Trainspotting: Home Summary & Analysis

Easy Money for the Professionals. Begbie makes Spud promise to keep a secret, not even telling Rent Boy. Spud and Begbie take a taxi to June’s place, where she lives with Begbie’s kid. June asks Begbie what’s going on, but he ignores her and the kid, leading Spud to the bedroom, where he has a big canvas bag full of money. Begbie got the money in a scheme that involved copying keys.

There’s a knock at the door. Begbie and Spud fear it’s the police, but it’s just a short young guy who helped with the scheme and wants his share of the money. Begbie tries to intimidate the short guy to make sure he won’t blab about the scheme. He throws a dart at his face, removing the dangerous metal part first, but the guy recoils, thinking it’s real. He takes his cut of the money and nervously leaves. Spud thinks Begbie was too hard on the guy, but Begbie feels it was necessary to make sure he’s discreet with the money.

A Present. Rent Boy stays with his friend Gav for Matty’s funeral. Rent Boy doesn’t know the full story of what happened to Matty, but Gav tells him Matty had HIV but didn’t realize it until late. Gav explains that Nicola’s cat had kittens and Matty got one for the young daughter of a woman he knows. But the woman didn’t want her daughter to have the kitten, so Matty brought it back to his place. He didn’t take very good care of the cat and got toxoplasmosis from its feces.

Gav continues the story, telling Rent Boy how Matty got a brain hemorrhage then had a stroke at age 25. After the stroke, he looked like a different person. Three weeks later, he had a second stroke and died. The police only found him later when neighbors complained about the kitten’s noise.

Memories of Matty. Begbie, Rent Boy, Spud, Alison, and others have all gathered for Matty’s funeral. At a small chapel connected to the crematorium, a busy minister gives a short speech. Rent Boy and Spud almost laugh when the minister mentions Matty’s guitar skills (which in reality were mostly nonexistent).

Several people at the funeral recall their memories of Matty. Spud remembers how when Matty was stoned, he used to watch Australian soap operas. Alison remembers having sex with Matty a long time ago, back before either of them started using heroin. Begbie feels impotent, willing to fight over any insult to a friend but unsure what to do in the face of death. Matty’s mother remembers him as a child. Matty’s younger brother wants revenge on Matty’s drug-using friends for bringing Matty down. Matty’s ex-girlfriend holds their daughter’s hand tightly, thinking about how Matty used to be a romantic.

Sometime later, the bartender at a pub tries to get everyone to stop singing so loudly. No one listens, although Begbie glares ominously at the bartender. Rent Boy tries to distract Begbie to diffuse the situation, reminiscing about a trip they went on together with Matty. This pacifies Begbie at first, but then he suddenly says that Sick Boy should have been at the funeral.

At the pub, Spud tries to defend Sick Boy for missing Matty’s funeral, saying Sick Boy is in France, and so it would’ve been a long trip for him. But Begbie digs in and insists Sick Boy should have come, so at last Spud gives up and agrees. Begbie gets up and puts his arm around Rent Boy, saying that when he’s in London, he’d better take better care of himself than Matty did. Rent Boy promises he will.

Still the pub, Rent Boy goes over to join a conversation between Spud and Alison. Spud says he’s attended way too many funerals for someone his age. He wonders who’s next. Rent Boy says at least they’re all getting a lot of practice with grief for the future. Eventually, everyone leaves the bar to go into the dark, cold night.

Straight Dilemmas, No. 1. A woman at a pub offers Rent Boy a mix of marijuana and opium to smoke. He says he’s always been too nervous around drugs to do them. He thinks about Kelly and misses her. The thought of heroin bores him now, even though he admits that he’s probably a less interesting person than he was when he was using heroin.

Eating Out. Kelly can tell it’s going to be a slow night with poor tips at the bar where she works. She misses Rent Boy, who is still away in London. Four drunk upper-middle-class English patrons walk into the bar. They make crude jokes about women, and Kelly tries not to hear. They persist, alternately verbally harassing and attempting to flirt with Kelly. Kelly tries to get her boss to kick them out, but her boss says they’re paying customers.

Kelly decides to take matters into her own hands. She’s in the middle of a heavy menstrual period. Some of the English customers have ordered tomato soup, so she squeezes some blood from a tampon into the soup. When the customers ask for more wine, Kelly adds some of her urine, which seems to be cloudy from a urinary tract infection into the carafe. She adds more urine to their fish marinade. They eat everything and don’t notice. She empties her bowels onto a newspaper and adds it to the ice cream, also adding a little bit of rat poison. Afterward, she finds it easier to put up with the customers’ insults.

Trainspotting at Leith Central Station. Rent Boy is back in Leith after being in London when he hears two men yelling near an archway. He isn’t sure if they’re yelling at each other or him, so he keeps walking quickly. Eventually, he comes across Second Prize vomiting on the street. Second Prize is talking incoherently and even takes a punch at Rent Boy at one point before calming down again. Rent Boy finds a taxi, pays the driver in advance, and tells him to take Second Prize to Sick Boy’s home.

