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There was a nineteen-year-old girl at a party who knew no-one intimately, but everyone by name. Nearly everyone. She shared an agent with a couple of attendees, and the group gathered in a bar she probably shouldn’t have been in due to the ‘no under-21s’ signs on the door and above the bar, but who cared in the still-fresh, all-new millennium, when people off the telly regularly patronised the establishment? The landlord didn’t mind; he turned a blind eye, occasionally asking how the hell he was supposed to keep track of everyone who came through the door anyway? People had fake IDs. He couldn’t be expected to know. He couldn’t be expected to recognise everyone who showed up. “Oh that’s the lass who was in that weekday drama. Not quite big enough for a weekend mini-series. I can’t possibly be expected to know her, yet.”
But Uisdean did. He stared at her with glowing eyes, not yet drunk enough to have lost his focus, still able to appreciate how young and pretty she was. And he later told the girl, he hadn’t glommed on her with corruption in view; he’d warmed to her because she was new to ‘this business’, new to the agency, new to his circle of friends. She hadn’t been embittered by it, yet, that was the whole point, the reason for his attraction. She hadn’t yet been jaded. She was yet to acquire the cynicism that would be visited upon her in later years, after a breakup and a breakdown and other parts of her life had gone terribly wrong.
“My middle name’s Glenn,” he said.
She gulped, nervous, but determined not to let it show. She hadn’t yet learned to act while off set, to schmooze and make contacts and to work the room. Though excited to be around people, you know, people, those who mattered, that youthful energy had yet to be tamed and harnessed and utilised in ways that would cast a spell on others. Still, others noticed that energy and wanted to take advantage of it. She wasn’t too stupid to realise there were vultures out there.
He, on the other hand, just wanted to bask in it. He’d been around so many jaded people in his thirty years that he needed refreshment, a new drug. A new addiction. And she was fresh enough to catch his attention, to suggest a new high awaited.
“Why are you telling me your middle name?”
“Most people find it difficult pronouncing my first. Can I get you something?” He pointed to her near-empty bottle. She had yet to grow out of the alcopop stage. Christ, she was young.
“Of course I wouldn’t be able to pronounce your first name if you don’t tell me it. And no, I haven’t finished this one yet.”
“You have to get the next one lined up,” he said, signalling to the barman and ordering another beer for himself and another brightly-coloured chemical cocktail-in-a-bottle for her.
“I would like to pace myself,” the girl said, surprising them both with her assertiveness. Or maybe it was nerves, under the guise of self-assuredness. A jittery young woman in a room full of people she barely knew, might try so hard to sound confident that her as-yet-untrained voice would harden just a touch too much. Her voice coach admired her talent for picking up accents and mimicry within a short period of meeting someone but even those who could sing like a bird needed coaching.
“Ah, come on.” He nudged her with his elbow, while he waited for the drinks to arrive. “Loosen up a bit. It’s Friday night.”
She scowled, unsure if he was just being a party animal and unaware of how patronising he might sound. Not that she was scared of alcohol; she’d been drunk plenty of times in her life, but on nights such as this when she’d walked into a bar alone? Slow and steady, for now. She didn’t want to make an idiot of herself.
“You’re Afton, aren’t you?” My-middle-name-is-Glenn asked. “Paul said you’d be coming, and to keep an eye out for you. You, uh...here alone?” Mentioning their mutual agent gave his patter the air of legitimacy.
“Yep. I had nothing else to do tonight and I wasn’t working this week, so I had the time.”
“Glad you could grace us with your presence.”
“I wasn’t being deliberately standoffish. It’s just, you know how tiring it can be, if you’re filming back-to-back episodes and you get no sleep.”
He shrugged, and leaned against the bar like a human italic, draping his form over it like he owned the place. He certainly seemed comfortable enough around licensed premises, drunk people and loud music. And from what she’d heard, there was a reason the local press had nicknamed him Glenn Morangie.
