by Irvine Welsh
This would have been affirmation had her expectations no been rock-bottom. If I still saw her as the too-cool-for-school chick, it figured that she’d always see me as the socially awkward, ginger-heided loser. We were condemned tae those perceptions ay our fourteen-year-old selves. I can not only feel the ‘but’ coming; much worse I ken exactly who he will be.
— … But not as good as one person we both know, she says, as her eyes take on a faraway aspect. I feel my spent dick shrivel a little. — He always left me wanting more, and feeling as if I could have given him more. Teased me, and she looks at me with a bitter smile that ages her. — I always liked good sex, and she spins catlike in the bed. — He gave me the fucking best.
My exhausted cock retracts another half-inch. When I speak, tae break my own ruinous silence, ma voice is at least an octave too high. — Ye let him wreck your life, Marianne. Why? I force my tones down. — You’re a smart woman.
— No. She shakes her head, her static blonde locks, like a nylon wig, falling exactly into place, just as they’d done when we’d been going at it full steam ahead. — I’m a fucking child. He’s made me that, she states, then looks at ays. And he’s here. In Edinburgh, not in London. Up here for Christmas, the cunt.
This was a revelation. Of course he’d be here: his mother, sisters, the big Italian family thing. — Do you know where?
— His sister’s, for Christmas, Carlotta, the younger one. But his brother-in-law … She suddenly looks awkward. — I met them in George Street. Simon told me that he was taking his son to the hospitality suite at Easter Road, for the game at New Year.
— Right … maybe see him there.
But I’m a fucking child too. So when Marianne leaves, I find out fae the Hibernian FC website that the game at New Year is against Raith Rovers at home. This is what we now have instead ay the derby. I’m glad I’ve been spared Hibs, and even fitba, in the last twenty years, becoming an armchair supporter. Ajax went downhill when I started following them. From the European Cup and the last season at De Meer, tae the fabulous Arena, and fucking mediocrity. I cannae even remember my last Hibs game. I think at Ibrox with the old boy.
So I go back tae my dad’s down in Leith. He’s seventy-five and sprightly. Not Mick Jagger sprightly, but nimble and strong. He still misses my mother every day, and his two dead sons. And, also, I suspect, his living one. So when I come into his life beyond the weekly phone call, I take him to Fishers down the Shore for some seafood. He likes it there. Over the sublime fish soup, I tell him how it came about that I’m pally with Franco again.
— I read about him, Dad nods. — Nice to see that he’s doing well. He waves his spoon at me. — Funny, I thought that art stuff was mair your thing. You were ey a good wee drawer at school.
— Ah well … I smile, a little infantilised. I love this old bastard. I look at his white hairs, plastered back in thin strands like a polar bear’s claw on a pink scalp, and I wonder how many of them are down to me.
— Good that you’ve put aw that behind youse, he growls. — It’s a short life; far too short tae faw out over money.
— Shut it, ya auld commie. I can’t resist the opportunity to recentre his politics. — Money is the only thing worth fawin oot ower!
— That’s what’s wrong wi the world the day!
My work is done! We finish a bottle ay Chardonnay, him still a bit fucked as he shifted too much whisky – as did I – on Christmas Day. When he starts tae get a bit woozy in the chair, I call a cab and drop him off home, then head on tae the hotel.
As the car trundles through the dark streets, I cannae believe who ah see begging on the pavement under a street lamp. Tae my mixed joy and trepidation, it’s Spud Murphy, sitting there, just yards fae my hotel. Ah ask the cabbie tae stop, and climb oot and pey the boy. Then I walk quietly up tae Spud, who wears a Kwik-Fit baseball cap and cheapo bomber jaiket, jeans and incongruously new-looking trainers, wi a scarf and mittens. He’s sat like he’s folding in on himself. Beside him, one of these wee terriers, dunno if it’s a Yorkie or a Westie, but it looks like it needs a wash and fur trim. — Spud!
