Porno (31 page)

Simon contemplates this, then says wearily: — It happens, though, by the tone of his voice, obviously not to him. We pull up outside my place and look up at the sky. It’s clear and there are loads of stars. I’ve never seen that many, not here in the city. Colin once took me down the east coast, to a cottage near Coldingham and the whole sky was a rash of them. Simon looks upwards and says: — The starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

— Kant . . . I say in a mixture of admiration and consternation, wondering what he’s getting at with the moral-law stuff. Does he know what I’ve been doing? But he just turns around quickly and he looks vaguely insulted. He says nothing but there’s an urging look in his eyes. — You used my favourite quote from my favourite philosopher, I explain, — Kant.

— Oh . . . it’s a favourite of mine as well, he says, his face breaking into a smile.

— Did you study philosophy? Did you study Kant? I ask him.

— A little, he nods. Then he explains: — It’s the old Scottish lad o’pairts tradition. One goes from Smith to Hume to Euro thinkers like Kant, you know, that old Jock Central route.

There’s a smugness in his tone that makes me cringe a little as it reminds me of McClymont. I so
not want
to think of him that way, so I venture: — Come upstairs for a coffee, or we could drink some wine together.

Simon glances at his watch. — A coffee would suit best, he says.

We get up the stairs and I’m thanking him again for his intervention, hoping that he’ll ask me about it, but he’s making light of it. Inside the hallway my heart stops as there’s a crack of light from under the door of the living room. — Dianne or Lauren must be up burning the midnight oil, I explain in a whisper, ushering him into my room. He sits down in the chair, then, seeing my CD rack stands up and goes through the collection, his face still inscrutable.

I go and make some coffee and bring two steaming mugs back to the bedroom. When I get back he’s sitting on the bed, reading a book of Modern Scottish Poetry, one of the course texts for McClymont’s class. I set the cups down on the carpet and sit beside him. He lowers the book and smiles at me.

I want to devour him, but there’s something granite-cold in those eyes, it makes me hold off. They are looking through me, into me. Then suddenly they fill with an incredible warmth which would have been inconceivable only a second ago. The glow from them is so strong I’m mesmerised, feeling myself to be formless, of no magnitude or density. All I’m aware of from within me is my hunger for him. Then I hear him say something, a foreign phrase, before both his hands clasp softly onto the sides of my face. He stalls for a while, his abundant, ebony eyes drinking me and then he kisses me: on the forehead, then both cheeks, each kiss strong and soft, exploding with precision, sending thrilling data to the now nebulous core of me.

I’m aware of my body and mind separating, I can feel the force of it seeming to rattle in concert with the central-heating radiator by the side of us. As he strokes my back I think of the red roses, the closed petals opening up, and I fall back onto the bed. It’s at this moment that a sudden force of will enters me, and I’m thinking, he’s changing me, I have to alter him too, and my arm goes around his head and I’m pulling him onto me and opening my mouth. My hand’s clamped around his neck and I’m kissing him so hard our teeth crash together. Then I’m kissing, licking at his eyes, his nose; tasting the salt track from nostril to top lip, then on his cheeks and his mouth again. My hands let go of his head to move to his torso and I’m pulling up his top but he’s not raising his arms to assist me, he’s sliding the dress off my shoulders. But I’m not moving my arms, because my nails are now digging softly into the muscular flesh of his back, so there’s an impasse, he can’t get the dress off me either. Then somehow through the back of the dress he’s managed, like a master pickpocket, to unhook my bra strap. Moving to the front of me, he pulls the frock and bra away with a violence that makes me let go of his back, because if I don’t my dress straps will tear. Then he frees my breasts and everything slows down as he strokes them, handling them with a careful awe, like a kid who’s been entrusted with the care of a soft, furry pet.

Once again he’s looking deep into my eyes, and with an earnest, almost sad, disappointed look on his face he says: — Looks like it has to be now.

Then he stands up and pulls off his top as I swing my legs off the bed, push up and pull my dress off, then my pants. There’s such a throbbing heat between my legs that I almost expect my pubic hair to be aflame. I look up and Simon’s stepped out of his trousers and white Calvin Klein underpants and for a split second I’m shocked because it’s like he has no penis. It’s gone! For that brief moment I almost think he’s been emasculated, insanely considering that would explain his reticence in making love, he’s no cock! Then I realise that he does have one, oh yes, he most certainly does, it’s just that from my angle of vision his cock is pointed, like a loaded gun, straight at me. And I want it. I want it in me now. I don’t want to have to say to him we can
make love
later; later I can suck you off, you can lick me, frig me, explore me any way you want, but please let’s just get this out of the way, just fuck me right now, right this second, because I am on fire. But he just looks into my eyes and nods, this man fucking well nods at me, like he’s read everything I’ve thought. Then he’s on me and in me, filling me, extending me, pushing right up into the centre of me. I gasp then adjust and he grows harder, but I roll us over and we’re a twisting, buckling, thrashing mass and I don’t know who slows it down but we’re savouring it again, and then the velocity of our love pumps up like a force of its own accord and we’re pummelling each other in this fucking war of one against one which feels like all against all. For a second I feel like I’ve defeated us both, me and him; that I want more, more than he can ever give, more than
anyone
can ever give. Then the force wells up like something inside me that seems to have escaped and is running away before it grabs and drags me along with it. I climax in explosive, angry bursts, aware only as my orgasm subsides that I’ve been shrieking loudly, and I’m thinking that I hope neither Lauren nor Dianne are in as it seems show-offy, ridiculously performative. Simon takes this as permission to do what he needs to do, sweeping back my hair and holding my face to his, forcing me to look into his eyes as he comes so intensely that his orgasm prolongs mine. Then he pulls me into his chest and as I briefly catch his eye I’m almost sure I see a tear. He won’t let me move to check and confirm this though, his grip is hard, and anyway, I’m totally spent. We lie in the wreckage of the sweat-drenched bed and all I’m thinking, as I drift off to sleep with his sweat, scent and the musty fried-breakfast smell of our sex in my nostrils, is just how good it feels to get fucked properly.

