Joe, like so many young men of his generation, a would-be writer, now slumming with the working class, as he searches for meaning in his life. 
Joe Taylor, a drifter, has a job working on a barge on the canals between Glasgow and Edinburgh.Joe is a compulsive womanizer who derives a great deal of pleasure and pride from being irresistible to women.Joe has no interest in any long-term commitment to any woman. He doesn't seem to even like women very much. They remain sexual objects to him