Rent Boy keeps walking until he reaches a pub and finds Begbie already inside. Begbie greets him enthusiastically and introduces him to some other guys in the pub. Suddenly, Begbie gets more serious and asks if Rent Boy has heard that Tommy’s sick. Rent Boy says he’s heard and is already planning to visit Tommy.

Begbie tells everyone that Rent Boy is a great guy and no one should blame him for selling heroin to Tommy, implying that earlier Second Prize was blaming Rent Boy. In exchange for the compliment, Rent Boy tells some flattering stories about Begbie. They leave the pub and go walking; Rent Boy feels like a tough predator when he walks with Begbie.

Begbie and Rent Boy make it to an old train station. Begbie laments that a person used to be able to get a train to anywhere at the station, but now it’s empty, about to be demolished and turned into a supermarket. Begbie wishes he could book a train out of Leith, which is unusual, because Begbie is usually proud of where he’s from.

An old drunk man comes up to Rent Boy and Begbie and asks if they’re trainspotting (watching trains), then he laughs at his own joke. Begbie says yes then curses the old man under his breath. The old man tells them to “keep up the trainspottin mind” and then leaves. Rent Boy only realizes later that the old drunk man was Begbie’s father. On the way back to Begbie’s place, Begbie randomly beats up a stranger on the street. Rent Boy doesn’t intervene.

A Leg-Over Situation. Rent Boy goes to visit Johnny for the first time since his leg amputation. When Rent Boy last saw Johnny, he had a lot of abscesses and was talking about a wild plan to move to Bangkok. He’s surprised to see that Johnny seems pretty happy. While he prefers to get his drugs on the “free market,” he is happy that the National Health Service has provided him with some prescription drugs that mix well with his methadone.

Johnny lost his leg because he ran out of veins and had to start shooting heroin into his arteries, which gave him gangrene after just a few shots. Rent Boy can’t help looking at the site of Johnny’s amputation. Johnny says he knows exactly what Rent Boy’s thinking and pulls out his penis to show Rent Boy they didn’t amputate it. (This wasn’t what Rent Boy was thinking.)

Johnny says when he saw his amputated stump, he thought it might at least be a new injection point, but someone in the hospital told him that might kill him. Now he plans to continue with maintenance therapy to get clean, then he’ll become a more professional sort of dealer who doesn’t use. He still talks about going to Bangkok, which surprises Rent Boy.

Johnny talks about how he’s eager to have sex but will probably have to pay for it. Johnny asks Rent Boy if he’s still having sex with Kelly. Slightly annoyed by the question, Rent Boy says he isn’t. Johnny says Kelly and Alison came by the other day to observe the “freak show” he’s become. Johnny says he never used his status as a dealer to coerce people into sex, but Rent Boy replies jokingly that that’s just because he had so much heroin in him that he couldn’t get an erection.

Somehow, Johnny is still HIV negative. He dreams of being in Bangkok and surrounded by Asian women. Rent Boy wants to leave soon but waits for an opening. Johnny doesn’t seem to acknowledge Rent Boy’s impatience and starts talking again about how he tried to make Alison give him oral sex. Finally, Rent Boy gets up to leave.

Winter in West Granton. Tommy looks healthy, even though his HIV diagnosis means he’ll likely die sometime in the next few weeks to 15 years. As Rent Boy sits longer in the old chair at Tommy’s apartment, he realizes that maybe some part of Tommy is missing, as if some of him has already died. Tommy asks how London is, and Rent Boy says it’s fine, about the same as Leith. Tommy doubts this.

Tommy gets angry at Rent Boy, saying Rent Boy has shared needles with many people but never gotten HIV. But Rent Boy maintains that he never shared. Tommy recalls how after he and Lizzy broke up, he went to Rent Boy and asked to try heroin for the first time, even though he used to look down on heroin users. Rent Boy wonders how guilty he is for Tommy’s condition. He feels that some people like Tommy naturally get strong heroin addictions, but this doesn’t necessarily make Rent Boy feel any better.

Rent Boy realizes that Tommy’s apartment is so run down that it probably doesn’t get much heat—Tommy might not even survive the winter in his weakened condition. Tommy asks Rent Boy if he has any heroin, and Rent Boy says he’s sober. Tommy says then the least Rent Boy can do is lend him some rent money, so Rent Boy pulls out a couple bills. Rent Boy and Tommy lock eyes and have a brief moment of understanding, but it passes quickly.

A Scottish Soldier. Johnny shaves his head, trying to look cleaner. The knee in his remaining leg is weak after a soccer accident a while back, and Johnny wishes he’d shot up in that leg so that it was the amputated one instead. He goes out into a public square and writes on a cardboard sign that he’s a Falklands War veteran who needs help.

Johnny makes more money on donations than he does at most other jobs. While some people ignore or look down on him, many give money or even come up to thank him for his service. As he looks at all the money, he gets excited about how he is going to trade prescription medicine with a friend who has cancer in order to put together his new favorite drug cocktail.