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Aunt Paula’s proposition, which I almost laughed at down the phone – nearly just started sniggering in the poor old doll’s ear – well, it just gets better all the time.

Duty calls though, and I’m up through a tortuous route of bus and train to Mandy-I-came-and-you-did-all-the-taking’s place in Highgate, picking up the laddie and giving her the forty quid per week that just vanishes into that hole in the boy’s face. For, make no mistake, the kid is fat. The last time I took him up to Scotland to see my mother, she said in that Eyetie-Scots accent: ‘He’s-ah jist-ah like-ah you at that age.’ Just like me at that age; a fat kid who bruises easily and is porky – porky prey to the thin, mean serpents of the playground and the street. Thank fuck for puberty and hormones and their deliverance from fat hell. Maybe my ambivalence towards him is due to the fact that the poor wee bastard does remind me of a younger, less cool self. But I can’t believe I was ever like that. It’s more likely to have come from his fat Jew bastard of a grandfather: on her side, of course.

Now we’re trudging around the West End, en route to Hamley’s to choose his Christmas present. Of course, the gig has long passed; now we’re into January-sales-greed frenzy. I gave him vouchers on the basis that the concept of freedom of choice should be learned as soon as possible. Amanda has kept them back, insisting that I accompany him as he makes his selection. We’ve not been walking that much since alighting at Oxford Circus, although it’s nippy, but the wee cunt complains, hangs back, rubs at his legs. A vid-game slug, he’d rather be at home indoors on the PlayStation. Even at this festive time of year, I’m as much of an imposition to him as he is to me. As we go in, I continue my pusillanimous attempts at conversation, hoping that there’ll be some fanny around the shops to leer at.

That’s the problem with winter: the lassies are too wrapped up. You don’t know what you’re getting until you get it back home and open it up, then it’s too late to take it back. Christmas. I check the white phone for messages first. I always give out that number to women I haven’t shagged. Then the red mobile, for the second-hand goods and the green one for business. Nothing.

The shops and the crowds and carrying lots of rubbish around soon begins to get me down. As for the kid . . . there’s no connection. I try. Not a great deal, but as much as is within my capacity. It’s a shift to put in, for us both, I expect. At the end of it, I’m bloated and greasy on junk food and totally skint, and for what? Parental duty? Social interaction?

Is this doing anybody any good?

I look at the fanny and recall bitterly a few weeks ago when I took Ben (the name was her idea) to Madame Tussaud’s. All I could do was think of her all full of herself cause she’s getting fucked by the selfish yuppie cunt of her dreams, saying it was great for them that I had Ben, they could just ennnjoooyyy being alone together for a bit. Paying forty quid a week and taking him out soas that she can fucking well bang in peace. I should have a tattoo on my forehead: M-U-G.

When I get him home, I have to admit that Mand’s looking a lot better. This last year is the first time I’d seen her in shape since Ben was born. I thought she’d just sprint to gross fatness, like other members of her fuckin family, but no, she looks well tidy. If she’d worked out and dieted like that when we were an item, I might not have found it necessary to humiliate her. I’m an ambitious man and no chappie with any self-esteem likes to be seen with a fat cunt on his arm.

But fat cunts do have their uses: as aunties. As kind, plump aunties. Aunt Paula was always my favourite auntie. Granted, there was little opposition. Poor old Paula, she inherited a pub, but she was daft enough to marry a wideo who almost drank her out of house and home before she kicked him into touch. It’s almost reassuring that even such strong, wilful cows as Paula can have their blind spots. Keeps the likes of me in business. Now she was offering me the pub for twenty grand.

The first major problem was that I didn’t have that kind of money. The second was that the pub was back in Leith.

6

‘. . . naughty secrets . . .’

Y
ou see the flint in Rab’s eyes, a quality that hints at something else. He measures his words like the old boys measure nips in those tight-arsed local pubs. Rab’s mentally circling Lauren, cause she’s tensed up like an alley cat, ready to spit or hiss, so he’s playing it carefully. She’s wanting to justify the anxiety she feels about him being here when she thinks it should be just us, girls together, or maybe even just them. But I live with her so I know that Rab’s getting the brunt of her PMT. As true sisters do, we’ve synchronised our menstruation, and she’s waiting to find a reason to turn her anxiety into dislike.