Afton had known who he was as soon as he’d approached and decided, yes, now is the time to practise acting cool, like I don’t give a shit.
Being around all of these people, though, some from the same agency, some merely friends of friends...well, this was the world she so desperately wanted to break into, after all.
She drained the rest of her first bottle, immediately started on the second which had magically appeared in front of her.
He saluted her with his beer, an admiring sparkle in his eyes. She couldn’t tell what colour they were, but that gave her an excuse to keep looking into them.
“You’re pretty,” he blurted out, laughing when she startled. “God, that sounded skeevy. I just meant, you’ll go far.”
“I like to think I can act as well.”
“Yeah, ‘course. Or Paul wouldn’t have signed you. I’m just saying...”
“That mean you’ll go far someday then?” she teased, smiling just so he’d know she wasn’t being deliberately snarky. Just a little...cheeky. “As we share the same agent?”
“Look, I know that sounded patronising. I just mean...”
She lifted her eyebrows and that little gesture, he later told her, unnerved him. In a good way. It set him on edge. No, intrigued him. Like, here was a girl, a young woman really, just starting out, new to the agency, who could intrigue him with a lift of her eyebrows.
“You looked me in the eye,” he would later tell her. “And you kept looking.”
~*~
The party moved on to someone’s house, and Glenn was there, and he eventually told her his real first name, insisted she call him Oosh as a nickname. “All my friends do.”
“Am I your friend?”
“Course. We share an agent. We might even end up working together at some point.”
She couldn’t see how that would happen. She acted in soaps. Maybe crime dramas someday. Thrillers.
He...he was a comedian. He did stand-up, guest-starred in all the well-known sitcoms. Sometimes even had recurring roles. And he was what was often referred to as a ‘party animal’ in the papers. Code for something a bit more serious than that.
~*~
He oozed charisma. Five minutes after meeting him for the first time, or maybe closer to five hours, she wondered how she could ever have stood in the same room as Oosh and not wanted him.
Maybe it was the alcohol, or the joint being passed around, neither of which were new substances to Afton.
“Like the poem,” he said. “You know, the one–”
“The one by Rabbie Burns, that I was named after? Yes, I–”
“You’ve heard it a thousand times before, then.” His shoulders slumped and she immediately felt guilty, for having let him down in some way. For having been unnecessarily abrupt.
“Sorry.” She took a deep drag on the joint and held it without coughing; he stared in silent admiration. When it came to be his turn, he murmured, “You’ve done that before.”
“I might be new to the agency. To all...this,” and she waved a hand at the rest of the room. She and Oosh sat on a battered settee in a flat somewhere in...well, it was somewhere. A short taxi ride away from the last bar they’d been to. One might have called it an after party if they’d gone somewhere more glamorous. “But I’m not completely naive.”
“I thought you were, earlier,” he admitted, groaning and leaning back. He eyed her through the smoke, his expression now slightly less sharp than it had been earlier. Not blurred or completely without focus, but the both of them had loosened up a bit. Now they’d shared more than a few drinks, spent some time in each other’s company, they – or at least she – felt more comfortable.
“You thought I was naive?”
“Maybe that’s a strong word to use,” he said, before taking another draw, smoke curling out of his nostrils. “Christ, I could do with something a bit stronger than this, though. No, you seemed a bit unsettled when you walked into the first bar we were in.”
“Walking into that place on my own?”
“Ballsy, though. Even if you were a bit unsettled.”
“I didn’t know anyone. Not really.”
He turned his head, still leaning back against the headrest. “And now you do.”
~*~
“How old are you, anyway?” Oosh panted, beads of perspiration running down his face. Strands of hair, normally slicked back, hung in front of his eyes, but his wide grin told her he didn’t care if he looked a state.
“You didn’t think to ask me that before you got inside me?”
The grin grew even wider. “I know you’re legal ‘cause you were in the bar earlier.”
“Fake ID exists. Even the landlord knows that.”
“Paul sent you there. He wouldn’t have done that if–”
“Oosh. Did you really have to stop mid-stroke?”
