Irvine Welsh - The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

I burst out into loud laughter, unable to contain myself. From their expressionless faces, it’s impossible to tell whether it’s the Botox masks or if they genuinely consider my glee inappropriate. I decide to test the water further. — It would be great if we could have some sharks in the secured area of sea, chomping away at all that blubber.

More silence as the masks seem to freeze a few more degrees. — We did want to introduce a punitive element, Waleena nods, — and we will have several menacing nautical and pirate themes running throughout the show.

Thelma chips in, — The one we’re particularly excited about is “booty call.” She twists her collagen-stuffed lips to Waleena, who carries on. — Yes, this is where we open a series of treasure chests we have mounted on the wall, all of them displaying the near-naked ass of each contestant scheduled for elimination. A guest panel have to guess, first the owner of the ass, then the weight lost that week by the individual on the basis of the size of their butt.

— Get the fuck outta here, I declare.

— You don’t like it? Waleena whiplashes to Thelma, then back to me.

— Shit, no! I love it! They need to be confronted with how gross their asses look, and I glance around the table, lowering my voice gravely. — But I do hope you realize that I wasn’t being serious about the sharks, and I wait for a reaction.

— Of course. . Valerie says.

— We knew that, Thelma agrees.

— Only because it would be totally fucking cruel to subject animals to the toxins in those junk-fed bodies!

They look at each other, and Valerie smiles, while Thelma laughs, a low wheezing mechanical sound. — That’s funny! You’re terrible, Lucy!

We spend the rest of the afternoon looking at homemade videos from a previous similarly themed show last year, which never got off the ground. — We couldn’t find a suitably charismatic, local fitness instructor to present, Thelma informs me in a smug purr. There are literally thousands of fat losers who have sent clips in, begging to be contestants on the show. Few, if any, demonstrate real signs of aspiring to change themselves.

Then I’m telling Valerie, Thelma, and Waleena about the two clubs I work out of, and I mention Jon Pallota, the owner of Bodysculpt. I explain that Jon was swimming up in Delray Beach and lost a large portion of his genitals after being attacked by a poisoned barracuda, stunned and lurking in the shallow waters. They tried to save what they could when they detached the fish, but his cock had to be more than half amputated and one testicle was lost.

Of course, everybody remembers the incident, and it becomes the cue for a round of familiar jokes. Tales of the genital mutilation of powerful young men resonate easily with middle-aged, middle-management women who have have been splattered against the glass ceiling by the myopic stampeding of that breed, on their relentless corporate ascent. I look around the table at the three Botoxed witches and think, with a chill, that this is quite probably me ten years on. And that’s the best-case scenario. And I feel disloyal, as Jon and I. . well, we tried but we couldn’t make shit work. Now he’s been engaged in a lawsuit for three years against the company who were found to have dumped the chemicals at sea, detected at very high dosage in the fish’s body. The company had already been fined for illegal dumping, but are contesting that the chemicals could have poisoned the fish to the extent that it would have headed into the shallows and attacked a bather.

— Did the fish attack any other people? Waleena asks. — Like, before your friend?

— I don’t think so.

— Tough one. I don’t really see any grounds for an individual suing the company here, unless he can find other people who’ve been attacked by poisoned fish and they do a class-action lawsuit.

— That seems to be the legal feedback he’s gotten, I tell her.

Jon’s been understandably depressed since then, and has spent much more time in the SoBe dive bars than at Bodysculpt. But as I’m telling Valerie, Thelma, and Waleena the backstory, I can see them thinking it would great to get this in the show . Then Thelma actually says, — Do you think that Jon would—

— No. Not acceptable, I cut her off. — He hates the media. He might let us film in the club, but that’s about all, and I swear I can see her Botox face melt under my gaze.

— Of course, Lucy, she purrs, — you know best!

Despite that hiccup, I come out the meeting pretty buzzed and I’m actually enjoying the drive home, which is almost impossible with all the crazies behind the wheels of Miami’s automobiles. The devastating combo of Latin Americans, really old white people, and young all-year-round Spring Breakers is not a mix that encourages complacent driving.

I pull up outside my building — still no photographers (both good and worrying) — and get settled back in my apartment. Miles calls, with more of the same hero bullshit, now all conciliatory after us yelling at each other on our last encounter. He’s a firefighter I trained to kickbox in a tournament against the police. He was flirty as hell, and I thought I’d seen the last of him, till he found me on hookup.com, a dating-slash-fucking website I used to subscribe to. We all make mistakes. He tells me he’s still off work with his famous back issue. He never had this going on when we first met, and the shit has been getting worse. — I gotta examination by the service’s medical board, then a meeting with personnel and their insurance people lined up. You wanna come round tonight? Or I could swing by your way?

— I’m going out, I lie.

— Who with?

— That’s my business.

— Some fucking dyke, huh?

— Which part of “my business” don’t you get? Don’t call me again. I am so over mercy fucking, I tell him, and switch off the phone. That asshole is way beyond real.

I wasn’t intending to go out tonight, but I sure as shit am now. Besides, I got plenty to celebrate, thanks to that nosy Sorenson chick and her iPhone! I head into my walk-in closet and slip into a clingy, short, black denim skirt. Then I roll on some nylons and a purple-trimmed garter belt. A lacy black bra pushes my tits up into the world’s face, and I pull on a long-sleeved see-through gray silk blouse. A knee-high pair of leather boots with fierce silver buckles finishes the look. Not quite, as it’s all about accessorizing, and a silver heart necklace dangles above my cleavage to draw eyes there. A set of spiked silver bracelets gives the look an edge that nicely hints at S&M. A last-minute change of mind, and I decide to put on some simple black cotton panties. The sort that can easily be pushed aside for dick, dildo, fingers or tongue. Some mascara, lipstick the same purple as the garter, and a few strategic dabs of Givenchy, “very irresistible,” and I’m out the door and heading to the club on Washington.

From Lenox at 10th, it’s an easy walk in the warm, still night air. Then I’m honked at by two separate cars stuffed with grinning Latino pricks, spewing rounds of Spanish inanities over their loud music. That’s the worst thing about slutting up, this gauntlet of a six-block walk. I wish I could just fucking teleport into that club. I wonder how many more years I can carry this look off: thank fuck we age slower in Miami Beach than the rest of the world, or at least those of us who remember sunblock and don’t have to work outdoors do.

The liquid display on the clock behind the bar tells me it’s just a couple of minutes shy of midnight as I get into Club Uranus. On weeknights you’re usually assailed by bad commercial EDM, but there’s evidently a new DJ and I’m pleasantly surprised by frothy, bubbling Latin beats. Club Uranus has a cramped aisle with a bar and an inset DJ booth opposite, which makes it look like a five-buck-cover-charge dive, until you realize that beyond this it opens out onto a larger dance area, expanding onto a wrecked concrete yard. The club resembles a narrow-necked vase, and many people say they should refurbish, moving bar and booth to the sides of the dance floor, and ending the potentially hazardous bottleneck at the door. My friend Chef Dominic always rolls his eyes when I suggest this. “That’s the appeal of this place, sweetheart, fighting through that tight passage into some kinda heaven!”