Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [73]
I’d be thinking, ‘Great, let’s have a relationship’, but they always had a boyfriend, some guy back in Leeds or Southampton or wherever they’d come from. Or sometimes the boyfriend was sitting right next to them, not saying a word, with a hairstyle hanging over one eye, so he couldn’t see out of it. ‘This guy? What are you doing with this guy?’ I would want to say and occasionally did. Nobody wanted to be with me.
Before long, my two other single flatmates, Jonas and Ben, also found girlfriends, meaning that four of the bedrooms surrounding the central kitchen contained couples. One morning I woke up, opened my silver bedroom door to the kitchen and put the kettle on. I heard noises from the bedrooms surrounding me. Every single couple, that’s four couples, were having sex. I sat there sipping my morning coffee on my own surrounded by four couples having sex. When was my luck going to change?
But when they weren’t enjoying the love and intimacy that I wasn’t, we had as much fun as you would hope to have when you’re a student. Edinburgh is a wonderful city. It had already played a very sad part in my life with the scattering of my father’s ashes, but now it was a party town. We were out almost every night and when we weren’t out, we were slobbing out back at the flat, drinking and smoking and watching movies. In fact, our lifestyle in the flat was so lazy that we purchased a fleet of remote control cars to pass things to each other without having to get up. We strapped ashtrays, lighters, beers, tobacco and crisps on top of the cars and navigated them to each other by remote controls.
Now, I’ve just come off the phone to Bill Clinton, who tells me my career shouldn’t suffer if I tell you about a particular incident involving marijuana. Experimenting with drugs is difficult to avoid at university, it’s part of life, part of growing up. One of my flatmates managed to get the details of a drug dealer who lived in the depths of Leith. If you are unfamiliar with Leith, then watch the film Trainspotting. I volunteered to go and buy it, trying to impress my new friends. I regretted my decision almost immediately.
I headed down to Edinburgh’s most deprived area in a taxi at about 10 p.m. I was off to visit a drug dealer by the name of Scott. Why did I agree to this? I was terrified. I rehearsed what I might say to him, but everything sounded so wrong coming out of my mouth:
‘Hello Scott, any pot in the house?’
‘Scott, would I be correct in assuming you are the possessor of skunk?’
‘Yo, Scott, I’m here to score some weed, dude.’
‘Scotty, baby, it’s Mikey, here for the herb.’
I liked the fact that he was called Scott and from Scotland. I thought it must make form-filling a bit easier when the answer for ‘Name’ is the same as ‘Nationality’. I thought of making this joke to him as an ice-breaker, but correctly decided against it.
It was freezing cold as always. I arrived at Scott’s tenement block in my buttoned-up cashmere coat from my grandfather. I looked up with trepidation at Scott’s building glowing eerily in the moonlight. The main door was ajar so I pushed it open. It seemed to be colder inside than outside. He lived on the top floor. I climbed the four flights of stone stairs, getting more tense with every step, preparing for my illegal transaction. I reached the door and knocked.
Within moments, I was being viewed through the peep-hole, as I heard a Scottish voice from the other side of the door holler, ‘It’s Hugh Grant, but he’s all Chinesey.’
The door opened to reveal a man with a tattoo of the map of Scotland on his face. This was worse than I could have expected. ‘All right, pal?’ he said before walking away. I followed him. I followed a man with a Scotland tattoo on his face. I arrived in the living room. The décor of the living room was minimal. Not minimalism which