Boyracers

by Alan Bissett

  Mrs Gibson shakes her head, folds her arms, looks at me as though I’m a new puppy and it’s Christmas Day and all but I can’t keep pissing on the kitchen floor like this. I know what she’s going to say. Instead of listening, I mentally evaluate Silence of the Lambs and Se7en (result: that head in the box wins every time). ‘I had this same trouble with your brother, Derek,’ she says, then pauses purely for dramatic effect. ‘He told me about your mother.’

  Mrs Gibson holds my gaze the way a lioness carries one of her cubs – tenderly, but with teeth around them.

  ‘Do you want to tell me why your work is continually late?’

  I sigh. Things escape in the sigh which I can’t chase and put back. On the blackboard is written a quotation from T.S. Eliot

  Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

  ‘Is this when ye tell me I’m university material again’

  ‘Yes.’

  I run my hand through my hair but it gets caught in all the gel. ‘What if I dinny wantay gotay university?’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that.’ She is looking at the floor, disappointed. ‘Can I ask why?’

  Yeah, she can ask, but what do I tell her? The Lads, and how they won’t be there? Connor Livingstone and how he probably will? Since the time that Derek would’ve had this chat with Mrs Gibson, Dad has gotten a lot worse.

  I drift to the window, lean my forehead against it so that a cold glass circle forms. Outside in the quad, Timberland fights Versace, leaving dirty marks, and Timberland laughs and Versace rages at the sight of herself and Tyra walks between these warring masses like a ghost. Ringtones all over the quad, a dreamy processional anthem for her, and her hand sweeps through her blonde hair

  I can’t live

  With or without you

  ‘Miss.’ My breath mists up the window, obscuring Tyra and the sweep of her world in a single desolate puff. The words will not come. I clench my fist and close my eyes but the pain does not go away. ‘Miss, I’m findin things … difficult …’

  as Belinda brakes across the gravel, then silence.

  Reedy crickets. The whole of Falkirk lit up in the valley below like something from a Spielberg movie. Dolby going off on some theory about the way the four of us Lads fit together, what we’re doing here on planet Earth, all that post-laugh stuff. He’s playing the Eagles, with their tequila sunrises and Hotel Californias and tourist-trap American shit that punters like us lap up. Central Scotland is glittering. A black sea filled with phosphorescent fish. The densest shoal is Grangemouth oil refinery. My Dad used to work in Grangemouth, when he could still find work, and I probably will too, trudging through every shift, twelve hours a day/seven days a week, but tonight it looks like a constellation, a shimmering barrier reef. The mood in the car glides like a ray, but the sky is as black and gaping as the mouth of a prehistoric shark, waiting to consume us all, Falkirk, Belinda, the Eagles. Me and Dolby are covering all the subjects we can’t when Frannie and Brian are here, since they usually hijack the conversation and drag it to Ibrox.

  ‘Is there anythin bigger than infinity?’

  ‘Are mobile phones part of a government conspiracy?’

  ‘Are the aliens in Invasion of the Body Snatchers really so evil?’

  ‘I read somewhaur, right,’ I say, ‘that the aliens are supposed tay represent the Communards.’

  ‘The communists,’ Dolby corrects me.

  He’s a closet philosopher. And very good at physics. A clever guy. He’s the only person I know who reads page two of the Daily Record, the bit with all the politics on it. He’ll say things that make the other two snigger, glance at each other, go back to discussing the Old Firm semi-final (so long as Celtic hadn’t won it) but sometimes he stops me in my tracks, translating Discovery Channel documentaries into my language or crystallising a moment with the philosophical words of Jean Luc Picard from the Starship Enterprise. Frannie told me once that he thought Dolby could’ve gone to university after school, so I decide to ask him about this now.

  Dolby shrugs, looks out the window, fiddles absently with the graphic equaliser of his stereo for the start of Hotel California.

  But Frannie told me the answer. Dolby dogged school whenever Brian dogged it, forgot his homework whenever Brian forgot his.

  Eventually Dolby mutters, ‘Ye dinnay dump yer mates.’

  End of discussion. He opens another can of diet Irn-Bru and chugs sugar-free girders. ‘Jesus,’ he gasps, ‘I wish the Eagles wid go back on tour.’ This is the sound of Dolby handing in his registration for the University of Life. ‘Anywey,’ he intones, ‘better this than studyin.’ Slurps. Stares at the black maw of the sky.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Only tossers and posh fuckers at university.’

