At midday, I caught a pink 500 bus from stance 1 to the city centre. Stance 1 was an open-sided metal shelter with a pane of glass at each end and a narrow alloy beam to sit on. One pane bore a painting of a toothless pumpkin with its eyes on fire, sitting cross-legged on the ground under that: a bag lady. She had bows in her straggly hair, rings on her fingers, burrs on her toes, warts on her nose, misery in her eyes, and a puppy which frothed at the mouth. I thought he might be rabid. Outbreaks of lethal rabies had increased steadily since we Scots were banned from re-joining the EU by the English dodderers at Westminster. I kept I my distance. The poor woman held up her carrier bag shewing me all her worldly possessions. The puppy yipped and yapped, drooling pink saliva from its mangy jaws, cuddling snugly inside his owner’s tartan skirted lap.
She stared at me imploringly and said, ‘Big Issue?’
I had nae words, nae change.
The pink 500 bus arrived. I sat alone upstairs at the back of the bus, reading yesterday’s Herald. The weather was dreary, dull and depressing, with light showers. I flicked thru the headlines finding it hard to concentrate, still coming down from the euphoric high of my survival. It was all news I already knew. Nothing ever changed here, in my registered country of birth, despite the younger generation’s growing appetite for independence.
Bonnie saw herself as an activist. She got quite agitated over our right to freedom as a nation, said we should hold an uprising, fight for the right to be free. She was constantly telling me how forward-thinking we Scots were compared to the heathens south of the border.
‘Take the bill we passed last year,’ she said, ‘giving sixteen-year-olds the right to be legally recognized as transgender without requiring gender dysphoria medical diagnosis. Isla, we want to recognise, respect and promote children’s rights. These include the rights to be treated fairly, to be heard and to be as healthy as possible. My vision is a Scotland where children’s human rights are embedded in all aspects of society, a land where policy, law and decision-making take account of children’s rights and where all children have a voice and are empowered to be human rights defenders.’
By the time she’d finished preaching to me, I was shaking inside. I wasn’t nearly as sure, or as confident, as my girl, recalling the transgressions I committed with the virile young men when I was an innocent young girl in mourning after mamaidh’s funeral.
Bored, I stuffed the rag under a seat and pressed my nose to the steamed-up window imagining the misty vapour was the gas they used to put me to sleep when I was treated. The swelling on the side of my neck felt sore. It really hurt. I rubbed my wound. Trying to take my mind off the ache, I wiped clear a peephole and peered at the gaunt unyielding landscape: dreary motorway aprons, derelict factories, featureless housing estates, lifeless playing fields, vacant suburbs, so glad I did nae have to live there.
My tummy rumbled telling my mouth it was time to eat. Jumping off the bus in the heart of the city, I found a deli, bought two rounds of chicken sandwiches, fresh mango and lime, a can of fizzy blood orange, and sat on an unsoiled bench in George Square handfeeding the hordes of greedy pigeons.
It wasn’t until I’d scattered my bread and shooed the birds that I caught sight of the tramp. He had crouched on the bench beside me staring vacantly at a statue of Robbie Burns. My nostrils squinted at his stench. If I’m truthful, I felt sorry for him: homeless, destitute, impoverished, nae-where to live, nae-one to love him. I had nae home of my own, nae place to live, either, at least, not until I met Bonnie. We’d that much in common, he and I: wild feral alley cats eking out an existence in a filthy world of smut.
The sky grew gloomy overhead. Affected by its sombre mood, I stood in front of the auld man, and studied his face: all crusted with dirt, his wiry hair and beard: stiff with filth. He had nae washed for days. He stared thru me, expressionless. I read the melancholy in his rheumy eyes. How long had he existed with nae woman to love him? I stared at his feet: their dirty bent big toes, ingrown toenails sticking out of gaping holes in his ruined leather brogues. Between his feet lay a closed tobacco tin with a scratched photo of a young buck on its lid. I squatted on my haunches with my tartan mini skirt riding up my bared thighs and asked if I could take a look.
He looked at me and made a toothless grin. I opened the tin. Inside were six auld pennies. I felt inside the slit in my skirt, drew out my red leather purse, undid the gold clasp, and ruffled thru my fifty, twenty, ten and five-pound notes. Deep in my heart I wanted to give the man a moment in his dreary life he would never forget.
His eyes lit up at the sight of the money! I smiled, took out a ten-pound note, folded it in four, popped it in his tin then shut the lid. He nodded his thanks, grinning at me wildly. He didn’t or couldn’t speak. In an odd way, the tramp reminded me of the mute barista, Mihalis, in the café: aulder but not much aulder. Their walnut brown hair and goatee beards were flecked with grey.
