James Kelman - If it is your life

I was looking forward to seeing Eric and going for a beer. He had been a good pal. He was a funny guy. He kept you going with his stupid patter. Although how could it be called stupid. It was not. If it was intentional, and it was, then it was not stupid. How could it be? He would have made a great stand-up comedian. I had not seen him for a while. I had not seen anybody for a while but I had not been home since last September, excluding Christmas; Christmas did not count. I was only there a couple of days and hardly saw a soul. He was the only one apart from family.

I would need to get out. I could not stay in the house all the time.

Probably he still sang in public. Unless he had hit the big time! Now I smiled. Although you never know. Somebody had to!

But maybe he used that as an excuse. Maybe that was why he did it, he was preparing for the day he won a major talent show!

Did he honestly believe that! Maybe he did. The stupid side was obvious. But he was not a mug, he would have seen that too, as much as anyone. But there was another side to that: Eric himself. Somebody had to win. He had as much chance as anybody. Probably more because he believed in himself. He did, really! He thought people wanted to hear him sing! Me too, he actually thought I wanted to hear him!

It was a personal quirk. Even if you told him to shut up he did not believe you, he thought you were saying it for effect. Secretly you wanted to hear him. He honestly believed that. Even when we were boys! What an ego! I had forgotten about that. His self-belief was much stronger than mine. In comparison I had an inferiority complex.

But at what point is self-belief transformed into egocentricity? If we were walking up the road, just the two of us, and he started singing I found it embarrassing. He must have thought I was a total fool. It irritated me. Eventually I told him, Oh fuck off man. I done that a few times but he still did it. So it was not to annoy me. It had nothing to do with me. He even did it when he was on his own. I watched him and I saw him perform wee actions, wee actions, and he was only there himself. It was a characteristic he shared with Celia. But at that time me and him were still at school and it was just weird. I kind of worried about him, doing something like that in public, it was beyond embarrassing.

Seriously. Eric was my best pal but it made you wonder about him. Yet some of what he did was the same as Celia. So if it was okay for her why not for him? Was that another gender issue? If so it put a different complexion on matters. It was illogical anyway. Unless it was separate logical systems. Some said that about women, that they operate differently from males in a structural sense. A guy said that in our sociology tutorial. He was destroyed. People ridiculed him. One of the girls wanted to punch him which only made him worse. He sounds likeable but he was not. He was arrogant, completely unlikeable, and not good-looking at all, but chubby, and with a chubby face. His dad was something like a Member of Parliament or town mayor. I told my mother about him. She would tell my father. I could not have told him. There were things I could not tell him and that was one. He liked me being at university in England but there were certain things he could not listen to me talking about. Usually to do with class. The idea of some-body in my tutorial group with a famous father or if he was rich. My father could not listen. I stopped talking about stuff if he was there, I mean political stuff.

Eric was like my father. I wanted to tell him stuff but he got annoyed and it was me he got annoyed with. I came out sounding bad but it was not me so much as a class thing, male working class. I did not need Celia to tell me.

I was not stepping on anybody’s shoulders. It is a cliché about people escaping from their background, how they step on the shoulders of friends and family. Eric could have gone to university himself. He was bright. Definitely. Why had he not? Perhaps his family did not push him. But they would have. I knew his parents. They were better off than mine but also they would have appreciated the chance. So why had he not gone? It was a chance in life none of our parents ever had. No matter how I might feel on a personal level I made the best of it. It would have been self-indulgent not to, and selfish.

Selfishness was all around. I saw it at university. Self-indulgence too.

But you needed money for stuff and I never had it, not really, and the bar job I had was for essentials. It was killing my parents for fees so the least I could do was be careful. Too much of anything. Stuff did not interest me anyway. And other people’s company was the same. You had to push your way in. I could not be bothered. Probably they thought I was boring. Maybe I was. Celia said I was relaxing. Probably that meant boring. They all had money. I thought they did anyway. You needed money. Most seemed to have it. But maybe they did not. People pretended and were scared to be different. I already was because I was Scottish. Some liked me because of it, others did not. It would be wrong to say I did not care. I was just glad to know Celia. And her father was in business. I did not care. Her mother even, she was a doctor. Doctors are rich.

I liked her attitude to everything, and how she was, how she thought, it was always herself and not other people’s prejudices. If it was left-wing politics or right-wing, she would want to know about the person, what like was the person. That to me was important. In Glasgow it was where you came from. People were scared to be different. My mother was like that. My father was a bit; if it was somebody that was upper class or else the royal family, he hated all that and would not listen to it or read it and if it was on the television he would switch channels or get up and leave the room, it did not matter the person. When I told Celia about him she listened and then said a funny thing, Does he whistle? My dad did, sometimes Mozart and Beethoven. Imagine classical! We were talking about old people. Her father was an old man compared to mine. Really, he was like a grandfather and over sixty years of age. Mine was forty-four and my mother forty-three. Celia was surprised. She was saying how old people talked to themselves and it was a good thing. But it was only men who sang. Men did not suffer from a foolish self-consciousness. Women did. They had to break through a barrier. Even Celia. She memorized her lines and said them aloud but she did not sing. Women did not, not in public. And they did not whistle. Men whistled. They did it on buses the way Eric sang. It was nearly as embarrassing, especially if women were there because you were a male as well and it was childish behaviour. We did not all behave the same way. Men were men but we were not all the same.

Women did not whistle. Had I ever heard one woman whistle? Never. It was a distinguishing feature. A very striking one. Here was a wee minor detail yet it separated the sexes, every bit as much as the sexual organs. Obviously not to that extent but it was a distinguishing feature. Yet I could not remember having read about it before.

Women always watched themselves. Men did not, except in a showing-off way. But women showed off too, especially about sex and their bodies. I had sex with two women here; once the first time and then Celia. Celia was just so different. She was an only child. That could mean something. It could explain her lack of self-consciousness. No need for privacy. With wee sisters you watch so she does not see you dressing or catch you peeing in the bathroom. This means you are always aware of your surroundings, and aware of yourself within them, within your surroundings. You see yourself. You need to. But Celia would have done what she liked and just, she could just have undressed without worrying because nobody would have been there to see her, just wandering around, she could have, if she wanted. That was what she did. She took me to her room and other women lived there and she wandered around only in her pants and even no bra sometimes and the women knew I was there, they knew I was in her room, so I was seeing her. Celia did not bother and then if she came back to bed and we started doing things and it was not quiet. So I admired her too, as a human being. She behaved in a proper way. Human beings should be allowed that, to be the same. It is dignity. People have it. Women have it, and Celia with big breasts flopping, because they did, and heavy, if you put your hands under and held them and just if you held them. But it was dignity, it was a woman, although you could never have been a runner, unless they were strapped down. But women were runners, they were athletes, so they must have been. It was just dignity, it was just being a woman. That is what Celia was. She thought about herself and what she was involved in, she became engrossed in it and absorbed.