If You Liked School, You'll Love Work

by Irvine Welsh

  Inside their own tent!

  The Americans turned in shock to see the Mexican brothers.

  — Two faggots and a dirty leetal lady, Alejandro said evenly, his features creasing up in malice.

  — This is … a rattlesnake bit me … Eugene stuttered, then shouted in outrage, — Get the fuck out of here!

  Alejandro’s face tightened further and he took a step into the tent. — Hey, seesay boy, you no talk to us like that, see, and he pulled out the gun and aimed it at Eugene’s cock and Scott’s mouth. — I blow your leemp deek off and thee teeth from thee head of your faggot friend too, he scowled.

  Scott and Eugene froze, looking in open-mouthed vacancy at the barrel of the pistol.

  Madeline swallowed hard, then crouched backwards, feeling the wall of the tent behind her. — What … what do you want?

  Alejandro looked her up and down. A faint, mordant grin of contempt crossed his mouth. Then he turned to the others. — Feenish, he spat.

  Scott looked up, Eugene’s cock, dripping with blood, still in his hand. — What … we weren’t –

  — Leesen to thees, Alejandro commanded, gun trained on them, — you feenish sucking hees deek, and you suck it right. Suck it like a leel gorl would suck your deek, he smiled coldly.

  — But – Scott protested.

  — FEENEESH! Alejandro roared, as Noe nodded frantically, imploring them to acquiesce with his brother’s demand.

  — Do as he says, for Gad’s sake! Madeline begged.

  As a terrified Scott started to obey, Alejandro regarded Eugene. — And you; you weel enjoy eet. I wahn see you come in hees face like he ees your beetch.

  Suddenly Scott started to gag on Eugene’s cock. It looked horrible and it tasted foul, the metallic blood so strong; he began to wonder if it was the snake’s poison in his mouth, going down his gullet and into his stomach. He thought he’d spat out most of the venom but he couldn’t be sure.

  And then there was Eugene’s dirty blood. He thought of his old college friend’s behavior at UCLA and then in San Francisco. By taking that shit into his system he was sleeping with every campus slut, every drunken waitress or bartender, every poxy whore on Sunset or the Tenderloin that his buddy’s filthy dick had ever been inside. And this meant, by extension, he’d taken in every diseased cock that had breached all those germ-incubating pussies. The odds against him not contracting something seemed so overwhelmingly vast. He could now hear Eugene’s boasts of those whores he’d enjoyed on their trip to Vegas last month, and he could, in his mind’s eye, envision their harsh, painted faces as well as the complacent, arrogant smirk of every John who had brothel-crawled across the globe from Tijuana to Thailand on expense accounts. Scott’s ears rang with the phantom clinks of Vegas slot machines and stoical chants of stern-faced croupiers as they flagged up impossible odds against the avoidance of fatal infection, as his mouth struggled around that sweaty, bloody cock.

  But he had to go on. Because a bullet from this range in your face offered worse odds still. Worse odds than just about anything.

  That gun; they had a gun pointing at them! These men were psychopaths. The crazy eyes on that sonofabitch with the revolver, it was like looking into hell. In a bitter fear, Scott decided that he was destined to die hopelessly, his skull blown apart by some wetback assassin’s bullet before he could liberate his trust fund. His money. The legacy bequeathed to him. Everything Pops had worked for. The old man: all he had ever expected Scott to do in life was to simply stay alive long enough to collect. And he couldn’t even do that one damned thing. There would be no band, no success, nothing to impress his father. He would perish out here in the desert and his last memory in his short life would be of Eugene’s goddamn bloodied cock in his mouth. The horrible injustice of it all hit home, and Scott started to sob. Then he heard Eugene protesting, — I can’t do this. I can’t come. I can’t even get hard! I don’t like him. I don’t like boys …

  Alejandro laughed loudly and thumped his chest in disbelief. — He no like boys! You hear that, my leel brother? He turned to Noe. — He has a faggot sucking his deek and he no like boys! He shook his head in disgust. — You steek it in thee leel gorl on her bad time. You are animals!

  Eugene protested, — Look, man, I told you I got a snakebite and –

  — Shut up weeth your fucking mouth! Alejandro roared, eyes blazing. — Estás como los frijoles, al primer hervor se arrugan!

