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Wir walkin apart fae each other shouting and cursing one another up the road and then wi sortay make up n try tae cairry oan drinking. Wi dinnae git served in any pubs but, except this real rat-hole where they let any radge in, no matter how pished n battered n bloodied they are n eftir a bit ah sortay black oot, n whin ah wake up ah realise thit ah’ve lost Chizzie. Ah git up, go tae the door n ah’m in Abbeyhill somewhere n ah cannae dae nowt but press oan.

— ALISON! A-LI-SAWWNN . . . ah hear a shout as wee bairns playin in the street ay the Abbeyhill Colonies look at ays aw wary like, n ah slip n faw doon a few steps n haul masel up oan the banister. The shout goes up again n ah realise fir the first time thit it’s comin fae me.

Ah stagger doon intae Rossie Place, passin the big red tenements oan the wey tae Easter Road n ah’m still shoutin, it’s like ah’ve goat two brains, one’s thinkin, the other’s shoutin.

Two lassies in Hibs tops pass by n one goes: — Shut up, ya radge.

— Ah’m gaun tae Disneyland, ah tell thum.

— Ah think yir awready thaire, pal, one ay them says back.

46

Scam # 18,747

N
ikki is a goddess. I’ve been watching her; she knows how to play people, how to make them feel special. For example, she doesn’t ask you if you fancy a fag, she says, ‘Would you like to smoke a cigarette with me?’ Or, ‘Shall we drink some wine together?’ and it’s always red, never white wine. That marks out a class bird from a bad Manchester perm from Fife or Essex with her white-wine farts. ‘Shall I make some tea for us both?’ or ‘I’d really like to listen to some Beatles with you. Norwegian Wood. That would be greyayt.’ Or, ‘Why don’t we choose some new clothes?’

In our financing scam she’s doing better than me, and I’m just starting to worry about my lack of progress. At least the filming’s going better, although I had the dubious honour of shooting Mikey Forrester getting a blow job from Wanda in the lifts at Martello Court last night. Brian Cullen, an old mate from Leith, is doing the security for Edinburgh’s biggest tower, Martello Court that is, not Mikey’s skinny cock. Still, that’s the brother number four satisfied.

The scam’s been worrying me, but thankfully my prayers are answered as Skreel comes through on the blower. — Awright there, ma man, he says as I stifle a sneeze to avoid expelling the big line of posh I’ve just snorted back. These days most of the shit seems to settle in my cavities and sinuses. When I blow my beak I get more in my hanky than my lungs. It makes me want to wash up my snot. My nose is fucked, I need the pipe.

— Skreel. I was jist thinking about ye, ma auld mucker. Just saying to this pal ay mine: Skreel, ma mate through in Glasgow, he’s the boy. Never lets me down. Any news then, bud? Eh?

— What the fuck ur you oan, Sick Boey?

— Is it totally obvious? I snigger. That’s ching for ye. I’m in league with Satan on a fucked-up, slow and expensive trip to hell.

— Isnae hauf. Onywey, the lassie ye wahnt is called Shirley Duncan. She’s a fat wee bird, steys wi her maw doon in Govanhill. Nae boyfriends. Shy type. Her n her pals usually drink in the All Bar One on a Friday after work. She’ll be there the night.

What a human being that Gleswegian is. — I’ll meet you in Sammy Dow’s at six.

— Done n dusted, big man.

I’m clad in Armani jacket and slacks with the lambswool Ronald Morteson sweater underneath. My shoes are Gucci. Unfortunately, I can’t find a decent pair of socks in my drawer so I’m forced to put on Adidas white sports efforts with the sick towelling effect. I have to get rid of them and find a Sock Shop up the Waverley before I get on the train or I’m fucked.

I buy a pair of navy thin efforts, and think about keeping the Adidas for Skreel, but he might take it the wrong way. Just before boarding the train I’m checking the messages on my mobile. Renton tells me he’s back in Scotland. The cunt is well paranoid alright. Won’t even tell me where he’s staying, presumably in case I spill the beans to one of François’ associates. I’ll find out soon enough.

I call Malmaison in Glasgow, thinking that if I book into somewhere expensive, it’ll make me double-determined to pull.

Off the train and into Sammy’s and Skreel’s standing at the bar. I realise that it’s been about four years. I try not to wince when he intros me as Sick Boy to another couple of Weedgie tinkers present. — Sick Boy here’s an Embra man, Skreel laughs, — a wee bit ay a contradiction that, but there ye go.