38

Scam # 18,744

T
hat was a pleasant surprise, as a phone call on the white mobile generally is. Of course, having sex with Nikki was excellent but it was that first-shag syndrome: no matter how good it is there’s always a perfunctory element which you can’t help but find distasteful. Later, when I got ready to go, she asked me if I was playing mind games. As a comment it was playful rather than heavy, or perhaps the brevitas was designed to conceal something weightier at the same time as it flagged it up. No matter, cause it’s like any sport: the most gifted know you always concentrate on your own game rather than the opposition’s. So I grinned enigmatically without answering. Fuck liberals wittering on about ‘honesty’ in relationships: what a colossal bore that would be. Nope, relationships are all about power and now is the time to cool it with her. She’ll crack before me, I know she will, and it’ll be a sweet moment. I tell her that I’ve changed my number and give her the one for the red phone. The best part is erasing the number from the white mobile and sticking it onto the red.

That was a strange one outside hers when she caught me looking up at the stars. I gave that quote from a Nick Cave song and I thought she called me a cunt. I didn’t realise that she was referring to Kant the philosopher. I even called Renton up about it. He reckons that Cave lifted that line verbatim from a Kant book. What the fuck is the world coming to when your favourite lyricists let you down with such shoddy plagiarism?

Yes, the sex was excellent. Her level of fitness, power and suppleness impresses and means that I’ll need to watch the weight and keep those gym visits up. But the buzz I got from it is nothing like the one I get when I nip into Barr’s Newsagent at the fit ay the Walk and pick an early edition of the
News
. The story is on page six, with a picture of yours truly and an insert of Chief Constable Roy Lester, a surprisingly youngish guy with a mowser who looks a bit like a Village People extra. I nip next door to Mac’s Bar and have a bottle of Beck’s as I read eagerly:

LEITH PUBLICAN IN ANTI-DRUGS CRUSADE

Barry Day

This is excellent news for one Simon David Williamson. The picture has a grimly serious Williamson at the bar, with the sub-heading:
Drugs menace: Simon Williamson’s fears for Edinburgh’s youth.
But best of all is the editorial the newspaper carries:

Wonderful. I down the drink and go back to the flat and chop out a huge line to celebrate. My campaign. They love a trier. I think back to Malcolm McLaren and the Pistols. Well, Malcolm, that worn-out old manual of yours is about to be updated.

I decide to take a cab up to my mother’s. When I get there, she’s absolutely delighted. — Ah’ma so proud of you! Ma Simon! In-a the
Evening-a News
! After all ah went through with they-sa drugs!

— It’s payback time, Ma, I explain, — I know I was far from an angel in the past, but it’s time to make amends.

Casting glances of obstinate smugness at my old boy, she quotes from the paper. — All for the young-ah people! Ah knew he’d turn out alright! Ah knew it! She sings in triumph at my father, who looks completely unconvinced by her enthusiasm as he sits impassively watching the racing. He has it on all the time, although nowadays he never bets.

So I might as well just rub the auld fuck’s face right in it. — There’s a new girlfriend on the scene as well, Mum, and this one’s a wee bit special, I tell her and she gives me another hug. — Aw, son . . . ye hear that, Davie?

— Hmmph, grumps the old scoundrel, looking sceptically up at me. A season-ticket holder at Cad Rovers can always spot a kindred face in the Bounders’ Stand. Matters not though, Pater, Simon David Williamson is still in pole position. David John Williamson, on the other hand, is a fucked-up, bitter, old has-been who’s achieved nothing except give a good and saintly woman a hell of a life for years.

I mind of when I was a kid, I used to really look up to him, and, to be fair, he was kind to me. Took me everywhere, even to his girlfriends’ places. Used to bribe me not to tell my ma. Aye, he always treated me well back then. The other kids used to say to me, ‘I wish my dad was more like yours.’ Then, as soon as I hit puberty and started taking an interest in fanny, that was it. I was a competitor, to be shunned and undermined at every corner. Didn’t do him much good, though, because I was on the move by then. — Pick any phantom winners then, Dad? I ask him.

— One or two, he says grudgingly, only making the effort to be civil because she’s in the room. If we were alone, he’d just drop the paper, look steadily at me and ask in a low growl, ‘What is it you’re wantin here?’ That would be the extent of the fucking welcome I’d get.

My mother’s still going on about my special lady, and I suddenly realise that I’m not really sure as to who I was talking about there, only that I need one in my life. Do I mean Nikki, after last night’s adventures, or Alison, who’s going to come and work at the bar, or is it this wee fat Weedgie bird I’m thinking about? Probably. I can’t seem to see past the scam. If this one comes off it’ll be a work of genius. Whoever becomes my new woman, she’s got her work cut out with Mama. — As long as she looks after ma laddie, n doesnae try tae take ma bambino away, she purrs in threat at this invisible harlot.

I don’t stay long; after all, I’ve a bar to run. But no sooner do I get out the door when the green mobby goes off and it’s Skreel, back with the information. — Ah’ve went n done the business for ye, he tells me.