by Alan Bissett
request volunteers to organise more study groups for the senior children
strikes me as lawlessly funny, the way a swear word leaps out in the context of a poem (would these be the same ‘children’, Mr Livingstone, who recreate the Grand Prix in Falkirk town centre, masturbate like Duracell bunnies and run up phone debt with each twitch of their hash-stained fingers?) Connor gives a letter from his mother to Mrs Pitcairn, complaining that the class tests are too easy, not stretching him enough, and I can’t bring myself to care about this as I’ve just realised I have another eighty or so years left on Earth in which I can do whatever the fuck I want and I’m wondering what booze I should bring to Tyra’s party and
we swagger from the shop at the bottom of the Glen Brae with two bottles of Famous Grouse and eight Strongbow (for the price of four). Brian and Frannie insist on singing Hello, Hello, We are the Billy Boys all the way up to Tyra’s house while I try to tell Dolby the latest on the forthcoming Lord of the Rings movie. The evening is blue and clean and billowing. My stomach is full of circus performers.
The music pumping from Tyra’s house (Abba), the antiquity of Albert Road – its stoic, middle class retirement air – filled with Europop and Rangers terrace anthems.
‘So whit’s the name ay the birthday bint?’ Brian asks, thumping my shoulder with a Strongbow. ‘Tie Her Up?’
‘Tire Her Oot?’ suggests Frannie.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Tyra. So the thing about the film,’ I carry on, my jaw tight as we approach her door, ‘is that they’re using the same technology as Gladiator, except they have to make you believe in a fantasy world, not a real one.’
‘That’s very interestin,’ says Dolby.
I ring her doorbell. The Grouse bottles clink gently. I can see dark shapes through the frosted glass; woozy, ghostly heads. I ring the doorbell again and the music is turned down briefly. Someone says, ‘… at the door? But everyone’s here …’ then a grey shape swells towards the glass.
‘I could shag a whole room full ay schoolies,’ Brian growls.
Frannie, in a ‘Vietnamese’ voice: ‘You so honny! Two dollar! Sucky-fucky!’
‘So, when’s the movie due?’ asks Dolby, but I shush them frantically and the door swings open.
‘Alvin?’ I actually intake breath at how beautiful she looks. Her hair has been set in golden curls for the evening. Her face is glowing with excitement. The temptation to touch her hand, resting on the doorjamb, is overwhelming.
The Lads say nothing, dumbfounded by her beauty.
‘You. Uh – you’re here.’ Her voice goes up on the last word, flecked with surprise.
‘Well, I’m a wee bit late, but–’
She’s staring at the cut on my cheek, concerned. ‘How did you get that scar?’
‘Oh,’ I fumble, ‘shaving accident.’
I thrust the gift at her and she stares at it for a second, as if unsure of something vital to the cogency of life. Then she shrugs awkwardly. ‘Well, I suppose you’d better come in.’
We stride past her into the lobby, the Lads mumbling ‘Evenin’/‘Happy birthday’/‘Hiya’ the same cowed way children speak to their dentists. Her hall is resplendent with balloons and streamers, littering the paintings and framed prints like clowns invading a serious arts debate and (I am in Tyra’s house!) the mahogany thrums with drum n bass. The Lads spread sheepishly into the hall as Tyra unwraps her present.
‘Oh,’ she gasps, reading. ‘Is this a box set of … the complete albums of Pink Floyd?’
‘Digitally remastered,’ I add.
‘Thanks,’ her small mouth utters. I was hoping she’d cry, but she’s obviously too stunned and grateful.
‘It’s a real idea of how the band developed,’ I point out to her, ‘over fourteen albums.’
party is littered with star names from the senior school, the detritus of an exploded galaxy: Jennifer Haslom, earrings glinting, curls swinging gently on a slender neck; Louisa Wainwright brushing a fawning hand down David Easton’s arm. All eyes turn as we enter, grinning like village idiots, hauling our Strongbow from the poly bag to offer them round. No takers. For most of the evening we remain in a tight, defensive phalanx, moving from room to room as a unit.
Brian’s eyes goggle at Tyra’s tanned, summery friends. ‘Canny remember schoolies ever lookin like this.’