And they burst out laughing, the absurdity of the situation getting to them.
“I thought I’d better check.”
“Bit late.”
“Well?”
“I’m nineteen.” And she hooked her ankles together behind the small of his back, feeling a thrill of power at the way his eyes widened but somehow lost focus at the same time, the way he groaned at the sudden tightness of her.
“God, you’re...”
“I’m what?”
“Young.” Still supporting his weight on his forearms, he leaned down to kiss her, and began moving again. Rocking back and forward. “And tight.”
“And I’m going to come,” she gasped, clawing at his shoulders. “Keep doing that.”
~*~
“Is there anything you won’t do?” he asked her suddenly. They lay, as usual, in his bed in Muirhouse. Side by side, staring up at the ceiling, duvet by now discarded. It had been kicked down to the foot of the bed, it being too much for both of them, on top of their own body heat.
She’d been naked in front of him enough times by now to feel completely unashamed of her nakedness. It would be good for her career, too. An actress should be comfortable in her own skin. Not that nude scenes were compulsory, but if it ever came to that...
“What do you mean?”
“Like...” The hand he used to gesture at the room, such as it was, seemed more naked than either of them, as strange as that might sound. Commonly he held a cigarette of not-quite-legal origins, or a bottle of beer, or a glass of whisky.
They’d done acid once or twice, but in the midst of it all he’d been convinced his future self was trying to phone him to tell him sloths didn’t really exist. Apparently, future-Oosh swore, they were just an invention by some evil animation company to distract us all from the truth about potatoes whatever that was, but Afton had been laughing too much to pay attention. The worst that had happened to her was the ceiling had pulsated like a beating heart and she’d spent five minutes – or a whole day; time was distorted – convinced that rats could talk; they just refused to in front of humans because they were in a huff with everyone for some reason.
But dear God, she loved to fuck on coke. Like they could go on forever. ‘Til she got sore, and she often did. Either Oosh didn’t come for hours, or her brain distorted time again or maybe he did but could just keep going and Christ she felt immortal.
“In bed,” he said, then shrugged, as well as he could while lying down. “Or out of it.”
“Oh God, you’re going to ask me to do it up the bum, aren’t you?” And she giggled, as she realised, I would do anything you asked. And it frightened her as another realisation hit, the truth of that thought. She really would do anything he asked. There was nothing she’d say no to if it would please him.
Oosh laughed too, and she didn’t think she’d ever heard such a beautiful sound. There was nothing cruel about his laughter, not then; she always knew he laughed with her, not at her. “Maybe,” he said, walking two fingers from her wrist to the inside of her elbow, stopping just short of the spot she knew he knew was ticklish. Another thing he was good at. Making her anticipate something, then stopping at the very last second. It was something they jokingly referred to as pulling out at Haymarket, Haymarket being the train station immediately before Waverley, in the centre of Edinburgh. Strictly speaking it referred to the withdrawal method, but as they shared a home town, Oosh used that phrase to refer to anything involving a build-up then a sharp halt. Edging, in other words.
She hated and loved it at the same time, the way he’d bring her right to the edge then with coke-fuelled self-control, manage not to come himself and keep her teetering until she begged.
“You know the rule,” she said. And she didn’t have to say it, because he did.
“Blood and fire,” he murmured. Nothing that drew blood, and no naked flames. This latter she was curious about, when it came to candles at least, but with a little persuasion and perhaps some whisky, she could talk him round. “And breath.” He wrapped a hand around her throat, not tightening his grip, not even flexing his fingers. Just making contact, and she turned her head on the pillow to look him in the eye.
His fringe flopped down across his forehead but the glassy darkness of his pupils still startled her every time. And he grinned, managing to focus on her.
“What if...” he began, and despite the alcohol and seventeen other substances coursing through her veins in that moment, adrenaline still made its presence felt, and her heart skipped a beat. If a stoned and half-cut Oosh hesitated in what he was about to say, it had to be something bad...didn’t it?
