Skagboys

by Irvine Welsh

  Seeker and I are still doing the weights. It’s been this ritual, much more so than the group or individual sessions with Tom, that’s kept me going through this nasty and debilitating bout of depression. The other day, when I tried tae tell him I wisnae up tae it, the cunt just wisnae hearing us. ‘C’moan. Yir daein it.’ I know enough about psychopaths through Begbie to sense when they have their non-negotiating heids on, so I got up and struggled through my sets. And yes, by forcing myself intae it, feeling the burn, getting the blood circulating, my mood started to swing north.

  So I’ve been saved by the biggest drug dealer in the city!

  Him standing over me, mother hen watchful behind those cold, dark lenses, ready tae catch the weights in his huge hands when I work tae the point ay failure. Ironically, through this activity, thicker veins are coming up oan my airms, forcing themselves tae the surface ay ma skin. I wonder if this is the real motivation?

  I found a skipping-rope in a drawer the other week, and I started doing boxer’s three minutes skipping, one minute rest, working up to six rounds after the weights, and I’m still at my push-ups and squat thrusts. I reciprocate and get Seeker intae the rope, despite his initial cynicism. It looks strange, him skipping on the back patio, stripped to the waist, hair tied back, mirror-lens shades still on.

  Started writing mair stuff in the journal. Trying tae think ay how I got intae this mess. All that came out was being with my auld man in Orgreave.

  Day 35

  Feeling fucking brilliant again! That rope rules. Can’t shut the fuck up in the one-on-one session with Tom. Although I ken I’ll probably feel different tomorrow, I’ve decided right now that he’s an excellent gadge. He’s actually read Tender Is the Night, and it’s great tae have somebody here who you can talk tae about books, films and politics. A long discussion on Scorsese and De Niro, him insisting that their best collaboration was Taxi Driver, me holding out for Raging Bull. ‘Taxi Driver was Schrader’s film,’ I insist, ‘he was the genius behind it.’

  I sit outside in the garden after dinner, when everybody else goes straight tae the telly. The evening shadows the overhanging trees, as sparrows flutter down to feed off our discarded crumbs. I can hardly hear the rambling, squabbling junky voices above the booming tones of the television newsreader.

  Journal Entry: Stabbing Eric ‘Eck’ Wilson at school

  It was second year at school, in the Tecky Drawing class, and the teacher was out somewhere. Two blows to the back of my head, with accompanying slack-jawed laughter. Not the first time this had happened, and I knew instantly who the perpetrator was. I turned round, instinctively pulling out the flick knife.

  SLAM! One in the hand of Eck Wilson. Horror! His coupon was a sight to behold. SLAM! The chest. SLAM! The gut. The nastiest, most contrived strike, really wanting tae hurt the paralysed Eck wi that yin.

  They weren’t bad wounds, but they drew blood and Eck went into shock. As did I. Among those who witnessed this was Fort joyrider Gary McVie (RIP) whae took the blade offay us. ‘Gie’s that, Mark,’ he said, pocketing it. He shouted at everybody tae sit doon and shut the fuck up, and they did, bar a couple ay sooky cunts whae clucked away as the teacher, Mr Bruce, came back. I worried that Bruce would see the blood, then the polis would come, and I’d be taken off to the chokey. But the bell went and Eck walked out, slightly doubled over. He never grassed, and after rabidly threatening to kill me outside, he left and went somewhere tae get his wounds treated.

  I saw him a couple ay days later in Geography. I was chivless and terrified, a knot of fear in my guts. I envisioned a physical fight and I was confident that Eck would kick my cunt in. But he didn’t: he sat beside me and started tae sook up, offering me sweeties – sherbet lemons, as I recall – saying ‘we’ve always been mates …’ which was, of course, nonsense.

  I sat in silence, enjoying and drawing power from the desperate eager-to-please fear in his eyes, and the taste of the sweetie, wedged against the roof ay my mooth, as it slowly dissolved in a burst ay sherbet.

  Day 36

  Sick Boy leaves, packing up his belongings, including the infamous tattered Collins dictionary. A tool for enlightenment in most hands, but deadlier than a loaded revolver in his. His sister Carlotta picks him up in her Datsun. She looks so sexy … I’ll have forty wanks aboot her the night! Too fuckin right! He was a bit perturbed at my heavy flirting. At one stage my palms are running up and down her bare arms, and I’m catching the scent of her black glossy hair. Trying tae get as much sense data as possible for later. She was giggling, and Sick Boy broke off a clinch with a heartbroken Molly tae gie us a half-playful, half-vicious kick on the shin.

