He looks up and blinks a couple of times before a smile spreads across his face. — Mark, ah cannae believe it, ah was jist aboot tae pack up. He rises and we share an embrace. A rank odour of stale sweat peels fae him, and ah even have tae fight down a retching impulse. We decide tae get a drink, and repair tae the hotel bar. Spud is a semi-jakeball and has a scabby wee dug in tow, but I’ve an account at this doss, so despite the barmaid’s glance indicating she’s singularly unimpressed, they let it slide. This is actually quite big ay them, because, well, ah hate tae be a cunt, but he kind ay fuckin mings, like he hasnae since he was a wee laddie. Well, maybe in the junk days, but ma ain smell probably masked that. We position ourselves in a dark corner, a bit apart from everyone else in the sparsely filled bar. The dug, called Toto, sits silently at his feet. I’m thinking it’s strange Spud going canine, as he was eywis a cat obsessive. We inevitably start discussing the Franco phenomenon, and I’m telling him aboot wanting tae square up Sick Boy, Second Prize and the art radge himself. How I need tae find one, how another has vanished, and how the third doesnae want the money he’s owed.
— No surprised Franco isnae interested in the dosh, catboy. Spud slurps back a good quarter of the pint of lager, as Toto accepts my pettings under the table. He’s a matted-furred minger, but he’s cute and sweet-hearted, and his sandpaper tongue slaps ma knuckles.
— What dae ye mean?
— Pure cursed that dosh, likesay. That money you gied ays was the worst thing that ever happened tae ays. A big, big binge ay drugs, the end ay me n Ali. No that ah kin pin ma demise on you, catboy, he helpfully adds.
— I suppose we all make our choices in life, mate.
— Ye really believe that?
So here I am, sitting discussing free will and determinism with a jakey; me on Guinness, him on Stella. And the debate carries on up in my room. — What other option dae ye have but tae believe it? I ask, as I open the door and the afternoon sex smells hit ays, but Spud seems oblivious. — Yes, we’ve goat strong pulls but we can see what they are and where they take us and we therefore resist and reject them, ah tell him, suddenly realising that ah’m chopping oot the lines ay coke in the bathroom, using ma stainless-steel Citadel Productions business caird.
— Can you no see what you’re daein now?
— I’m no in a resist-and-reject mode at the moment, I tell him. — I’m in a getting-through-shit-at-all-costs one. You dinnae need tae join ays. It’s up tae you, ah tell him, waving a rolled-up twenty. — Make yir choice: this is mine.
— Aye… mibbe just tae be social, likesay, Spud says with rising panic, only abating as soon as ah hand the cunt the note that ah ken ah’ll never see again. — It’s been a long time.
Then we’re back oot, at a couple ay bars, which is the only wey I ken I’ll get rid ay him, before my eyes start shutting and a pit-bull yawn almost tears my bottom jaw fae my face. I head tae the hotel and try tae fitfully sleep.
The shattering alarm seems tae wake ays ten minutes later. And this is my life, the sheer fucking lunacy of it. I now have to fly back to LA, for one of Conrad’s gigs, then return here for Hogmanay, getting in on the morning of New Year’s Eve for the big bells party. Then I want to just hole up in Amsterdam for winter and get some work done, but ah need tae go back tae LA again, and put time intae Vicky and me, if I really want things tae take off. And, I reflect, as a ball ay self-loathing sticks in my chest like a tumour, I need tae stop shagging the fuck aroond.
So I’m on the red eye tae that fucking blight on humanity that is Heathrow and then up in first class aw the way tae LA. The cunts at security swabbed every inch of my case for traces of ching. But my bank cards show fuck all, and the stainless-steel business caird cleans up a treat.
Hell, it’s a long and tedious flight with Conrad, whae connected fae Amsterdam, sitting next tae us. He’s bored, sulky and utterly charmless company and I give thanks for the relative isolation ay the individual pods. Conrad is basically mildly autistic, a spoilt fat cunt, but I believe there’s a fundamentally decent young gadge in there. I have to believe it. Emily, who is on at Fabric in London, is just young and confused but has a good heart. Then there’s Carl. The biggest bairn of them all. What a fucking trio. And now FUCKING FRANCIS BEGBIE is back in ma life and I’m seeking out SICK BOY.
At LAX, the immigration ratshagger’s look is long and searching, gaun fae me, tae passport, tae me, tae passport. This is bad. It means he now has tae say something. — So how long have you lived in Amsterdam?
— On and off, about twenty-five years.
— And you’re a manager in the entertainment industry?
— An artist manager, I concede, depressed at the lack of irony in my voice. I watch Conrad, a couple of booths down, breeze through, his doughy digits sweating over the fingerprint glass like sausages on a hotplate.
— Like bands?
— DJs.
He softens a little. — Is that like managing a band?
— Easier. Solo artists. No equipment, I state, then think of the exception to every fucking rule, that fucking Neanderthal Ewart. — Book the plane, transfers and hotels. Organise the press. Fight for publishing royalties, battle promoters for gigs and cash, I rant, managing to stop myself from saying, and drugs.
— You come here a lot. Do you plan to move to the USA?
— No. Though I do have an apartment in Santa Monica. It saves on hotels. I’m in LA and Vegas a lot on business. One of my artists, I point at Conrad, now through and heading for the luggage, — he’s got a residency at the Wynn. I always travel on an ESTA. I’ve applied for a green card, and I suddenly think of Vicky, smiling in the sun on the beach, — but even when I get it, I won’t be living here all the time.
He looks at me as if he doesn’t believe my green card application for resident alien will be accepted.
— David Guetta is one of my sponsors, I offer.
— Uh-huh, he says doomily, then seems all put out. — Why don’t you wanna live here permanently?
— Maybe the same reason that you don’t want to live in Amsterdam? I like America, but it’s a bit too American for ma personal tastes. I suspect you’d find Holland a wee bit too Dutch.
He pulls his lower lip out in dreary evaluation, slumping back into catatonic boredom, as the luminous green light comes on and I print my fingers for the thousandth time, and get my picture snapped yet again. A stamp on the passport and customs form, and I’m back in the land of the free.
The first thing I do – literally – when I land somewhere is hassle the promoter for drugs. Anyone who doesn’t have a contact shouldn’t be in the fucking game. I tell them it’s for the DJs, but most of those boring cunts nowadays never touch anything other than hydroponic grass, my contemporary, N-Sign Carl Ewart, being the exception – yet again. I usually get some gak, just to keep the party going, anything that stops me from reminding myself that I’m the oldest person in the club, unless I’m with N-Sign. I feel sorry for old DJs, they deserve big money, stepping out to that ritual humiliation every night: guys who no longer dance, playing music for people who do. That’s why I try to be patient with Carl. I put in my order for the unofficial rider: cannabis, MDMA powder and cocaine. Conrad is slavering so much techy shit about different buds in my ear, I put him straight onto the man.