Poor Rab, he’s got two mad cows in tow. I’m feeling that heady, heavy way and I’ve a spot coming through on my chin. Lauren and I are a bit uptight because there’s a new girl moving into the flat tomorrow. Her name’s Dianne and she seems okay, a master’s student in psychology. Just as long as she doesn’t try to get into our heads. We had half agreed to get home and tidy the place up for her arrival, but two drinks tell me it’s not going to happen. The union’s getting crowded but there’s not a lot of serious drinking going on, we’re all nursing our tipples. Roger behind the bar is smoking a fag in a leisurely manner. Two guys playing pool look at me, one nudges the other and he smiles over. Ten-a-penny, but I actively consider flirting a little with them, if only because I don’t like the way our conversation’s heading.

— I suppose if I was a lassie, I’d be a feminist n aw, Rab concedes, defusing one of Lauren’s shrill, wilting attacks. There are quite a few carpet-munchers in the union tonight, and their presence seems to bring out the worst in Lauren, encouraging her to be more right-on. The fact is that most of them won’t even be out when they return to their home towns for the break. The chest-beating goes on here, in this safe environment, this lab for the real world.

Lamenting the lack of atmosphere, we decide to move on to a Cowgate pub. It’s a mild evening outside, although when we head down into the dark bowels of the city, the sun’s almost completely blocked out and only the sliver of clear blue sky above testifies to the beauty of the day. We head into a bar which was considered
the
place, although that may have been a couple of weeks ago now. This is a mistake, as my lover, or my ex-lover, Colin Addison, MA (Hons), MPhil, PhD, is in.

Colin’s wearing a fleece, which makes him look like one of his students and I’m feeling quite powerful about that because it’s the kind of thing he never wore before he was with me. Of course, it looks a bit silly on him. We’ve just got our drinks and sat down when he comes over to me. — We need to talk, he says.

— I disagree, I tell him, looking at the stain of lipstick on my glass.

— We can’t leave it like this. I want an explanation. I deserve at least that.

I shake my head and screw up my face.
I deserve at least that
. What a tosser. This is both boring
and
mildly embarrassing, two states of emotion which should surely be distinct. — Go away, will you?

Colin’s all puffed up and he’s pointing the finger at me, jabbing it in the air to punctuate his outraged words. — You’ve got a lot of growing up to do, you fucking little bitch, if you think you can just tre . . .

— Look, you’d better just go, mate, Rab stands up. You can see Colin’s eyes flash in brief recognition, thinking that it’s just a student and he has the university senate and expulsion as a threat if Rab tries to get rough. Mind you, he should be more worried as to what the senate would do to
him
: screwing, or trying to screw, a student. It seems that, since I chucked him, Colin’s stuck on this theme of me needing to grow up. Whatever happened to that mature relationship we used to enjoy back in those halcyon days of, well, last week?

I’m about to let fly with this, when Lauren decides to intervene as well. Her face is pinched and harsh and I see a tougher side to her that she undermines slightly by saying: — We’re having a private drink, which causes me to giggle a little, drunkenly and stupidly, as I think of a private drink in a public house.

I don’t need their help though. When it comes to slapping Colin down, I’m in a league of my own — Look, I’m
really
heartily sick of you, Colin. I’m sick of your soft, alcoholic middle-aged dick. I’m sick of taking the blame cause you can’t get it up. I’m sick of your self-pity because life’s passed you by. I’ve sucked out all I can from you. Now I choose to discard the sapless shell that’s left. I’m in company at the moment, so do us all a favour and just fuck off out my face. Please?

— You fucking bitch . . . he says again, his face crimson like a stain as he looks round self-consciously.

— Yeeww fucking bitch . . . I imitate his whine. — Can you not do a bit better than that?

Rab starts to say something, but I speak over him, addressing Colin directly again. — You’re simply not elevating the standard of debate? Even at this table? Just go, please.

— Nikki . . . I . . . he begins placatingly, again looking to see if there are any of his students present, — . . . all I want to do is talk. If it’s over, fine. It’s just that I don’t see the point of leaving things like this.

— Don’t fucking bleat, replace me with someone else, someone naive enough to be impressed. If you can last through to next freshers’ week. I’m afraid I just don’t hate myself enough to go out with you.

