“I can’t stay. Do you want me to? Do you want me to go? Will you come with me?” He was pulling on me. His sister said she’d slipped an acid tab into his vodka. Then they were gone, catching a taxi back to their parents.
I saw Dan in the queue. I’ve just started work with her, in the Scarlet Empress. She grabbed me and we talked briefly. Said how much better we both felt for getting fucked regularly.
Later there was some older bloke, David, pulling faces at me. I kissed him on the stairs. “I just want to cuddle,” he said, when I pulled away. “Tonight I want someone to hold me. I’ll give you a wank, if you want. I’d love to. I love your jeans slashed like that and your boots. But I want holding.”
In the toilets no one would piss next to this bloke with a shaved head. There was a queue. I wouldn’t wait. “Ay, you’re not shy, are you?” he went. We had a conversation about how best to shave your own head. I like that about this place, when you talk to people and then see them later, as everyone moves around. It’s like the fair. You see people getting on new rides. Twirling about. People getting on and getting off all over the place.
I staggered back. Halfway down Queen Street I almost turned back to find scraggy David and say, “Go on then. I’ll take you home.” But I carried on. By then I wished I’d taken Cameron up. Imagining a young, pink body. A small and hot prick. He’d have a prick like a baby mouse, that turns hot and red and inside out when it gets inflamed. Really, he must be barely out of his teens. That David kissed me and said, “You need a shave.” He rubbed his chin where I had burned him. “So do I.”
“Right,” I said. “I must be a grown-up.”
At the top of the hill we had a nightmare. This was because Reet was wearing his stillies. I’d said not to, I’d said what the night was going to be like, that we’d be out on the hillside and everything. But you can’t tell him anything. I made him take them off and carry them. He was cursing me. but there was no way I was missing out.
Everyone was out on the hillside. Sat in the long, flattened grass at nearly midnight. Thousands, in their thousands, watching the fireworks. There was that clock tower in the way, but we got the effect. Free, too, which was smart.
They had a big fuck-off laser from the Bank of Scotland, shooting out everywhere. The fireworks were in time with the music, but the bastard laser wasn’t. It was all over the place. It made the sky look tiny. Reet said, just think how much money they’ve spent on this lot. Millions! And the seats down under Princes Street cost like thirty quid each. Who’d pay that? Someone daft. There’s always daft people.
Reet’s always on about money. He hasn’t got much and he’s saving up. I’m not sure what for this time. Doesn’t get much from waitressing he says. I says, I bloody know! I do the same job! And he looks withering and says, “Aye, but you’ve got your inheritance coming and you’re gunna be a rich cow, aren’t you?” And he looks at me venomous.
This is up the hill, watching the fireworks, for the end of the Festival, the end of summer.
Someone’s passed Reet a bottle of booze and he’s passing it me, but I’m looking at him like, anyone could’ve spat in that But he says they were friends of his, the fellers passing it along. I’d never seen them before. Reet reckons everyone’s his friend, though. That’s his downfall, bless him, he’s daft.
And someone ‘s got their tranny going. Ha! Tranny. I mean their radio. Reet would laugh. Well, he might.
And their radio’s coming live from the castle, from the thirty quid seats, where you can hear the jewellery rattling, I swear it. They’re playing Handel and Beethoven, mostly in time with the fireworks. I was wondering which they did first…were they speeding up and slowing down the playing of the music...?
Was all the orchestra watching the sky instead of a conductor? That’d be good.
Reet was telling us then about a friend of his who’d been sleeping with a feller who made fireworks. He invented and designed them for a living. Can you imagine? When they stopped shagging, the Pyrotechnician — that’s the word — took a big fuck-off Roman Candle round the other bloke’s house. Who thought he was being, like, funny at first. But he wasn’t. It was a parting gift. He said, when you set it off, whenever you choose to...think of me.
Turns out the other bloke hasn’t set it off yet. Hasn’t the heart. I reckon it’s Reet himself, the way he told the story, but he wouldn’t say. And then we got interrupted by some pretty loud fucking banging over the top of Handel’s Zarkoff the Priest or whatever. Scary piece of music and loud banging. And there’s golden showers! Loads of tinselly threads corning down. It must look fucking ace down on Princes Street. Cause you’d be right underneath it. Like it was coming down on you, filling the whole sky, like a big golden cage. From where we were it just looked like Tina Turner’s fright wig, the shape it was in. Like the castle was wearing Tina Turner’s frizzy golden wig.
It kept banging, getting bigger, and everyone’s cheering louder and some are just laughing, spontaneously.
“That’s the campest thing I’ve seen all summer!’ Reet laughs, standing up. Everyone’s starting to stand up.
I pull a face.
