“Really? Brixton? Where nobody speaks fucking English?” Okay, that wasn’t quite fair, and supposedly Brixton was getting “gentrified.” “Remember Guns of Brixton, the Clash?”

“When you get to that point where you notice a person’s faults, you’ve got to decide if you can live with them or can’t live without them.”

“You wouldn’t shut up about how brain-damaged that ‘little Rusky diva-bitch’ was and how he needed to just ‘get over his sorry self and give our poor cop a blow job and live happily ever after’—you remember that?”

“Can’t... can’t just go away. Can’t just... You can’t get on that train and charge out of my life. It’s not fair. I can’t work, dammit! I... I made a bad trade. I made a bad trade. How dare you? How dare you walk into my flat and... and then just... just walk out again? How can you even—”

“You got a faggoty boyfriend yet?”“Got a hope for one.”“Just don’t do no ass-fucking while I’m there.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway!” Patrick couldn’t sit down. He couldn’t. “It’s not like sex is anything to shout about! It’s icky, and the guy never wants to wear a condom, and I have to give a frickin’ health and safety lesson every time I give a blow job because they think I’m stupid, and I know you can get shit from giving head, and I’m not putting that thing in my mouth unless I get a written fucking guarantee that it’s not going to drop off or explode or give me some life-threatening disease or mutant antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea!”

“Okay, basics. The three S’s: shower, shit, and shave—every man could do that in his sleep. So he did. He managed his complete morning routine in a mental and emotional coma.”