Ирвин Уэлш - Dead Men's Trousers

— Aye… mibbe just tae be social, likesay, Spud says with rising panic, only abating as soon as ah hand the cunt the note that ah ken ah’ll never see again. — It’s been a long time.

Then we’re back oot, at a couple ay bars, which is the only wey I ken I’ll get rid ay him, before my eyes start shutting and a pit-bull yawn almost tears my bottom jaw fae my face. I head tae the hotel and try tae fitfully sleep.

The shattering alarm seems tae wake ays ten minutes later. And this is my life, the sheer fucking lunacy of it. I now have to fly back to LA, for one of Conrad’s gigs, then return here for Hogmanay, getting in on the morning of New Year’s Eve for the big bells party. Then I want to just hole up in Amsterdam for winter and get some work done, but ah need tae go back tae LA again, and put time intae Vicky and me, if I really want things tae take off. And, I reflect, as a ball ay self-loathing sticks in my chest like a tumour, I need tae stop shagging the fuck aroond .

So I’m on the red eye tae that fucking blight on humanity that is Heathrow and then up in first class aw the way tae LA. The cunts at security swabbed every inch of my case for traces of ching. But my bank cards show fuck all, and the stainless-steel business caird cleans up a treat.

Hell, it’s a long and tedious flight with Conrad, whae connected fae Amsterdam, sitting next tae us. He’s bored, sulky and utterly charmless company and I give thanks for the relative isolation ay the individual pods. Conrad is basically mildly autistic, a spoilt fat cunt, but I believe there’s a fundamentally decent young gadge in there. I have to believe it. Emily, who is on at Fabric in London, is just young and confused but has a good heart. Then there’s Carl. The biggest bairn of them all. What a fucking trio. And now FUCKING FRANCIS BEGBIE is back in ma life and I’m seeking out SICK BOY .

At LAX, the immigration ratshagger’s look is long and searching, gaun fae me, tae passport, tae me, tae passport. This is bad. It means he now has tae say something. — So how long have you lived in Amsterdam?

— On and off, about twenty-five years.

— And you’re a manager in the entertainment industry?

— An artist manager, I concede, depressed at the lack of irony in my voice. I watch Conrad, a couple of booths down, breeze through, his doughy digits sweating over the fingerprint glass like sausages on a hotplate.

— Like bands?

— DJs.

He softens a little. — Is that like managing a band?

— Easier. Solo artists. No equipment, I state, then think of the exception to every fucking rule, that fucking Neanderthal Ewart. — Book the plane, transfers and hotels. Organise the press. Fight for publishing royalties, battle promoters for gigs and cash, I rant, managing to stop myself from saying, and drugs .

— You come here a lot. Do you plan to move to the USA?

— No. Though I do have an apartment in Santa Monica. It saves on hotels. I’m in LA and Vegas a lot on business. One of my artists, I point at Conrad, now through and heading for the luggage, — he’s got a residency at the Wynn. I always travel on an ESTA. I’ve applied for a green card, and I suddenly think of Vicky, smiling in the sun on the beach, — but even when I get it, I won’t be living here all the time.

He looks at me as if he doesn’t believe my green card application for resident alien will be accepted.

— David Guetta is one of my sponsors, I offer.

— Uh-huh, he says doomily, then seems all put out. — Why don’t you wanna live here permanently?

— Maybe the same reason that you don’t want to live in Amsterdam? I like America, but it’s a bit too American for ma personal tastes. I suspect you’d find Holland a wee bit too Dutch.

He pulls his lower lip out in dreary evaluation, slumping back into catatonic boredom, as the luminous green light comes on and I print my fingers for the thousandth time, and get my picture snapped yet again. A stamp on the passport and customs form, and I’m back in the land of the free.

The first thing I do – literally – when I land somewhere is hassle the promoter for drugs. Anyone who doesn’t have a contact shouldn’t be in the fucking game. I tell them it’s for the DJs, but most of those boring cunts nowadays never touch anything other than hydroponic grass, my contemporary, N-Sign Carl Ewart, being the exception – yet again. I usually get some gak, just to keep the party going, anything that stops me from reminding myself that I’m the oldest person in the club, unless I’m with N-Sign. I feel sorry for old DJs, they deserve big money, stepping out to that ritual humiliation every night: guys who no longer dance, playing music for people who do. That’s why I try to be patient with Carl. I put in my order for the unofficial rider: cannabis, MDMA powder and cocaine. Conrad is slavering so much techy shit about different buds in my ear, I put him straight onto the man.

The deal done, he says, — Where is that cokehead bum N-Sign? Why do you persist with him?

— History, mate, I shrug. I should tell Conrad to mind his own business, but I’m desperate he doesn’t go the way of Ivan. And it is his business, as I’m booking Carl gigs on his undercard.

As we wait for our luggage to come onto the belt, a text from the cunt himself: no Carl, but Begbie .

When r u next in Embra?

You never know if he’s being ironic or dyslexic.

Hogmanay. N-Sign playing .

Would you, Spud, Sick Boy and Second Prize be up for an art project? I want to make casts of your heads .

Can’t speak for them, but count me in. Saw Spud, hoping to see Sick Boy Hogmanay .

Sound. Can u do 3 Jan?

Aye .

Conrad gets an Uber to the hotel, on his own, after I explain that I’m meeting my girlfriend. — Dude, he smiles.

When I get back to the apartment to hook up with Vicky, she’s so pleased to see me, and me her. I’m thinking about Marianne and what the fuck was I doing? Maybe it was something that had to happen. To get it out my system, so I can move on with her now.

After we go out for a meal with her friends Willow and Matt, we head home and are at it like knives. I feel a sort of twang and Vicky feels it too, but we only pause for a second, before finishing. We find that the condom has split. It has rolled down the shaft of my cock, splattered in a mix of spunk and thick menstrual blood; her period has started. I’m relieved but she nonetheless goes for the morning-after pill. — I want to be double-treble sure, I’m just so not a mother, Vicky smiles cheerfully.

We fall back into the bed, and for a brief second I hear Marianne’s nagging voice: I don’t shag around. I haven’t fucked anyone in months . With her being privy to Sick Boy’s movements, I’m just not convinced. But it’s drowned out by Vicky’s appreciative contentions. — It’s great being with you. I’ve dated boys, nice boys, but boys. It’s good to be with a man.

I feel the vice of guilt. I’ve always enjoyed boyishness, never striven for maturity. Manhood is an ill-fitting cloak on my shoulders, like being dressed by somebody else. But my euphoria breaks its constraints: there is more than one type of man. — You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a long, long time, I confess to her. We share a wow look; acknowledgement that we’re spinning into something and it feels good and right.

Then, of course, I have to leave her. When I get back to Edinburgh, without the smoothing pills, my fatigue is jaggy and acute. Thankfully Carl has not too bad coke, and the home crowd inspires him to play a decent set at Hogmanay. As well as Marina and her boyfriend Troy, I have a twitching Spud and a jovial Gavin Temperley with me in the main guest box. One is skeletal, the other now a fat bastard. In the next box my auld pal Rab Birrell, with his brother Billy, who used to be the boxer. Both look well. It’s good to see them.