It started to rain. I blinked if off and cast my eyes over the square’s statues, standing defiantly. Everyone ran for cover. We were alone. The rain rinsed my hair, washing my cheeks, freeing my spirits, as it had at mamaidh’s funeral. I loved rain. It made me feel alive, so much that my body tingled and glowed all over. I couldn’t help myself. I needed, wanted to take a risk. I lived for risks. Risks were my life.
He looked pitifully sad. I asked him if he fancied a treat. The not-so-auld man scraped his jaw like the blonde with pruritis. He must have itched all over. His underpants must’ve been alive. My legs ached: the taut muscles in my thighs straining in protest at squatting on my haunches.
I straightened, rubbing dry my damp thighs, and asked the tramp if he’d like to see my treats. He came alive, enthusing, craving the loving, beautiful, woman he had never met. Brazenly, I hoisted up the hem of my mini skirt, and gave the man a tantalising glimpse of my underbelly.
‘Lovely,’ he mumbled incoherently, ‘God bless you, lassie.’
After I’d finished teasing him, I wandered indoors to the nearby galleria to dry off and shop for my essentials: face cream, scent, toothpaste, herbal shampoo, a giant-sized Toblerone, and the reward for surviving my ordeal: a red tartan lamb’s wool scarf to keep out the chill. The galleria was alight with festive decorations, full of men and women trying on dresses, applying make-up, buying perfume for Christmas: wives, husbands, standing by with overdrawn credit cards. I wondered what life must feel like married, living boring routines with screaming kids, whole life mortgages, recurrent rain-filled school runs, fading, ultimately, non-existent sex lives. My soul cheered when I came across a grotto underneath the escalator, the bright red warning sign:
Children are no longer allowed to play inside the Grotto. Children must not sit in Santa’s lap.
I wore moisturising cream with collagen to keep my face fresh, firm, and wrinkle free. My skin was important to me. I exfoliated frequently to keep my arms, legs and torso smooth. I needed to keep my body smooth for when I got into hold. For my armpits I used lady shave to keep them soft and clean for public appearances but I never used bikini bare, preferring to trim my netherhair with scissors. My hair, skin, face, body, physique and figure were all perfectly toned, nicely tanned and beautiful. My challenge was to keep them that way. Animal scents like musk were my favourite fragrances when I was in the mood for sex with a man or woman which was often. The Toblerone was just a chocolate sugar fix I took with Bonnie. She enjoyed her treats. Once it had stopped raining, I finished shopping, found myself a drying bench under the statue of James Watt, well away from the filthy tramp, took out my towel, sat on it, and checked my iPhone for text warnings about the treatment’s side effects:
You beauty! You’ll experience side-effects from my treatment. Increased skin sensitivity to changes in temperature. Increased appetite. Intense emotional mood swings. Anything, from joy to anger in seconds, hormonal imbalances.
I touched myself. Was she referring to the same hormonal imbalances that resulted in my really high sex drive, my hypersexuality and could, if left untreated, culminate in severe continuous, compulsive, sexual behaviour disorder?
I love you, Isla, she wrote.
Oh, and I love you too, girl, so much it hurts, I mused fondly, reading her final, telling words:
Love is painful,
Maud
I touched myself, intimately this time.
Think I’m going to enjoy being the new me. Any regrets, girl? I asked myself, thrilled, riding high, exhilarating bursts of raw energy pulsating thru my aroused body, Nae, no regrets at all!
*****
It started to get dark, uncomfortably cold. I wrapped the scarf tightly around my neck, careful not to aggravate the wound, crossed the busy street and entered the terminus, weaving my ways tenuously thru the throng of expectant riders, over the slippery concourse. My train wasn’t due for another hour, so I searched for a place to sit and reflect on my life and think about my girl.
The waiting room was warm if stuffy, heaving with a melee of commuters, auld retirees, young hikers with cumbersome rucksacks on their backs, and families, many of them too tired to cover their faces. An exhausted-looking young mamaidh wearing a flimsy grey vest and faded mum jeans was breastfeeding her little girl. A curved green seat was free, so I sat next to her. I caught a glimpse of the girl’s hand clutching her mother’s breast and wondered at her age.
My mamaidh breastfed me well into my teens, weaning me to make me big and strong. I missed the unique sensation of warmth and love I felt when she was feeding me. Bonnie did help me, playing make believe by taking me to her breast like her wee bairn whenever we made love. I envied the suckling. I wished I could take her place, or lie with her, and drink from her mother’s breasts. I admit it, I thirsted for her mamaidh’s milk.
‘Lovely, isn’t she?’ I said trying to keep my excited voice even, trying to control my emotions.
‘Aye, Enid’s my little angel, aren’t you?’
The mamaidh, whose tangled mess of brown hair was shot with split ends and eyes were lined with smudge, smiled proudly at her daughter’s blonde head as she fed her. Transfixed, I found myself unable to take my eyes off her feeding breast.
