Boyracers (2 page)

‘Em.’

‘Naw?’

‘Naw.’

Dolby and Brian shake their heads, weary cops saddled with a rookie. ‘Right, well, here’s the plan.’ We merge into the queue. Frannie has changed from his Rangers shirt into a Top Man shirt.

I recognise the two girls in front of us from school, 15 year-olds trying desperately to look 18. One of them starts adjusting her
barely-there
chest. ‘Tell ye whit I says tay her, Emma,’ she seethes, in her mother’s voice, ‘Make a fuckin choice, I says. Ye canny like Destiny’s Child and the Sugababes equally.’

‘Fuckin outtay order,’ her pal agrees.

‘Alvin,’ Dolby commands, ‘stick close tay us. The bouncer might assume yer the same age.’ I shuffle into position. ‘If he asks for ID whit should ye dae?’

‘Pretend tay search for it?’

‘And why will ye no find it?’

‘Must’ve left it in ma other jacket. Sir.’

‘Good. Dinnay call him sir. He’ll probably no go for it, but it’s better than just shruggin and lookin like a knob.’ Dolby’s tone suggest I’m often shrugging and looking like a knob. ‘Fake date ay birth?’

I reel it off, smart.

He nods, without much confidence, checking me up and down. Shoes shined black. Shirt almost stapled into place. Hair slick and stiff with gel. I don’t feel very old. I feel that over-groomed, stuffed way you do on the morning of a cousin’s wedding.

‘Have ye shaved?’ Brian growls.

‘Aye. Twice.’

I peer through the club window. Alvin through the looking-glass. My reflected face looms ghostly in front of me, and for a second I am dislocated, hovering with the pretty faces, listening to chat-up lines from immaculate blondes over the sound of Basement Jaxx/Armand Van Helden/Geri Halliwell. Drinks glowing a Mediterranean neon, live lived in knife-like prime, while I

Stand outside.

In the grey Falkirkness.

Frannie has let in workmates from Tesco’s, there are grumbles from the rest of the queue. He does his MC bit – ‘Andy, Mark, this is the Lads. Brian Mann, fellow teddy bear. Heddy haw.’ They shake hands fraternally. ‘This is Dolby, he works at Whirlpools Direct.’

Dolby taps cracks in the pavement with his shoe.

‘And the wee yin here … this is the runt.’

The pair nod at me, unimpressed, before commencing the Ibrox chat with Brian and Frannie – ‘aye, there’s definitely a split in the
dressing
-room likes’ – and the queue shunts up.

Falkirk cinema across the road is showing Scary Movie. Dolby is chatting up the girls in front of us. They turn over their accents, stroke their 15 year-old curls and sigh ‘Work? Oh, well I work for an uh … management consultancy firm in Edinburgh.’ Q: How can you tell someone in Falkirk is lying about their job? A: It’s in Edinburgh. Seriously, have you ever met anyone in Edinburgh – batting their eyelashes, patting their ringlets – who admitted to working in Falkirk? Dolby-Wan Kenobi’s gesticulating to these schoolies, ‘Canny believe you’ve no even read an X-Men comic!’

One of them laughs, high and piano-like. ‘You’re so funny.’

The bouncer leans his meaty head out like a truck-driver in traffic. I duck, fearful, then try to position my shoulders that sort of Liam Gallagher way so that I look older, harder, cooler, but my shirt feels far too tight on me for it.

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.

‘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.

‘How can ye have seen Hellraiser 4 and no the first one?’

Does my breath smell of Wrigleys?

the two girls breeze past the bouncers with a professional tinkle of their fingers. ‘Evenin, ladies.’ Their perfume dances happily on the air and

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?

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?’

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.

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 Pet 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

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

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.