Irvine Welsh - Skagboys

It never seemed so bad when ah was a kid. The fact that a large section ay it was still buried under a landslide since the 1960s didnae escape me, but then ah only saw a place of mystique, the child’s imagined underground city, rather than the reality of a festering den of municipal complacency and corruption. While hardly artist-inspiring, the auld family farmhouse had seemed romantic, instead of a draughty rural slum, and even the huge car breaker’s yard full ay rusty Fiats that still dominates the dusty hamlet was a playground to us, not an eerie blot on the landscape. And I didn’t notice that the ground around the settlement was barren and its citizens unsavoury and depressed-looking enough no tae seem oot ay place on Gorgie Road.

The only parts I think of affectionately are this cafe bar in the station, where ah sit drinking fantastic Italian coffee, and the old barn where cousin Antonio thoughtfully left a pile ay knock-off hassocks fae the church before he married and went to Napoli tae become a minor civil servant. In the family tradition, it was there that I finally had my way with Massima. Before ah was allowed to break the seal, I endured two weeks of frustrating kisses and gropes and the Catholic girl blow jobs I knew from back home (thank fuck ah went tae a non-denominational school, one thing ah do owe that cunt of a faither), followed by plenty of pleading, cajoling, threatening and, finally, the desperate mentions of love and marriage. And Massima is almost twenty years old! My cousin Carla pointedly warned me, after practically throwing us together in that Italian apprentice matriarch way: she has a boyfriend. So we’ve been sneaking around like fugitives, fae the station tae the barn.

But persevere is my middle name, and right now ah’m enjoying my coffee, not at all miffed that Massima’s train, coming fae another village two stops down the line, is delayed by almost thirty minutes. Where is the Duce when you need him most? No matter; I can’t think of anywhere better tae wait than this wee bar with its glass door, watching the fat old men playing cards at the next table. Sipping my coffee, comforted by the gleaming, hissing espresso machine, which evokes the old steam engines of yesterday. Thinking about how, for the poor bastards in this town, things dinnae seem tae have changed that much since then: it’s still a lifetime ay commitment for one fuckin ride! It’s a ‘C’ day, and the word is:

CONTRETEMPS, noun, pl same, an unexpected and unfortunate occurrance, *a minor dispute or disagreement.

The coffee’s kick pushes against the drowsy effect ay the eftirnoon sun, cascading in through the window. The cashier closes the register with a ping. A fat ginger cat that reminds us ay Keezbo sprawls across a sunlit patch on the tiled floor, looking up indolently as it forces customers to either walk round or step over it.

Outside, through the half-clear, half-frosted windae, two young gadges, who were at the pinball machine earlier on, playfully jostle each other. One wears a Juve T-shirt, the team Antonio supports. A lot ay them seem tae around here, though that’s probably changed wi Napoli’s signing ay Maradona. Those poor wee fuckers; I predict loads ay pent-up sexual frustration ahead, fratellos . It’s weird the way those wee chappies hud hands here, like lassies ay that age back hame sometimes dae. And it goes right on through their teens! Imagine heading up the Walk, hudin hands with Renton, Spud, Tommy or Franco! Franco would probably enjoy it though, and I entertain the notion ay him in a cabin boy’s outfit, pulling the train up in toff class back on The Freedom of Choice . Thinking of home, my thoughts drift tae Mark and rehab, and ah pull oot the folded pages fae ma wallet. It’s the ones ah liberated from the waste-paper basket in his room, the diary and journal entries. It was all he deserved, and payment for his rudeness in dropping off when I was endeavouring to discuss key concepts. Such carelessness eywis invites a tax; you have to be on your guard in the modern world or ye get punished.

Day 21

Pulled out of a dream about Fiona, in the waking hours of the morning. I’m feeling her up against a wall, but she’s slipping through my hands as she assumes hideously demonic shapes. Even though she’s a monster, it still seems important to fuck her before I wake up … but in her ectoplasmic form it’s like trying to nail a jellyfish to a wall … I’m awake, wilting cock in hand, in a noisy twilight of birdsong .

After breakfast (porridge, toast and tea), it’s the now familiar ritual of weights on the patio with Seeker. When I get back to my room I’m buzzed but tired, normally optimum conditions for reading, but I can’t settle or concentrate. I’m beset by a terrible sensation of dread and loss, so strong it makes me shudder. Then I feel my breath catching. The room seems to swirl, and I’m aware that I’m having some kind of panic or anxiety attack and have to lie down, trying to get my breathing under control, until it subsides. It quickly passes and everything is as it was, except that I’m really shat up .

In my session with Tom, I get irritated at fuck all. He sees through it and asks what’s bugging me. I tell him that I’m feeling bad because I was a total cunt to somebody I loved, but I can’t talk about it. He suggests that I write it down in my journal. I almost have a fit again, this time in a burst of sardonic laughter, and the session ends .

I’m restless; I feel something eating at my insides. My breath catches again, even though my respiratory system is better than ever. With the weights and exercise, air’s been flooding into it like smack from a needle. Not now. I try and fight through it, recalling Kierkegaard saying ‘anxiety is the dizziness of freedom’. But maybe ah’m no meant tae be free .

I spend hours inside my own heid, thoughts bubbling with such velocity and force that I can envision my skull splitting open. Tom’s right: it seems my only option. The words need expelling before they burst out of their own accord. I go to the pages of the journal and I write .

Journal Entry: Betraying Fiona by fucking Joanne Dunsmuir

I was the one who instigated it; in the Talisman Bar at Waverley Station. Joanne and I had been drinking with Bisto and Fiona on the train up from London. It was like we couldn’t end it, couldn’t end this amazing adventure we’d just been on. We got off at Waverley, leaving Bisto Aberdeen-bound. They departed with a chaste kiss, in stark comparison to the intensity of Fiona and I’s separation at Newcastle .

We went to the station bar and had another few drinks. Joanne got distressed, saying she didn’t want anybody to know that her and Bisto were going out. The conversation developed that ferocity and profundity that can often signal trouble between genders. On some crazy impulse, I asked her for a kiss, and then we were snogging. We were both rampant .

‘ What d’ye want tae dae?’ she asked, eyes fierce with purpose .

I whispered in her ear, ‘I really think we should fuck …’ I was almost creaming myself with excitement .

We left the bar and started walking wi our gear, her a backpack, me a scabby holdall, out the rear exit of the station, up the hill, to the entrance tae Calton Hill Park, where the bufties went at night. But it wisnae night, it was still late afternoon and daylight .

I’d just just left Fiona, a girl I’d fallen in love with. But this would just be sex. Fiona and I had never made any declarations, not negotiated terms as to what our life would be like. We never said we wouldn’t see other people. We weren’t pathetic and bourgeois. (I cringe as I write that word; only a student wanker uses it, but that’s how I felt.)