  They hastily complied as Alejandro turned to Madeline, and grabbed her roughly by the arm.

  — Alejandro, please … Noe pleaded.

  — Be silent, leetal brother, he commanded in a low hiss, pulling Madeline over to Scott and Eugene. — Take off your top and your brassiere, he whispered at her in soft threat.

  — You really think I’d – Madeline started in defiance then faltered, as she looked at Alejandro for a second, then again at the .38 in his hand. In one quick motion, she pulled off her tank top. Noe, now half in the tent, saw the St Christopher’s around her neck, hanging on her chest bone above her breasts and was moved to cross himself and say a silent prayer. He then drew a breath as Madeline removed her bra.

  Alejandro thought of them all; the lazy wives and daughters of the rich men. How, as they lay by their pools, in their bikinis, sipping their drinks, they never, ever saw him as he sweated in their gardens. And he wanted them to see him. Wanted them to take off their tops. Free those big breasts they had pumped with silicone. Now he could make them.

  — You see her teets, seesay boy? Alejandro turned to Eugene who had his head to the side. He’d bowed it at first, but that had only forced him to regard Scott. — Look at her, seesay boy, Alejandro urged, waving the pistol, — look at those fine teets, so feerm. She want you, seesay boy, she want you so much … so much …

  Alejandro gasped, and a horrified Noe realized that his brother had dropped his trousers and was masturbating himself with his free hand.

  Noe took a step back out of the tent, trembling as he held the flap open. Madeline closed her eyes and Scott sucked, fearfully swallowing that dark blood. Alejandro continued jerking himself off, filling the tent with his commentary. — She want you just like the leel faggot want you, seesay boy, so wheetch one you choose? Wheetch one, seesay boy? You, beetch, he spat at Madeline, — you touch those teets! Make your neepels hard!

  Madeline began caressing herself, first in stiff fear, then attempting to divert her thoughts to Scott, in an effort to black out everything else. She was trying to think about whether or not she was in love with him. Those soft, dark eyes, so full of sadness, yet hope. He was a beautiful boy and they’d had a great experience together on the yagé, and she’d seen something inside him, his soul, and knew there was more to him than the fearful trust-fund kid trying to avoid and appease a distant father and an alcoholic mother.

  She thought of how she should have phoned her own folks. They liked to talk to her at least once a week. She knew they worried about her. What would they think if they knew she was here, now? Madeline considered the path, so apparently mundane, that had taken her to this terrible place. Just over six months ago she was working in Walgreen’s and living at home with her parents in the Cleveland suburb she grew up in. She hated it, and had particularly detested her high school. Most of all, she despised her surname: Madeline Frostdyke.

  Or Frigid Lesbian, as the nastier kids had called her at school.

  In San Francisco she could be Madeline Frost. Sometimes, when her feminist spirit was ascendant, she would take on her mother’s maiden name, Kennaway.

  When the insults started, Madeline reacted by trying not to draw attention to herself, but that was exactly what she ended up doing. By letting her conservative mother dress her, Madeline Frostdyke, in her fifties-style outfits and her big glasses, became one of the most obvious geeks in her school. And she’d have stayed that way, trying too hard to be anonymous, but then puberty hit her hard, and left her with curves that her shapeless, dowdy clothes couldn’t quite conceal and drives
that a decent, God-fearing suburban American household couldn’t contain. However, save for a couple of encounters hastily engineered largely in order to gain rudimentary carnal experience, she was determined that Cleveland, so cruel to Madeline Frostdyke, was not going to get the best of Madeline Frost.

  Jackie Kennaway, a diligent law student at the Jesuit University of San Francisco, was surprised when a vivacious, stunning-looking young girl turned up on her doorstep. She was even more taken aback as she realized it was her formerly awkward young cousin, Madeline.

  And so the girl from Cleveland moved into the spare room that Madeline’s aunt had absent-mindedly mentioned was available in Jackie’s apartment in San Francisco. Madeline initially expressed a desire to follow her cousin into the university, in her case to do business studies, but it soon became apparent she wouldn’t be joining Jackie on campus. Instead, Madeline took to San Francisco’s social life like a bear to bacon, making friends with some of her studious relative’s more outgoing acquaintances.

