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*Semi-autobiographical writing has always appealed to me. The intertwining of fiction and real life hold endless possibilities for a writer of which I occasionally attempt to be. The following is the first chapter in a novel I am tinkering with. It's not perfect but you don't become a better writer by not writing! I apologise to those of a sensitive disposition. The following contains Scottish slang, copious swearing and depictions of drug use. In fact, the Scottish dialogue may be difficult to understand. Still, if you do decide to read it you are bound to learn some very genuine Scottish swear words.* 

*Of course, one of the joys of semi-autobiographical writing is that you do not have to admit to the ratio of fiction versus fact. It can be very cathartic too*

*It also means you can get away with murder ;o)*



### Prologue

The cold November sun shone down on the cemetery where we gathered round the grave. It should have been raining. it felt wrong that there were birds singing. Felt wrong that the trees not bare enough for the time of year, or the occasion. The wind was barely strong enough to stir the grass around the edges of the neatly excised hole.

The minister droned on, thankfully the eulogies had finished in the church and here was just a few selected readings from the bible. It was over quickly. She didn’t look at any of us, just stood ramrod straight in her sedate black skirt and jacket. No hat, just some streaky mascara from the tears she had shed over her boy, taken too young. We didn’t doubt that there was blame being thrown about and we looked like being on the receiving end. 

There were five of us, or at least there were. Down to four now, ***fuck.*** It was bloody hard to keep correcting myself like that. 

We had been out. Just another Saturday, nothing unusual.


### Chapter 1 – *One Year earlier*

The pub was crowded, expected for a Saturday night even though it was only just gone eight o’clock. It was the West end of town and this was yet another new chain pub that professed to be different and cooler than the rest. Utter pish of course. It had the same boxy tables and cube-like seats of exposed pine and leather littered about. For all the world looking as if they had sailed straight from Ikea to rest here. There were deep red drapes hanging about seemingly at random and a looping bass was throbbing loudly with some breathless female vocalist gasping over it.

We were standing about near one of the tall tables that dotted about the darkened interior. Three of us, Tom, Pat and me, Johnny. 

'Your round Mr Johnny, don’t keep the lad's waiting!' Yelled Pat, exaggeratingly waving his empty pint glass around. He was the biggest of us all, over six feet with a rugby player's build, short blonde hair and a crooked smile that seemed to impress the ladies. Alarmingly he had an almost never-ending capacity for alcohol and drank it blindingly quickly too. Bad news for me, being shorter and lighter I didn’t quite match up to his beer engine capacity. 

'Yeah yeah mate, same again? I was too busy starin' at that blonde chick to notice you chuggin yer pint down.”
'Where?' Pat scanned the bar area quickly. 'Aaahhh.'

I grinned and so did we all, as we shamelessly stared at a blonde girl in impossibly high heels and short skirt at the bar. 

'Am up there.' I ambled off to the bar through the throng. It was all talk of course. I got to the bar and after the usual jostling about and slowly twisting a tenner in my fingers lure-like at the bar staff I got served. Ineffectually I glanced at the girl who had been the subject of my finest staring. I think at this point you are meant to speak to them but I rarely had the nerve. Others could, but not me, at least not until I was three sheets to the wind and possibly half canned on pills. Not that the conversation from me in that state counted for much.

Tom seemed quietly smug about something and it wasn’t till he weaved back from the toilets and casually stuck a small wrap in my hand that I realised why.

'Oh excellent man, what’s this? Sulph, charlie?'
'A bit of Cha cha mate! Fire in and then pass it to Pat.'
'Cool mucker, back in a mo!' 

I darted off to the toilets with a spring in my step. I had felt half gashed by the beer and was really glad of a pick me up. As I pushed my way into one of the cubicles I thanked god that this wasn’t one of those pubs in which every surface in a cubicle was curved. Making it so very difficult for the likes of us to chop a line out. We are not usually so desperate that we will snort from the porcelain of the pan itself but hey, it has been done in times of great duress. 

I quickly chopped out a line onto the cistern and then, appalled at my own miserliness added a little more from the bag. It looked like good shit, well at least that’s what guys like to knowingly say. To tell the truth I wouldn’t know the difference in looks between a good bag of coke and an afghan hound. I could hear people jostling outside and someone gabbling about their girlfriend just not giving them enough space as I waited in a paranoid fashion for someone to start the hand dryer. 

