That’s Your Lot. Limmy

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СКАЧАТЬ looking back, they maybe just asked if Art’s only UK date was London. They were maybe just asking, rather than saying that it was.

      Or it could be that the person just said that they themselves were going to see the concert in London.

      So Vinnie had gone ahead and searched for ‘Art Garfunkel’ and ‘London’, and up came the London date. Just London. And Vinnie took that as confirmation that Art was only going to be in London. So he booked it. Then he came all the way down from Glasgow to London, got off the train, and saw the poster with the dates.

      And there on the poster was a date for Glasgow.

      It had already passed, it was last Wednesday. Vinnie could have made it. He dearly would have loved to have made it. But now he wasn’t going to see him in either Glasgow or London, and he felt so fucking stupid.

      He loved Art Garfunkel.

      Really, what a talented singer and songwriter.

      Vinnie wasn’t sure if it was Art who wrote all the songs in Simon & Garfunkel, but he must have. He was the main singer. Plus the fact that he left the band to go solo and then went on to write ‘Bright Eyes’, whereas Simon, the short one, disappeared without a trace. That tells you everything you need to know about Art.

      Vinnie couldn’t wait to see him live. But that just wouldn’t be happening, not tonight anyway.

      It didn’t piss him off, though. He was used to it. He was used to things like this happening. But he couldn’t laugh it off either. And he didn’t want to go into it all with the driver.

      So when the driver asked him if he was down for some sightseeing, he just said ‘Aye’.

      The driver nodded and started driving, looking out the window to the side. He wasn’t looking at other cars, though. He was looking at the people on the pavement. And he’d turn his head all the way around to look at some of them.

      ‘And what a day for it,’ said the driver, looking at the people going by. ‘D’you know what I mean?’

      ‘Aye,’ said Vinnie.

      He thought he knew what the driver meant, but then the driver gave him a look in the mirror that made Vinnie think that he didn’t know.

      Vinnie asked ‘For sightseeing?’

      ‘Yeah,’ said the driver. ‘If you know what I mean.’

      Vinnie didn’t know what he meant, and it must have shown, because the driver looked at him again and said, ‘The women.’

      Vinnie got it now.

      ‘Oh, right, right, aye,’ said Vinnie. ‘The lassies. The women. Aye.’

      What the driver meant was the women. What he meant was, because it was a nice day, because it was lovely and warm, women were wearing less clothes. Instead of getting all wrapped up in big coats and pairs of tights, they were stripping down to keep cool. They were out in their bare legs or wearing thin clothes that let you see their bodies.

      Vinnie got it. He looked out the window at them, and after a while, he started getting hard.

      He was going to cover it up. He reached over for his bag, which was lying next to him on the back seat. He was going to pick it up and cover his bulge. But then he realised that it didn’t matter, when he thought about it.

      He left his bag where it was. Because when he actually thought about it, it was all right, when he thought about what the driver said.

      He’d said it was a good day for sightseeing, a good day to look at women. To look at them and get turned on by them.

      He wanted Vinnie to know that he fancied women, and he wanted to know if Vinnie fancied women as well, and the driver would like it if Vinnie did. For some reason.

      Vinnie didn’t know why the driver wanted any of that, but it didn’t matter. Vinnie was fine with it, because he fancied women as well.

      ‘Look,’ said Vinnie.

      The driver looked out the window to the side, to see what lassie Vinnie was talking about.

      ‘Who?’ said the driver, looking at Vinnie in the mirror, then he looked out the side window again.

      ‘No,’ said Vinnie. ‘Look here.’

      The driver looked in the mirror, down to where Vinnie’s hands were, and saw that Vinnie had a hard-on. It was bulging underneath his tracksuit bottoms.

      Vinnie saw the look on the driver’s face, and it was like the driver didn’t know what Vinnie was meaning. Vinnie thought that maybe the driver just thought his trackie bottoms were baggy and what he was looking at was just a big baggy bit raised in the air.

      So Vinnie pulled the trackie leg tight to show the shape of his hard-on, so that the driver knew what it was and what Vinnie was talking about. But the driver still had that same look.

      The driver even turned his head around to see it with his own eyes, in case he couldn’t see it properly in the mirror, but he still had that same look. Vinnie smiled at him, but the driver looked away and didn’t say anything.

      What had happened?

      Why did the driver act funny when Vinnie showed him his hard-on?

      Was he gay?

      Maybe that was it.

      Maybe the driver was doing that thing that people do in taxis, the thing where the driver and the passenger say things that they’re not really interested in, things like when you ask the driver what time he started and what time he finishes, or when the driver asks you if that’s you on your way home now after a night out.

      You know, taxi patter.

      Vinnie had seen that being talked about on a stand-up comedy thing on the telly. Maybe the driver was just pretending to be into women, because that’s just what you do. Vinnie sometimes pretended to be into football if the driver had football on the radio. He’d ask the driver who was playing and what the score was, even though he didn’t care.

      It’s just taxi patter. It’s just people pretending, but the driver got caught out. He fucked it up.

      Vinnie sympathised, because he himself knew all about fucking things up. Just look at how he fucked up going to the concert, coming all the way down here when he could have went to the concert back in Glasgow.

      He looked at the driver, and he could see that the guy looked ashamed. He felt for him, so he decided to change the subject.

      He leaned forward and put his hand on the driver’s shoulder to let him know it was all right.

      ‘Do you like Art Garfunkel?’

       Grammar

      Donnie started a new job, at an office. When he got there, he sent a group email СКАЧАТЬ