Boyracers (4 page)

Brian is on a shift at Smith’s. Our chances of finding any lassies are limited without him. The Franster is trying far too hard to compensate for the Mann’s absence, hoping to prove to disinterested Bainsford scrubbers that tonight he’s a star, and sure enough he soon gives up and starts singing, for no reason, Sweet Caroline to every girl he sees, at the top of his voice, til one of them – perhaps called Caroline – waves, making Frannie yell, ‘Heddy haw!’ and Dolby beam with shame and laugh and screech into the tarmac as the lights turn

Red.

Men stumbling from the Big Bar. The most imaginative pub name in Scotland. It has a big bar. The old guys croak and groan, crossing in front of us. A line of brown tweed drapes our vision for a while. The three of us watch and are appalled. There was one night when Dolby, Brian and Frannie found all their dads in Smiths at the same time. They were sitting there at the bar, by chance cos they don’t really know each other that well, anyway, the Lads joined them, and they discussed the football, music, the telly, all the shite we talk, except sitting there before us like that, they told me later, they had a vision of their future. The horror of it. They walked out of the pub as though they’d just been given six weeks to live by the doctor. I bet Falkirk never seemed so dead and wasted and dustbin lid as it did that day.

Derek in London. The Vegas-like vista from his window. The
beautiful
, intelligent Cosmo models in every lift, in every restaurant, while We. Are parked. Outside the Big Bar.

Frannie turns to me. His eyes are clear and hard. He jabs a finger at the pensioners. ‘I swear that’ll never be me. Shoot me if that’s ever me.’

Dolby’s fingers make a gun shape and he shoots him, like Mr Blonde in Reservoir Dogs.

Amber light. Blockbuster video on our right hand side. Tom Hanks grinning away (I’ve been told I look like him) (and the wee swot from the Breakfast Club) becomes elongated as – green light – Dolby starts to gather speed and unfold away from the old guys who yell at the noise from our getaway across central Scotland, making Frannie shout, ‘Fuckchoo man!’ like Al Pacino in Scarface/Carlito’s Way as we hit the open road, a snake attacking a rat, fangs glinting, the old guys trailing behind us like grey skin cos We. Are. The. Fucking. Future.

‘Runt,’ Frannie says, turning to me, ‘there’s a night in Smith’s comin up. You gonnay start getting pished wi the Lads soon?’

I’m well aware that I still have no idea at all what it must be like being drunk, or having sex – or being drunk and having sex – the booze-soaked fumbles which everyone at school seems so icky about by Monday. ‘Ye dinnay look at the mantelpiece when ye’re stokin the fire,’ is Frannie’s fat-girl escape clause. I’m in absolutely no hurry, but Frannie, for some reason, won’t let it lie, as though my virginity
somehow
emasculates
him
. I imagine the night in Smith’s: me strapped to a seat, as super-lager is poured down my throat, before being made to sing Hello Hello, We are the Billy Boys, like in some grotesque Clockwork Orange experiment.

mum stumbling across a road in a pissy Scottish town somewhere. Paisley, Penicuik, Perth

‘Nup,’ I tell Frannie, ‘I will not be gettin pished wi the Lads.’

‘No even Bacardi Breezers?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Toddlers can sink Bacardi Breezers, Alvin,’ Frannie sighs. ‘Dolby, tell him, he listens tay you. Although fuck knows how, cos ye talk shite.’

Dolby grimaces as though being told a favourite son is gay – which I’m not – and I resent his tone a bit when he says, ‘Are ye sayin ye’ll never drink?’

‘Never,’ I insist.

‘Never?’

‘Never!’

‘Ye can never say never.’

‘Never never never! There, I said it three times.’

‘Why?’

No. I’m not going to tell them about Mum. I mean, they’re aware, but they don’t
know
anything. But one day I might tell Dolby about the sound of that first glug of vodka, the slurredly maternal words, the day she went missing, and I came home from school to find

But I’m not telling Brian or Frannie. They’d just say, ‘Get a grip and get on wi yer life,’ the undercurrent being exactly what Frannie tells me now: ‘Alvin, you truly are a poof.’

‘Whatever, man.’

Belinda rolls on. The world rolls under her. I’m not a poof. I just don’t shag. I don’t see any immediate reason. Still seems like
something
to me elephants should do, not people, so I just pick up the copy of FHM in the back seat, which lies next to Autotrader (Dolby has ringed a Renault Megane), flick through moodily, scan the interview with the actress Denise Richards posing naked with a serpent beneath the words Eden Better Than The Real Thing and the Lads start pissing themselves at a vision of me wandering the pub, gassed on shandy, beerily asking girls what their favourite books are, but I don’t care, so instead Dolby tries to bring me back in by talking about the new Clive Barker novel as Belinda floats across a

rise

into Laurieston, and Frannie has already covered his face with the Rangers News and Dolby thinks the book is (but I know it isn’t) a sequel to Weaveworld.

