Here Are the Young Men Read online

  me and dwayne wer redy to get de fuck out uf their. but wile dwayne is at the bar gettin one mroe shot each for the road dis hot little indie bird beside me starts lookin at me. lovely tits on her like ye just want to stick yer face in and go nuts and fuckin bite dem off hahaha. and i start gettin big rushes of blood to me mickey cos im fucked off me head and i smile at her tinkin id luv 2 put d willy inside hur but suddenly its not just her its her friends too. male friends all of dem starin at me and no one is smilin like. and i think wat de fuck is rong now? and i start wonderin if dey are anti irish or somethin. and dis big lanky cunt shakes his hed adn goes “dis ain’t cool man” and sticks his finger in me chest and goes “de fuck is dis huh?” and i goes nothin cos i dont know wat de fuck its all about and now the little indy bitch goes “do u tink its like cool or sometin. is it all a joke to u. or do u really think its cool to like masscacre 3000 people” and i goes “i didnt massacre anyone!!!” and im totlally lost thinkin “Do dey think im an A-rab or sometin??!”

  an den de penny drops n i look down at me t shirt n i remember dat its de one, u know d black one i had made back in dublin with JIHAD!!! printed across de frunt. id fuckin forgotten i was fuckin wearin it an be now everyones shoutin at me n slappin me hed and im panickin goin wheres dwayne but hes over by de bar laffin his hed off n the bouncer comes flyin over n goes “de fuck outta here!!!” he goes “n dont come back or i break yr neck asshole!!” he goes

  so dat was dat dey fucked me out and i put on my hoodie wit like quiet dignity den dwayne comes out and we went off into de nite to get fucked off our merry little heds. fuckin deadly

  i taught id tell u that little story for a laff hhahaha fuck dem infidels. bush. fuck dat de only bush i care about is yer fuckin mas bush!!! hoho!!! did u get me postcards oh niggz. i hope so n gess wat. dis fella Stu is comin up next week from LA or sumwer n dwayne goes “now weell get sum real drugs” n apparantly he has sumething else but he wont say wat it is … not drugs but sumeting real interestin. dwayne says stu is a total mental cunt so lets wate n see.

  been on dis fuckin computer 4 ages. its only cos i love ye n i want to ride de hole off ye ye fuckin ride ye

  B COOL BiTCH

  ALLAH FORGIVE U!

  THE K

  SHAME ON DA NIGGA!!!!! I FUCK YO ASS UP!!!!

  PS wats dis?? , .

  anser: a 1-eyed chink blowin u a kiss hahaha

  perhaps u put yr DICK tru his eye???

  haha lightin up im only jokin

  off me fuckin chops i am

  jesis kirrst

  24 | Matthew

  I deleted Kearney’s email and didn’t bother replying. Then I turned off the computer and took a bus into town to meet Jen for her birthday.

  It was the fifth of July, a Saturday, and another warm, beautiful evening. We walked around randomly, chatting and happy. I’d bought her a book about some girl who had travelled around Asia looking for magic beads or enlightenment.

  When we were in George’s Street Arcade looking at old vinyl records, my phone beeped with a text. It was from Rez.

  ‘jesus matthew i did something v stupid last night it could have been disastrous. im all fcked up i think i need help dont say it to anyone … jesus.’

  ‘What the fuck?’ I said, staring at the screen.

  Jen frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’ I showed it to her. ‘Oh my God. What’s he done? Is he okay? Call him, Matthew.’

  I called but it rang out. I tried again with the same result. ‘He’s not answerin.’

  ‘This is really bad,’ she said. My phone beeped again.

  ‘haha just kidding, nothing wrong. was only having a laugh. will call u later about tonight R.’

  I locked the phone and put it in my pocket. ‘He says he was only kidding. What a sap: he had me thinking he had gone and tried to do a Stephen Horrigan or something.’

  Jen said nothing, eyes narrowed, reflecting. ‘I’m worried, Matthew. There’s something wrong. We should do something.’

  But there was nothing to do. Rez would be seeing us that night anyway, we reasoned, so we could put it out of our minds and enjoy ourselves. We went for pizza in a fancy place behind George’s Street. The waiter put a candle on our table.

  ‘I’m excited,’ said Jen, wiping her lip with a napkin. ‘I can feel it, it’s going to be a great night.’

  I smiled and leaned across the table to kiss her. All of this – having a girlfriend, eating pizza in town, planning to meet your friends later for a night out – it all seemed right – kind of normal, but not in a bad way.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ I said.

  I paid for the pizza. That meant I was fairly broke, but Jen’s da had given her a wad of notes ‘to have fun with’. After we’d eaten we walked through the grounds of Trinity for a while, watching the people out and about on a fine sunny evening, drinking coffee or orange juice, everyone relaxed and cheery. Then we went to an arcade near the Screen cinema and had a two-player game of Time Crisis II.

