BRILLIANT and this was the best night of my life and it was then that I had my satori. My kick in the eye. My sudden and profound realization. My on-the-road-to-Damascus revelation.
From this moment on I would dedicate my life to rock and roll and take as many drugs as possible.
What could possibly go wrong?
8
Running the Gauntlet
M y plan to be a drug-addled American rock star by the time I was sixteen began to fade on the drive to JFK. I was very quiet in the car, I didn’t trust myself to talk without crying, and I didn’t want to take that chance. Just bidding my cousins farewell at the house had caused tears to well up unexpectedly and embarrassingly. I was comforted that Karen and Leslie cried too, although Steven seemed to hold it together pretty well and young Jamie genuinely didn’t give a rat’s ass.
On the drive, Uncle James asked me if I would ever move to America when I grew up and I gave the stock answer that any thirteen-year-old would give to a direct question.
“I don’t know.”
But I did. I wanted to move to New York and smoke marijuana and live in an apartment and play the guitar and make out with girls and mush their boobies together.
My dad and I didn’t speak much on the flight home and we really didn’t ever speak much about that vacation ever again. I can’t be sure, but I think if things had been different in his own life, myfather would have liked to live in the U.S., but my mother would never have left Scotland, and my father never really spoke about things he couldn’t have, he found it pointless. I understand, I’m the same way. I never go window-shopping, unless it’s for windows. Strip clubs don’t appeal to me for the same reason. If I was inclined to seek the company of a bunch of angry drunk women who hated me, wanted all my money, and were determined to tease me but not have sex with me, I would just open a bar in Edinburgh.
When I got back to school, things were different. Over the summer many of the boys had grown much taller and older-looking, myself apparently included, because my nickname changed to Skinny Ma-linky Longlegs, a delightful transformation from the hated “Tubby.” A lot of the girls had changed shape too—radically—and seemed a lot more confident, sensing the power which they held over the drooling, awestruck boys.
I gained a little notoriety by being the kid who’d gone to America, and a few of the real hard tickets, guys who were known psychopaths, like Shug McGhee and Billy Thompson, sought me out and included me in their grumpy little mob. I was invited to stand behind the school gym at recess with the bad guys and wild girls and smoke cigarettes. I was happy to be there but I had to be careful not to mention America unless asked about it, lest they thought I was bragging, and for that I would be shamed. This would mean challenging anyone who insulted me to a fight or else I’d lose face, and losing face was a terrible curse. You could end up like Gordon Macfarlane, the skinny kid who was the butt of all jokes and was once spat on by Margaret Cameron, an older girl who had once gotten so drunk she had to have her stomach pumped and, rumor had it, when they were carrying her out to the ambulance Stewart Campbell saw her tits fall out of her bra.
Smoking cigarettes behind the gym was forbidden by theschool, of course, and periodically the teachers would attempt a raid on our little outdoor speakeasy. Anyone they caught would be belted viciously, but it didn’t happen too often because at recess the teachers were usually huddled in the staff room, smoking their own cigarettes.
Smoking was cool and it was a way to meet the older kids and the great fighters of legend like Stevie McGhee, the aforementioned Shug’s older brother, who was finally expelled for head-butting a teacher, or Gus Armitage, who once beat up three Feinians (Catholics) when they jumped him outside his girlfriend’s house. Gus had supposedly just shagged her,
From this moment on I would dedicate my life to rock and roll and take as many drugs as possible.
What could possibly go wrong?
8
Running the Gauntlet
M y plan to be a drug-addled American rock star by the time I was sixteen began to fade on the drive to JFK. I was very quiet in the car, I didn’t trust myself to talk without crying, and I didn’t want to take that chance. Just bidding my cousins farewell at the house had caused tears to well up unexpectedly and embarrassingly. I was comforted that Karen and Leslie cried too, although Steven seemed to hold it together pretty well and young Jamie genuinely didn’t give a rat’s ass.
On the drive, Uncle James asked me if I would ever move to America when I grew up and I gave the stock answer that any thirteen-year-old would give to a direct question.
“I don’t know.”
But I did. I wanted to move to New York and smoke marijuana and live in an apartment and play the guitar and make out with girls and mush their boobies together.
My dad and I didn’t speak much on the flight home and we really didn’t ever speak much about that vacation ever again. I can’t be sure, but I think if things had been different in his own life, myfather would have liked to live in the U.S., but my mother would never have left Scotland, and my father never really spoke about things he couldn’t have, he found it pointless. I understand, I’m the same way. I never go window-shopping, unless it’s for windows. Strip clubs don’t appeal to me for the same reason. If I was inclined to seek the company of a bunch of angry drunk women who hated me, wanted all my money, and were determined to tease me but not have sex with me, I would just open a bar in Edinburgh.
When I got back to school, things were different. Over the summer many of the boys had grown much taller and older-looking, myself apparently included, because my nickname changed to Skinny Ma-linky Longlegs, a delightful transformation from the hated “Tubby.” A lot of the girls had changed shape too—radically—and seemed a lot more confident, sensing the power which they held over the drooling, awestruck boys.
I gained a little notoriety by being the kid who’d gone to America, and a few of the real hard tickets, guys who were known psychopaths, like Shug McGhee and Billy Thompson, sought me out and included me in their grumpy little mob. I was invited to stand behind the school gym at recess with the bad guys and wild girls and smoke cigarettes. I was happy to be there but I had to be careful not to mention America unless asked about it, lest they thought I was bragging, and for that I would be shamed. This would mean challenging anyone who insulted me to a fight or else I’d lose face, and losing face was a terrible curse. You could end up like Gordon Macfarlane, the skinny kid who was the butt of all jokes and was once spat on by Margaret Cameron, an older girl who had once gotten so drunk she had to have her stomach pumped and, rumor had it, when they were carrying her out to the ambulance Stewart Campbell saw her tits fall out of her bra.
Smoking cigarettes behind the gym was forbidden by theschool, of course, and periodically the teachers would attempt a raid on our little outdoor speakeasy. Anyone they caught would be belted viciously, but it didn’t happen too often because at recess the teachers were usually huddled in the staff room, smoking their own cigarettes.
Smoking was cool and it was a way to meet the older kids and the great fighters of legend like Stevie McGhee, the aforementioned Shug’s older brother, who was finally expelled for head-butting a teacher, or Gus Armitage, who once beat up three Feinians (Catholics) when they jumped him outside his girlfriend’s house. Gus had supposedly just shagged her,
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