There! My expertly rolled up tenner skiffed over the line, hoovering it up with nary a crumb left behind. Although for form's sake I licked a finger and wiped up some imaginary specks before licking my finger again. Oh aye, this was it alright. Back to the bar for some beer for me.

My seat had been nabbed by a man wearing an inordinate amount of corduroy, hmm well protected by my so called friends, not. Tom was slightly mad-eyed and talking to Pat at a rate of knots and seemed to be in no position to know I was even sitting with them. Pat was looking confused at Tom’s ever more erratic rambling conversation. After checking the nick of Tom I cursed under my breath and wished I had chopped myself some more of his gear, it *was* actually good stuff, I could feel an amazing clarity and familiar need to talk incessantly course through my system.

'Pat.' I edged closer to pass him the gear.
'Aye?'
'Present fae Tom.' I winked.
'Aw J-man, I thought I was going to punch Tom if he didnae shut it! Yes man, back soon.” 

I watched him waltz off to the bogs and turned to Tom with a gleam in my eye.

'Seems like good stuff mate, you still up for pills but?'
'Aye! Of course.' Tom giggled 'Am up for anythin you know that mate... Don’t get yer hopes up though, cos that doesnae mean I am gonnae shag ye!'
'As if I would be letting your wee nob anywhere near me man!'

Later we clattered out the pub, drunk as skunks although we certainly didn’t look it thanks to the effects of the powder.

'Where to dudes, Melting Pot?' I couldn't help but breathe dramatically in through my nose then blowing out through my mouth several times. Everything gleamed, the rain soaked cars, streetlights orange reflections smeared on windows.

'Cool with me mate.' Tom said, pulling his collar up. 'Think we are meeting the other two in there are we not?'
'Let’s get a fuckin taxi then, it's freezing'

It may only have been November but in Glasgow, its arctic weather anytime out-with the window of June to August and I was in no mood to hang about. Tom was now hunched over with his jacket pulled up high around his head shuffling to some unheard dance track which caused him to mumble the odd vocal from his mouth. Pat as ever was poncing about in his rugby top seemingly impervious to the chill. He was cheerily waltzing half on the road half off with his thumb out attempting to flag down every vehicle that passed in the hope of it being a taxi.

I was starting to get excited, it was only eleven o’clock and the night stretched out in front of us beckoning with its neon fingered promises of girls, drugs and drink. Shallow I know but it was what we liked. True the girl’s rarely happened but when it did it was always a bonus. 

Melting Pot was a newish place that had already attracted a good following. It was based in a ceilidh venue which chucked all the kilted fannies out at half eleven, jacked up their prices then let in the hordes of steamers and dealers that made every club night a good one. The DJs were allegedly shit hot but to me, it all sounded like the same old trancey shit that you could hear anywhere, in fact when I was on *E* I found it difficult to notice where one song finished and another started. I think I was alone in this though as everyone else raved about the *tunes.*

The queue wasn’t too bad and we were quickly in and at the bar. It was a weird place alright, although they kept the lights down low you could still make out the tartan wallpaper.  It was small too, maybe two-thirds of a tennis court.  Just a big hall really with the DJ and toilets at one end and bar at the other. Each side had tables and chairs and we plunked ourselves down at one looking about whilst Pat headed off to the bar.

'Think we will score the night?' Tom asked huddling close to me as if the FBI had wired the table.
'We always do mucker, just a wee bit of patience and soon you will be laffin.'
'Ah hope so, cos this place is crap if yer straight ain't it?'
'I am always straight mate, don’t involve me in your wee gay fantasies.'
'Aye very good ya nob, here’s Pat with the bev. Patty boy, over here!” 

Tom waved enthusiastically at Pat who was peering through the murk with little success. The place was filling up fast and I could already feel the first beads of sweat starting to trot down my back. That was a major feature of Melting Pot.  The way they stuffed so many people into a small hall that doesn’t have air conditioning. I swear that on a really cold snowy night I have never experienced such pain as leaving there hot and sweaty. Hitting the solid wall of frost at the door feeling my damp shirt crisp up with the cold and my bollocks retract up to my ears whilst my penis frantically attempts to resemble a butter bean, not nice. At all.