He looks up and blinks a couple of times before a smile spreads across his face. — Mark, ah cannae believe it, ah was jist aboot tae pack up. He rises and we share an embrace. A rank odour of stale sweat peels fae him, and ah even have tae fight down a retching impulse. We decide tae get a drink, and repair tae the hotel bar. Spud is a semi-jakeball and has a scabby wee dug in tow, but I’ve an account at this doss, so despite the barmaid’s glance indicating she’s singularly unimpressed, they let it slide. This is actually quite big ay them, because, well, ah hate tae be a cunt, but he kind ay fuckin mings, like he hasnae since he was a wee laddie. Well, maybe in the junk days, but ma ain smell probably masked that. We position ourselves in a dark corner, a bit apart from everyone else in the sparsely filled bar. The dug, called Toto, sits silently at his feet. I’m thinking it’s strange Spud going canine, as he was eywis a cat obsessive. We inevitably start discussing the Franco phenomenon, and I’m telling him aboot wanting tae square up Sick Boy, Second Prize and the art radge himself. How I need tae find one, how another has vanished, and how the third doesnae want the money he’s owed.
— No surprised Franco isnae interested in the dosh, catboy. Spud slurps back a good quarter of the pint of lager, as Toto accepts my pettings under the table. He’s a matted-furred minger, but he’s cute and sweet-hearted, and his sandpaper tongue slaps ma knuckles.
— What dae ye mean?
— Pure cursed that dosh, likesay. That money you gied ays was the worst thing that ever happened tae ays. A big, big binge ay drugs, the end ay me n Ali. No that ah kin pin ma demise on you, catboy, he helpfully adds.
— I suppose we all make our choices in life, mate.
— Ye really believe that?
So here I am, sitting discussing free will and determinism with a jakey; me on Guinness, him on Stella. And the debate carries on up in my room. — What other option dae ye have but tae believe it? I ask, as I open the door and the afternoon sex smells hit ays, but Spud seems oblivious. — Yes, we’ve goat strong pulls but we can see what they are and where they take us and we therefore resist and reject them, ah tell him, suddenly realising that ah’m chopping oot the lines ay coke in the bathroom, using ma stainless-steel Citadel Productions business caird.
— Can you no see what you’re daein now?
— I’m no in a resist-and-reject mode at the moment, I tell him. — I’m in a getting-through-shit-at-all-costs one. You dinnae need tae join ays. It’s up tae you, ah tell him, waving a rolled-up twenty. — Make yir choice: this is mine.
— Aye … mibbe just tae be social, likesay, Spud says with rising panic, only abating as soon as ah hand the cunt the note that ah ken ah’ll never see again. — It’s been a long time.
Then we’re back oot, at a couple ay bars, which is the only wey I ken I’ll get rid ay him, before my eyes start shutting and a pit-bull yawn almost tears my bottom jaw fae my face. I head tae the hotel and try tae fitfully sleep.
The shattering alarm seems tae wake ays ten minutes later. And this is my life, the sheer fucking lunacy of it. I now have to fly back to LA, for one of Conrad’s gigs, then return here for Hogmanay, getting in on the morning of New Year’s Eve for the big bells party. Then I want to just hole up in Amsterdam for winter and get some work done, but ah need tae go back tae LA again, and put time intae Vicky and me, if I really want things tae take off. And, I reflect, as a ball ay self-loathing sticks in my chest like a tumour, I need tae stop shagging the fuck aroond.
So I’m on the red eye tae that fucking blight on humanity that is Heathrow and then up in first class aw the way tae LA. The cunts at security swabbed every inch of my case for traces of ching. But my bank cards show fuck all, and the stainless-steel business caird cleans up a treat.
Hell, it’s a long and tedious flight with Conrad, whae connected fae Amsterdam, sitting next tae us. He’s bored, sulky and utterly charmless co
mpany and I give thanks for the relative isolation ay the individual pods. Conrad is basically mildly autistic, a spoilt fat cunt, but I believe there’s a fundamentally decent young gadge in there. I have to believe it. Emily, who is on at Fabric in London, is just young and confused but has a good heart. Then there’s Carl. The biggest bairn of them all. What a fucking trio. And now FUCKING FRANCIS BEGBIE is back in ma life and I’m seeking out SICK BOY.
At LAX, the immigration ratshagger’s look is long and searching, gaun fae me, tae passport, tae me, tae passport. This is bad. It means he now has tae say something. — So how long have you lived in Amsterdam?
— On and off, about twenty-five years.
— And you’re a manager in the entertainment industry?