  ‘Yup.’

  Frannie joined Tesco’s straight from school, became cock-of-the-walk in stock control. Brian worked his way up behind the bar at Smith’s, between filling in forms for his dream emigration to the States. Dolby took the job in Whirlpools Direct, installing jacuzzis in homes he’ll never get close to owning.

  Now he has to know about shower heads and delivery dates.

  Not physics.

  Or Star Trek.

  ‘But yer only 19,’ I point out, ‘ye can still go.’

  He just looks at me, as if I’m offering him cash to betray a close family member.

  ‘Ye dinnay. Dump. Yer mates.’

  I don’t like the way he says ‘mates’, as though it’s an accusation, so I divert him back to the old debate about the Irn-Bru can falling in a moving car and he patiently takes me through it again and his Ghost Rider t-shirt glows on his chest. ‘The Irn-Bru is in the car,’ he explains, juxtaposing fizzy juice with distance over time or something, ‘and if the car is daein sixty-six miles per hour, that means the Irn-Bru must be daein sixty-six miles per hour. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed,’ I mumble, scrutinising the outside of the can. I am going to understand the mystery of its vertical descent. I am going to know how an object can drop in the front seat of a moving car and not land in the back seat, but like the crap bit in every episode of Friends, soon I’m saying, ‘Youse three are all I’ve got, man.’ Actually, I try to say this, but I can’t. These things dare not speak their name in Scotland. Dolby talks rationally about Einstein and later also how juvenile the whole Ibiza thing is, but I can see something in him too, trying to wrench its way out, like an alien in a sci-fi movie taking over the host. He eyeballs the landscape in front of us, pretty and glittering tonight but which tomorrow will look just like Falkirk again, and the Irn-Bru can still sits there, still unexplained, still haunting me with its physics and my place in the grand scheme of the Falkirk boyracer circuit.

  ‘See,’ Dolby tries to explain, ‘it’s like each ay us can be seen, right, in the sortay movies we like.’

  ‘How?’

  Think aboot whit happens when we hire a film.’

  ‘Fuck aye.’ There was one night when Frannie and Brian had a Mexican stand-off about whether or not we should rent Armageddon or There’s Something About Mary. Neither of them would budge. ‘Frannie always wants a comedy,’ I grumble, ‘and Brian always wants an action film.’

  ‘They wantay see themselves reflected in the world.’

  ‘But you like Sci-Fi,’ I point out, ‘does that no make you a bittay a geek?’

  ‘A dreamer,’ he corrects me, ‘aw in the terminology.’

  ‘So if ma favourite film is Jaws whit does that make me?’

  ‘A geek. But the point is …’

  and though he tells me what the point is, I can’t quite grasp it. It’s something to do with how a good video-shop should have comedy, action, fantasy and Jaws, and that’s why we work, and he elaborates this whole Stephen-Hawking-style formula of group dynamics and opposing forces and the structure of friendships, yet still based, I think, on the video-shop analogy, and though I try to follow it, it just seems to come down to the fact that we’re good as a foursome. We’re going places with Going Pl
aces. Palm Springs circa 2010: the four Lads in Bermuda shorts, and girls in hula-skirts bringing phone calls from James Cameron, apologising for not doing the Spider-Man film. So while Frannie sees himself unfolding in the strike-rate of a classic Rangers forward, Brian in the cigar and grimace of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Dolby, watching the skies, I see myself in them.

  and all of those roads, all of those futures, and this one useless wafer-thin present which we zip through blasting tunes uncool to the Connor Livingstones of this world, as we make the nights ours, every day wiping tables, stacking shelves, fitting whirlpools, studying for Highers, worthwhile for the few desperate moments of escape at high-speed, the faster, the further away we drive, the more that parents, shite jobs, self-loathing, uneven Oasis albums recede in the rear-view, meaning that we can do anything, go anywhere, see anyone, be anyone in this pathetic little Scotland-or-something country. Like characters in a plotless movie, we race through night after night, story after story, film quote after film quote, eternity stretching before us as an open road, and this is the reason I gave Mrs Gibson for why my essays are late: that you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

  ‘Whit dae ye suppose that song’s about?’ Dolby asks, finishing his Irn-Bru and shifting Belinda into gear.