  ‘Look after my man here,’ I tell Carlotta, locking him in a matey embrace, enjoying his uncomfortable, helpless wriggling in my now stronger arms.

  I only became pals with the cunt in the first place, soas I could go roond for him and ogle his sisters, and his ma, before she got fat. You only got in the hoose if his hostile prick ay a faither was oot. If he came tae the door, he’d go, ‘So you’re the laddie fae the Fort then, eh?’ aw snobby, like the Bannanay flats were fuckin Barnton or something! He’d make ye wait oot ootside till Sick Boy wis ready, where ye’d invariably git hassled by local radges whae kent ye wir fae the other side ay Junction Street.

  ‘Behave,’ Sick Boy says, eyes pilled in narray focus, ‘and I’ll see ye in a few weeks.’

  ‘I’ll be oot next week,’ I remind him.

  ‘I’m gaun tae Italy for a spell: but for real this time. Dae me good to get out ay this savage Pictish swamp,’ he says, looking round disdainfully over the trees tae the smoky-grey sky, before turning tae an anxious Molly.

  ‘Phone me as soon as ye git back!’ She wraps her thin arms around him.

  I can see his face over her shoulder. He winks at me and widens his eyes before whispering in her ear, ‘You just try stopping us, babes. You just try stopping us.’ Then he breks oaf abruptly and heads tae the car.

  We watch them leave. Molly runs inside. Tom puts a light hand oan ma shoulder. ‘You’ve lost Danny, Johnny and now Simon. But cheer up, you’ll be finished next.’

  Back in the recky room Molly looks devastated, but Keezbo’s consoling her, which keeps the fat Jambo cunt oot ma road.

  I go back tae my room and read.

  I get disturbed by Skinny-Specky, who tells me that I have a session with Molly. I’m wondering what the fuck she’s on about, and she tipples and says, ‘Sorry, the other Molly.’

  The other Molly is a straight-backed, horsey Englishwoman called Molly Greaves, who is a visiting clinical psychologist. She couldn’t be more different from our own beloved Moll if she tried. I first met her at the clinic, where I answered her probing, insistent questions in a dazed compliance. Now I’m far more testy and resistant to her violating edge, and it doesn’t go well.

  At night I sit on the back porch with the guitar, strumming under the inky-black sky, but a string breaks and there’s no replacement, so the party’s over.

  Day 38

  Tom’s getting under my prickly skin. I’m due tae be discharged next week, but as well as scheduling me for another fruitless session with the clinical psychologist, in our one-to-ones he’s changed his softly-softly tactics. Today, he looked me in the eye and said in frosty detachment, ‘Don’t lie to yourself, Mark.’

  ‘What?’ I was wrong-footed, and I thought, once again, about The Big Lie. If he wis gaunny pill us up oan it.

  ‘Work with me.’

  ‘What d’ye mean?’

  ‘You’re an intelligent guy. But you’re not that intelligent. For as well read and educated as you are, you can’t solve the mystery of why you’re doing this to yourself.’

  ‘Ye think so?’ I challenged him, while aw the time ah kent that the cunt was spot on.

  ‘You don’t know why you’re a junky and that bugs the shit out of you. It offends your intellectual vanity and your sense of yourself.’

  It was like being punched in the guts. Be
cause it was true. I was perplexed, but more than that, a bit shaken, as much by his U-turn towards this more confrontational approach, as by what he said.

  CUNT.

  I could hardly hear my own words over the blood bubbling in my brain and I started to rant. It went something like this: ‘Ah cannae value this type of world. It’s no good for me, this shithole we created and cannae make better. That’s what offends me. Ah’m choosin no tae engage, tae drop out, if you want tae use that shitey hippy term!’

  And that’s making it sound more articulate than it was.

  ‘That’s not normal talk for a young guy,’ Tom responded. ‘You’re simply depressed. What’s making you depressed, Mark?’

  Couldnae think ay anything to say. ‘The world.’

  ‘It’s not the world,’ he shook his head emphatically. ‘Yes, it’s bad, but people like yourself should be trying to make it better. Besides, you’re smart enough to get by and thrive in any sort of society. What is it?’

  ‘Skag’s a good buzz,’ I telt him. Anything tae burst the bubble, tae avoid confronting The Big Lie. ‘Ah eywis liked a good buzz.’

