Four New Words for Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

better off than before, except that I was one of the faceless drones paying for the likes of Lolly and Dad.
    My social life still stretched no further than the cinema. I was working myself up to a quiet night down the pub. Lolly appointed herself social convener. A quiet night is a failed night by her
reckoning. At that time there was still a liner of sorts anchored in the Clyde, used as a floating casino and dance club.
HMS Fornication
, a rust bucket of emergency fucks kept afloat by
sheer exuberance and a life belt of spent condoms. The licensing laws allowed all-night drinking. A whole social stratum of Glasgow was banged into existence against the cracked port holes on that
boat. Young girls tripped up the gang plank in slingbacks, hearts full of high hopes, handbags full of illicit drink, and lurched down four hours later, stomachs full of Bacardi, uteruses full of
cooling spunk, the future single-parent families of the city. To the right-minded city fathers and the hard-line religious types, it was Sodom and Gomorrah on the quayside. It was either going to
sink or get closed down. The breaker’s yard beckoned. The boat’s days were numbered. Word got around. The final weeks were frantic. Girls wearing outfits that wouldn’t keep them
warm in Tenerife stood at the dockside in a wind that would cut cardboard, trying to talk their way past the bouncers.
    ‘I’ve got tickets for the boat on Saturday.’
    ‘I thought we were taking it easy, going to a quiet local pub.’
    ‘There aren’t any quiet local pubs round here. And even if there were, they’ll still be here when the boat isn’t.’
    She turned up on Saturday to help me get ready. She’d topped up her tan and squeezed herself into some corset arrangement that squeezed everything up and out like a market garden display.
I felt like the desperate sister they let out the attic when the gentleman caller comes round. Lolly went through my wardrobe full of ‘this won’t do’s and ‘is this a
sack?’ and ‘too dull for Mrs Menopause’ and ‘this is sexual kryptonite’ and that sort of thing. Her compromise solution was for me to keep on what I was already
wearing and leave most of the buttons undone. But I didn’t spill out strategically the way she did, and I didn’t want to either. She insisted on a photo. I look like a maiden aunt
who’s run out the burning house without stopping to get properly dressed.
    We had to wait on the quayside even though we’d tickets. The wind funnelling up the Clyde estuary was vicious. The buttons didn’t stay undone. I’d had the presence of mind to
put on a coat. Even though I’d three times more clothes on than Lolly, I was freezing. She wasn’t. It wasn’t just natural insulation, she’s got some kind of hormone that
kicks in when drink, fun and men are involved that makes her immune to cold, exhaustion, embarrassment, subtlety or any of the other things that inhibit the rest of the world. My hands were plunged
into my coat pockets. When she handed me my ticket I was shocked at how cold her hand was.
    ‘Sometimes you’ve just got to teach your body who’s boss.’
    The bouncer looked at the heft of her bag. ‘Full,’ she said, ‘like your balls.’ He smiled and waved us up the gangplank. We walked into a wall of noise. Music spilled out
from the dance floor, flaking rust, and pulsed its way into the casino where Chinese waiters were going frantic round the tables. Lolly ordered two glasses of tap water from the bar. The guy put
them down with a bang. This didn’t cover the overheads. We went into the toilet and Lolly fished out the gin and mixers from her handbag. The place was crowded out with girls doing the same.
Dope smoke was rising out two separate cubicles like talking smoke signals, adding another layer to the smell of hairspray and cheap perfume. Girls were renewing their lippy or mascara already. The
noise was tremendous, with about fifteen simultaneous conversations and