by Irvine Welsh
Of course, everybody remembers the incident, and it becomes the cue for a round of familiar jokes. Tales of the genital mutilation of powerful young men resonate easily with middle-aged, middle-management women who have have been splattered against the glass ceiling by the myopic stampeding of that breed, on their relentless corporate ascent. I look around the table at the three Botoxed witches and think, with a chill, that this is quite probably me ten years on. And that’s the best-case scenario. And I feel disloyal, as Jon and I . . . well, we tried but we couldn’t make shit work. Now he’s been engaged in a lawsuit for three years against the company who were found to have dumped the chemicals at sea, detected at very high dosage in the fish’s body. The company had already been fined for illegal dumping, but are contesting that the chemicals could have poisoned the fish to the extent that it would have headed into the shallows and attacked a bather.
— Did the fish attack any other people? Waleena asks. — Like, before your friend?
— I don’t think so.
— Tough one. I don’t really see any grounds for an individual suing the company here, unless he can find other people who’ve been attacked by poisoned fish and they do a class-action lawsuit.
— That seems to be the legal feedback he’s gotten, I tell her.
Jon’s been understandably depressed since then, and has spent much more time in the SoBe dive bars than at Bodysculpt. But as I’m telling Valerie, Thelma, and Waleena the backstory, I can see them thinking it would great to get this in the show. Then Thelma actually says, — Do you think that Jon would—
— No. Not acceptable, I cut her off. — He hates the media. He might let us film in the club, but that’s about all, and I swear I can see her Botox face melt under my gaze.
— Of course, Lucy, she purrs, — you know best!
Despite that hiccup, I come out the meeting pretty buzzed and I’m actually enjoying the drive home, which is almost impossible with all the crazies behind the wheels of Miami’s automobiles. The devastating combo of Latin Americans, really old white people, and young all-year-round Spring Breakers is not a mix that encourages complacent driving.
I pull up outside my building—still no photographers (both good and worrying)—and get settled back in my apartment. Miles calls, with more of the same hero bullshit, now all conciliatory after us yelling at each other on our last encounter. He’s a firefighter I trained to kickbox in a tournament against the police. He was flirty as hell, and I thought I’d seen the last of him, till he found me on hookup.com, a dating-slash-fucking website I used to subscribe to. We all make mistakes. He tells me he’s still off work with his famous back issue. He never had this going on when we first met, and the shit has been getting worse. — I gotta examination by the service’s medical board, then a meeting with personnel and their insurance people lined up. You wanna come round tonight? Or I could swing by your way?
— I’m going out, I lie.
— Who with?
— That’s my business.
— Some fucking dyke, huh?
— Which part of “my business” don’t you get? Don’t call me again. I am so over mercy fucking, I tell him, and switch off the phone. That asshole is way beyond real.
I wasn’t intending to go out tonight, but I sure as shit am now. Besides, I got plenty to celebrate, thanks to that nosy Sorenson chick and her iPhone! I head into my walk-in closet and slip into a clingy, short, black denim skirt. Then I roll on some nylons and a purple-trimmed garter belt. A lacy black bra pushes my tits up into the world’s face, and I pull on a long-sleeved see-through gray silk blouse. A knee-high pair of leather boots with fierce silver buckles finishes the look. Not quite, as it’s all about accessorizing, and a silver heart necklace dangles above my cleavage to draw eyes there. A set of spiked silver bracelets gives the look an edge that nicely hints at S&M. A last-minute change of mind, and I decide to put on some simple black cotton panties. The sort that can easily be pushed aside for dick, dildo, fingers or tongue. Some mascara, lipstick the same purple as the garter, and a few strategic dabs of Givenchy, “very irresistible,” and I’m out the door and heading to the club on Washington.
From Lenox at 10th, it’s an easy walk in the warm, still night air. Then I’m honked at by two separate cars stuffed with grinning Latino pricks, spewing rounds of Spanish inanities over their loud music. That’s the worst thing about slutting up, this gauntlet of a six-block walk. I wish I could just fucking teleport into that club. I wonder how many more years I can carry this look off: thank fuck we age slower in Miami Beach than the rest of the world, or at least those of us who remember sunblock and don’t have to work outdoors do.