  ‘A hotel,’ I shrug, ‘in California?’

  ‘Dick.’

  We drive home. Back to Falkirk. Where Frannie and Brian are watching the Scotland game in Smith’s, their hands flailing at a near-miss, Elvis Presley singing

  Oh I wish I was

  in a land of cotton

  and everyone in a huddle, joining in, delerious at a Scotland win, a swelling shout, and it’s a great feeling and I spill my Coke over Brian’s new shirt and he doesn’t even care

  But still. It was the least exciting of all the roads we could’ve taken that night.

  and Camelon, as anyone will tell you, is the Bosnia of Falkirk. Streets like grey labour. Chewing-gum accents and Danielles with their boyfriends and their babies. The thousand-yard stares. Camelon’s bowling-alley, though, is the Narnia of Falkirk. Lights. Magic. Sound. Vision. U2 blasting out from all sides and we four walk onstage – Bono, Edge, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen Jnr – women screaming and the stadium lights coming up and a huge swell of sound charging from us and

  It’s a beautiful day!

  Dolby pays for the lanes. We scatter over to the pool-hall like pool balls, Brian trying to interrupt Frannie trying to interrupt him. ‘Listen, boys,’ he warns, ‘I’m no wantin nay carry-on the night. Ho. Yese listenin? We’ll play a couple ay games ay pool, then I’ll thrash Frannie on the lanes, then we’ll go hame. That’s it.’ When there’s money involved, which there is this evening, Brian takes things seriously seriously. ‘Money won,’ he reminds us, going all Paul Newman on our asses, ‘is twice as sweet as money earned.’ He and Frannie have a bet on tonight’s bowling square-off. Brian reckons he’s Champions League, even though the last time they played, Frannie beat him five games to three, then spent the rest of the evening singing Elton John songs at him for no other reason than the fact that Brian hates Elton John. The Mann was pissed then, of course, which is why he was beaten. Of course. ‘Nay boozin this time,’ he demands, the spirit of Elton creeping up on him, camply tinkling piano keys, ‘nay chattin up birds, and nay,’ he insists, ‘nay fuckin film quotes.’

  The second Layla comes on the pool-room jukebox, Dolby and Frannie start pinching each other’s cheeks and hugging like mobsters

  We was wiseguys, goodfellas, like you’d say to someone

  You’ll like this guy, he’s one of us, he’s a good fella.

  Brian slamming three balls in quick succession, aware of the attention we’re drawing from Camelon neds. He warns Frannie and Dolby to quit their Joe Pesci ‘funny how’ routine, nodding to the glaring baseball-caps across the hall. ‘Dose fucks?’ Frannie says. ‘Fuget about it. Whatsa matta witchoo? Wodda fucksda matta witchoo?’

  ‘Quit it,’ Brian mutters darkly, perhaps fearing another night in the back seat of Belinda, ground down by Frannie’s a capella Rocket Man, ‘ye playing this game or no?’

  ‘Mudda fucka.’ Frannie lines up his shot, swear words tripping from his tongue. Frannie should really be an adjective

  like you’d say to someone

  You’ll like this guy, he’s one of us, he’s a frannie fella

  We should all be adjectives. Film critics should be able to describe the X-Men movie by musing, ‘Yes, well it’s very dolby isn’t it?’ Or Dougie Donnelly comment on the Old Firm game, ‘It was a brian mann match for most of the first half.’ Or U2 describe their new album as, ‘really, the alvinest thing we’ve ever done.’

  Every living-room in every household in the land will know exactly what they mean.

  ‘Who da fuck is dis prick?’

  ‘Very good, Frannie.’ (growl)

  ‘I outta have ya whacked.’

  ‘Gie it a rest.’

  Brian uncages himself on a line of balls – they ricochet with business – and Frannie, here at his franniest, leans to the girl sitting at the milkshake counter. Ned-bird hair and tracksuit and trainers. ‘Bet ye dinnay hear patter like oors very often,’ he smooths.

  ‘Naw,’ she agrees, ‘there’s no that many dickheids come in here.’

  Frannie laughs, and leaves her well alone, and we move over to the lanes: four adjectives with milkshakes. Is this because Brian specified no film quotes? Rangers-tight they may be, but Frannie can still wind Brian up like no-one else, like every time Brian’s about to release the ball, Frannie goes, ‘Muddafuckin asshole jerk-off!’ making it spin towards the gutter. Brian can’t retaliate when Frannie steps up cos Brian doesn’t do impressions.

