Final thoughts on Trainspotting

Ok, I'm glad I stuck this out. After the story about the baby dying and Sick Boy shooting dogs in the park to make them bite their owners, I really was ready to fuck off. Also, lots of stories about dirty knobs which isn't too surprising given this is a story about a bunch of skag addicts but, gross. Compelling reading at least. Also, I learned you can lose a limb if you inject into your artery instead of your vein. How the hell do you even do that? If you are really curious, here is more information.

Here were some of my favorites for various reasons:

• The Skag Boys, Jean Claude Van Damme and Mother Superior: Rents and Sick Boy go to score from the White Swan, a former mate and once promising soccer player that's been on junk so long his nickname is Mother Superior. While Sick Boy inevitably finds a girl willing to shag him, Rents is anxious to return home and finish his Van Damme film.
• The First Day of the Edinburgh Festival: The sequence I remember best from the movie (other than dead baby scene). Rents tries to kick and instead goes to see a dealer and scores some suppositories to ease his withdrawal. Alas, he soon has an attack of withdrawal-related diarrhea and shits them out into the world's most disgusting toilet and has to fish them out. And then he sticks them right back in the place where suppositories go. Who still wants to do heroin now, kids?
• Growing Up in Public: Nina (Renton's cousin) deals with her period and a death in the family. Who knew that electric blankets could make a corpse sweat?
• Cock Problems: just what it says. Rents decides he's run out of veins and has been using his junk for junk.
• Na Na and Other Nazis: oh, poor sensitive Spud. Here he narrates his family tree. Hilarious and riveting.
• The First Shag in Ages: Rents picks up a girl and FINALLY gets some action. Alas, she has a secret that leads to an awkward family breakfast.
• Strolling Through the Meadows: Spud again is horrified by the violence of the world he shares with Rents and Sick Boy
• House Arrest: Rents' parents force him to kick. In his withdrawal delirium, he is visited by the now clean Sick Boy and the ghost of Sick Boy's dead bairn.
• Bang to Rites: Rents is not really that sad at the wake of his brother who died in military service in Northern Ireland. This leads him to start a fight with a distant family member and shag his brother's widow in the restroom. 
• Bad Blood: the occasionally mentioned Tom (one of the very few non-junkie or criminal characters) makes an appearance in this story of how he takes revenge on the very bad man who, indirectly, gave him AIDS.
• There is a Light That Never Goes Out: a night on the town ends with a girl finally taking an interest in Spud
• Feeling Free: after all the misogynous claptrap, a great story of Allison and Kelly engaging in some female bonding
• The Elusive Mr. Hunt: why that famous scene from Porky's isn't always so funny. Is Mike Hunt in the parking lot?
• A Leg-Over Situation: The White Swan loses any hopes of a soccer career by turning to his arteries after his veins no longer suffice.  He then considers whether the abscess where his leg used to be would make a good injection site (er, no) and why Allison wouldn't blow him just because he has a filthy knob when she owes him after all. 
• Winter in West Granton: Rents is clean but his mate Tommy who first tried smack with him is not. And he has AIDS. People in the projects are not obliging of his illness. 
• Station to Station: a scam to sell a shitload of heroin in London gives Mark the opportunity to make a clean break at his buddies' expense.