She said nothing, hoping he’d put her out of her misery and just say it.
“What if I didn’t mean you?” he asked.
Unbidden and startled, her eyes widened. “What?”
And he lifted his hand away from her throat, breaking eye contact at the same time. She immediately missed both. “Forget I said it.”
“Oh come on, with everything else we’ve done? You can’t tell me you’re nervous about saying something.”
Nineteen years old and coaxing honesty and openness from a thirty-year-old man, she narrowed those startled eyes and glared at him, now just about sober again, not as high as she was when they’d tumbled into bed an hour ago. Or had it been two hours?
“Well, there’s this thing you could do next time you go down on me, that I like.”
“Oh, really?” She propped herself up on one elbow, resting her head on her palm, and used the other hand to reach beneath the duvet to stroke his cock. Somehow, somehow, it never took long with him. He was positively Priapic, despite the fact his blood must have been ninety percent proof.
He’ll spoil me for every other man. She quickly dismissed that thought, because it suggested there would be other men after him, and he would not be her last.
Silly, to be so set on the man she’d met while still a teenager, and so sure of their affair, but that was what Uisdean Glenn Peterson did to her. He made her want.
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do,” she whispered, nuzzling into his neck, and he groaned, arching his back. “Not if you really wanted me to.”
“Fuck,” he said, a throaty curse in a tone that said she could ask for anything in that moment and he’d agree to it. It spoke to power, and power over Oosh was more potent than any drug with which she’d thus far experimented.
And he was such an easy addiction to cultivate.
~*~
Naked on his living room carpet, flat on her back in front of the fire while he sat up, rolling a joint. Had she ever been fully clothed in his presence since the first night? And he murmured his way through the first verse of Sweet Afton before licking the edge of the papers again to make them stick.
The fire was a 1990s holdover, a heater with three bars and fake coal, lit from behind with a red bulb to give the illusion of something burning.
~*~
“Hold still,” he said, giggling, the sound hinting at the mania to come. Sometimes when he got high, anger bubbled away under the surface, and she got scared. Not of him. And perhaps it wasn’t even anger. More like resentment. Whatever it was, his moodiness always seemed directed inward, at himself. But still, she couldn’t help wondering if there was anything she could do to avoid it.
Logic told her that no, it was not her job to fix him, but...she couldn’t help wanting to.
“I’m trying, but you keep tickling me.”
“It’s not me, it’s the credit cards.”
“And you’re holding them.”
“Lie fucking still, woman, would you?” He tapped her backside playfully, half an hour after fucking it. The sting – from the fucking, at least – had faded, and she hated that. She preferred to feel marked. Even pain was a memory of Oosh having been inside her.
And so, lying on her front on her living room floor this time, head resting on her folded arms, while he cut the coke into two lines on her back with a couple of credit cards. It would have been easier on a mirror, but he’d wanted her skin. “I’m gonna be brutally honest,” had been his exact words. “I want to fuck you in every hole then snort coke off your back.”
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do, had been her response to him once. And it was still the case. She’d do anything to hear the sound he made when he came in her mouth, a couple of her fingers forced inside him – not too violently, always lubricated – and pressing against his prostate to prolong his orgasm.
The first time she’d even seen a hundred-pound note had been when he’d handed one to her after using it to snort a bump of cocaine off her pocket mirror. “The highest denomination available in Scotland,” he’d said. “There’s something decadent about using a hundred to get high then spending it on my next wrap. I really, really want to fuck now.”
She loved it when he got direct, made demands of her. They made her feel wanted. And the more he hurt her, the more he wanted her. Hurt in a good way. Using her ‘til she ached inside, the exhaustion going bone-deep.
And there was not a part of each other they did not know.
~*~
It’s always easier for me to imagine what went before as if I were an omniscient observer and the events happening to someone else. I suppose in a way it did, because I was so young, then. So naive and drunk on hormones. My addiction to Glenn – Oosh, whoever – was always the most dangerous one, the one set to tip me over the edge into uncontrolled dependency.