— An artist manager, I concede, depressed at the lack of irony in my voice. I watch Conrad, a couple of booths down, breeze through, his doughy digits sweating over the fingerprint glass like sausages on a hotplate.
— Like bands?
— DJs.
He softens a little. — Is that like managing a band?
— Easier. Solo artists. No equipment, I state, then think of the exception to every fucking rule, that fucking Neanderthal Ewart. — Book the plane, transfers and hotels. Organise the press. Fight for publishing royalties, battle promoters for gigs and cash, I rant, managing to stop myself from saying, and drugs.
— You come here a lot. Do you plan to move to the USA?
— No. Though I do have an apartment in Santa Monica. It saves on hotels. I’m in LA and Vegas a lot on business. One of my artists, I point at Conrad, now through and heading for the luggage, — he’s got a residency at the Wynn. I always travel on an ESTA. I’ve applied for a green card, and I suddenly think of Vicky, smiling in the sun on the beach, — but even when I get it, I won’t be living here all the time.
He looks at me as if he doesn’t believe my green card application for resident alien will be accepted.
— David Guetta is one of my sponsors, I offer.
— Uh-huh, he says doomily, then seems all put out. — Why don’t you wanna live here permanently?
— Maybe the same reason that you don’t want to live in Amsterdam? I like America, but it’s a bit too American for ma personal tastes. I suspect you’d find Holland a wee bit too Dutch.
He pulls his lower lip out in dreary evaluation, slumping back into catatonic boredom, as the luminous green light comes on and I print my fingers for the thousandth time, and get my picture snapped yet again. A stamp on the passport and customs form, and I’m back in the land of the free.
The first thing I do – literally – when I land somewhere is hassle the promoter for drugs. Anyone who doesn’t have a contact shouldn’t be in the fucking game. I tell them it’s for the DJs, but most of those boring cunts nowadays never touch anything other than hydroponic grass, my contemporary, N-Sign Carl Ewart, being the exception – yet again. I usually get some gak, just to keep the party going, anything that stops me from reminding myself that I’m the oldest person in the club, unless I’m with N-Sign. I feel sorry for old DJs, they deserve big money, stepping out to that ritual humiliation every night: guys who no longer dance, playing music for people who do. That’s why I try to be patient with Carl. I put in my order for the unofficial rider: cannabis, MDMA powder and cocaine. Conrad is slavering so much techy shit about different buds in my ear, I put him straight onto the man.
The deal done, he says, — Where is that cokehead bum N-Sign? Why do you persist with him?
— History, mate, I shrug. I should tell Conrad to mind his own business, but I’m desperate he doesn’t go the way of Ivan. And it is his business, as I’m booking Carl gigs on his undercard.
As we wait for our luggage to come onto the belt, a text from the cunt himself: no Carl, but Begbie.
When r u next in Embra?
You never know if he’s being ironic or dyslexic.
Hogmanay. N-Sign playing.
Would you, Spud, Sick Boy and Second Prize be up for an art project? I want to make casts of your heads.
Can’t speak for them, but count me in. Saw Spud, hoping to see Sick Boy Hogmanay.
Sound. Can u do 3 Jan?
Aye.
Conrad gets an Uber to the hotel, on his own, after I explain that I’m meeting my girlfriend. — Dude, he smiles.
When I get back to the apartment to hook up with Vicky, she’s so pleased to see me, and me her. I’m thinking about Marianne and what the fuck was I doing? Maybe it was something that had to happen. To get it out my system, so I can move on with her now.
After we go out for a meal with her friends Willow and Matt, we head home and are at it like knives. I feel a sort of twang and Vicky feels it too, but we only pause for a second, before finishing. We find that the condom has split. It has rolled down the shaft of my cock, splattered in a mix of spunk and thick menstrual blood; her period has started. I’m relieved but she nonetheless goes for the morning-after pill. — I want to be double-treble sure, I’m just so not a mother, Vicky smiles cheerfully.
We fall back into the bed, and for a brief second I hear Marianne’s nagging voice: I don’t shag around. I haven’t fucked anyone in months. With her being privy to Sick Boy’s movements, I’m just not convinced. But it’s drowned out by Vicky’s appreciative contentions. — It’s great being with you. I’ve dated boys, nice boys, but boys. It’s good to be with a man.
