The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

by Irvine Welsh

  All America is enthralled by the so-called morality issue, which really is a degenerate’s wet dream. Reading between the lines, one chick wants to fuck her boyfriend, the other is giving it the religious shit. Those girls have divided the nation. I caught some of it with Miles last night, before we got fractious when he contracted pussy vertebrae. Guys like him think that the would-be beau of Annabel, one of the twins, is one sick but lucky little fuck. I remember those twin chicks at high school, always getting hit on by guys about threesomes, who then genuinely wondered why they were grossing the girls out. Would any of those morons want to fuck their brothers? It’s called, like, empathy, but even that basic emotion is barely part of Miles’s makeup. However, some squeaky-clean kid, Stephen Abbot, who makes Justin Bieber look like the bastard love child of Iggy Pop and Amy Winehouse, is pouting at the screen. — I’ve known the girls awhile and I really like Annabel. It ain’t like I’m some pervert. It’s just about going to a movie and grabbing a soda and maybe some candy. But some folks jus got dirty minds and there’s always some tryin to make it into somethin it ain’t.

  As Annabel nods, the other twin, Amy, cuts in and says, — That ain’t all it is. They kiss a lot and it’s gross!

  I tear myself away and watch Marge grunt her way through the last set. Then it’s time to load her stout carcass onto the treadmill. I flick it onto 3.5 mph, enough to force her to get with the project, then ramp up to 5 mph, solid trotting speed. — Go, Marge, I shout as she reluctantly lumbers into her stride.

  — Jesus H. Lester (5’11", 185 lbs) is looking to the TV and saying to his client, some nice thirtysomething, motivated college professor chick, who strides evenly on the next treadmill. — It’s tough on those girls, that’s for sure.

  What-fucking-ever. Let them debate the philosophical issues; I tweak the groaning Marge up to 6 mph, as I start pondering another number: 33. My birthday last week. The age that most real athletes seize up. That’s when you can tell it’s a real sport and not a game: are they finished at 34? They say that 35 is officially middle-aged. I cannot afford to buy into that. Part of me cheers when every gangbanger or lardass, like the sweating Marge, ends up on a slab before their time. Bullets or burgers, I don’t care how they bite, as it sends the stats for those of us who try to avoid either soaring to the heavens. Marge busts out with some pathetic protest as I push her up to 7 mph. — But—

  — You’re good, honey, you’re good, I coo.

  — Heugh . . . heugh . . . heugh . . .

  But I’m at an age when a woman is expected to have certain things: a husband, perhaps a child or two, a home, and plenty of debt. I got the last to the tune of $32,000 in student loans and credit cards. No mortgage, just a thousand bucks rent to make each month on a crappy one-bedroom apartment on the Beach. I look at the row of photographs of us all, the personal trainers: me, Lester, Mona, and Jon Pallota, who opened this place. Jon looks tan, fit, with his wavy hair and easy smile, and how I’ll always remember him, but that was before his accident. Life can change so quickly: if you don’t grab the fucker it’ll slip by you.

  — OH . . . OH . . . OH . . . Marge is petrified, her ass swinging like a semi-truck fishtailing back and forth across a three-lane highway.

  — Nearly there, honey, and FIVE . . . and FOUR . . . and THREE . . . and TWO . . . and ONE, and the machine slides back to 4 mph, for the cool-down, and Marge is gripping the handles now, splattering the belt with sperm-thick sweat. — Well done, girl!

  — Oh . . . oh my God . . .

  I slap the red halt button. — Right, climb off and pick up that kettlebell again and gimme a two-handed swing for twenty reps!

  Oh, there’s that you-just-ritually-slaughtered-my-firstborn expression.

  — Go on!

  As Marge sweatingly complies, I think about my other significant numbers. Height: 5’7". Weight: 112 lbs. Number of regular clients: 11. Number of clubs attached to: 2. Parents: 2 (divorced). Siblings: 1, female, playing the fucking saint out in India or Africa or some shithole. Yes, Jocelyn works for a nongovernmental organization, trying to save poor people of color in the Third World; possibly compensating for Dad’s somewhat unreconstructed stance on the issue of race.

  Marge is playing at this! — Bend down at the knees, get that butt low! KEEP THOSE SHOULDERS BACK! DO NOT LET THEM PASS YOUR KNEES! Better! That’s it! Good!

