Free Porno by Irvine Welsh

Aye, ah’ve loast a bit ay weight this last year, he whispers to me, evidently quite pleased about it, patting his sides to show what must be his now-diminished love handles. I turn to look, but I can hardly keep my eyes from the screen, as a young girl, — Melanie, Terry whispers, comes into the picture. He nods to the bar and I recognise her now as the same girl that was standing there earlier. She looks different, really sexy on the screen. Now Gina is performing cunnilingus on her. Somebody makes a comment and there’s a bit of laughter and the Melanie girl smiles in coy embarrassment, but it’s followed by silencing shushes. There’s barely any sound quality now, I can just about make out a few gasps and comments and Terry faintly saying things like ‘come on’, ‘yes’ and ‘that’s the game, doll’. On the picture a blonde girl comes in and he’s frigging her and she’s sucking him off. Then he bends her over a couch and starts fucking her from behind. Her face looks right into the camera and her large breasts dangle. Then we see Terry’s head over her shoulder, looking right into the lens, winking at us, and saying something which sounds like ‘spice of life’. — Ursula, Swedish lassie, he explains to me in a stage whisper, — or is it Danish . . . anywey, au pair girl, hings aroond the Grassmarket. Game as fuck, he explains. As the other players enter the fray, Terry’s occasional commentary flits into my head: — . . . Craig . . . good mate ay mine. Top shagger. No exactly well-hung, bit a total sex case. Kin eh find wid but . . . Ronnie . . . could pump fir Scotland that boy . . .
    The show ends up in a free-for-all and the camera work deteriorates. At times all you can see is a pink blur. Then it pulls out and in the background you see the Gina girl chopping out some lines of coke, as if bored by the sex. It badly needs editing and I’m tempted to share this thought with Terry, but he senses the audience’s growing boredom and switches it off from the handset. — That’s aboot us, folks, he smiles.
    After the show, I’m having a chat at the bar with Rab, asking him how long this has been going on for. He’s about to reply, when Terry sidles up to me and asks: — What did ye think ay that then?
    — Amateurs, I reply, more loudly and pompously in drink than I intended, as I whisk my hair back. My blood chills a little, because I think that Gina girl heard me and I caught a cold, razor glint in her eye.
    — N you could dae better? he asks, his eyes hooding and brows arching.
    I look him steadily in the eye. — Yeah, I tell him.
    He rolls his eyes and eagerly scribbles a number down on a beer mat. — Any time, doll. Any time, he says softly.
    — I’ll hold you to that, I say, to the distaste of Rab.
    I notice for the first time the two other guys in the film, Craig and Ronnie. Craig is a thin, nervous-looking, chain-smoker with a modish mop of light-brown hair, Ronnie a relaxed guy with thin fair hair and the same idiot grin that he wears on the screen, although he seems podgier in the flesh.
    Shortly afterwards, the Scandinavian girl, Ursula, comes in, and Terry introduces us. Her initial glance at me is polar, though she greets me with over-the-top warmth. Ursula doesn’t look as good in the flesh as she does on screen; her features are slightly pudgy, troll-like even. She offers to get me a drink and the party looks like it’s going to continue but I make my apologies and head home. Something interesting might be about to happen but that look in Terry’s eye tells me that it’s wrong to play all my cards at once. He’ll wait. They all will. And besides, I’ve an essay to finish.
    When I get back home I find that Lauren’s still up, and she’s with Dianne, who’s moved her stuff in. Lauren seems to be really in the huff with me for going out, for not being here to help, or to welcome Dianne or whatever. The fact is, though, that she’s pissed off with me