  Through one of them, Candy, she had met Eugene. Unbeknown to him, he’d instantly reminded her of Kevin Dailey, the boyfriend of her horrible nemesis Sara Nichols, who gleefully orchestrated many school-bullying campaigns against her. Sara had been quick to enlist Kevin in the offhand dismissal of Madeline. Now she realized that Sara had noted first what the rest of the high-school divas would eventually recognize: Madeline Frostdyke was a looker, and a possible rival, whose confidence needed to be kept low.

  Sara had made sure that cool, sporty, conventionally handsome Kevin never took an interest in Madeline. But this version of Kevin Dailey wanted her so badly. That was the thrill of it all. But it was just a game, because it was really Scott, moody, doe-eyed Scott, that she wanted to be with.

  And that had brought her out to the desert and this nightmare.

  So now there was just this tent and the podgy Mexican youth’s rasping voice: — Suck hard, leetal faggot. Look at the leel gorl, seesay boy, look at the show she put on for us with those beeg fine teetays … maybe you should suck on them, huh, seesay boy? Huh? Like you fuck that dirty pussy, huh?

  Dirty pussy? What the fuck was that fat, twisted, spic asshole talking about? Eugene wondered, as he stared at Madeline’s breasts. They were good tits, no getting away from it. Full, firm, but real, with one observably bigger than the other. The way she looked with her eyes closed. Trying to concentrate: to not be powerless and humiliated. And he understood it. He thought of his own sad, solitary experience in the pornography industry. He had been trying to make some extra money as a student at UCLA, and he and Lana were in a decidedly ‘off’ phase of their ongoing on-off relationship. His buddy Jerry did it, so why not him? He was cut, as he worked out, and he was hung. It seemed a good way to make money: fucking hot chicks. He remembered as a kid having a bit part in a couple of scenes from The Other Sister, filmed, like so many Hollywood movies, at his high school. Eugene had even entertained the dumb-ass notion that somebody might just take notice of him and he’d make mainstream Hollywood before Lana.

  When he went up to that house in the Valley for the audition, there were three other guys in the frame, or trying to get in the frame. He didn’t know any of them. A fat man in a dark blue suit, no tie, had greeted them. The only thing he could remember about the other dudes was that one of them wore a White Stripes T-shirt. They all waited in a room with soft drinks and magazines. Eugene was told he’d be last. During the wait he grew increasingly edgy. The first two guys had both shuffled through the door with an arrogant gait only to exit in silent, hunched-shouldered humiliation. After the second one departed, Eugene and the White Stripes guy looked at each other in some trepidation. Then White Stripes went next, leaving Eugene alone. And he was in there for ages. When he came out White Stripes was wearing a shit-eating grin, with the fat guy slapping him on the back. The pornographer’s parting words were: — Remember, work on those abs! Then he summoned in Eugene, to whom White Stripes gave a euphoric wink on the way out.

  In the other room, a naked girl, long straight black hair, plenty of makeup, pendulous fake breasts, orange suntan, reclined on a sofa. Behind the camera was a train-wreck of a guy with a Texan accent who smelt strongly of alcohol. The guy shook his hand, introducing himself as Ray. The girl didn’t speak, but cracked an ugly, predatory smile at him when the fat man said: — And this beautiful young lady is Monique.

  Eugene went across to her and kissed her chastely; in the confident manner he’d seen porn performers execute upon meeting new partners.

  — Right, son, let’s see what you got, the fat man said urgently.

  With an engine full of lust, Eugene eagerly stripped. This Monique chick was hot. But the trouble was that his dick somehow wasn’t receiving the message his brain was sending it. He knew he had to forget the camera, the others around him, and just focus on Monique. Her tight ass. Her shaved pussy. Her big red lips. Her heavy, silicone tits.

  But there was nothing happening. Nothing at all. Monique’s whorish ministrations and exaltations were wasted as her features slowly froze in a mask of boredom. Soon Eugene was forced to quit, leaving as humiliated as the first two guys. The fat guy had said, — Don’t worry, son, there’s very few bucks that can just party in front of the camera on demand. I get some real studs come waltzing in here all best-in-show; 90 per cent of them skulk out like beaten mutts.