  When we were kids we moved from Southie to Weymouth. It was a nice big house with high ceilings and a huge yard out back, and Jocelyn and I had our own bedrooms. I always nurtured a sense that Mom and Dad weren’t happy though, and as I grew up, they only seemed to demonstrate togetherness through a shared rancor. He had his ongoing moans about the “Dorchester influx” into Weymouth (I got that he meant the blacks, whom he claimed he’d moved us down here to get away from, despite the fact that our last neighborhood was the whitest, most Irish in the city), while Mom would follow up with a trauma-filled nod of endorsement and a comment about “falling house prices.”

  — That’s it, honey, I encourage Marge, — get that butt lower! All the way down!

  But let’s go back to 33. It’s a dirty age for a single woman, and a filthy one for a personal trainer. It goes (mostly) unsaid, although the sneaky, squeaky Mona, eight years my junior, 5’9", blond, 36-24-36, and the next oldest female trainer at Bodysculpt, will occasionally, with cloying fake deference, describe me as the “most experienced.” Now there’s a bitch who takes acid in her saccharin.

  — Okay, Marge, gimme an around-the-body pass, left to right . . . good . . . good, try to keep it at the same height, I tell her. This sucks bigtime for a cellulite-caked fatty. — Better . . .

  Now that Jon no longer appears, the only person I really get along with here is Lester. I much prefer working out of Miami Mixed Martial Arts, a proper joint on 5th, run by Emilio, an ex-boxer. The clients are serious about their fitness and goals. Bodysculpt, a corporate glass and pine-floored yuppie chain, is more like a freakin daytime nightclub. They even have resident DJs, like the execrable Toby, thankfully absent today, playing “workout” music. It’s usually inspid ambient bullshit for lazy, Prozac-stunned, cocktail-guzzling beachballs who think they’re in some fucking spa. Most of the clients are women; the fat housewifes on my roster work uneasily alongside fashion-shoot, stick-thin models, and professionals who spend most of their time talking into their phones while doing low-speed elliptical shit. The few men in this gym all seem of the type who’d made fairly advanced plans to shoot up their high school, but chickened out late in the game. Decided studying and then practicing law was a better way of hurting their local community. And they were probably correct.

  Marge ends her set and I’m showing her how to do a deadlift on a heavier kettlebell. — As you come down, you brace the abdominals, I demonstrate, — and you’re squeezing in the glutes and pressing right through the centers of the heels.

  A gaping black hole and two shocked eyes stare back at me out of a sweating red furnace.

  — Go on!

  Marge gets to five and then she starts that white-flag bullshit. — Can I stop now . . .? the quitter begs.

  I draw in a deep breath, my hands on my hips. — Quitters quit! Doers do! Five more, Marge girl. C’mon, honey, you can do it!

  — I can’t . . .

  — Not acceptable! Gimme five more and we’ll call it quits, I demand, as she bends over, sucking in the air. — Find a way!

  The bitch looks at me as if I’ve just shanked her, but complies.

  — FOUR!

  Those fucking time-wasters don’t want change: they want affirmation. You need to shake them up. You have to slap their fat, stupid faces until they squeal.

  — THREE!

  To tell them you are gonna carve that suit of pudgy indolence from their bodies and make them human again. And yes, they are going to hate you for it.

  — TWO!

  And I don’t blow smoke up their gross asses; I lay it on the line. I tell them it is like being born again, but in slow m
otion, and where you remember every sweating, grunting, choking, bone-crushing, violent detail. But what you come out with is a body and a mind fit for the purpose of life in this world. Marge strains with the weight . . .

  — ONE! AAAANNND REST!

  The kettlebell weight spills out of her grip and smacks onto the rubber floor. She bends over, gasping for breath, hands on her knees. I don’t like people dropping weights, so I shout, — You’re rockin’ it, Marge! Gimme five, forcing her to reluctantly half rise to slap my palm, before fastening her hands back on her knees. She looks up, breathing heavily, like a wildebeest that’s escaped a lion’s clutches this time, but only at the expense of having a chunk of its ass ripped off. You wish, fat bitch! Yes, I’m detested now, but as the endorphin rush blitzes her she’ll start an all-day love affair with me. Then she’ll step out into the sun and see those tanned, lean South Beach bodies and think: I must work harder.

