"My advice to you, son, is to take that nicotine patch off, fill it with tobacco, and smoke it."
	
	He looked at me for a moment, checking my haggard features for a sign of mirth, and finding none, smiled and shrugged.  "Easy for you to say, old timer.  You're already old.  I might never get there if I can't kick this."  He brought his fingers up to his mouth and sucked on an imaginary cigarette.  "You don't smoke."
	
	I hitched the front of my Stetson with a bent knuckle.  "I used to."  And left it at that while we surveyed the street.  The main shopping drag was quiet, it being Sunday, the only sound a far off church bell ringing in the St. Aloysius mid-day mass.  Pubs would open soon.  "I used to do a lot of things."
	
	He was nothing but a boy to me.  Jobless, shiftless, hair a bit too long for a working man.  But not a bad lad, not like some of them.  And he didn't seem to care that I wore a hat and boots and looked as if I had just walked off a Robert Michum cowboy movie.  That meant a lot to me : most people his age were intolerant of it, called me Tex and Pardner in the street.  Maybe he was the son that Sherry and I never had.
	
	"Why do you want to quit, son?"
	
	He shrugged.  "Because it costs too much, I suppose.  And Jessie wants me to."
	
	I nodded.  "Now we get to it.  Jessie wants you to.  And you'll do it because you love her."
	
	He frowned.  "You talk funny for a guy.  People from here don't love each other.  We tolerate each other because that's the way it's always been.  And nobody admits anything different.  I'll give up the smokes because she'll stop nipping my head about it."
	
	I laughed.  Another street philosopher, a miniature version of myself in my younger day.  There was one on every park bench and street corner in this city.  But some things took age to know.  I pulled myself up straight, and tucked my shirt in under my snakeskin belt.
	
	"How heavy do you think I am?"
	
	He cocked an eyebrow.  "Eh?  What are you on about now?"
	
	"How heavy would you say I was, looking at me?"
	
	He stood back and examined me critically, weighing up the lean torso in the loose silk shirt, the chicken arms, and the lanky legs thankfully hidden from view behind imported Wrangler jeans from Wyoming.  He took far too long about it, in fact, and I suppose that was my punishment for asking such a seemingly stupid question, so I stood it out, saying nothing.
	
	"I'd say about eleven stone. "
	
	"And you'd be nearly right.  I've been 150 pounds since I was 28 years of age, not an ounce either side of it."
	
	"Impressive.  Too skinny for somebody your height though."
	
	I nodded.  "Would you believe I was once twenty five stones, and had a gut and arse on me like a beached whale?"
	
	"Really?  That's amazing."  I saw him unconsciously appraise his own growing beer belly.  "Did you go on a diet, then?"
	
	I laughed again.  "You could say that.  It was the queerest thing I ever saw.  But there's a lesson in it I never forgot, and I think you should hear it too, before you go too far with these patches and chewing gum."
	
	"Well, old man, I've got nothing else on until Shevlanes opens its doors to the world, and we all go in for a drop of the electric soup.  So tell me a story."
	
	I smiled.  I hadn't told this story to more than a dozen people over the years, people I trusted.  The street was empty, nobody would stop to talk to me, the lonesome cowboy.  It wouldn't take long, and he might get something out of it.
	
	"You know my wife Sherry?  You know what size of woman she is?"
	
	He grinned.  "You called her voluptuous one night when you were pissed.  You also said that was another word for fat, and I was too far gone myself at the time to argue."
	
	"Aye, she's fat.  A big fat Glasgow woman, like you see in etchings and prints in trendy Glasgow shops.  A big washer woman, a wifie.  This place is full of them, every one of them complaining about their feet and their backs.  She's a big fat woman."
	
	I saw on his face that he was unsure how to respond, so I forged on.  "When I met her, she was a size six in a dress, just a slip of a girl.  I fancied her with a passion.  But I was a fat bastard, and she wouldn't even give me the time of day."
	
