by Alan Bissett
The queue shuffles up.
A gaggle of girls roams past in pinks and lilacs and my stomach starts flopping like a fish on a deck.
‘Y’awright there, Alvin?’ Frannie frowns. ‘Look a wee bit pale.’
‘I’m fine,’ I swallow, ‘too much Irn-Bru.’
‘Too much Irn-Bru,’ a Tesco boy splutters, ‘aw, the wee man.’
I imagine that, inside, Daft Punk segues into Radiohead and Thom Yorke starts wailing about jumping in the river with black-eyed angels. The floor empties in protest, until the DJ panics and sticks on some dance choon that goes ‘Ooa-ooa Ooa-ooa’ and the place goes barmy. But for a brief moment there …
‘Ye’ve never seen the film Gregory’s Girl?’ Dolby is choked, crimson.
One of the girls pats the others hand and says, ‘Isn’t he funny?’
‘Have ye seen Alien?’
‘Naw.’
‘Are ye alive?’
Why are they still laughing? I’m wondering where the hell I’m going wrong with lassies. All along the queue people are tapping at phones, reading texts, grinning, tapping, reading, squawking, raucous, then a random, hip-hop snatch of thoughts:
How did the Cruiser feel about the world seeing Nicole Kidman’s tits in Eyes Wide Shut?
Will the government shut down Falkirk as a non-profit-making industry?
What if the Cruiser and Nicole, right, were just walking down the street, right, and I just walked up to them and asked, ‘Can I see your tits?’ Would they let me?
Date of birth. Date of birth.
‘So you’ve read Stephen King?’ Dolby’s urging. ‘Clive Barker? Enid fuckin Blyton?’
We are four people away from the head of the queue now. Three. Three steps to heaven. I can feel the music trembling in the base of my teeth. The Lads. Look cool. As gods.
Would the Cruiser and Nicole let me, do you think? See Nicole’s tits? But, like, what difference does it make just cos she’s in a film? What difference does it make? These questions keep me awake at night. Phones ringing semi-tone chart hits, digital love arriving up and down the queue, the Lads’ patter, girls, and I sometimes wonder if it’s really truly genuinely alright for someone of my generation to not take drugs. I mean, will it stop me from getting a job in the future?
The bouncer, eyes like flints and his smile a tiny razor-cut, turns away two hopefuls (older than me) with a malevolent, ‘Backtay the nursery, boys.’
Has anybody noticed I’m wearing a girls’ deodorant? (Dove)
Does Dad really believe that Mum’s coming back?
Is Dolby stuck at Whirlpool’s Direct forever?
Could Spider-Man kick Batman’s ass, since Batman has no superpowers, just a really cool outfit?
Why doesn’t Tyra Mackenzie fancy me, for fucksakes.
‘There must be a law against it.’ Brian is discussing Wonderbras with the Tesco’s boys.
‘False advertisin,’ says Frannie.
Dolby will not give up on his crusade to educate these schoolies. ‘Whit about Hellraiser?’ he demands.
‘The Old Firm should join the English Premiership,’ says Brian, and everyone mutters, agreeing. ‘Scotland’s deid for Rangers.’
The Chemical Brothers kick into life and Rosie’s howls and stomps its bright colours and I look on, a child at Santa’s grotto.
Hey girl
Hey boy
Superstar DJs
Here we go!
‘You’re deid, ya fat fuckin bastard!’ the spurned ravers are yelping at the bouncers as they retreat, the Gap stark and black on their chests, Newmarket Street cold and loveless and eerie as a graveyard. The further away they get, the more they look like vampires. The bouncer raises a nasty smile and his middle finger.
Hey girl
Hey boy
Superstar DJs
‘How can ye have seen Hellraiser 4 and no the first one?’
Does my breath smell of Wrigleys?
Do I look like a girl?
Why doesn’t Tyra Mackenzie fancy me!
Do I put too much gel in my hair?
I do, don’t I?
I nervously run lines from Top Gun in my head, but the only
one I can fully remember is
you screw this up, Maverick and you’ll be running a cargo
plane fulla rubber dog-shit
outta Hong Kong
the two girls breeze past the bouncers with a professional tinkle of their fingers. ‘Evenin, ladies.’ Their perfume dances happily on the air and
Here we go!
the place starts jumping. ‘Movin oot tay California next this year, boys,’ Brian informs us, his determination made in Scotland, from girders. ‘Wait and see.’