‘How did the boy Barker write Weaveworld?’ Dolby gasps. ‘Imagine havin brought somethin like that intay the world. Imagine bein like Jakey Rowlin, or the guys that did the Matrix.’

‘I totally agree,’ I say, totally agreeing, even although Dolby pronounced it ma-trix rather than may-trix. ‘Why dae anythin unless it’s a masterpiece? Why live if ye dinnay wantay change the world wi yer thoughts?’

‘If ye’re gonnay record an album, make it Dark Side of the Moon.’

‘If ye’re gonnay write a book, write Weaveworld.’

‘If ye’re gonnay talk shite,’ says Frannie, ‘it should be the finest
quality
shite. Fuck are yese on aboot?’

‘Listen,’ I say, suddenly passionate, ‘
we
should dae somethin. Us. We should make a film … or form a band … or drive roon America … or gotay university.’

‘University?’ coughs Frannie. ‘Fuck
that
.’

Our future is emblazoned across the sky. Weakness is not
permitted
, pain is discarded like litter at the roadside, as we speed forth speed forth speed forth and multiply, kings of our own world, and nobody is listening to me.

Oh.

‘Has anyone seen the size ay Brian’s nipples?’ goes Frannie.

‘I have,’ says Dolby. ‘Huge.’

‘Like plates!’

They are very much the nipples of a pregnant woman, and don’t go at all with the highly Mannly look, and soon we’re singing a verse of Born To Run like cats injected with steroids by a student who missed
the class on injection procedure and so doubled the dose, and as Frannie opens the sunroof to belt out the chorus, Dolby asks me, ‘The name Uriel. Whit d’ye thinkay it?’

‘Eh?’ I say. ‘As in the archangel? Out of Weaveworld?’

Dolby has a thing about archangels. He’s not religious. He just has a thing about archangels. Frannie has a thing about Rangers, Brian has a thing about Clint Eastwood, Dolby has a thing about archangels. His bedroom’s a weird sight, I tell you: Playboy bunnies, Pulp Fiction, South Park, and a huge print of Gabriel bearing the words Let There Be Light. Dolby was furious when Frannie drew a speech bubble on it that said, ‘Naw that’s God. He just likes tay pretend he’s Ally McCoist.’

‘As in the archangel out of Weaveworld.’

‘I think Raphael’s a cooler name.’

‘And aw the other Ninja Turtles,’ tuts Frannie, who has given up trying to fiddle with the sunroof. Angels, alternate worlds, things that go bump in the night: not Frannie’s scene. His idea of Fantasy fiction would be a bed, a line of Tesco’s checkout girls, and a Rangers Greats DVD playing in the corner, the crowd roaring his every move.

‘Uriel,’ Dolby raptures, trying out the name. ‘Uriel.’

‘Sounds like a fuckin washin-powder,’ Frannie grunts.

‘Cos,’ Dolby says, lowering the music volume, ‘I’m thinkin ay changin ma name. By deed poll likes.’

Silence in the car. Blur singing

and there’s a slight bump as Belinda flattens the corpse of a cat. Frannie say, ‘Ye’re changin yer name tay Uriel?’

‘Forget it.’

‘Or Persil? Or Daz?’ The corners of Frannie’s mouth rise.

‘I kent you widnay understand, ya dull fuck,’ Dolby broods. ‘I just happen tay like it.’

‘Uriel,’ he sniggers. ‘Or whit about Muriel? Or Urinal?’ and I can see him in the queue for Rosie’s already: ‘Alright ladies, have ye met ma mate Urinal. Ach don’t mind him, he’s always pished.’

This isn’t as unexpected to me as it is to Frannie. We’ll be browsing the Fantasy section of a bookshop, when Dolby will turn and say, ‘D’ye no think that if ye had red eyes the women would totally love it?’ or be paying for petrol in some rural backwater and he’ll whisper, ‘These places often have strong werewolf legends,’ and look about, actually
wanting
something to spring from the bushes to bite and transform him, and it’s a lot to do with why I like him, to be honest.