Tom yet again had done the business. Within twenty minutes of entering the place he had located a dealer and got six pills. He sat down with us and passed us each two with the kind of sleight of hand even a giraffe could beat, whilst looking around furtively. That was the thing about Tom, he took the gear the same as the rest of us. In fact maybe not even as much as some of us and yet he always felt the need to conform to the expected stereotype of an illegal substance user. When he bought them - he was furtive and suspicious looking, when he took them he experienced exactly what you are meant to.

He smokes hash; he always has to get the giggles, then the munchies even if it was two puffs from a weak joint. He takes acid or mushrooms and he hallucinates about foxes and snowmen chasing him. He snorts coke and he has to keep walking about rubbing his nose in that comedy *look at me, I am on Charlie* way. He takes ecstasy and he tells us all repeatedly, incessantly that he loves us and keeps trying to hug us all the time. It was, to be honest, a little embarrassing at times. We were stuck with him though as he was the guy that usually got us all the drugs.

There was the usual fear/anticipation as we all popped one. I for one have been getting more and more aware of my own mortality since I turned thirty, for a while, I calmed down on the crazy hedonism, but life was kind of boring and before I knew it I had been sucked back in. Pat sat back and beamed at us 

'Half an hour chaps and you won’t be able to get us off that dance floor!'
I laughed. 'Yeah, me with my quicksilver feet, watch me.' I glanced at Tom who’s eyes were darting around like two demented fish. 'Whassup mate?'

'You getting anythin yet?' He was fidgeting like fuck.
'Its been two minutes man, give it a chance.'
'Mibbe we should have another wee line of sparky to get us going?'
'If you want mate, fire away.'

I rolled my eyes at Pat who was making a wanker sign at Tom’s back as he set out for the toilets. He could never wait, it was always the same.

The music was brilliant and there were sparkles at the edge of my vision, I was dancing and everything was good. I had no idea what time it was. The most important thing to me seemed to be moving my hands around in a wavy motion occasionally shouting to Tom or Pat when they appeared in my circle of vision about how great everything was.

'I love you guys!' Shouted Tom regularly as the music pumped on. 

I could barely summon the strength to care as I felt waves wash over my scalp and down the rest of my body. Surely this was what it was all about? Having a good time with your mates and livin life the way it should be lived. I wished every night could be like this. Drugs fucking rocked and anyone who said otherwise was quite frankly out their tree. In fact, they were dull boring twats that just needed to let go and live a little. How can you belittle something so ferociously if you haven’t tried it?

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A kebab shop. Fuck me it was cold. The last three hours were a little hazy and I was still quite far gone. Why wasn’t I in a taxi? Ah, Pat. He could never go a night out without getting a big greasy slab of spiced meat down his neck. He came burling out of the kebab shop like a prize fighter with his kebab held high in the air. 

'Guys you will have to wait till I finish this before I get in a taxi.'
'Mate, fuck that. I am knackered, let's go. And where the fuck is Tom?'
'He must have pulled his disappearing act again, more likely in a gay bar than havin pulled a bird.'

We both sniggered at that, Tom was rampantly heterosexual but he didn’t take kindly to being accused of anything otherwise which generally made it worse for him when it came to taking some verbal abuse. Of course, we always debated whether his extreme touchiness on the subject bordered on the verge of “protesting too much”. 

'Look mate, I think I will have to just get a taxi the noo, I am falling about all over the place.' 

As if to emphasise the point my legs had become like sails in a strong wind and I was walking about in small disorganised circles whilst waiting for Pat to wolf down his bizarre meat feast. 

'Hang on mate.' Pat chewed 'I am nearly done.'
'Sorry mate I need to go now, I am totally wasted.'
'I will just be five minutes man I am nearly there!' Pat was surrounded by a blizzard of torn paper and spilt cabbage from his kebab but seemed no nearer the end of it. I stuck my hand out as I caught a lucky glimpse of a taxi with the for hire light on. 

'You comin?' I said, blearily.

*'No way is he getting in ma taxi wi that pal.'* Greeted the taxi driver kindly as I opened the door and plopped myself down in the back seat. 

Pat was muttering and swaying with his back turned to me still dipping his greasy fingers into his pile of meat and salad. *Fuck this* I thought.  I could see the taxi driver getting ready to deliver me a rant about wasting his time so I thumped the door closed stuck two fingers up at Pat’s back and let the taxi whisk me off home.

#### Thank you for reading such a long chapter! Chapter 2 coming soon.