Weedgies. If you take away their knives and teach them personal hygiene, they’d make excellent pets. Skreel’s in the chair though, and he’s done the business, so I’m perfectly prepared to snack on humble pie right now, and let him go through the wind-ups, in anticipation of the big meal to follow. — Anywey, whaire’s this wee bird? I drop my voice, and start singing, like a cartoon I saw once, I think it was Catnip out of
Herman & Catnip
: —
I’m in de moood for luff
 . . .

— Ah dinnae even wahnt tae know aboot the scam yir tryin tae pill here, ya bastirt, Skreel smiles, which means he most certainly
does
want to know. The envelope I thrust into his pocket silences him.

— One day I’ll tell ye, but no quite yet, I say with a starkly cold finality.

We exit and head across George Square through the dull drizzle, into Merchant City as the Weedgies hilariously call this tarted-up part of their doss. A polisman stops a jakey for drinking and tells him to put his can away. What bullshit. If Glasgow was serious about operating a zero-tolerance-of-jakeys scheme, they might as well just put the entire city population on cattle trucks and transport them all up to the Highlands.

I tell Skreel this, and he tells me that he’d stab me if I wasn’t his mate.

I tell him I expected nothing less.

It’s your classic All Bar One, could be anywhere. And the lack of character in such places seems to suck any out of its customers. It’s an Ikea showroom where people go to get drunk with colleagues when their office has shut down and hopefully find somebody who’s pissed or desperate enough to take them home and fuck them. I spy a sea of bad Manchester perms; more than you’d get in the Arndale Centre on a Saturday.

We get up to the bar and Skreel points out Shirley Duncan to me, leaving me with a jaunty, — Good luck.

Well, hello, baby. I would have guessed that she was the one straight away. She’s there with two other lassies, one of whom is awright, the other a bit of a hound. But my lassie in question, my Shirley, is more than a few pounds overweight. One thing I agree with Renton on is the repulsiveness of fat. You can’t put a decent spin on it, it’s a socially strangulating deformity, which hints at greed and lack of self-control, and let’s face it, mental illness. In a woman, that is: in a man it can show a bit of character and a
joie de vivre
.

I’d say she’s late teens or early twenties (that’s another thing about fat, the more of it, the less age becomes of any import) and is dressed by a domineering mother. ‘That 1950s retard’s dress of cheap material I picked up in the market looks awfay nice oan ye, hen.’ I stand at the bar nursing a JD and Coke and wait for her friend, the hound, to come over. I flash her a smile and she reciprocates, sweeping the fringe from her eyes, her expression plastic coy. But this starlet is fooling nobody that she’s not desperate for the real column inches that count in the audition to the next stage of this great ‘I’m alive, honest’ game we must all now play.

— Is it always so busy through here this early on a Friday? I ask her, as Sting sings about being an Englishman in New York.

— Aw aye, that’s Glesca, she says. — So where are you from?

Oh, this is such easy work. If only it was her instead of Fat Girl Gross over there. — Just Edinburgh, through on business, but I thought I’d grab a drink before heading back. You just finished work?

— Aye, just a while ago.

I introduce myself to this lassie, who is called Estelle. She offers to buy me a drink. I insist upon buying her one. She tells me she’s got friends, so being a proper Edinburgh gentleman, I buy the round.

The lassie’s impressed, and ain’t it just obvious why. — Is that a Ronald Morteson jersey, she asks, feeling the wool quality. I just smile in ambiguous affirmation. — I thought it was! She gives me that couthie, evaluating look that you never really see in Edinburgh or London women unless they’re twice her age.
I’m a Leither in soapdodger-land, oh, oh . . .

As I get over with the drinks, I ascertain that they’re all quite pished, even Shirley Duncan. Estelle looks at me and turns to Marilyn, the other lassie present. — She’s in the mood tae snare a bear, she giggles, coughing out some of her drink.

— Did it go doon the wrong hole, I smile, catching Shirley Duncan’s eye, and getting a traumatised look back. She’s certainly the ugly sister of the three.

— Funny, it usually goes
up
the wrong hole wi her, Marilyn laughs and Estelle nudges her. I try to curb my natural instinct to fire into that Marilyn, and even Estelle would do in an emergency, but this is business.

Shirley looks embarrassed, yes, she’s definitely the odd one out in this company. — What sort of work are you in, Simon, she asks timidly.

— Oh, PR. Advertising mainly. I moved back up to Edinburgh from London recently to set up some projects here.

— What sort of clients dae ye work with?