	I remembered how she looked that day on the Balgrayhill, floral dress wrapped into her impossibly thin waist with a white leather belt.  He ankles were like china, I could have circled them with my thumb and finger.  I had to have her.  I knew what I looked like, but I had to try.
	
	"I asked her to come for a walk in the park with me.  You understand, she was in with the crowd, you know.  She was liked by everybody, all the guys in the district were after her.  But she knew it, as well.  You know?  We were little more than children ourselves,  and with it she still had that childlike cruelty that could turn a man's heart to stone."
	
	"She knocked you back?"
	
	"Oh aye, son.  She knocked me back.  She gathered her friends around her like a big pair of dragon wings and let me have it for all she was worth.  It was humiliating.  I can still remember every word she said to me.  I ran halfway up Springburn Road with the tears streaming down my face, gasping and choking in a close until I was nearly sick with it."
	
	"So you decided to go on a diet."
	
	"Not right away.  First I had to have a blowout, cheer me up.  I went up to my mother's house and took all the week's sausages and bacon, and they were rationed in those days son.  If you ate them, that was it for the week.  A big dod of lard in the frying pan, and I ate the lot.  I drowned myself in the grease and the comfort of food.  And after that I really was sick."
	
	"Man, that was bad.  She might have let you down easier."
	
	"She wasn't capable of it, son.  You see, it wasn't just me who had a few things to learn.  I gave her the benefit of the doubt, imagined that maybe she had to do it to keep face in front of her pals.  Maybe if I could get her alone, she would be sorry for it, and with no pals around, might be kinder to me.  So I followed her."
	
	"It wasn't hard.  We lived in the same street, I just waited until I saw her going out to the shops with her wee net bag, and waited at her close for her returning.  I had a newspaper, and tried to look as natural as I could.  But inside my big fat frame, I was cowering like a leaf."
	
	"Anyway, she comes back, and I make out as if I've just noticed her.  'Hello' I say to her as she passes me.  'Hello', she says back.  No too bad, I think to myself.  'If you're standing there trying to impress me, then forget it.  I don't go out with men with bigger hips than me, son'  I was devastated, I just stood there gaping."
	
	"But I was in love, I couldn't believe she could be so nasty, I didn't want to believe it.  But if I'm honest with myself, I looked into those blue eyes of hers and saw not one bit of compassion.  She really did despise me… then.  I asked her if I managed to lose the fat, would she be interested.  She just laughed and went on up the close."
	
	"So I dieted.  For three months solid I ate nothing but one meal of bread and potatoes a day.  And I never lost a bean, son.  Not an ounce.  The doctor couldn't account for it.  Told me to exercise."
	
	"So I started walking.  Just up and down the main road at first.  Then when I got more confidence, I went up the Balgray and back down again.  The girls in the shops along there used to wave at me as I went past like clockwork.  But I wouldn't give it up.  I was out there, rain or shine, son, pounding the streets, long before all these joggers and such became trendy."
	
	"And it started to come off.  One day outside the florists, ach it's a hardware store now son, at the lights, the wee lassie who works in there was cutting some stems and she slipped in the water on the pavement.  As luck would have it, I was just passing, and I caught her just as she was about to go right over."
	
	"Ah we had a good laugh about it, and she thanked me very nicely, and asked me what I was doing, she had seen me going up and down a lot.  So I told her I was trying to lose weight, and she stood there and told me that I was looking a lot better already.  She looked me up and down much the same way as you did a minute ago, son.  And then she winked at me."
	
	"Hah, that must have been a bit of a boost for your confidence?"
	
	"Oh aye.  And I always stopped to have a wee natter with her on the way past, and sometimes with the wee lassie that worked in the butchers next door.  Some days I would have a bit of a crowd out there talking away with me.  It got to be quite the thing to do.  And all this time I had been losing weight, and was feeling no bad."
	