It is my hair gel, isn’t it? What if Tyra’s in there and my hair’s stiff as an Oriental sculpture, my palms slick with Asda-brand gel? What then? What if I don’t even get in? Will the Lads stop letting me hang about with them?
this is what I call a target-rich environment
boasts the Cruiser in my head, in his pristine white navy uniform, and I’ve just remembered that the Cruiser and Nicole have actually split up, and Dolby (shit!) strolls past the bouncer (what’s my date of birth!) who nods his head politely, almost reverentially, then Frannie, then Brian, then (what’s my date of birth!)
The bouncer stops me. His hand on my chest.
the world
slows
down
‘Whit are you, son?’
His words sound machine-distorted, like a bomb threat, like Arnie in the Terminator. Vhat. Age. Uh. Yoo.
The eyes of the people in the queue. They’re all itching to enter once this schoolie gets his Poundstretcher-clad arse out the way. Brian lingers, holding open the door, and beyond it are giggling, tipsily dancing beautiful ones. A guy with a roving mic and a lion’s mane of blonde dreadlocks is purring at glittering party dresses. The barman throws drinks like the Cruiser in Cocktail. The Cruiser and Nicole have split up. All of this moves across me in waves, in slow, swimming-pool motion.
‘18,’ I say in a deep voice, then add, ‘19 next month.’
‘Date ay birth?’
your ego’s writing cheques your body can’t cash
I tell him confidently.
The bouncer frowns an actual frown, with the mouth turned down at the corners. His skin is pock-marked, rough, and I imagine him stubbing out his own fags on it. A badge on his bomber jacket names him the Outlaw.
‘So you’re 16?’ he says.
‘Eh?’
He fiddles with something between his teeth, with all the bored air of a lion after a meal, and I don’t believe it: I’ve given him my real date of birth. ‘That date ay birth makes you 16 years old, son.’
I try to laugh, but it comes out as more of a choke. ‘But of course I’m no 16.’
The Outlaw raises his tabloid-sized hand, ushers in two pubescent girls. They wink at him. ‘Mibbe no,’ he mutters, ‘but ye’re definitely no 18.’
Brian hears this. Nods. I watch him join Frannie and Dolby at the bar, probably mouthing, ‘The runt lost it.’ So I turn from the throng, braving taxis that vomit more Ben Sherman out into the street. I decide not to bother going to the pictures on my own, laughing on my own, hiding behind a box of popcorn on my own. I head for home. The music dies behind me like a whale sinking beneath the sea.
in the High Street: WH Smith, Burtons, Virgin, Boots, the Body Shop. All empty, stark and flat. Their products stand regimented as if preparing an invasion. A drunk wearing a Scotland top asks me for/demands a pound for the phone, which I give him. He puts it in his pocket and walks right past the phone booth. I stand and watch the numeral X become trapped by the hand of the steeple clock.
crashed and burned, huh Mav?
when I get in, Dad is sleeping on the couch, and Davina McCall is streetmating a rugby player with a poet in Colchester. I switch it off, knowing they won’t match (who does?) then throw a cover over Dad and go to bed to read some of Stephen King’s P
et Semetary, the bit where the wee boy gets killed by the truck, then fall asleep with Dark Side of the Moon playing and have a lush dream about Tyra Mackenzie and me at a Pink Floyd concert in Paris and during Great Gig in the Sky she moans, reaches over, whispers, ‘Alvin,’ then gently touches my lips with her lips and I
slip un
der
to
when Mum was there. I’m very small, and I’m looking at a big Phillips atlas on the kitchen table. Sunlight tearing at the curtains. My straw in a glass of Orangina. Byker Grove is on the telly. Derek coming in, going out. Home. Mum roaming the kitchen, taking things out of cupboards, putting them back in again. The scent of her perfume. The crinkles in the back of her blouse. The smeck sound she and Dad make as they kiss. But I can’t see her eyes. I want to see her eyes. I follow Dad’s finger on the atlas, marvelling more at the hairs on his wrist than countries so far away they might as well be Narnia. That’s America, son. Ken whaur Mickey Mouse comes fay? And that’s Russia, whaur they wear the big overcoats.