Who doesn’t have that wish?

mum and dad screaming at each other. Derek ushering me upstairs to watch Spider-Man cartoons. Dad’s voice. Did ye drink it? That’s aw I wantay ken. Did ye fuckin drink it? The Manthattan skyline, the web-slinging, the air soaring

‘Aye awright, Frannie,’ Dolby’s muttering, his skin starting to hiss, before turning to me. ‘Anyway, Alvin, this Connor Livinstone bastard. Whit’s happenin wi him?’

I tell them about Connor’s club of rich acolytes, his smirk, how he claims to have tried charlie (‘Charlie who?’), his working mother (Strathclyde University), his working father (Chartered Accountant), his entirely, as it happens, working fucking family. Frannie pauses to consider this, before going all Harvey Keitel in Reservoir Dogs. ‘Whatchoo wanna do,’ he says, ‘is break that sonofabitch in two.’

‘Seriously,’ I say, ‘what
am
I gonnay do?’

‘Seriously?’ says Dolby.

‘Aye.’

The car screeches to a halt outside Tyra Mackenzie’s house. Her door has frosted glass panels. Marigolds, tulips, roses. The number 9 in brass.

‘Ally McCoist’s old shirt number,’ Frannie breathes, ‘it’s a sign.’

Dad met Mum at a punk venue. I still can’t get used to the idea of a punk venue having ever existed in Falkirk. The way Dad tells it, the motorways of Scotland were packed with safety-pinned youths trying desperately to get to Falkirk to see the Drunk Fuckpigs or something. He once told me and Derek the story, out of the blue, on a beach in Irvine or Girvan or somewhere: how he saw her for the first time,
wearing
her New York Dolls t-shirt. I mean, boys, no even the Pistols or the Clash? The New York Dolls! He sighed. Classy. The waves crashed against the sea in doomed battalions. A child’s name was dissolved by the tide. It was getting cold. Me and Derek glancing at each other. There wis this ither guy getting ready tay talktay her, and he could see me thinkin the same thing, so the two ay us went for her at the same time. Some skinheid battered intay the poor fella, so I reached her first. He beamed proudly. It sounded like something out of Back to the Future to me. Just think, boys, he said, and then came the chilling part. If it wisnay for that youse might no be here.

There you go. Born from the failure of a drunk skinhead.

I have to be able to scare my own son shitless like this. I have to sit him on a rock on the beach at Irvine or Girvan and say, ‘If my mates had never stopped outside yer Mum’s door that night,’ and make him too realise that through such accidents are fucked-up teens made.

Dolby and Frannie’s stares try to push me from the car, up the path. ‘No,’ I say, thinking: Tyra Mackenzie!

Then Karaoke Colin starts murdering Sweet Caroline again and Dolby’s asking, ‘How wid this Connor react tay you walkin the
corridor wi her?’ He points. Tyra is visible, pottering near her window, and I duck out of sight.

‘Nay way,’ I stress, my heart both retching and in love, ‘I’m no makin a fool ay myself just for entertainment.’

‘Alvin, how wid he react?’

‘Naw.’

‘How wid you react then?’

‘Um well,’ I say, ‘probably be … envious.’

‘
Envious
,’ Dolby rolls the word around his mouth. ‘Tastes gid.’

‘Shut the fuck up, Frannie. So ye gontay her door or no?’

‘No.’

‘Are ye a pussy?’

‘Whit?’

‘I said are ye a pussy or a Lad?’

‘I’m a pussy.’

‘Meow.’

‘Frannie, give it a rest eh?’

Dolby clamps his hand over Frannie’s mouth. ‘Alvin,’ he urges, ‘don’t be the runt all yer life.’

I think: this from the man who wants to be called Uriel.

But these guys have done it, lived it. I’ve had no Elaine Section Manager propped up against the stock room door. I’ve never fitted a whirlpool. I’ve never even been drunk. Belinda chugs, listening, and it’s almost her I feel like I can’t let down, not the Lads, not even myself really. Belinda is the closest I’ve ever been to something with a girl’s name. Without her, I’d still be staring out of my bedroom window at drizzly Hallglen roofs and fridges dumped in gardens, mumbling along to Comfortably Numb. Yet here I am, outside Trya Mackenzie’s house, heart doing mad choreography, Tyra herself, perhaps, dreaming right now of a knight who will ride along on a shining steed to save her.

‘Okay boys.’ I breathe deeply, thinking about my parents’ eyes meeting across a room of pogo-ing bodies, and say, ‘I’m gonnay fuckin dae it.’

‘Heddy haw!’ explodes in the car like a flare. They start shaking my hand, slapping my back, as if me and Tyra’s wedding date has just been announced in the society press. ‘Gon the wee man,’ says Frannie, ‘ye’ll make a Ranger yet.’