Frannie is horrified by evidence of Tyra’s Dad being a Celtic fan. ‘A Souvenir fay Dublin?’
Dolby scours the bookshelves for confirmation of his own good taste, his fingers resting on all seven of the Narnia books in hardback. The party shifts
up a gear. Someone plays Fatboy Slim’s You’ve Come A Long Way Baby, Brian and Frannie rolling into an argument about lyrics. ‘Does that song say Carol Vordeman is druggy druggy druggy?’
‘Naw. It’s California.’
Frannie cocks an ear, raises a finger
‘It’s Carol Vordeman. Carol Vordeman is druggy druggy druggy.’
‘Shut up,’ Brian rumbles.
Through the swelling crowd I catch a glimpse of my mother watching me the way she once looked into my cot, and for some reason Louisa Wainwright is giving Gordon French a massage, her hands easing and rising on his shoulder blades as a look of bliss breaks across his face, and a couple of guys – older guys who claim to know Tyra (they wink) very well – ask about Derek
‘Is your brother back from London?’
‘Naw, he’s stickin it oot,’ I say.
and I half-deflect, half-ignore their questions, Fatboy Slim’s loops burrowing a dull worm of pain into my skull and Tyra is nowhere to be seen, and so, slurping at the syrupy warmth of the Famous Grouse, I go hunting, asking vague party girls if they fancy my mates, cos they’re, like, all single, glimpsing Mum several times – sipping gin on the stairs, helping someone be sick in the garden, browsing the Mackenzie CD collection – and when next I return to the living room the hash heads from the back of the History huts are talking to the Lads, Barry holding court like Shaun Ryder, his lit joint making the Lads stiff, wary, subdued. He is telling Frannie and Dolby about his idea for a novel called Twelve Storeys High, which is, ‘a bit like Trainspotting except set in this high-rise in Fawkurt, an there’s like, twelve different stories for the twelve different storeys, an they’re aw drug dealers so that’s why it’s cawed Twelve Storeys High. Robert Carlyle’ll play me in the movie likes.’
Gordo, meanwhile, is imparting one of his prophecies to a rapt Brian Mann. I shuffle close, inconspicuous, to hear Gordo say, ‘Just tay let ye know, man, I’ve heard it said that Cottsy fay Camelon’s still gunnin fir ye.’
Brian grunts moodily, retorts something about Cottsy having to fucking catch him first.
‘Whit happened at the races, by the way? I heard somethin like yer mate ran ower some nutter fay Langlees?’
A monosyllabic reply from Brian.
‘Well, they’re keepin an eye oot fir yese an aw. Cottsy’s crew and the Lang Boys? Yese better stey aff they roads fir a while, man. They aw recognise that car ay yours. An mair important, they ken whaur ye work.’
‘Fucksake!’ Brian explodes, prodding Gordo’s chest and producing a brief splutter of smoke. ‘Gonnay tell us some good news?’
‘If ye like,’ Gordo shrugs. ‘Celtic are winning 2–0.’
I head (am directed? divinely?) to the garden to write a birthday poem for Tyra, trying to ignore the Slipknot slam-dancers who’ve colonised the kitchen, one of them barging into me and dislodging a fantastic metaphor which I’ve just composed. On a low wall which borders the calm of the lawn, I listen to the gurgle of the fish pool over the screech of guitars, raising my face to the sky, burbling with poetry. The sky is an irresistible velvet blue, rippled with stars and an indolent moon. I try to picture Tyra’s face – just at her moment of ecstasy when she opened my present – then write on the back of a napkin
you are the moon
celluloid-thin, white,
touched by the silhouette of
E.T.’s bike.
and get up to look for her, eager to impart these lines, my head swimming with whisky, romance and the complete albums of Pink Floyd, but over the pogoing heads of the Slipknot parade, between the prefects who smooch in drunken poses on the settee, beyond the champagne pyramid which someone is attempting to build, I can’t
see
her
but take the chance to steal carelessly left drinks (the tastes blending in a gloop on my tongue) and no-one knows where she is, not even, strangely, after I regale them with my joke about the Pope on a tour of Ibrox, which suddenly seems important – vital – to my quest. The party evolves into a vortex, me anchored to the centre by the logic of my Pope joke as pretty, educated, drunken faces rotate around me then away before the punchline and someone
!
