Anything, I’ll do anything
To get out of line just to survive
And never to be next
Not ever to be next.