The liquid display on the clock behind the bar tells me it’s just a couple of minutes shy of midnight as I get into Club Uranus. On weeknights you’re usually assailed by bad commercial EDM, but there’s evidently a new DJ and I’m pleasantly surprised by frothy, bubbling Latin beats. Club Uranus has a cramped aisle with a bar and an inset DJ booth opposite, which makes it look like a five-buck-cover-charge dive, until you realize that beyond this it opens out onto a larger dance area, expanding onto a wrecked concrete yard. The club resembles a narrow-necked vase, and many people say they should refurbish, moving bar and booth to the sides of the dance floor, and ending the potentially hazardous bottleneck at the door. My friend Chef Dominic always rolls his eyes when I suggest this. “That’s the appeal of this place, sweetheart, fighting through that tight passage into some kinda heaven!”
As I weave through the chatting throng toward the bar there’s no sign of Dominic or any other faces, but two android carpet-munchers gape at me, quickly turning away as I meet their eyes. It’s soooo pathetic to see one chick trying to be butch and the other femme, but the bitches in fact looking indistinguishable. You can smell the U-Haul off them, but I guess we all got to start somewhere. Then I pass a shirt-sleeved, marvelously cut black guy, who mouths, — Hot.
I glance at myself in the mirrored pillar without breaking stride, and I know I’m the shit.
The back bar is lined with an assortment of tourists. Most look too sozzled and paunchy to cut it on the dance floor with the beautiful locals, so they amuse themselves by getting loudly drunk. Two heavy-eyed, swaying, German-sounding dudes ask what I want to drink, and I shake my head and wave to Gregory at the bar, who gives me a soda water. I seldom drink alcohol and I never touch drugs.
I take the water and press on. A stick-thin coffee-and-cigarettes slut, huge implants straining against her tank top, practically offers herself to me with a desperate smile. I blank the bitch instantly. Think again, ashtray breath! As if that isn’t bad enough, she has a total grenade in tow. The grenade has haunted, anorexic eyes but a still-beefy ass and short, stumpy thighs that refuse to retract in the face of her starvation diet.
So I turn and I’m face-to-face with this big, square-shouldered guy, and he grins broadly at me. I don’t want to go home with anybody though, so before either of us knows much about it, we’re across to the rear dance floor, then out the back, round through the yard and into the alley behind by the patio wall. It stinks of the garbage dumped here from other liaisons, and I can hear tin cans and plastic containers crushing under our feet. — Let’s fucking do it, I say, and the guy goes to speak but I shut him up with a kiss. I don’t want to hear a goddamn thing from his mouth, and I’m guiding him into a stance between the back wall of the club and a big tree, sort of wedging ourselves in between a space which I know, through previous experience, is perfect for fucking. The vibrations from the sound system drill through the wall, reverberating the bones in my back. The playboy’s pressing his hard meat against my thigh, saying shit in Spanish. I don’t need that cause I’m already Niagara Falls moist, and I reach down and rub at his crotch. — Gimme that shot of beef, I command in his ear, slut-demanding, and as he backs against the trunk of the tree, I enjoy the little glimmer of arousal (or maybe even fear) in his eye before he unzips. I’m wrapping my arms around his neck, crushi
ng my thighs around his hips like a boa constrictor, levering him against the tree. He pulls my panties aside and I’m enclosing his hard prick. Then he gets some traction and he’s slamming into my cunt, practically knocking my breath out with every stroke. I’m bucking like a deranged goat, thrusting my ass up to take more of this motherfucker, pushing him back against the tree and he’s screwing me into that fucking wall, the 4x4 beat throbbing through in time with his strokes. — C’mon, bring it home, boy, I’m demanding, — I need more, bring it the fuck home!
