I heard shouting and laughing and saw three boys—fourteen year olds? Fifteen year olds? They were arranged in order of height, swaggering to fill the track. One of them whispered, “That’s that cunt that jumps aboot wi that Jason radge.”
“Fuckin bawbag!”
I kept walking, pretending I couldn’t hear them.
“Here, cunto! Dickheid, we’re talkin tae you.” In the distance there were fireworks, shot up a mile or two away, bursting red, amber, and green. I turned, just as the middle-sized guy shoved me. Then I was stumbling backwards and he was following me, fists clenched, shouting “You mind Giorgio, eh? You mind Giorgio, eh? Ya fuckin radge cunt.” He was leaning into my face and shouting and I could feel his breath. And the world bleached white because when I lose my temper I get this—it’s not a red mist, it’s more like white dots that merge together until I can’t see, like a blizzard that gets faster and faster until—
The only thing I can tell you is that I would have expected more pain. At first I thought someone had punched me. Then my whole side was warm and I saw the blood running oily thick from my fist and the kids saw the blood and for a moment we all stood there and stared. Then they ran towards the road and I remember being on my haunches, jeans soaking up puddle water. Then I stood up, dizzy and sick, alone but conscious of how this looked—the blood, the fireworks, the whole composition of the scene. I wrapped my jumper around the wound and stumbled towards the street lights.
On the main road, the taxi drivers swerved towards me, saw the blood, and accelerated. I had to jump in front of a black cab, place my hands on the bonnet. “Please, I really need to get to hospital?”
At A&E, the receptionist took my details. A mop diluted my blood on the plastic floor. They slammed me on a trolley and crashed me through swinging doors. “Okay, he’s nineteen, lacerations on the upper arm.”
They wanted to know what had happened.
But how far back do you go? Should I start with the blowjob in the Railway Inn? With Deanne? With her butterfly tattoo, short skirts, and ripped stockings? Jerry the Fence’s daughter, Gordon’s cousin, and briefly, briefly, my girlfriend, Deanne was eighteen when eighteen was impossibly old. When I met her in the summer of ’96, Deanne was already old enough to work in a bar. She was old enough to know how to slam tequila with salt and lemon. She was old enough to have a stud in her tongue.
When Gordon introduced us, we were drinking illegally in his uncle’s pub. Joop perfume buzzed around Deanne like an entourage. She had big lips and acne and a brown face that shared a neat border with a white neck; she had big gold earrings, like coopers’ hoops, trussed in her platinum blonde hair.
When it was late and we were drunk, she followed me into the gents, shoved me into the cubicle, and grabbed the back of my head, crashing our teeth. She kissed a sloppy wet kiss with a slimy wet tongue—she kissed like a Labrador—and then she unbuckled my belt. Imagine it: I’ve spent the whole night trying to hide my erection, but just when I need it, my cock’s wrinkled and small. She takes it in her mouth (kneeling on the pissy wet tiles, heels pressed against the foot of the door), and pulls her skirt to her waist, but all I can think about is the hole in the door where a lock might have been, the toilet seat propped on the barred windowsill, the gang names carved into the ceiling, the charred bog roll holder, the bloody bogeys smeared on the partition. On the other side of the door, some guy’s piss is thundering into the tin urinal. He farts and exhales in satisfaction. I can’t do this!
She stops. “What’s wrong?” she whispers, holding my dick in her hand.
“Nothing.”
“Nothin?” She throws the flaccid penis at me in disgust.
“...”
“Are you queer or somethin?”
“No! Fuck no.”
“Do you no fancy me?”
“Oh aye, totally, you’re well tidy.”
“Can you no get stiffies?”
“Aye, course I can. It’s just…”
“What?”
“Well, I’m a wee bit nervous.”
“What the fuck have ye got tae be nervous aboot?”
“Just cause, cause… I’ve no really done it before?”
She laughs and laughs and laughs.
Or, if I start by describing the Southfield Fry, its own story will be left hanging. Why did Grandpa Salvatori leave Parma to sell deepfried food in a Scottish housing scheme? Whatever the reasons, the Southfield Fry was probably the best chip shop in the world. Even to open the door felt like you were releasing a genie: all the pent up steam would push past you and soar, liberated in the cold air.
After swimming, we’d warm our paws on the hot cabinet, and Gianfranco would yell “Dinnae put yer honds on the cabinet, ye mucky wee bastards.” We’d pull our pink wrinkled fingers from the glass and press them on the stainless steel and watch as our fuzzy prints faded then disappeared.
Gianfranco’s menu, a yellowing fat-speckled piece of card, was as limited as his customer service skills. You could have chips, chip butty, fish, sausage, haggis, or pie. In 1993, he introduced deepfried pizzas, but these were never added to the grease-stained menu, nor were the cigarettes and chocolate bars, or the big glass bottles of Irn Bru and ginger beer. These sat on shelves behind the counter, wearing their prices on star-shaped orange badges. In 1996, the only other decoration was a fixtures chart from the 1986 world cup, a picture of Rossi, and a framed photograph of a Parma side from the seventies. The Southfield Fry was only two and a half metres wide by six metres long. There were no seats and no “chip-forks”; you bought your food, you fucked off outside, and you got your hands greasy.
In short, but for the Salvatori family’s legendary frying skills, there would have been no reason to patronise the place; and if you frequented Salvatori’s in the mid-nineties, chances are you would have heard Gianfranco lament his son’s refusal to fry. “The boy can dae it, ken? He jist wilnae. And it’s no suttin you can teach any doss cunt; it’s in here,” he’d say, beating his chest. But though he was about as Italian as the food his father served, Giorgio Salvatori had reinvented himself as a Sicilian entrepreneur. He had the name, the dark eyes and Mediterranean features; it was nothing to affect a thick Italian-American accent. In 1996, he was nineteen and had started to traffic fake or stolen designer clothes. As an aspiring Mafioso, he had acquired a Vauxhall Astra, a fake Rolex, and one of the biggest gold chains in Dundule.
And then he met Deanne.
I won’t pretend that I wasn’t upset when she dumped me in favour of Giorgio, but I certainly wasn’t bitter. He was older and better looking than I was. He had a car and a fake Rolex. For her to have done anything else would have been a sign that she was crazy.
The day I chose to say goodbye was the warmest of the year. On Deanne’s street, an ice-cream van Popeye jingle drifted from two blocks away. A boy practised wheelies. On a small square of