‘I can nae get her off my breasts, you know,’ she admitted shyly, ‘She likes my milk too much. Just as well I’m expressing lots of milk for you, isn’t it, Enid?’
I was enthralled, struggling to suppress my mother fixation, imagining she was feeding me, her bairn, latched onto her, clinging to her breast. My face went totally red as Enid, who wore curly blonde hair, faded denim dungarees, socks and sandals, gurgled. The mood in me shifted. I felt enchanted yet saddened. Motherhood, the act of conceiving and giving birth to a bairn, wasn’t something I’d considered. Maybe, I could adopt an orphan, be artificially inseminated or have a wee test tube baby when I retired from fighting.
The preoccupied mother continued her feed, ‘Enid loves her mummy’s milk, don’t you bairn?’
Unable to take any more milking, I stared at the mould on the ceiling and changed the subject.
‘How auld is your little girl if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘Not at all. She’s only three.’
‘Three, you say?’
‘Aye, off to kindergarten soon, aren’t you girl?’ She eyed me suspiciously, ‘Do you nae have a bairn of your own to feed?’
A sad-lump-in-my-throat choked away a chunk of my voice, ‘Nae, I’m afraid I can’t conceive.’
‘You should see a gynaecologist, you know, about your fertility,’ she brushed her daughter’s hair off her face with her free hand, her bairn’s pursed lips extruding her dark honey complected nipple like child’s plasticine, ‘Or seek help from someone in the family. I did. Do you not fancy a wee bairn of your own by any chance?’
I nodded my head, feeling strangely maternal, and ripe, ‘I’d love a wee bairn. If I were married.’
She threw an arm at me, ‘Oh, you don’t have to be married to have a bairn these days. You can have a bairn without a husband. I was inseminated by my grὰdhaiche.’
I was amazed, ‘Your grὰdhaiche, you say?’
‘Aye, I’m a single mamaidh I’ve got a lovely bairn to love and it’s all thanks to my grὰdhaiche.’
I swallowed a mouth of saliva as the realization set in lowering my voice. I spoke wondrously, out of the side of my mouth, ‘Your father sired your wee bairn?’
‘Oh aye! A woman can get very lonely and needy living in a log cabin up in the highlands.’
Surprised to discover the mother indulged in interbreeding, I left her to nourish her illegitimate bairn and scanned the room. The mamaidh clearly hadn’t seen the vicious youth in the hoodie perched on the seat opposite, leering at her. His trainers were unlaced. I hoped the scum tripped on his feet when he stood up. The sneering youth, who had marbled eyes, twigged me watching him. My fellow passengers fell silent, pretending to check their phones for messages, read their papers, books and magazines, or take a snooze, surreptitiously enjoying the character conflict about to unfold.
Apathy, I cursed, Why is there so much apathy in this world? That poor mamaidh’s trying to feed her bairn, the filthy scumbag’s ogling her tits, and nae-one’s lifting a finger to help her. I need to protect this woman, make my feelings known to the ghoul, without getting into a brawl.
‘I scrape turds like you off my gym shoes,’ I said, scornfully, ‘Now, take your eyes off her.’
‘Who the fuck are you?’ he slurred in a guttural apology for a voice. He had bad sebum, oily skin, a waxy complexion, his face sported a day’s growth, his lips were split. And he was drunk.
He waved his clenched fists for me taking wild swings at empty air, ‘Looking for this, are you?’
Horrified by his threatening behaviour, the mother unlatched her little girl, tucked her breast in her vest, gathered up their heather red padded coats and dragged her wailing bairn out the room.
‘Thank you for caring about me and my baby girl,’ she said, sliding past me.
I said goodbye. As soon as they’d left the room, the youth got to his feet and swaggered towards me. I sprang out of my seat, balling my fists, adopting the offensive. He towered over me, was at least six inches taller than me, and he clearly fancied his chances in a fight. I estimated his weight at one-hundred and eighty-five pounds: middleweight. He’d a longer reach than me, but he was out of shape, gone to fat, unfit from years of alcoholic even drug abuse. Nae threat to me at all.
I warned him, ‘Don’t even think about it. I’m a killer at judo, deadly at karate, my kick boxing’s lethal. I know jabs, kicks, and punches that’ll lay you flat on that floor in an instant. Care to try me?’
The flames of fire in my eyes, the timbre of my voice, my confidence and stealth, told the youth not to mess with this girl. He raised his palms in unconditional surrender, slumping in his seat.
Struggling to control my rage, I moved away from him, to just inside the door, wishing I could fight the young mamaidh’s twisted admirer in my pit, and teach him a lesson he’d never forget.
*****
Can’t wait for the next fun instalment? Thrill Ride, my debut novel is out now on Amazon:
Thrill Ride – Kindle edition by Furl, HJ . Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