I’m sprinting to the bathroom, hitting the porcelain and suddenly making a weird sound like this, ‘Blooooouuuurgh.’
‘Bohemian Rhapsody will not be played on this piano, thank you very much.’
‘Blaaaaarrruuuugh. Uh. Help. Eough.’
‘Me, Jonesy, Gordo and this bird wi huge–’
‘Aah. Aaah. Heeelp! Boooooaaagh. (ohh)’
‘invited that Alvin and those awful schemies …’
‘(fugg) Gooooaaaagh. Goooaaaggh. (ohfug)’
‘… you are my Falkirk, my only …’
then wipe my hand across my face, feel the slavers fall away in drips, and piss, making a Z in the foam with my urine. In the living room, people are gyrating hip against hip, kissing, and a copy of Empire magazine lies stuck to the coffee table in a glaze of dried beer, so I pounce on it, ignoring the lovers crushed against me on the couch, their sex-crazed elbows digging into my ribs. Winona Ryder is on the cover, her face clear and white like the moon above the trees on a fishing night with the Lads last summer, Dolby, pencil-thin in the dark, whispering so the fish wouldn’t be startled, ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’
Winona has hazel-coloured eyes, with a sphere of reflected light glistening in the centre. Inside the sphere the photographer is visible, his sinister outline like a fleck of evil. There is a serial-killer in the chamber of Winona Ryder’s eye. Empire are advertising a 2-for-1 DVD offer and I lose myself in the glossy sheen of the pages, the glinting promise of each crisp edge, and soon I notice that the sky outside the room is the colour of slate, remember there’s one street in Bainsford that has three – count them – three chip shops and
All I want is to find a ruby in the trash.
Something that is true and good and right.
Every night we head out in Belinda like road warriors, avenging angels, and I search for it with Terminator-like determination, my eyes lingering on the actresses in the video shop windows and the drunks who appear randomly and who we ignore, laughing, nosing through a relentless shoal of streetlights but
I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.
Dolby and Frannie are talking about some girl that Brian used to go out with. ‘Mind ye telt her ye’d seen Noel Gallagher’s willy in a toilet in Glasgow and when she asked whit it looked like ye said–’
‘It’s goat a big bushy eyebrow and sings Wonderwall!’
They both crack up and Brian tries to shush them, sorting out yet another pub crisis on his phone (which I hope isn’t Cottsy wrecking the joint) and I obsess on that dark slice in the pure crystal of Winona Ryder’s eye, then the fishing night, where beside a fitfully flickering campfire we talked about Jack Nicholson movies and listened to the midnight hymn of the water and Dolby, distantly, without emotion, mentioned that he would rather die than go back into Whirlpools Direct on Monday.
‘Awright, Alvin?’ Frannie frowns, lifting the drink from my hand. ‘Bit green around the gills there, bud.’
I wish they all could be California
(I wish they all could be California)
I wish they all could be California girls
best of the Sixties playing and what looks like a porno but is actually the new Britney Spears video flickering on MTV and an entire section of the living room turned into a hash-head zone which the Lads have quit in protest at the giggling, virginal dope-ridden faces of the prefects, and framed Scottish landscapes/glens/Tyra’s modelling shots (so soft-focus as to be hallucinatory), and row upon row of Absolut Vodka/Omega cider/White & Mackay/Bacardi Breezers (such pretty colours) compete in my reeling vision and someone suggests heading out to Rosie’s to which I snarl, ‘No, I don’t fuckin know what Derek does in London, okay? Where’s Tyra?’ and Frannie shakes Brian’s hand, congratulating him on Celtic’s 3–2 defeat by Aberdeen and I hear
telepathic messages?
saying?
Tyra’s voice floats from the top of the stairs, so I stumble towards it, my poem about her and the moon memorised. Someone – Frannie? Mum? Stephen King? – tells me they saw her slip away upstairs, and I creep towards a door ajar and behind it Travis are singing Last Laugh of the Laughter and a voice, two voices are moaning, so I repeat the poem quietly in my head, pick up a photo of Tyra with her three sisters, who are all as gorgeous as she is, posing like the Virgin Suicides, kiss Tyra on the forehead, open the door and
My eyes acclimatise to the dark. Someone is kneeling on the floor. Tyra is on her knees before Connor Livingstone. He has a sordid grin on his face and his jeans at his ankles.