— Film, television, that sort of thing, I say. I keep chewing the shit and more drinks come over and I see their three faces with the blotches on them getting bigger and redder as the alcohol rapidly fires through the system, flashing them like beacons, as the hormones shoot all over the place. Aye, it’s like a Vegas sign which says: COCK PLEASE.

And I just know that that fuckin Estelle; I could have her singing on her back for her supper in six months’ time down in King’s Cross if I gave her the full treatment. Aw aye, there’s some chickies you just smell damage off-of, some you know that bad daddy or stepdaddy’s left some psychic scar tissue that just cannae be healed, and that while it might be dormant like a social eczema for a while, it’s just waiting to erupt. It’s just there in the eyes, that blighted, wounded aspect, manifesting itself in the need to give a destructive love to an evil force, and to keep giving it until it consumes them. Chicks like that, their whole life is underscored by abuse, and, make no mistake, they have been programmed to hunt their next abuser down just as relentlessly as the predator seeks them.

The night sprawls up to Clatty’s and I’m peeling away from Estelle and Marilyn, all over Shirley Duncan, to their complete shock and to hers. She’s fat and fresh and I feel like a stoat and a social worker combined and soon we’re kissing and heading out and up towards Malmaison. She’s saying: — I’ve only done this once before . . .

As we get into the bed I grit my teeth and think of the scam. I’m as hard as fuck and my hands are all over her heavy breasts, up and down those flabby thighs and across that lunar landscape of an arse. No sooner am I in than she’s off. For control purposes, I opt not to shoot into the rubber but give a false grunt and let my body hold a rigid stretch with a spazzy pelvic thrust to simulate ejaculation.

I consider that this is the first time I’ve ever faked an orgasm. It felt quite satisfying.

When the morning light spills in, the extent of my sacrifice becomes apparent, causing me to feel nauseous. Then she gets out of bed saying: — I’ve got to go, I’m working this morning.

— What? I ask, a bit concerned. — Do you work when Rangers aren’t at home?

— Oh no, I don’t work at Ibrox. I finished there last week. My new job’s in a travel agent’s.

— You don . . .

— That was so lovely last night, Simon. I’ll call you! I have to hurry, and she’s out the door and I’m lying there, raped by a fat minger, thanks to that cunt Skreel’s incompetence!

I have the hotel breakfast and head self-loathingly towards Queen Street, calling Skreel on his mobile. He’s protesting innocence, but that soapy cunt’s set me up, I know it. — Ah didnae know, big man. Never mind, hing oot wi her, n she’ll be able tae tell ye if onybody else works there.

— Hmmph, I click the phone off, hoping Nikki’s doing better than me.

47

‘. . . the Ubiquitous Chip . . .’

I
’m sore and tired. Mel and I had to do the boxing-ring scene with Craig. At least I didn’t have to fuck him afterwards. The script had been changed, that was the first thing that we noticed as we met up down at a boxing club in Leith on a cold morning. Rab was setting up the camera, and he came across to me. — You shouldnae dae this, it wisnae in our script.

I don’t respond to him, but I do approach Simon. — What’s this in aid of? ‘Jimmy pulls out an eighteen-inch dildo, which has a penis head at each end. It has ruled measurements down its length.’

— Aye, he says, as he gestures Mel over, — I felt we needed more tension between the girls before the big lesbo love scene. It was all too soft, too sisterly, too cosy. I felt it’d work best if there was an edge to the characters. They both want exclusive rights on Tam’s cock, see?

I look at Mel and she strokes my arm. — It’ll be alright.

But it’s not an easy scene to do. Melanie and I are on all fours in the boxing ring and the dildo is between us, up us. We have to force back into each other, the one with most of the dildo enclosed when our arse cheeks touch is the winner and gets fucked by Craig. Worse is the way Simon’s set this up; he’s brought in people to cheer, from the pub where they watched Terry’s old stag films.

It feels different. For the first time since I started this, I feel as if I’m being used, I feel dehumanised, like an object as those ugly men from the pub surround the ring, their faces contorted as they bay and scream. At one point I feel the tears rolling down my face. Simon’s encouragement, — C’mon, Nikki, c’mon, baby . . . you’re the best . . . soo sexy . . . is fucking irritating me, making me feel worse. I feel myself drying out and tensing up. I pray for him to just shut up. Whatever he says, I keep hearing other words in his head:
in Britain we like to see people getting fucked
. After countless retakes, Mel and I collapse into each other’s arms. I feel sore, raw and diminished. — Take a break, girls. We have enough hot stuff for the edit, Simon says.