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do became less of an agreement to anal sex or doing a bump of cocaine off his abs, or sucking his dick up a dark alley on the way back from the pub. More of a mission statement, an article of faith. A reminder of what I was to him. Someone he used, someone who let him use her.
At some point, I couldn’t specify why, I realised the danger in losing myself completely in Oosh. The threat of him going down and taking me with him. Like the Titanic, and I’d wondered if me speaking up or issuing an ultimatum would be a rat deserting a sinking ship.
No, no, think of it as offering him a place on the lifeboat, I said to myself, and could have cried for the poor little girl I’d been. Trying to carry someone else’s problems when I could barely recognise my own.
Any time I tried to raise the subject, Oosh brushed me off. With laughter at first, then by tutting, then muttering profanities until eventually, he threw the words “Well you’re a fucking user too!” at me. They may as well have been knives. Yes, I was a user. But he’d said it with such contempt. Don’t think you’re any better than me. You’re not. You’re not.
I’d never believed myself to be better than Oosh. But I’d desired to be his equal. The resentment, the contempt with which he’d spoken told me that for as long as I was compliant and available, all was well, but when it came down to a choice between an attempt at sobriety and completely losing himself in a bottle of whisky and whatever his dealer could make available...
It was like using the tip of my tongue to poke at a sore tooth. Yes, it was still there. Yes, it still hurt. Eventually I’d have to face facts and get something done.
Eventually I’d have to tell Oosh I didn’t like how deep in the hole he was getting. The ratio of sober to off his face decreased each day, and...God, it must be possible to have a good time with a clear head sometimes, right? What must that feel like?
But sobriety wasn’t something he was interested in. At least for my sake. Certainly not for his own.
Though I couldn’t articulate it at the time, not having the life experience I would later acquire, I just wanted someone to love me sober. I wanted someone to think I was beautiful without having his beer goggles on first. I wanted to know I was worthy of being loved without all those chemicals rushing through his bloodstream and Jesus Christ, that was the scary part. Worrying that I wasn’t. Worrying that if I got sober and he got clean, there would be nothing left.
But I kept pushing, because...because even then, I knew if he ended up hating me for raising the subject, the world would be a lot more interesting with Oosh still in it.
Even if he didn’t want me around. And if the worst happened...if he did come to grief...I didn’t want to see it. I couldn’t bear to see what he was doing to himself, how little he cared for his own health, his own safety.
But when I told him to fuck off, to just leave if he gave not a damn about my feelings, I hadn’t expected him to take me quite so literally. I hadn’t expected him to go to another country, another continent.
And by the time I heard that Oosh wasn’t technically missing, but abroad, I had a pretty good reason for not wanting to see him anyway. If I’d had to see him face to face, eventually my pregnancy would have become detectable even to his drugs-addled mind. Not that I showed physically, but I wouldn’t have been able to hide the morning sickness that at first I’d thought was the DT’s, withdrawal. That carried on long after the hangover left.
It all made so much more sense this way. Oosh had gone, and I wanted every remnant of him gone, too. I didn’t want to raise a child alone, and if I’d had it, we would have been tied together in perpetuity. Physically it had been a bloody miracle I’d fallen pregnant in the first place given the state my body was in; there was no guarantee I’d be able to carry to term anyway. Plus, there was the fact my career was just kicking off and taking a years-long sabbatical to raise a child at this stage would have been a big mistake. Huge.
If it’s over, then let it be over, had been my reasoning. Oh, nineteen-year-old me had been so ambitious, both with regard to my career and what I was emotionally capable of. Once I’d sobered up, had an abortion and got fully clean, it was like my body, now physically recovered, went into emotional shock. Being drunk then not, being pregnant then not, being a regular user then not...those ups and downs sent me spiralling into a nervous breakdown.
Because apparently, the hardest addiction to kick was Glenn Peterson himself.