	"This one time I was passing, and a this wee slip of a thing who worked part-time in the chemists stopped to talk to me.  I hadn't really spoken to her alone before, but I'd seen her a few times standing when the other lassies came out to talk to me.  Anyway, she said that she thought it was a terrible thing that Sherry had done to me that day on Balgrayhill, and she wishes she had said something to her at the time, but I knew how these things went, and everything."

	"I just stood there agreeing with her for a bit until she said 'serves her right she's putting on the beef herself these days'"
	
	"I didn't know what she meant.  I hadn't even seen Sherry for weeks, I had wanted to surprise her one day with my new physique, so I had been avoiding her.  The beef?  What did she mean?  Oh aye, it turns out that while I had been losing the pounds, she had been putting them on.  Seems her mother had taken her down to the doctors to get her a pregnancy test they were all so worried."
	
	"And was she?"
	
	"Pregnant?  No.  I'm not sure what was happening, but sure enough, I catch her coming out the close the very next day, not quite so fine and mighty as she had been the time before.  I saw her noticing my better shape, and then trying to dismiss me with that cruel frown of hers.  But she knew that I could see it was true, she was putting it on around the waist, and no baggy coat was going to hide it."
	
	"So what did you do?"
	
	"I didn’t do anything.  I just carried on walking up and down Springburn Road.  I had got into a habit you see, and when I missed a day, folk came round to the house to see where I was.  My mother was angry at first, but some of these lassies who came up to check on me were no half bad, you understand.  I think even she began to see hat I might find myself a fine looking wife out of all this, so after a while she encouraged visitors in the parlour."
	
	"It must have taken me six months solid walking to get to the weight I am now.  But by that time I didn’t care about the weight any more, it had become less important to me.  I enjoyed my trips round the shops, I was something of a local celebrity.  For the first time people liked me, and I liked them."
	
	"It was one day, getting into winter when the wind blows, and you can feel the chill in it, but it's just warning you about the cold that's coming later.  Some of us had been up to the park, and were coming back down Balgrayhill Road, arms linked like the front of a knitting pattern.  And who should come waddling up the hill, but Sherry.  And I mean, she had laid it on by then.  It must have been something genetic, but the first flush of rosy youth had certainly passed this doll.  Her arse was the size of Pinkston power station, god help the lassie."
	
	"Well I had all these friends around me, and she was by herself, a wee fat ball coming up the hill, and I thought back to myself six months before.  Then it had been her all slim and popular, and me all fat and self-conscious coming up the hill, and her coming down it with all her friends."
	
	"So did ye slag her?  Rub her nose in it a bit?"
	
	I shook my head.  "No.  No.  I loved her still, you see.  I waited until she was about to pass us and called to her to stop.  Then, gathering everyone around, I took her hand and asked her if she would like a walk in the park.  I winked at some of the girls as I said it, and they smiled back at me, encouraging me.  Sherry was a bit bedraggled, but oh those eyes, son.  They melt me to this day."
	
	"Aw man, that's dead romantic.  And she said yes?"
	
	I smiled.  "Did she hell.  I've never heard such language this side of a shipyard gate.  And it takes a lot to make me blush."  I laughed out loud.
	
	He looked confused.  "But…  "  He started laughing.  "You're married!  She must have said yes?"
	
	"Oh she did.  But I didn't taste a whiff of that until nigh on a year later.  I don't know if it was pride, or shame, or the last wee bits of her childish streak.  But she told me to go to hell."
	
	"Oh man, that's too funny.  So how did you two ever get together?"
	
	I stood back, waving a hand up and down my delicately pressed shirt.  "Why do you think I wear this bloody stupid looking get-up?  She loves cowboys.  I had to get her some way.  I was gutted.  If I'd known that at the start, it would have saved me a lot of walking."
	
	He laughed again.  "I need a fag, pardner."
	
	So we walked down the road, pausing at the paper shop while he bought twenty Woodbine.  Some kids passed me as I waited for him, and they jeered and pointed at me, the old cowboy in Springburn Road.  I knew they would learn. It didn't bother me.
	
	
Cowboy - p1
	
	
	
	
	
	






Cowboy - p1 of 12