  ‘So you’re at an age where you discover that the world is fucked up and it can’t be easily fixed. So deal with it. Grow the fuck up.’ There was a new iron in his eyes. ‘Get on with your life. So what?’

  ‘So this.’ I rolled up my sleeve and show him the scar tissue ay my healed track marks.

  The Big Lie.

  We were all playin a fuckin game: the rehab game. We had tae collude wi the staff in the myth that we wanted tae stop using heroin. Few, if any ay us, really gied a flying fuck though. What we wanted was to clean up, soas we could get back tae using at a reduced dosage. But we didnae want tae stop, fuck that! We wanted a clean slate so we could use without things getting out ay hand. Success in this game was based on our ability tae deceive the staff, and their ability tae con themselves, by buying intae the myth that we actually wanted tae embrace this bullshit ay a drug-free life.

  TO DO WHAT?

  Only Seeker wanted something else: tae find a place in Tenerife so that the crippling winter cauld wouldnae get at the metal in his body.

  Scribbled more mair aboot that Yorkshire trip wi Dad. The writing’s my refuge; my life here would be intolerable without it. For experimental purposes I tried tae frame it in the form ay a story, writing as events actually affected me.

  Journal Entry: Concerning Orgreave

  Even the plank-stiffness of this old, unyielding settee can’t arrest my body’s slink into deliverance. It reminds me of the university residences in Aberdeen; lying in the dark, basking in exalted freedom from the fear that coalesced in my chest, like the thick phlegm did in his. Because whatever I hear outside, cars scrunching down the narrow, council-house streets, sometimes sweeping their headlights across this fusty old room, drunks challenging or serenading the world, or the rending shrieks of cats taking their torturous pleasures, I know I won’t hear that noise.

  No coughing.

  No screaming.

  Day 39

  High drama, as Skreel was discovered tae have gone AWOL late last night. He comes back wasted early this morning, shuffling in wi a dopey smile on his face, and some blood tricklin fae his big, bust nose, responding tae aw interrogations wi an offhand shrug. It seems he managed tae score smack in Kirkcaldy. The way I see it, the cunt deserves a medal for initiative. He’s only around for half an hour, presumably as some sort ay negative example tae us all, before the polis arrive and he’s carted off tae jail.

  We have an emergency process group meeting tae discuss, predictably, ‘our feelings’ about the incident. Emotions are running high and Ted, who had become close tae Skreel, gets intae a shouting match with Len, Tom and Amelia, storming out the room, calling them ‘grassin cunts’. Molly shrilly parrots on about Skreel ‘letting everybody doon’. Well, the cunt certainly let me fuckin doon, no telling us that he was daein a runner and had a connection locally. I’d have been right ower that fuckin waw behind him. Being contrary by nature, I say absolutely fuck all, except a philosophical, ‘He’s gone. Can’t really see the point of inquests and recrimination. Let’s just get oan wi it.’

  The fat lassie – Gina, her name is – she’s fresh out of detox but still rattling like fuck, is constantly whining, ‘Ah cannae handle aw this …’ as she rocks away, sitting on her hands, meaty airms tight by her side. The wee felly wi her is called Lachlan, or Lachy, he tells us timidly. Lackey of the state, I’ll think of him, as he’s in the care of a state agency.

  Molly and Skinny-Specky Amelia are now big buddies, Ms Bloom having almost turned intae a clone; posture and gestures shamelessly thieved fae her posher sister. She starts gabbin oan in the recky room that evening aboot ‘destructive relationships that enable negative behaviour’ and how she would ‘never get involved with guys like Brandon or even Simon again … he jist tries tae trick ye wi words’.

  How soon they forget! Aye, I fair had a wee smirk at that yin, knowing full well that if Sick Boy walked in that door her keks would be roond her ankles in seconds.

  ‘Great thit yuv learned yir lesson,’ Seeker says, and flashes me a grim, collusive smile, while Keezbo picks and chews at the dry skin aroond his heavily bleeding nails.

  ‘Aye, ah huv!’ she says belligerently, then looks at us in disdain before storming off.

  Day 40

  Today in the junky transfer market: OUT: Seeker, IN: old smelly Leith hippy Dennis Ross and a rodent-faced radgeworks fae Sighthill who goes by the name ay Alan Venters.