Another flicker of distress in his eyes, but then he starts to go harder at it, pounding like that fucking bass line. Sometimes they just need a little encouragement. The red mists are coming down and I’m turning inside out in ecstasy in this shit-strewn alley. He’s spent, you can tell by those tombstone eyes and his shallowed breathing (it’s no mistake that it was a man who described the orgasm as a mini-death), but I’m bucking my way to paradise and he will hold the fucking line till I’m done. They can always give more than they think they’ve got. Fucking hammer me, you prick-wielding pussy, I won’t lie down to you, FUCK ME FUCK ME, I won’t lie down to you, FUCK YEAH FUCK YEEEAAAHHH . . .
As he fades and slips out of me, I climb off him, lowering myself onto unsteady legs. In more than a hint of desperation he croaks that his name’s Enrique and he wants to buy me a drink. But the dude is just like a piece of gym equipment to me, and we’re now in postworkout scenario. I’ve had my dose of dick and his is already weeping like last night’s leftover quesadilla. So I smile and say, — Thanks, that’s very kind of you, but you know what? I gotta go. Maybe some other time, enjoying the sad tumble of his face and the sorrow in those brown eyes. No point at all in hanging around a joint like this once you got what you came for. I go back home and check my emails.
6
CONTACT 2
* * *
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: I Know It’s a Long Shot, But . . . .
Dear Lucy,
On behalf of Jillian Michaels, I’d like to thank you for your email. Unfortunately, due to the volume of correspondence we receive, it’s impossible for Jillian to answer personal inquiries, such as your own.
Thank you for your interest.
Best wishes,
Julie Truscott
* * *
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: So Good To Hear From You!
Dear Lucy,
Nice to hear from you so soon!
It was lovely to meet you at my presentation in Miami, just too bad that there wasn’t much time to talk as such tours tend to be whistlestop! Your heroism is really inspiring to lots of people!
I’m so glad my comments about diet books resonated. Let me make it clear I wasn’t dismissing low-calorie, or even low-carb diets. They obviously have their place, but only as part of an integrated and balanced program. I’m afraid I have absolutely no tolerance whatsoever for the “quick fix” merchants. On that note, you should really insist to your clients that they do Morning Pages. It does yield quite revolutionary results.
Thank you for your kind words. Yes, it can be rather daunting being thrown into the media spotlight, as I can testify with my own experience on Shed That Gut! I find that when you deal with certain people you really have to keep your cards close to your chest. You can usually see exactly where they’re coming from. You’re a smart cookie, so I’m sure you’ll be able to figure them out!
Congratulations again on your success!
All the best,
Michelle Parish
7
VILLAIN
WE’RE PRACTICALLY ALL transplants in Miami Beach. Natives are thin on the ground in this town. The guys you can tell; they strut proudly in their home city baseball caps and football tees. Just don’t expect to actually see them back in Cleveland or Pittsburg anytime soon. Chicks? Well, I’m not above wearing my Red Sox cap on the odd occasion; at least it tells you where I’m from. You see an asshole in a FUCKING YANKEES cap, they’re as likely to be from England or France or shit like that.
Lena Sorenson. 5’2", 203 lbs. Should be one-twenty. That means she is carrying an extra eighty-odd pounds of fat. It’s on her gut, her ass, her thighs, and, most of all, that ugly strap around her face and chin. Like she’s stuck her head into a pink-colored tire.
I have to admit I’m surprised she’s back. Welcome to phat beach, fat beetch. If only we were at my friend Emilio’s spot at the Miami Mixed Martial Arts gym. I’d come on like a ghetto sergeant major and tell the corpulent hoe what she needed to hear: eat less, eat better, and get off your fat little ass. But I doubt she’d be seen dead in Emilio’s place; Mexicans are meant to sweat alone in your garden, not side by side with you in a gym. And despite her having the classic low-self-esteem fat-slob’s fashion sense, I suspect there’s some wealth here. But we’re at Bodysculpt; if I speak my mind and a client complains, my tenure will be over, even given the relationship I have with Jon. So it’s a lopsided grin, and a cheerful, — Well, we got a little work to get you back in shape, Mrs. Sorenson, and I check her reaction to my assumption of her marital status, but her expression stays glazed, — but the good news is you already made the biggest step by walking through that door.