Ra-ra Rasputin?
Eh, aye son. And see – that’s Spain. Mind where yer pal went for his holiday?
Spain, aye. Says there’s swimmin-pools outside and everythin.
Aye well, we cannay afford it. Anywey. See this magic wee place here? He taps a tiny purple head, jutting awkwardly at the top of Britain. That’s Scotland. That’s whaur ye live.
I look at it. I have to lean in and squint in order to look at it.
That?
That is the finest country in the world, ma boy.
There is hardly room to even fit the word Scotland on it. The letters spill out into the North Sea, swimming desperately towards the Netherlands.
That?
And right in the middle … Dad makes a dot with his pencil on the purple head … that’s Falkirk.
I focus on the dot, try to relate it to the vastness of EUROPE.
That’s the town whaur ye live. And see if ye look right intay the centre ay that dot.
He brings out a magnifying glass, so that, if I hurt my eyes enough, I can make out the tiny ridges of pencil mark on paper. That’s whaur we are the now. Me and you and Derek and yer Mum.
Then he rubs the dot out.
I wake up every Sunday to the Sex Pistols. Dad in his dressing-gown, straining his vocal chords and slashing an invisible guitar. Today it’s Pretty Vacant. I drag myself from bed, a prehistoric thing rising from the sludge. Patch of sunlight outside Derek’s old room. Pick up toothbrush. White slugs of paste on the tap. Bleary eyelashes. Shower water revolving into the plughole like in that scene from Psycho and
We’re so pretty, oh so pretty
We’re va-cant!
bare feet making the floorboards groan. Downstairs, Dad is arranging toast on chipped plates. He nods, gives a perfunctory ‘morning’ as I drip through the back pages of the Sunday Mail, find a report on the lazy Rangers defeat to Hibs, see Frannie zapping barcodes on his next shift, muttering about it. I finger some toast into my mouth and offer Dad the paper, which he refuses.
‘Did I ever tell ye?’ His eyes alight on the sparrows on the fence outside, and I know what’s coming. ‘That me and yer Mum saw Elvis Costello live?’
‘Elvis Costello? When?’ I have to keep sounding surprised when he mentions this.
‘1979?’ he muses. ‘1980? It was at the Maniqui.’
I dump a carton of orange juice on the breakfast bar – installed during Mum’s formica phase, never removed. A nail-varnish smudge still decorates one end, a quick image of Mum spilling it, her mouth an O of horror, the Baywatch theme playing in the background.
‘Elvis Costello at the Maniqui,’ I marvel woodenly.
‘Well, it was called Oil Can Harry’s back then. Docksy’s before that. But it usedtay attract a lottay big name acts. Costello, the Jam, the Buzzcocks. Nay artists that stature playin Fawkurt now.’
‘Nope.’ I start pulling on my Simpsons socks. ‘Was he, uh, any gid?’
‘Aw aye,’ Dad begins, nodding like a toy dog in the back of a car on a long, long trip, ‘really gid.’
‘Elvis Costello in the Maniqui,’ I say again, as Dad’s mind and mine dance druggedly around each other. When I cross to the fridge there is a pause which seems as fraught with danger as an Arctic journey. ‘The Jam as well?’
‘The Jam as well.’
‘And the Buzzcocks?’
‘And the Buzzcocks.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Just goes tay show.’
‘Yup.’
Dad takes a pensive sip, transporting himself to the fag-end of the seventies, where he is gayly trashing some phone-boxes. I’m waiting to see if there’s more of the Maniqui story to escape those coffee-tinged lips. Queueing for tickets in the rain? An interrupted kiss on Mum’s doorstep? But no, he is treading towards the stereo and the off-button.
We’re so pretty, oh so pretty
We’re vac
The portable kitchen TV. Ghosts flicker on its screen, slide, merge into images of a cricket match, a great white shark, an awards ceremony, Lorraine Kelly. ‘Brad Pitt!’ she says, gleeful as a kid, then probably ‘table tennis banana prince william huddersfiel,’ for all I care.
I Love My Coffee, Dad’s mug declares, like a placard raised at some pro-caffeine rally.