— Cow, he snaps, then: — Fucking cunt! And he exits with haste. As the door slams heavily behind him, I’m flushing a bit for a second or two, but it soon passes and we’re all having a bit of laugh. The barmaid looks over at me and I shrug.

— You’re shameless, Nikki, Lauren gasps.

— You’re right, Lauren, I say looking straight at Rab, — having an affair with lecturers . . . it’s not fun. It’s the second one I’ve had. The first time was with an English literature professor when I was in London. He was a funny sort alright, what might be termed exceptionally weird.

— Oh, don’t . . . Lauren starts. She’s heard this before.

But no, I’m telling the Miles story and embarrasing the fuck out of her. — He was a real literary man. Like Bloom in
Ulysses
, he liked the tang of urine in the kidney. He used to buy fresh kidneys and have me pee into a little bowl. He would then put the kidneys in this bowl of my piss, leaving them to soak overnight in it before cooking them in the morning for his breakfast. He was a very civilised pervert. He used to take me shopping in boutiques. Loved to pick my clothes for me. Especially if there was a young, trendy, female assistant attending to me. He said he liked the idea of one young woman dressing another, but in a commercial environment. His erection was always visible and sometimes he used to come in his pants.

Lauren looks lovely when she’s angry, rising to a marvellous incandescence, which adds to her. Her face grows slightly ruddy, her eyes glaze. That’s probably why people like to see her angry, it’s the closest they get to seeing what she’d look like getting fucked.

Rab’s laughing, raising his eyebrows and Lauren’s face is furrowed. — Don’t you think Lauren’s beautiful, Rab? I ask him.

Lauren is not happy with that. Her face colours a little more and her eyes water slightly. — Fuck off, Nikki, stop messing aboot, she says. — You’re making a fool of yourself. Stop trying to embarrass me and embarrass Rab.

But Rab isn’t bothered at all, because he then freaks us both out a bit, Lauren evidently so, but me much more than I let on. Putting one arm round Lauren and one round me, he in turn kisses us gently on the side of our faces. I see Lauren stiffen and blush fully-fledged, and I feel a randy flush and an intrusive bracing all at once. — You’re both beautiful, he says with diplomacy, or is it feeling? Whatever it is, it’s unerring, showing me a coolness, depth and power of expression in him I simply hadn’t bargained for. Then it’s gone. As his arms slide away, he adds coolly: — See, if I didnae have the likes of youse here, I’d’ve jacked in this course. We’re talking about fuckin analysing films like bastard critics when we’ve never held a camera in our hands. Nor have any of the cunts that teach us. All we’re being taught is how to whinge at or arselick people who’ve got the bottle to get off their holes and do things. That’s all arts degrees do, turn out another clutch of parasitic drones.

I feel despondency setting in. Intentionally or not, this boy is a fucking tease. He gave us a glimpse of something beautiful, and now he’s sent us right back to studentland.

— If you say that, Lauren’s retorting testily, though relieved that Rab’s affectionate display has gone no further, — that means you agree with that whole Thatcherite paradigm of running down the arts and just making everything vocational. If you kill off the idea of knowledge for its own sake, then that just kills off any critical analysis of what’s happening in soci . . .

— Naw . . . naw . . . Rab protests, — what I mean is . . .

And so they go on, battling away like this, sparring and telling themselves that they don’t fundamentally disagree when there’s a chasm between their positions, or alternatively, arguing savagely over minor, pedantic differences in emphasis. In other words, they’re being total fucking students.

I hate those kind of arguments, especially between a man and woman, particularly when one of them has just upped the stakes in that way. I feel like screaming in their faces: STOP LOOKING FOR REASONS NOT TO FUCK EACH OTHER.

The bar starts to become that more acceptable soft-focus way after a few drinks, where things seem to slow down and people are happy enough just to be in each other’s company and it’s good to talk shit. And now I decide that I quite fancy Rab. It’s not been an instant thing, it’s been a kind of slow build-up. There’s something clean and Caledonian about him, noble and Celtic. An almost puritanical stoicism that you don’t really find with men his age in England, certainly not in Reading. But they do go on, those Scots: arguing, discussing and debating in a way that only the leisured and metropolitan media classes in England tend to do. — Fuck all these silly arguments, I tell them grandly. — I told you both a naughty secret earlier. Don’t you have any naughty secrets, Lauren?