Tyra turns. Her eyes are steely as bullets.
‘Alvin, get the fuck out.’
I stand frozen. I can only hear the door swinging on its hinges. I am trying not to look at Connor’s dick dripping with saliva, or Tyra’s vicious face. ‘Well, fuck off then,’ she spits. ‘Shut the door.’
Dumbly, I retreat. Connor Livingstone’s dirty laughter echoes. The door closes, the room becoming a thin strip of dark. Downstairs
the party has become the universe at the dawn of time. Things fly, smash, die. Curtains balloon and fall. A window has been broken in the kitchen and people stand around like dead weights. The night roars in, black and relentless, while the room swirls in the breeze.
Brian comes over and fits a Becks into my hand. ‘Aye,’ I mutter to whatever he’s saying, ‘aye,’ and the next time I look the Becks is drained although I can’t remember having drunk it.
The smashed window has ended the party. People are fraught with concern, stomping to and fro, blaming each other, you drank this, you threw that. Someone has turned MTV over and a programme that nobody is watching is imploring us to look after our bodies, because
by the age of seventy we have lost a third of our muscle strength
the hairs in the cochlea die, leading to hearing loss
cartilage rubbing causes sharp pains at the joints
and computer graphics detail the cross-section of a knee grinding, twisting, gristling like torture.
Tyra and Connor. Oh god.
I stagger outside, my stomach so light it feels as though it has floated away. Dolby follows, worried I’m going to be sick again.
‘Alvin,’ he asks. ‘Ye awright?’
My world pierced. The life escaping it in a thin, whining hiss. I feel functionless, fucked. I collapse on a sun-lounger by the fish pool, my hand dappling its cold shallows, a smooth silver body brushing against my fingers, then away. The sky is huge and timeless and black. The point is there is no point, etc. Oh god.
‘It disnay really exist, does it?’ I murmur to Dolby.
‘Whit?’
‘Youth.’
He doesn’t answer. We stare at the shimmering skin of the water. Things dance, then disappear like phantoms.
‘It’s a con,’ I say. ‘A clear surface. It breaks when you touch it.’
There’s a pause. Dolby blinks at me.
‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ I say.
The cold wind on our faces. I lean back, realising how devoid that sky is of any secrets, how poor Oasis are now, all those Britpop bands, how fucking drunk I am, and after all that, all I can remember is Dolby stretching my jacket across me, the police arriving, maybe several t
imes, and an anonymous kiss on my cheek, a brief waft of a girl’s perfume, my name whispered once, only once, and then
Our living room.
Me, Derek, Mum and Dad watching Family Fortunes in the dark. The light sharpening the corners of the ceiling. The TV makes everyone’s face a flickering, aquamarine mask. I’m on my belly, jabbing at crinkle cut crisps, one sock dangling halfway off my foot.
Name something, says Les Dennis, you would use in the garden.
Derek passes me the George and Lynne cartoon from the Sun and we snigger sneakily at Lynne’s melon-like breasts as she cooks breakfast, as ever, in the nude. Bet when she’s in the shower, Derek’s giggling, she wears a woolly jumper and a bodywarmer. Simmering resentment from the couch behind us. Mum and Dad’s blank faces crackle with light.
Name something you can cut with.
A contestant buzzes, hesitantly. Paper?
Me and Derek trade punches to the arm.
Enough, Dad mutters.
He told us earlier tonight that he has been paid off from the oil refinery down Grangemouth. Being paid off always sounds exciting in gangster films, like here’s some pay-off money for you to keep ya mouth shut, but Derek told me that it isn’t good at all. There was a lot of screaming and banging from the kitchen after Dad told Mum (though Derek took me through to watch cartoons while this was going on). Mum always does the high-pitched stuff. Dad grunts, sighs, and asks whit exactly is it that ye want me tay dae? Sometimes we can hear her sobbing in the middle of the night, along with Dad trying to calm her down.
Derek turns to Page Three and shows me Lena, 19, from London’s ‘boob-ti-ful assets’.
Her jeans are faded at the knees, I point out.
Derek tuts and drags the paper away. That’s the fashion, he says.