Irvine Welsh - The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

Dad’s dust jackets claim he was a Boston homicide detective for eight years. They’ll be laughing at that one in a few Mick bars in Southie. He served with the BPD, in uniform, for only three years before he was kicked out for “racist behavior,” following an incident at a warehouse in Dorchester. Some achievement that: Josef Mengele couldn’t get ejected from Boston’s finest for that shit. The real reason was that he took a dive to protect a higher-ranking officer. Dad used the payoff dough well: he wrote a crime novel, which wasn’t too bad. Since that debut, he’s blossomed as the suburbanites’ choice; they can sleep easy knowing that his Boston tec protagonist, Matt Flynn, is out there protecting them, tying everything up in neat resolution. Yes, he’s metaphorically grown into that airbrushed jacket photo of him, looking like a chunkier, nightclub-bouncer version of Doctor Drew. I suspect Botox, but he fervently denies this.

— Thanks, Dad. It’s scary, looking back, but I just reacted.

— You sure did that! I’m so glad I encouraged you with all that kickboxing and tae kwon do. You saved two men’s lives, and probably your own.

I know Dad makes a living through crime hyperbole, but the truth in that statement makes me shudder. While I wasn’t the target, there’s no telling how an asshole with a gun might react once he’s spilled blood.

— I’m glad too.

— And I’ll tell ya someting else, I’m gonna make you rich, princess! I got contacts in Hollywood now. Been speaking to agents and producers about Matt Flynn screen and TV adaptations.

What to say to that? — Well, um, okay. . but you might be too late. A TV company has already been in touch about a pilot. In fact I’m just heading to a meeting in a little while. I’ve got a local talent agency working for me.

— That’s my girl. The Brennan get-up-and-go! But watch out for those guys, kiddo. Keep some native Southie cunning back in the locker room. You know what this wiseass Hollywood agent said to me the other day?

— No. .

— He said, “I see Matt Flynn as being a down-the-line project for the Damons, Afflecks, or Wahlbergs. Like a nest egg for those guys when the gym-rat stuff gets too much like hard work and the middle-aged spread hits and they can finally do that grizzled, lived-in shit.”

— Right. I get that.

— No, think it through, honey, and this is what I said to him: those guys are fuckin actors . By the time they’re ready to play hard-bitten, fifty-five-year-old BPD homocide detectives, they’ll be seventy, and I’ll be in an urn on somebody’s mantelpiece!

— Dad, this is taking on a morbid turn, like so many of your conversations.

— Well, the clock’s ticking. Give me a grandkid, honey; just do the nine months for your old pop. One that can make me proud. Hell, I’ll pay for the kid to attend the best schools. You’ll never see him. It.

Oh my God, I thought I’d get through a phone call without that old theme recurring. — You know what? Have you ever asked yourself why I become more dykish every time you address me directly? Like, since I was about six years old?

— Jesus, honey, don’t do this to your old pop. Anyway, lesbians do the motherhood thing, it’s all the rage, he contends. Dad knows I’m bi. He doesn’t like it, but at least he acknowledges it. Mom almost physically chokes when I mention it. She would send me for extreme ECT if she could. — Why should a woman be denied motherhood on the grounds of sexual orientation?

I’m about to retort that I could find a hundred men to impregnate me, but, disturbingly, the only face that pops into my head is Miles’s. — It’s on the grounds of choice, of not wanting my body wrecked. Of things like liking sleep, hard breasts, tigh—

— Don’t say “tight vaginal walls” for chrissakes. Remember I’m your goddamn father! I don’t have the gift of abstraction when it comes to you!

— Sorry, Pop.

— Think it through, pickle. Ticktock. Ticktock. That’s the way it is. The human condition, he wheezes, then sings in pain, — the cocksucking, evil, motherfucking, God-awful human condition. .

I let a brief silence hang, which he fills. — I gotta go now. But I’m in Miami next month hitting the Sunbelt part of the tour. Let’s hook up for some food, a good porterhouse for me, and a nice big helping of rabbit food for you. In the meantime, I’m gonna send you the website details for this insemination project. Think about it.

— Jesus. . Dad. . as you say, you are my father!

— That’s parental prerogative, honey, as you’ll hopefully soon know when you succumb to the force. Gotta go, angel. Love you!

— Love you, I tell him, with I think , reverberating in my head as the line goes dead. That man is beyond real.

My cal count is low today so I fix myself some tofu and couscous (around 450 cal), then do a routine of hand weights. After working up a decent sweat, I take a shower, before settling down in front of the TV. I try not to let it get to me, but it sucks not having cable, if only for the sports channels. The network news channels bug me, even if there’s nothing on me or the twins. It’s just that missing kid, Carla Riaz. She looks so small, frail, and angelic in that picture. I hope she’s okay. There are some evil motherfuckers out there.

I drive up to North Miami Beach. The TV studios are situated in a three-story concrete building. As I go through automatic doors, I instantly sweat under the blast of cold air conditioning as my body recalibrates. I’m feeling gross as a doorman escorts me to a sterile reception area. Valerie is waiting, her own forehead reassuringly beading. We get a black coffee and exchange bland pleasantries. Soon the producer appears, a late-thirties blonde, with the inevitable Botoxed android half-smile, thinly plucked brows, and pass clipped to her tan jacket, which she sports with matching slacks. Hooped earrings hang at her caked face like satellites over a desert planet, and a dangling necklace droops into a pushed-up rack of silicone. She intros herself as Waleena Hinkle. As she leads us through security doors, I catch her sneak a fearful glance at the young receptionist, the fresher meat who will soon replace her in the corporate sandwich. We follow Waleena, along with the string of inanities spilling from her mouth, down a corridor and into a boardroom.

We sit for a spell, with more talk about the weather. It’s just getting unbearable, when Thelma ceases her power play and deigns to join us. I know through Lieb’s time-management books that if somebody is late for a meeting they are either 1) an incompetent asshole (62 percent), or 2) trying to make some power statement (31 percent), and seldom, if ever, 3) fighting fires at some emergency (7 percent), as Thelma pathetically tries to make out now. B-fucking-S: I’ve got her number.

After some small talk about the flash flood I’ve had from press, camera crews, and photographers (thankfully done now, surely), Waleena springs into some sort of animation, flagging up a presentational display on video, explaining to me the concept of the show (I still haven’t opened the email attachments). It seems that they’ve moved on from the simple makeover premise. — We feel that your profile and Miami as a location allow us to be more adventurous, Waleena gushes. — The show is now tentatively entitled Shape Up or Ship Out. It will take place on a boat, a cruise liner, which sails from Miami around the Caribbean for the duration of one series. But this luxurious boat will also have two gyms and be a floating torture chamber. As we go around the islands, we ditch various failures at differing ports — Nassau, Kingston, Port of Spain, etc. — all the way back to Miami. — It’s essentially The Biggest Loser at sea, Waleena explains, — hopefully with a hint of The Love Boat thrown in. We’ll have a plank-walking ceremony at the end of each show, the plank also being a scale that tips the fattest contestant into a secured area of the sea.