  Yes you fucking must.

  As our clients, Marge and Lester’s college prof, finish up and wander off to the showers, we take a break to wait for our next appointments. There is an office, but it’s primarily used for payroll, and managing the place, and we prefer to hang out by the juice bar, basking in the light spilling in through the slanted glass roof. The best trainers always want to be visible, even if you aren’t working out or training somebody.

  Lester is sipping a black coffee, while I’m on the green tea. I like Lester, now that he’s cooled it on the South Bronx ghetto tales which bored the living shit out of me. He had that New York arrogance when he first arrived, that tiresome assumption that only interesting, edgy, crazy stuff can happen there, but Florida has chilled him out. He’s also learned to use the ghetto talk selectively; great for the boxing and self-defense classes, less so for the one-on-ones with the wealthier white clients. Mona comes in and joins us, laying down her William and Kate mag and going to the espresso machine. Lester is animated as Sarah Palin comes on the TV talking about the need for tighter immigration control. — Tighter immigration control? Damn, she need tighter ass control, he snickers.

  — Enough sexism already, Les, but I can’t help but smile. I shouldn’t encourage him, but I do, as it offends Mona, who is back into her magazine. — Imagine living each day like it’s a dream, she gasps under her breath.

  — Palin, bitch’s ass has gone south, Lester explains. — Compare it with ’08. Like shit Tina Fey gonna take her off now. She wish. That slovenly butt is what really cost her the 2012 GOP nomination. How far hellbound them handfuls gonna be by ’16? Les’s eyes bulge. — No good ol’ boy who can’t raise it to jerk off to her is gonna bother to trek his sorry ass down the polling booth to put his cross by her name. Gimme her booty for six months, man, I’d have it as hard and as smooth as two beach pebbles!

  Lester always goes on about his list of fantasy clients, and what he could do for them. Bieber would be pumped with iron and steroids till he looked like Stallone. Roseanne Barr would be ruthlessly melted down till she resembled Lara Flynn Boyle. But his observations never impress Mona. — That is so misogynistic, Les, she whines, looking up from her magazine, her tone of voice indicating a disapproval that a face paralyzed from hairline to jaw by botulinum toxin simply cannot express. — I find her a really inspirational figure.

  — I’m gonna go split-ticket against the sisterhood here, I cut in, — cause Les is right. Palin’s down to lose two million votes through letting her ass flop like that. I figure that for chick politicos each pound gained represents a net loss of a hundred thousand votes. Ten pounds one way or the other puts more than a few swing states into play, I conclude, picking up an apple from the basket and taking a crunch out of it.

  — Damn straight, Les says, high-fiving me. — Warning bells for her and Hillary in ’16.

  — Well, I like what she says, Mona admits sulkily. — She’s one very impressive lady.

  — She does handle the media pressures well, I smile, looking up at the screen, watching Mona’s eyes follow. There I am again. Damn it, that was a fucking exceptional front kick!

  Then Lester’s face scrunches into a deeper smile. — Jon sure gonna be pleased with you becoming our next big media star. Takes him right off their radar. He might even show his face in here again!

  — I hope so, I agree. Jon is the owner of Bodysculpt, but since his much publicized accident has no clients and seldom comes in. A shame, as he was one of the best trainers around.

  I pull my iPhone out my bag. I have all of my clients’ records and programs on here. I key in another sixty-five cal for the small apple. I came of age as a number-cruncher the day I discovered Lifemap TM.

  More than a website, a phone application, a calorie tracker, an exercise, weight, and BMI monitor, but all of those things, Lifemap is an indespensible tool. It’s better than a recorder of all the food you eat, of everything you pack into that hole, or every exercise you undertake from walking to the local strip mall to running a marathon. It’s a way of life, and it’s the device which will save America and the world. Lifemap was invented by a software design company and endorsed by former NBA star Russell Coombes (three-time World Champion rings, 1136 career games for Chicago, San Antonio, and Atlanta. Famous for his number of steals per game, 1.97. Retired at thirty-two . . .)

  . . . shit.

