Irvine Welsh - Skagboys

I instantly ken who he means, but elect tae play dumb .

‘ That snidey wee cunt Connell, that’s who. Ah ken Matty’s your mate, Mark, auld Fort loyalties n that, but he’s eywis hoverin aroond askin aw sorts ay questions, like wantin tae ken where ah git ma gear fae, n aw that shite .’

I think of an old picture ay me and Matty, standing outside the walls ay the Fort in Hibs strips. We’d be about eight. ‘He’s a tea leaf. He just wanted in on your action, Johnny. He wouldnae gie info tae the polis .’

I’m genuine. Like most people, I thought it was weird that Matty just got a suspended sentence and a few poxy days on remand, rather than proper jail or detox, but I cannae see him as a grass .

Day 16

I’ve had my first individual counselling session with Tom Curzon, the ‘superstar of rehab’, according to Skinny-Specky. She’s defo got the hots for him .

Tom seemed tae expect me to dae all the talking. No way: I clammed right up. It must have been like trying tae get a drink out ay an Aberdonian coconut. It was quite a tough session: jockeying for position in a covert battle of wills .

Day 17

Woken up by the chattering birds again. Go for a stroll in the garden, even though it’s pishing doon. A disturbing sight under a bush at the back wall: a waddling crow jabs its beak through the breast of a dead pigeon repeatedly, till it locates a coil of gut, then twists out a slimy stretch and starts to devour it. This scene transfixes me, and I wonder if the pigeon was still alive, dying, but yet to perish, when the crow punched its first few holes into its chest .

I think about this during breakfast, and feel queasy and distracted .

Keezbo returns, but he’s deep in his room, he never leaves it. I refuse to chap on his door, it’s better to give the chubby cunt some space, it’s obviously what he needs. Ted fae Bathgate tells me he heard that Begbie battered some cunt in Saughton, but it apparently wisnae Cha Morrison .

One gadge I’ve warmed to is the Weedgie boy, Skreel. He got done for trying to bump a taxi. He’d been living in various homeless hostels here and through in Glesgey, and still has yellow-black bruised eyes from swedges. On arriving here, his long hair was shorn off as it was infested with lice — we telt him we’d have expected nothing less from a Weedgie. He has more abscesses on his hands, feet, arms and legs than I’ve ever seen, and he wears them like badges of honour. He’s a bit gimpy from a bad fall, and the fact that he has practically no usable veins left in his limbs and had started injecting in his arteries. He boasted that last year he was on 750 mg of heroin per day, which I don’t doubt. His teeth are rotten and give him constant gyp; he blames that on the barbiturates, which he loves as much as the skag. You have to respect Skreel, he’s proper. I’ll say one thing for the Weedgies: they don’t go in for half measures .

‘ Ah’ll be deid soon, big man,’ he cheerfully informs me over a lunch of almost inedible cheese salad for me, and pie, chips and beans for everybody else. (Skreel is, at six foot, an inch taller than me.) ‘Ah jist wahnt tae stey aff ma face till it happens, know whit ah mean? ’

Day 18

Wake up to a gold sun, shimmering in a blue sky. On the patio, I marvel at its heat on my bare arms, listening to the excited magpies nesting in the sycamore tree, sounding like 1950s football rattles. I have an urge to get beyond those big, dark-stoned walls and that dense foliage; that light-bladed horizon .

Getting more into the weights. Seeker and I generally do a few sets together every morning and afternoon, following breakfast and lunch. I like the discipline of it, pushing upwards, the rushing of the blood in my body and head, feeling the ebb and flow of eternal, mysterious forces inside me. Seeker does much bigger weights than me, and has really started tae bulk up, he has that kind of physique, but I notice wee clusters of muscle coming up on my arms and shoulders. It would be cool to have that sleek, feline, Iggy Pop look; muscular and defined but still slim and lithe. Seeker shows me how to be systematic about it: sets, reps and all that stuff. Before, I would have just lifted them till I got tired or bored. This interaction is a big deal, as Seeker isn’t a man of conversation, in fact his comfort with silence is probably his only redeeming feature. He wears shades indoors .

A spiky session with Tom; he asks me about my discussions with cunty baws Dr Forbes, fae the clinic. ‘Are you depressed, Mark? ’

‘ I’m in rehab for heroin addiction,’ I tell him. Then add, only half jokingly, ‘In Fife .’

‘ But before. Your brother died last year. Did you mourn him? ’

I want to ask him, ‘Why in the name of suffering fuck would I mourn the loss of constant humiliation and embarrassment? If you were a gangly, sensitive, yet highly egotistical kid growing up in Leith, would you not be pleased that a source of your torment had been removed?’ Instead I say, ‘Obviously. It was a sad loss .’

Day 19

I spoke too soon! Seeker speaks! He tells me he was in a bad bike smash a few years back. They put a steel plate in his nut and a pin in his leg. The pain was bearable in the summer. In the winter, though, only gear could sort it oot, and he ended up hooked. I also learned that he wears the shades on account ay being light-sensitive since his accident. Fair fucks tae the cunt; the overhead strip lights in here are harsh as, and I usually have a thumping headache just bubbling under migraine level by the time I turn in. We discover we’re baith early risers, so agree to do a larger set of weights before breakfast .

Now I know how Tom feels with the rest of us. Like I’ve made a breakthrough .

Day 22

This diary bullshit is getting as addictive as the skag. But it’s also as dangerous; that personal shite you’re somehow compelled tae put intae it. I had to rip oot the diary page yesterday, and a couple ay pages in the journal section, screwing them up and flinging them in the waste-paper basket. Suppose some cunt had read it? They say it’s confidential, but what’s that in here?

Len’s clocked me daein the weights with Seeker, so I’m deemed ready for the group sessions on addiction issues — SORRY! — substance-dependency issues .

While the process review group looks at our general behaviour, this one focuses purely on the issue of our drug addiction and matters directly pertaining to it. We sat in a semicircle, the bones in my skinny erse pressing on the curved and slidy, one-piece laminate chipwood chair. The only other items were a flip chart and some pens. Tom sat with his long fingers locked together, clasped roond his knee, also uncomfortable, the traction and strain in his gangly frame belying the nonchalant air he tries tae exhibit. He wore slip-on shoes, the cunt unaware this means about 80 per cent of the room automatically think he’s an irredeemable wanker .

I was dreading it as there had been plenty of shouting in the process review group that morning; that Ted is quite an aggressive wee bastard, and he and Sick Boy and Swanney were having a fair old go at each other. They only stopped when Seeker suddenly said, ‘Turn the fuckin volume doon. This is daein ma heid in.’ And they did, cause everybody’s feart ay Seeker .

Tom introduced me, even though I kent every cunt. ‘I’d like to welcome Mark to the group. Mark, can you tell us what you want from these sessions? ’

‘ Just tae stay clean and get myself sorted out, and help others do the same,’ I heard a squeaky Boys’ Brigade voice wobble from somewhere between my mouth and nose. Swanney sniggered and Sick Boy puckered his lips .