  And now, when the chips were down, once more his hard-on would fail him. But this time it might cost him his life. The camera, the goddamn camera. Now the camera was the barrel of a gun and the pitch-black eyes of the killer holding it. Eugene looked at Madeline again. She was so beautiful, and he would die without knowing her. With her eyes closed, she attained this tragic but heroic nobility. Her tits were so gorgeous. If only she was sucking his cock … those lips of hers, working skillfully on him, now taking him right to the back of her throat, but her somehow just standing there, virtuous and serene …

  Madeline … Madeline …

  Yes. It was her. It WAS her. His cock stiffened up.

  Oh fuck, Madeline …

  Suddenly, Eugene felt an explosion rising from within him as spasms shook his shivering body. He was climaxing like never before. Then, through his euphoria, he suddenly remembered the golden rule of porn: the audience needs to see the ‘facial’, and this deadly audience probably more than any other. Eugene quickly pulled out, splattering Scott’s face and bloodied lips with cum, horrified as he spangled in ecstasy. — Oh my Gad … he moaned, then whispered at Scott, — I’m sorry, buddy … I …

  Alejandro ejaculated almost simultaneously, his jism shooting across Madeline’s leg. Then he put his dick away, pulling up his briefs and trousers, fastening and zipping himself in a few casual, perfunctory movements. He handed the gun to Noe who physically shrank from it. Eugene and Scott glanced at each other. — Take it, Alejandro commanded, and the boy slowly moved toward the gun and took it in his trembling hands. — Point it at them, he urged. The boy obeyed, the gun shaking almost uncontrollably in his grip. Scott looked away, his bottom lip seeming to mimic the rhythm of the pistol. — Keep them covered, Alejandro said cheerfully, slapping his terrified brother across the back. — Feel its power, he urged, — be a man. If one of them even speaks, shoot them. Then his eyes fell upon Madeline’s cellphone, which lay by her bag on the groundsheet. — I theenk I take thees, he smiled, picking it up.

  Madeline had opened her eyes and crossed her arms over her breasts. — Please leave it. We need it to phone for help, she begged. — We’re stuck out here. We won’t say anything about this!

  Noe, the gun still shaking in his hand, looked in a hopeful pleading endorsement at Alejandro, who steadfastly ignored him, instead glaring at Madeline, who fell silent. Then his hard gaze fell on Scott and Eugene. — You should tell this beetch to shut her fucking mouth or she will get you all keeled, he smiled. — Now I need your other phones. You, he pointed at Scott, — where are they?

  — I-I didn’t br-ing mine, Gene’s is back h
ere. He pointed behind them.

  Dumb-ass pussy, Eugene thought.

  Alejandro regarded him with an almost piteous expression. — You did not breeng your phone?

  — No, Scott stammered again, — I l-lost it. Check the bag if you like …

  — I believe you. I theenk you are too scared to try to deceive us. Throw the other phone to me.

  Scott lobbed Eugene’s cell over to Alejandro, who crouched down and picked it up. He played around with both phones for a while. — You know, if I were you, as soon as we are gone, I would contact the po-leece, he mused.

  — Please … Noe, still trembling as he pointed the gun, pleaded to his brother, — we should go now!

  Alejandro raised a hand to silence him.

  As a sniveling, hyperventilating Scott wiped some sperm from his face and started to retch blood up, Eugene lay back against the wall of the tent, his heart pounding. Looking up, he could see only Alejandro’s ice-cold stare closing in on them. — But now there will be no contact with the poleece, the Mexican sang breezily, — because now, we shoot you.

  Madeline turned to Eugene in appeal, her face long and white with abject terror. And he knew then that he really loved her; would do almost anything for her. But he wouldn’t take a bullet for her. Eugene wanted her to get it first, then Scott. Because he saw the way that crazy guy was with her and he didn’t want to leave her out here alone with him. His hand went into his pocket, as he fingered the handle of the knife. He would probably only get this one slim chance, and that was if he was very, very lucky. Otherwise they were stone dead by the side of a desert road with buzzards picking at them.