That’s what the lardass wants to hear. They want to believe that it’s all easy from here on in. That it can literally be done in their sleep. Because heaven forbid that they interrupt sitting in front of the TV, rising only to refrigerator-raid and pack shit into their sneaky, blubbery mouths. They don’t wanna get up before ten, eleven. Perish the thought that any diet and exercise regime should impinge on those basic American freedoms. And I’m sorry, Michelle Parish, you hot-assed little visionary, but what they do not need is more procrastination by sitting on those blubbery butts writing Morning fucking Pages. — It’s not Mrs., it’s Mi . . . Lena . . . please, call me Lena.
— Right, I smile. You GET Lena, THEN I will call you Lena, bitch. — So let’s just get you on this treadmill, Ms. Sorenson . . . sorry, Lena . . . I smile, as she steps on and I set the speed to 5 mph, — . . . a nice even pace . . . there . . . how’s that? It quickly racks up to the mark and soon Sorenson is pounding along, sweating like a skulking schoolyard pervert.
— I . . . I . . .
— Too much! Surely not?
I’m met by the face of the fat moaner: the apologist, the self-pitying, poor-me quitter. — It’s . . . really . . . fast . . .
I hate those stupid expressions more than anything. The bloated dumbass oil tanker, where you search for light in those eyes; the frightened child looking for Momma’s sweet treats to make it all better; the belligerent asshole who wants to kill themself and really doesn’t know why they’re here. It doesn’t matter which of those archetypes show up, I just wanna punch out every time-wasting bum I see wearing one of those goddamn insults to humanity.
As her meaty thighs wobble in those yoga pants, Sorenson’s face blooms florid. — I like to give my clients a goal, Lena. One more specific than just weight loss. A half-marathon, 10k, 5k, it don’t really matter.
— I . . . I couldn’t . . . I just . . . cooo . . . Sorenson’s heavy legs clatter on the accelerating rubber belt.
— Don’t wanna hear that word, those words; couldn’t, can’t, shouldn’t! You have to stand up. You have to come forward!
Sorenson cringes under the violating impact of my words, but she doesn’t stop. Her terror-stricken pout tells me she’s not exactly full of grace, but she’s doing. I burn her this way for a solid forty-five minutes, bringing her to reasonable jogging speed, then back to walking, then jogging again. At the end of it she’s glowing like a red-hot ember. Sweaty and exhausted as she climbs off the treadmill, Sorenson finds herself unable, for once in her life, to open her fat mouth to take in anything but the sweet air she’s forcing into her puny lungs. — You did well today, I signal her to follow
me into the office, and she wobbles behind me, still gasping. — But remember that exercise is only one component to this. I’m giving you a diet sheet, and I swipe one from a stack on my desk. Push it into her grasping paw. As Sorenson looks at it, I watch her face subside.
I grab a card from the rack. — Call me if you start to get cravings for shit over the weekend, and trust me, you will.
Sorenson’s face tells me she’s got them already. — You’re really . . . professional and dedicated, she gulps, fear sparking in her eyes.
— I’m serious about you losing weight . . . Lena, so you need to be too. It isn’t easy, especially at the start. So phone me if you feel yourself going off the rails. We are fighting an addiction to crappy eating habits as well as poor exercise ones, I explain, thinking of Michelle’s wise words. — We are looking at the whole picture. You didn’t put this weight on in one day, and it won’t come off in one day.
— I know . . . it makes sense.
— Good. It’s important we’re on the same page here. So, tell me about you. What do you do for a living?
— I’m . . . Sorenson hesitates, — . . . sort of an artist.
Sort of an artist. Everybody in SoBe who isn’t sort of a model or sort of a photographer, is sort of an artist. Waitress, I get it. Or maybe a trust-fund parasite, playing at it. — Cool. . . . Where are you from?
— Minnesota. A town called Potters Prairie in Otter County.
Are you fucking kidding me? — Right . . . I’ll bet it’s a pretty part of the world.