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Irvine Welsh

The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

ABOUT THE BOOK

When Lucy Brennan, a Miami Beach personal-fitness trainer, disarms a gunman chasing two frightened homeless men, the police and the breaking-news cameras are not far behind and, within hours, Lucy is a media hero. The solitary eye-witness is the depressed and overweight Lena Sorensen, who becomes obsessed with Lucy and signs up as her client — though she seems more interested in the trainer’s body than her own. When the two women find themselves more closely aligned, and can’t stop thinking about the sex lives of Siamese twins, the real problems start…

In the aggressive, foul-mouthed trainer, Lucy Brennan, and the needy, manipulative Lena Sorensen, Irvine Welsh has created two of his most memorable female protagonists, and one of the most bizarre, sado-masochistic folies à deux in contemporary fiction. Featuring murder, depravity and revenge — and enormous amounts of food and sex — The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins taps into two great obsessions of our time — how we look and where we live — and tells a story so subversive and dark it blacks out the Florida sun.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Irvine Welsh is the author of eight previous novels and four books of shorter fiction. He currently lives in Chicago.

THE SEX LIVES OF SIAMESE TWINS

For Elizabeth (again)

I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s.

William Blake

Part One. Transplants

1.  LEPER COLONY

2-4-6-8, WHO DO we appreciate?

Numbers are the great American obsession. How do we measure up? Our crumbling economy: growth percentage, consumer spending, industrial output, GDP, GNP, the Dow Jones. As a society: homicides, rapes, teen pregnancies, child poverty, illegal immigrants, drug addicts, registered and otherwise. As individuals: height, weight, hips, waist, bust, BMI.

But the number in my head right now is the one that causes most of the problems: 2.

The argument with Miles (6’1", 210 lbs) was trivial, yeah, but containing enough discord to prevent me spending the night at his Midtown (equals ghost town) apartment. The jerk had moaned all evening about his bad back, talking himself out of any action with that crybaby bullshit.

As his eyes grew moister, so my pussy became more arid. Not so fucking difficult to comprehend. He actually shushed me during the last few minutes of an episode of The Big Bang Theory; like, come on, dude! Also, his chihuahua, Chico, was yelping belligerently and he wouldn’t stick him in another room, insisting the bug-eyed little asshole would soon settle down.

Well, fuck that.

He didn’t take it well when I opted to split: making like a sulky toddler, all stiff posture and pouting lips. Like, man the fuck up! Some guys are just not cool enough to do anger. Chico, changing his routine by jumping onto my knee, despite me continually lowering him back onto the floor, has a bigger set of balls.

So I’m heading back to South Beach, a couple minutes short of 3:30 a. m. The night had been calm earlier, a hanging moon and a rash of stars providing shards of light which cut through the deep mauve sky. Then, almost as soon as I start up my wheezy 1998 Caddy DeVille, inherited from my mom, I’m aware of the shift in the weather. I’m not concerned as I have Joan Jett’s “I Hate Myself for Loving You” rattling out of my speakers, but by the time I get onto the Julia Tuttle Causeway, gusts of wind are shoving at the car head-on. I slow down as sheets of rain batter the windshield, causing me to squint through the rapid swishes of the wipers.