  I’ll certainly miss Seeker (again, it’s a club of one I’m in), basically cause I know it’ll be harder to motivate myself tae exercise every morning and afternoon.

  Day 41

  It’s a lovely morning, and I’m up early to do the weights and the rope. To my surprise, Audrey comes through, tapping on the patio doors. I think of her as Bowie’s little girl with grey eyes, say something, say something … as she joins me in her customary silence, doing some weights and skipping. But afterwards, we sit and chat in the garden. Audrey doesnae say, but it’s clear she didnae care fir Seeker. Perhaps understandable. After a bit we go in for breakfast, as the others rise in a cacophony of groans and yawns.

  On the menu: scrambled eggs and surprisingly good vegetarian sausages, with tons ay broon HP Sauce. The downside: that Venters gadge sitting on his tod, shaking, but giving out a malevolent vibe. Audrey and Molly are both visibly creeped out by him. That cunt is trouble. Not my problem, though.

  Having cracked Joyce, I’ve finally moved on to Carl Rogers. More interesting than I thought: I want to finish it before I go, for Tom’s sake.

  Day 42

  It pishes heavily half an hour at a time, before the rain seems tae vanish back up intae a silvery sky ay nippy, ragged-ersed clouds.

  Audrey has replaced Seeker as my fitness partner. After a session we sit and chat about music and life. She tells me she worked as a nurse with terminally ill people but got seriously depressed and started raiding the morphine in the controlled-drugs cupboard.

  So she’s become a friend, which instantly knocks her off my J. Arturoing jukebox. Ye cannae wank aboot mates, even ones with tits and fannies: it just disnae work for me.

  Molly and Ted leave us. Their time here is up. Ted comes up to me and goes, ‘Ah didnae like you at first cause ah thoat ye wir aw snidey n superior, eywis sneakin away oan yir ain n no mixin. Then ah realised that ye jist wanted a bit ay peace n tae git through it yir ain wey.’ I give him a surprisingly heartfelt hug. I’m even more shocked when Molly embraces me and kisses me on the cheek, and says, ‘I’ll miss arguing wi you, ya radge.’ I return the kiss and wish her well. Ted and Molly are the two I like least from the original crew, but I’ll miss them, as I’m singularly unimpressed by the new intake. Thank fuck I’m offski on Thursday. Can’t wait.

  I sit up alternating between reading Rogers and writing mair aboot Orgreave.

  Day 43

  Keezbo graduates with honours f
ae our drug users/substance abusers project, but doesnae seem too excited about it all. ‘Chin up, buddy,’ I tell him, ‘the Fort Rhythm Section’ll be back in action soon. Toughest skiers.’

  ‘Toughest skiers …’ he sadly responds.

  What’s up wi that fat Jambo cunt? The fuckin coupon on him! He’s breaking my heart! Before he walks out he hugs me, and it’s like being mauled by a fat, shaved, sweating bear. ‘Ah’ll miss ye,’ he says, as if we’ll never see each other again! Then the fat cunt hands us this envelope. When he’s gone I open it up; inside is the team photae ay us aw in the Wolves strips.

  Day 44

  Brian Clough spent forty-four days at Leeds United. I’d rather have been him than me. No a great deal ay time tae turn roond a club. No a great deal ay time tae turn roond a life.

  I mind of that superb John Cooper Clarke number, ‘Beasley Street’ and the lyrics: ‘Hot beneath the collar, an inspector calls …’ Well, fucked if we dinnae have three ay them today, fae the NHS, Social Work Department and Scottish Office respectively. The Daily Express ran a piece on Skreel’s ‘escape’ and did a feature on the ‘junky five-star hotel’, with a helpful editorial saying that the place should be shut doon. Len tells me that a sleazy paedophile-type with a press pass was hanging around outside, harassing the staff for quotes.

  It’s amazing how seedy scumbags (the press) can write shite, and demented retards (the public) suddenly go up in arms and then opportunistic slime (the politicians) jump right on the bandwagon. Such is British life. So now there is to be a ‘comprehensive review of the facility’.

  It actually brings us all together. We feel like celebs and are very complimentary about the unit. As the veteran, I do most of the talking, though Audrey’s now saying her piece and Dennis Ross as the oldest, most mature and articulate member of the new breed is making a sterling contribution. (In the gairdin ay eunuchs, even the gadgie wi the two-inch cock cannae help but swagger.) We’re stressing tae the po-faced bureaucrats that it’s no easy ride. This is no piece of cake.