They call me Peacock.

Why?

The tattoo. I wear it on my shoulder. I had it done in my teens, in admiration of the bird. I still admire the bird today. I admire the way it looks. I admire the way it struts. I admire the way it preens.

And did it hurt?

Did it fuck.

But perhaps even without the tattoo they would still call me Peacock. I like to strut. I like to preen. I keep myself colourful. I wear a white vest to give the tattoo as much exposure as possible, but when it gets cooler I like to wear a good Hawaiian shirt on top. A good vintage one. None of this modern shite. I keep my hair slicked back and my long moustache well trimmed. I like a good pair of vintage trousers too. I like to look good. There's no point in slinking about in the shadows like a cunt. That never got anybody anywhere, and I'm certainly going somewhere.

You'll see.

Right now I'm on my way to Chicago. Sitting high above the clouds in the sunshine. There's a start already. When I left Glasgow this morning the rain was pissing down. Bucketing. But here I am now with my head up high above the clouds.

Fucking magic.

I've got an idea, you see - and I'm taking that to Chicago. I'm on my way to meet a guy who can turn ideas into something real. A friend of a friend of a friend. I took the risk of telling a guy I know that I had the idea, and he said he might know someone who could help. Someone who could make it real. I'm strictly an ideas man, but then again - that's the most important part, eh? I just hope this guy can do what I've been told he can do. He fucking better be able to. I spent just about the last money I had on this fucking flight.

There's an idiot sitting next to me. But when's there not, eh? This one's in a suit. As soon as we were up and it started to get stuffy I pulled off the Hawaiian shirt and he clocked the tattoo.

"That's a fine piece of work," he told me.

So I let him know that he should keep his eyes off it, keep his eyes off me, and forget about trying to make any more conversation.

He thought the bird was a fucking budgie.

Fucking tool.

But there's not been another peep out of him since then. The prick's been pretending to sleep since my wee warning. I can see him slightly opening his eyes and risking a worried glance at me every now and again, and then he makes a fucked-up noise to try and convince me he's asleep for sure. But he's stopped bothering me now, and as long as I know he won't try and talk to me again I'm happy. And I've got my idea to keep me occupied.

I'll tell you what I feel like up here - carrying this thing. I feel a bit like my Uncle Tam. Or how I imagine he must have felt, the day he fucked himself up for good. While he was making his journey at least.

He was eighty-two years old then, and the poor cunt had been impotent for over twenty years. But on this particular morning he woke up with one of the most impressive hard-ons he'd ever had. Hard as a rock, he said. So - still half asleep - he rolled over towards his wife, and she wasn't there. He started shouting on her, and as he woke up more he remembered she'd gone to stay at her sister's. Typical, eh? So he thought about working it off himself, but he decided that would be a waste. And instead he got out of bed, half expecting the thing to fall away as soon as he stood up. But it stayed. He could hardly fucking believe it.

He got himself dressed, carefully - then he went downstairs and it was still the same. He said there was something almost supernatural about it; as if he was an adolescent again. And he got outside and got on the bus, and of course that could only help. He'd expected it might go down once he got amongst people, out of a sense of decency; but not at all. It stayed. And he had to cover it with his hat.

So he travelled like that all the way to his wife's sister's, early in the morning, on a bus full of people going to work.

When he got to the house everything was still quiet there. He knew he was taking his chances if he knocked the door and had to talk to his wife's sister first. He'd have to think up a reason for why he was there and then risk his wife coming downstairs to sit and drink tea with them. So instead the old fool went round to the back of the house and started climbing up the fucking drainpipe to the spare room. And he got pretty close too. He got close enough to knock on the window, and close enough that his wife came and opened the curtains. And he managed to hold on. He managed to hold on while she looked scared then just confused. And he managed to hold on while she opened the window. But then, as a way of explaining his strange visit, the old idiot took one hand off the drainpipe to point at his dick bulging in his trousers, and he fell all the way onto the path beneath them.

Never walked again, and he certainly never got another hard-on.

But at that one point, that moment in the day when he was travelling on the bus with his hat covering his prick - he must have felt pretty much how I feel just now, up here above these clouds. And I only have to hope this Yank cunt I'm on my way to see comes through for me. And I don't end up lying in the garden like Uncle Tam.

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