  The main reason my thirty-three years are significant is that here, in fashion-conscious Miami Beach, they set the parameters for my client base. Nobody with any sense wants a personal trainer older than them. Nobody wants one who looks like shit, and other things being equal (which they seldom are, but never mind), the older you get the more like shit you look. Of course there are exceptions; the celebrity or “personality” trainer springs to mind: trendbuckers like the J-Micks, Harpers, Warners, and Parishes of this world. But it usually means that I get fat, unsavable fortysomethings who aspire to look like me, while Mona gets slightly out-of-shape thirtysomethings who want to look like her, and a disturbing roster of Belsen model bitches, taking time off from sitting with their fingers down their throats, waiting for that Condé Nast hotline to ring. But that is about to change!

  Not all of them are time-wasters, though. Ubercool gym bunny Annette Cushing strides in with a cheerful expression and a confident sweep for the juice bar. One of Mona’s clients, but she’s ignoring her, wrinkling her button nose and focusing her black saucer eyes on me. — Congratulations, Lucy! That was soooo brave. Whatever possessed you?

  — Didn’t have time to think, I explain, as I see Mona’s mouth hang open; my deeds have obviously passed the self-absorbed bitch by, — just react as I was trained to do.

  — That kick, the one the camera picked up . . .

  — What’s this? Mona asks. Lester points up to the TV; it’s back on the loop again. — OH MY GOD! Mona squeals in excitement, and scuttles under the mounted TV set to hear better.

  — A simple kickboxing move, it’s like a foot jab . . . I tell Annette, extending my leg to demonstrate.

  — You didn’t say anything . . . Mona bleats in half-assed accusation, then her chin drops as Annette asks me, — I was wondering if I could do some of that stuff with you?

  — Sure, I point at our rack of personal cards. — Give me a call. It’ll have to be at the Miami Mixed Martial Arts, though. I glance at Mona: hoe had to eat that one up like it was a one-thou-cal slice of Key lime pie!

  — Yes, I’m ready to get my hands dirty, Annette smiles, then walks off with an edgy Mona toward the pristine Pilates studio. That bitch paid eight grand (or rather some fucking sugar daddy of hers did) to get that crappy trainer accreditation and equipment.

  We can hear the phone’s shrill bell ripping out from the small office. Lester springs off the stool and goes to answer it. His eyes, then his head, pop back around the door. — Call for you, Lucy. They all want you now, superstar. And as I advance toward him, he raises his hand for another high five. — A hero and a TV celebrity! Man, that is good for business!

  — I know, right? I grin, slappin
g flesh and heading into the small, ugly room, lit only by one small window. Workstation desks are built in against the walls, on three sides. I pick up the phone, partially buried under some client worksheets on Lester’s desk. Another overhead TV silently shows my open-mouthed shock and the fat chick in pink’s chubby pointing finger. I pick up the phone. — Hello, Lucy Brennan speaking.

  — Hi . . . The voice is soft and hesitant. I feel I’ve heard it before. — I’m Lena, Lena Sorenson. I was the witness on the bridge last night. I shot it on my phone. Those guys . . . running in the road . . . and you disarmed the gunman? The police station?

  It’s her! The fat chick! The one who made me a star! — Right . . . okaaaay . . . I look at the screen, but we’re gone, displaced by the picture of a young girl, around ten. According to the bar on the bottom of the screen, she’s gone missing. Then the conjoined Arkansas twins reappear.

  — I got your number from the Internet, the fat chick gasps. — I Googled your name and the web page for the gym came up, with you listed as a personal trainer.

  Right, you creepy, stalking loser. — Greaaat . . . how are you?

  — I’m good . . . well, maybe not so good, she says in cagey, semiconfessional tones. — I’ve kinda put on a lot of weight recently, and I really want to get back in shape. Think you could maybe help me?

  — That’s what I do. When can you come in for a consultation?

  — I’m kinda in the neighborhood, well, North Miami Beach. Could I swing by sometime tomorrow morning?

  — Sure . . . and I’m looking up to a smaller screen, on the other wall of the office, where we’re back, on a different channel. This pink-clad turkey with a strap of reverberating flesh around her neck is gushingly describing me as a hero. — I’ll look forward to meeting you under calmer circumstances. How’s ten?

  — Ten’s good . . . she says without conviction.