‘See you fell asleep on the couch,’ I mention, for conversation’s sake mainly, but Dad quickly tries to justify it.
‘Aye,’ he coughs, ‘I was watchin a film.’
‘Aw aye. Which wan?’
Dad takes a gulp of coffee, his eyes on Lorraine Kelly. ‘Clash of the Titans,’ he says.
‘Good movie,’ I say. ‘Good special effects for its day.’ Their wedding video is perhaps half an inch further out than the rest in the cabinet. ‘I like the bit with the army ay skeletons.’
‘That’s Jason and the Argonauts,’ he says.
I muse about the kitchen for a bit. The tap is working again. Dad is not going to the job centre today. Or the doctor’s. I move the lid of the breadbin up then down, noticing tiny beige crumbs that have accumulated over months. Lorraine Kelly is saying
and later we’ll be making a picture of Ronan Keating from Boyzone using needlecraft.
Dad calls from the living room, ‘So whit did you get uptay last night?’
My reflection shrugs in the mirror. ‘Stayed in at Brian’s,’ I call back, with a composure I should’ve reserved for the Rosie’s queue, ‘Watched Saving Private Ryan. Played the Playstation.’
‘You no too auld for Playstations?’
‘Are you no too auld for the Sex Pistols?’
Dad comes into the kitchen, a wry little snort shuffling out from him.
monday. Schoolday. Graffiti on the bus shelter: FRANNIE + GREEDO JABBA JAR JAR BINKS. Funnily enough, I end up sitting on the bus next to a girl who looks like Carrie Fisher. Skin white as a china doll’s. Hands folded neatly on her lap. I am about to try and talk to her when she leaps to her feet and shouts, ‘Davie, ya fuckin knob ye,’ and throws a Coke can down the bus.
The Blade Runner soundtrack in my headphones drowns out the hordes. By the time I fish out the postcard which arrived from Derek this morning I’m calm as Buddha. On the front is a red London bus. In one of the windows, Derek has drawn a stick-Alvin, carrying a book of Horror Stories. The bus runs over another stick-figure, spurting ink blood. Stick-Me is smiling merrily at this gruesome death. Derek thinks I’m warped cos I read Stephen King and listen to Dark Side of the Moon. A lot.
Dear Floyd-loving fuck
All is well in the big city. London has finally been broken.
Hoping to grace Hash-Glen sometime soon, but until then give Dad my best and Mrs Gibson reeeespect.
Big D.
know that moment in films? When the boat’s bobbing to a shore decked in metal, or the police helicopter descends to the roof of the jungle, or the police van draws up outside the drugs bust. The faces of the men. Mouths doing chewing. Bodies locked on rifles. Eyes steel, as
little things itch in the skin then
GO GO GO
the bay door opens and they stream out into bombs and bullets and shouts and stabs and glory and death and
Anyway. See when our school bus rolls up at the gates? That’s what it’s like.
School’s a war. All these kids from all these different homes all stuffed into uniform, a pen in their hand and a stencil set in their bag, and told to go fight the good fight. The enemy: each other. A common goal: survival. Some are shot on the first day, never to rise again. Some go in and become heroes, immortal in gold leaf on mahogany in the foyer. Dux medal. Their names we shall remember.
Look from a window onto the quadrangle, with your lesson plans and your union protection and tell me it’s not a war. We arrive in first year, our eyes shining like gems, our new blazers coming down past our arms so we can ‘grow into them’, but by Christmas we’re just doing what we can to stay alive, desperate to think of something funny to say in front of the in-crowd and
She’s employed where the sun don’t set
growling at the smallest in the corridor, lest we be growled at ourselves, nipping out during double French to either smoke hash or buy clothes, depending on which part of Falkirk we’re from, and the whole time our whole lives are dependent on every single thing we do in class, every book we (don’t) read, every exam we can(’t) be arsed to turn up to, and there’s politicians on the telly and they’re promising us that soon every single Scot is going to have internet access in their homes. In my second year, a bottle fight erupted in the quad. Plastic bottles, right enough, but hurled with enough force to break the spectacles of any dozy sod caught beneath it. Camelon lined up one side, Hallglen lined up the other. A no man’s land in between where
