Mark arrives at a friend’s apartment in London, but his friend isn’t home. He goes to a nearby pub for a drink and then heads back to his friend’s flat, hoping he’ll be home, but has no luck. He tries calling a girl he used to know in London only to find that she’s moved. He ends up heading to an all-night pornographic movie theater, which he describes as a “crash pad for every low-life under the sun” (231). The last time he stayed there, someone stabbed a boy. He notes that the movies are all pornographic except for one “excruciatingly violent documentary, where various animals tear each other apart in exotic locations” (232).

An older Italian man, Gi, short for Giovanni, puts his hand on Mark’s thigh in the theater. After first rebuking him, Mark agrees to go to the man’s flat; he even reflects that perhaps he’d have anal sex with the man: “Ah mean, yuv goat tae try everything once. Huvin said that, ah’d huvtae be in the drivin seat. Ah couldnae handle some cunt’s know up ma erse” (233). Mark previously had oral sex with a man, which was interrupted when his friends Tony and Carolina walked in on them.