Dead Men's Trousers (The Trainspotting Novels Book 4)

by Irvine Welsh

You got that ye had to escape fae where we were, long before I ever realised it.

Lovers are cunts. They rub your face in it without meaning to.

You know you’ve turned intae a cunt with nae life, whose fetid arsehole is owned by late capitalism, when times like this feel an imposition and you cannae stop checking your phone for emails and texts.

He and Simon, whom he calls Sick Boy, seem to be arguing about the merits of two dating sites. — Slider’s the best, the driver, whom Simon refers to as Terry, argues. — Nae fuckin aboot, jist get right doon tae it! — Bullshit. Tinder rules. You need at least the veneer of the romance. The intrigue of seduction is the best part of the whole enterprise. The hump at the end of it is just simple bag emptying. The process of allurement and inveigling always provides the bulk of the magic.

You’d fuckin ride it raw, mate, Terry sings from the front seat. — It’s the wey wir hard-wired. Guaranteed. Ah’m only gaun by Richard Attenborough. That cunt’s been aw ower this fuckin planet, watched everything that moves n analysed its cowpin behaviour. Scientific. He taps his head. — Trust in Dickie.

Mission accomplished, he winks. — Slide it in, slide it oot, git thum frothin at the mooth.

It’s true but, ye need a wee four-legged buddy tae go through life wi, now that aw the two-legged yins have aw waltzed oaf intae the sunset, ken?

Back in the day, I never had that much ay a thick skin, even though ah pretended tae. Then, suddenly, it was just there. Like ah was a fuckin Tony Stark whae’d invented a psychic Iron Man suit. The upside ay developing that armour is the obvious one: fuck all bothers ye that much. The downer? Well, it’s like antidepressants. You dinnae get the lows, but ye sure as fuck miss the euphoria ay the highs.

She tells me no more pills, just sex. After we make love I fall intae the deepest sleep I’ve had in months. In the morning, I’m delighted tae find that she’s stayed over. It feels great tae wake up with her.

Drink and drugs are a whippersnapper’s game: there is little worse than a hangover or an E comedown after you hit fifty. Even under the licence of Christmas, you just feel weak and stupid, as the facts have to be faced: the meagre, diminishing returns of fun to be squeezed out in no way justifiy the subsequent extended horror show.

People walk past, bleary. Global commercialism has compelled the Scots tae pretend tae like Christmas, but we’re genetically programmed tae rebel against it. Ah come oot in a rash if I’m stuck in a hoose wi family for more than two days. New Year is more our natural speed.

Some privatised utility-shareholding one per cent public-school Nazi fuck will be getting wanked blind by a Third World child on a luxury yacht right now.

I’m sitting back in my flat, smoking dope, feeling sorry for myself. Getting even more depressed through knowing exactly what I’ll do tae handle this setback: get wrecked, then sober up and fling masel into my graft. Repeat till death. This is the trap. There isnae a later. There’s no fucking place in the sun. There is no cunting future. There is only now. And it’s shite and getting worse.

Simon Williamson looks at him in injured disdain. — I’m as desperate as you, and I’ve been pulled into this world by you shagging about! — You gave me that fucking drink spiked with MDMA! Your drugs started – — Fuck you and your First World problems! If every cunt that had taken their first ecky committed adultery by jacksie-rifling the first psycho fucker who smiled at them, not one worthwhile relationship in Britain would still exist! Either you man the fuck up and we sort this shite out, or everything, your family, your job, your reputation, are all down the fucking swanny!

Sometimes ye have tae step past yourself. Past aw those voices you’ve always heard in your heid. All the shite that you’ve let define ye: that ignorance, certainty and reticence. Because it’s fuckin crap, all of it. You’re nothing but a work-in-progress until that day you fall out of this world into the land ay dead men’s trousers.

Fuck me, ah wish ah could take her pain, but that’s the narcissistic element ay love talking. It’s no yours tae take. All you can dae is be there.

Nonetheless, the funeral is shite, as the untimely death ay a young person always is. I obviously didnae ken Hannah, but the outpouring ay grief and torment is real enough tae evidence a pretty amazing and deeply loved woman. They talk about Hannah’s VSO work, culminating in NGO stuff in Ethiopia and Sudan, then working for a human rights charity based in London. The sort ay person a total wanker, that never did a thing for anybody in their lives, least of all themselves, would dismiss as a do-gooder.

But I suppose that’s the nature of love: we are either creatures ay the present and have tae live with the trauma and misery if it goes tits up, or doomed tae loneliness.

I’m zonked when I get home, but I still have enough juice in the tank to pummel Marianne under the beef cosh, while igniting her with the creeping love bombs of obscene speech. Keep them well shod and well shagged: the only decent advice my father ever gave me in the affairs of the heart department. The only decent advice the cunt gave me in anything.

enough. Everything in life is distorted by wee irrational jealousies and daft impulses. Ye huv tae get control ay these cunts or they destroy ye.