Trainspotting

Davie is now HIV-positive and takes part in a self-help group. He sought out this group specifically to “befriend” one man, Alan Venters. Alan is a sour and mean man, and Davie’s social worker, Tom, can’t understand why Davie wants to befriend him; as Tom points out, Alan is also very ill and will die soon.

Alan brutally raped Donna, Davie’s girlfriend, and infected her; this is how Davie was subsequently infected. After getting to know Alan through the self-help group, Davie learns that Alan has a son, Kevin. Davie knows that killing Alan would only be doing him a favor by shortening his suffering; Kevin is his chance at revenge: “The child showed me how Venters could be hurt” (249).

Davie finds Frances, Alan’s ex-girlfriend and Kevin’s mother, at a bar and hits on her. This is all coolly calculated: “I timed my courtship of Frances to coincide with Venter’s decline into serious illness and his attendant incapacity in the hospice” (250). He wins Frances’s trust to the point that she lets him babysit Kevin.

One night, Davie drugs Kevin and then sets up a photo shoot: While the boy is unconscious, Davie uses makeup, stolen bags of blood, and other props to make it look like he’s tortured and cut Kevin (in order to infect him with his own HIV). The boy is naked in the photos, further suggesting that Davie has raped him. Welsh has written the anecdote so that the reader only discovers that the scenario is fake later, making it a truly horrifying tale.

Davie goes to see Alan in the hospice and confronts him about raping Donna and how this led to his own HIV infection. He then shows Alan photos of himself with Frances and Kevin. Finally, he shows Alan the staged photos of Kevin, telling him, “[W]hen I got bored fucking your old girlfriend, I decided I’d give wee Kev one up his…eh…tradesman’s entrance. I thought, if HIV’s good enough for Daddy it’s good enough for his brat” (258).

Alan is in agony at the thought of the news: He believes (falsely) that Davie raped, tortured, and killed his son. Davie then puts a pillow over Alan’s face and suffocates him. It’s only after this entire nightmare has played out that Davie reveals that it was all staged. Davie just wanted to emotionally torture Alan with the thought that the one good thing he’d managed in his life, having a son, is ruined.

Frank, Mark, Gav Temperley, Alison, Kelly, and Danny enter a pub. Kelly is Alison’s friend who has a crush on Mark. It seems Kelly and Mark might now become an item. Meanwhile, Gav is hitting on Alison. Danny is left grumpily wondering when he will next have sex.

Danny recalls a previous sexual encounter with a girl named Laura McEwan “with an awesome sexual reputation” (268). She had already slept with Simon, Mark, and Matty when she “chose” Danny for a new sexual escapade, telling him, “Ah want you to take my arse virginity” (268). Danny feels like the so-called “sex goddess” has bestowed a great gift on him. The experience goes awry, however, when she uses Vick’s vapor rub as lubricant on his penis, causing an unbearable burning sensation. Frantically trying to clean himself off in the bathroom, Danny ends up falling and cutting his head open on the toilet bowl; he ends up in the hospital with a concussion and six stitches.

In the present, the group goes for breakfast. Mark and Frank get into an argument when Mark says he doesn’t eat meat, and Frank scoffs at his vegetarian ways: “A fuckin junky fuckin worryin aboot what he pits in his boady! That’s a fuckin laugh!” (271). The chapter ends with the group going out to drink even more. Mark and Kelly leave together after one drink. While Gav is in the bathroom, Alison unexpectedly asks Danny to take her home.