  The girl who called Frannie a dickheid keeps drifting back and forth, a phantom in Fila gear, glancing flirtatiously. She’s attractive in a skanky sort of way.

  But, then again, here’s me in a Meat Loaf t-shirt.

  Dolby rests his chin in his hand, tracking her with the precision of a rifle ranger.

  ‘Think she’s interested?’ I ask hopefully.

  ‘Hm,’ he muses, narrowing his eyes.

  ‘I’m bustin your balls!’ Frannie yells, as Brian veers off again into the gutter. Might as well be the next galaxy, considering how far he is from beating the Franman now, shown by his bullish neck filling with crimson, his fingers flexing, as Frannie coaxes more pins to the floor then grins.

  I feel damn fine tonight. Watching Frannie and Brian joust is like watching Sammy Davis Jnr beat Lennox Lewis, and I’ve barely thought about the shit going on at home with Dad, or Connor, or Tyra, Derek, or F(uck) Scott Fitzgerald, or my late essays, or my Higher results, or my future disappearing before me. I am actually a long way from caring about these things now. Got my best mates, U2, Belinda parked outside and a road leading to somewhere/anywhere/everywhere. Through a coruscation of neon tubes and MTV adverts (how many kids in Scotland actually snowboard?), the sound of bowling-balls hitting wood, teenage squealing, techno techno techno techno, and Frannie doing DeNiroPacinoBrando, I slink to the toilet. On the way back, I realise I am walking behind the Fila girl. I would very much like to feel a girl.

  Pick a part that’s new.

  ‘Scuse me,’ I cough, tapping her shoulder. She turns and frowns and is meaner-looking than I first thought, sort of like a female vampire in a tracksuit.

  ‘Whit,’ she says, the bottom note on a piano being struck.

  ‘See ma mate Dolby over there?’ Think of something cool, funny, Hollywood. ‘He fancies you.’

  She looks over. With all the interest of a plate of cold spaghetti watching a lecture, she says, ‘The dickheid?’

  ‘Eh naw, that’s Frannie.’

  She spies Brian and her face lights up. ‘That good-lookin yin?’

  ‘Naw, no him either.’ Cold spaghetti again. ‘The one sittin doon.’

  ‘Wi the Spider-Man t-shirt?’

  ‘Aye, a really cool yin tay.’

  She
extracts a long piece of gum from her mouth and snaps at it like the crap shark in Jaws: The Revenge. ‘Listen, I’m no meanin tay be cheeky or nothin. But wannay yese is wearin a Spider-Man t-shirt, wannay yese is a dickheid, and wannay yese is eh you.’

  I look at her. I shrug. ‘So ye comin over or no?’

  Brian snorts at my return, and I get the impression his game hasn’t improved. Frannie is performing graceful pirhouettes that culminate in a delicate smash of pins. ‘That wis an awfy long pish for somebody wi such a wee dick.’

  I grin smugness back at him. ‘I, mister Brian Mann, have been chattin up a lassie.’ I say the word as though it will reveal a cave worth’s of treasure to them but

  ‘Whit’s the score?’ Dolby says.

  ‘Five one,’ Brian mutters, sending his ball on another lost cause.

  ‘Heddy haw,’ Frannie goes, punching the air.

  ‘Did naybody hear me?’ I squeak.

  There is a tap on my shoulder and I turn. Facing me is a mug I recognise from the Falkirk Herald ‘Round the Courts’ section. His names is Steven Cotter – Cottsy to his enemies, and there are many – and he has just tapped my shoulder. His head resembles a bowling-ball. He looks like a sports shop doomed to walk the earth, brand names plastering his body like tattoos. ‘Ken wha am ur?’

  I nod as though he has a gun at my head.

  ‘Well, see that lassie ower there?’

  I look over the rise of his simian shoulder to the track-suited girl, glaring malevolently, having alerted the rest of the apemen. This is starting to remind me of the Hallglen ritual which begins, Did you swear at ma laddie?

  ‘Aye.’

  Cottsy unfolds his spherical biceps and Olympic committees everywhere feel a tremor in the force. ‘That’s ma burd.’