I feel the vice of guilt. I’ve always enjoyed boyishness, never striven for maturity. Manhood is an ill-fitting cloak on my shoulders, like being dressed by somebody else. But my euphoria breaks its constraints: there is more than one type of man. — You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a long, long time, I confess to her. We share a wow look; acknowledgement that we’re spinning into something and it feels good and right.
Then, of course, I have to leave her. When I get back to Edinburgh, without the smoothing pills, my fatigue is jaggy and acute. Thankfully Carl has not too bad coke, and the home crowd inspires him to play a decent set at Hogmanay. As well as Marina and her boyfriend Troy, I have a twitching Spud and a jovial Gavin Temperley with me in the main guest box. One is skeletal, the other now a fat bastard. In the next box my auld pal Rab Birrell, with his brother Billy, who used to be the boxer. Both look well. It’s good to see them.
Afterwards there’s a party, but I’m no much company, and I dinnae want tae get too fucked up in front of Marina, so I make my excuses and bow out early. I crash at the hotel and sleep like fuck, right through tae the next night. Then I go doon tae Leith and get a wee dram with the old boy for New Year, and he’s made a welcome pot ay stovies.
Then more kip at the hotel and I’m off the next day tae see Hibs. Surprisingly, for a relegated outfit, the club seems a much bigger and more professional operation than ah mind ay it being. The reception area looks like one ay they corporate hotels, and there are now several hospitality suites rather than just the one. — Just gies ays the most expensive package, I tell the woman, who looks at ays like I’m a clown.
— But it’s just for you, right?
I realise how pathetically nae-mates this is sounding. — I’m meeting a Mr Williamson here, it’s a last-minute thing.
— Right … Is it Simon Williamson? There’s a party of six. Would you like tae join them at that table?
— Sound.
I square up on the Visa and head for the stairs. On reaching a reasonably plush dining area, I immediately see Sick Boy, looking much the same, bar the greying locks, sitting wi what appears to be Juice Terry Lawson, still with that corkscrew hair, and four young gadges. I stare at Simon David Williamson, the cavalier shagger ay the Bananay Flats, for a few moments. Yes, the mop has maybe receded a little along with the touches of silver, but he looks well. As I gape, he suddenly rubbernecks. He stares at me in disbelief, then, rising, bellows: — What the fuck are you doing here?!
— Wee word, buddy, I say, nodding tae Terry. — Tez. You huvnae changed much! Got tae be fifteen years
, easy, I consider, remembering the last time I saw Terry was when we made that dodgy scud film. He had a terrible accident where he ruptured his cock.
— Aye, he smiles, and he kens exactly what I’m thinking, — one hundred and ten per cent recovery!
We exchange pleasantries for a few moments, but I can feel the seethe of Sick Boy, who grabs my wrist and ushers me ower tae the bar. When we get there, I dump the envelope in front ay him. He has zero reticence about immediately snatching it. Snidely looking inside, he discreetly counts it, hudin it close tae his chest, eyes gaun fae the money tae me, tae the people in the vicinity, in an almost Dickensian parody ay furtive greed.
Finally he lets those blazing lamps rest on me. I’ve forgotten the hurt, questioning, accusation they permanently carry. With an injured pout, he declares, — You ripped me off not once, but twice. The cash I can get past, but you stole the film! I put my heart and soul into that movie! You and that fucking bitch Nikki and that stuck-up hoor Dianne –
— They shafted me as well. I went back tae the Dam with my tail between my legs.
— I came looking for you there!
— I figured ye might, so I moved out of town for a bit. Den Haag. It was a little dull.
— Very fucking wise, I can tell you! he hisses, but he’s looking in the package again. He’s impressed and cannae even hide it. — Never thought you’d pay me back.
— It’s all there. You should’ve been after Nikki and Dianne for most of it, but I decided tae compensate ye on their behalf.
— That doesn’t sound like you! You must be fucking off-the-charts wealthy. All that NA stuff works for rich bastards, who think they can buy their way oot ay the misery they’ve created!
This cunt has loast nane ay his natural outrage. — Well, there it is. I’m happy to take it back –
— You can get tae fuck!
— Good, cause it’s aw yours. Now you can expand Colleagues.
His eyes bulge, his voice goes to a low growl. — What do you know about Colleagues?