  ‘You look deadly holding that gun,’ said Jen after we’d completed the second level.

  ‘So do you.’

  She laughed and pointed the gun at my head and fired.

  At half seven we walked to the Foggy Dew to meet Rez and Cocker. To our surprise, Rez was in a good mood from the moment we met him. ‘Ah I’m sorry about that stuff earlier, I was only havin a laugh, it probably seemed a bit weird,’ he said. I watched to see if he was faking it but he seemed cheerful, up for a wild night.

  ‘All set for the Noosehound tonight?’ said Cocker as we squeezed through the bustle and sat down around a table with cocktails that Jen had paid for, even though it was her birthday.

  ‘Yes I am,’ I said. The plan was to get a bit of a buzz on us here before moving on to the Noosehound, our favourite indie and punk night, just around the corner in Temple Bar.

  ‘Let’s make this one to remember, lads,’ said Cocker, feeding on the collective eagerness. ‘In the sense that we won’t remember it at all. To be totally honest with yis, I had a brief moment this mornin when I thought I might not be able to make it. Fuckin destroyed I was from last night. Seriously, I don’t think most people recognize the effort ye have to put into this drinkin business. These hangovers. That’s real blood, sweat and tears, lads. You’d never do it if ye didn’t feel ye were part of something important.’

  Jen smiled and shook her head. ‘Gary Cocker, you seem hell-bent on poisoning your body and mind. All of you do. Imagine the remorse you’re all goin to feel when you’re old and your insides have stopped workin, because of all the toxins you’ve poured into them down the years.’

  ‘Hah!’ said Cocker with a cheery grin. ‘The future me. Ol’ Dirty Bastard himself. Me only aim is to fuck him up as badly as I can, while I can.’

  ‘The idea is to plant time bombs against our future selves,’ I said, explaining to Jen the half-arsed philosophy that Rez, Cocker and I had cooked up over a night of vicious drinking, back before the Leaving Cert. ‘Ye have to sabotage yer own future. That way, when yer future does come and yer nerve fails ye and ye want to sell out, it won’t matter because certain, like, avenues won’t be open to ye any more.’

  ‘The avenues of cowardice,’ added Rez, who had first come up with most of this stuff – me and Cocker went along mainly because it sounded cool. He continued, ‘There’s no use pretendin that when it comes to it, yer really goin to have the courage of your convictions, and ye’ll be faithful to the facts ye saw so fuckin clearly when ye were eighteen. That’s the same mistake that everyone makes. They get older and no matter how idealistic and how, like, clear-sighted they were when they were younger, they start to collaborate. And they tell themselves that it had to be that way, that passion and intensity are bound to give way to a more, like, mature version of the world. But it’s still the same evil, degraded, capitalist world. Only they’ve smelled the honey and become collaborators. So fuck it, poison yer mind and body now, and decimate the future enemy. Annihilate the collaborator.’
/>   Jen raised an eyebrow and smiled, unsure if we were deadly serious or only having a laugh.

  ‘So have ye heard any more from Julie?’ Jen asked Rez a few minutes later. ‘Sally MacLennane’ came on the speakers and me and Cocker cheered.

  Rez looked at her for a moment, as if weighing up whether to say something. Then he told us the story about the diving instructor, the island, how he’d read Julie’s email.

  ‘Oh, Rez,’ said Jen when he was finished, instinctively reaching forward to put a hand to his face. I liked the way she did that. ‘That’s really awful. I can’t believe Julie would be so hurtful.’

  ‘She didn’t know I’d read it,’ muttered Rez, looking a bit sheepish now that he’d told us of Julie’s betrayal.

  ‘Fuck that,’ I said. ‘Don’t mind her Rez, she’ll come beggin to be with you again when she gets back.’

  ‘Marleygate,’ said Cocker.

  ‘Sex, Dives and Videotapes,’ I added.

  ‘Expert muff diver,’ said Cocker, then regretted it and looked down at the table. But Rez didn’t seem to have heard.

  Jen shook her head sympathetically.

  ‘Fuckin Julie,’ Rez muttered. The topic was clearly threatening to darken his evening. ‘Anyway, let’s get wrecked. Surely that’s the mature and intelligent way to resolve all the complex problems that, like, vex me.’ He raised his glass.

  ‘To Marley and his aqualung of love,’ said Cocker. ‘May he get the bends because he’s actually a bender.’ We clinked our glasses and drained the cocktails. ‘Rez, this’ll cheer ye up. What do a woman and a KFC meal have in common?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘If ye take away the legs and the breasts, there’s nothin left but a greasy box to throw yer bone into.’

  Rez smiled and shook his head.

  Jen sighed.

  Just after ten we went to the Noosehound. As usual, the bouncers pretended to be convinced by our crap-looking fake IDs, and in we went. Usually when we came here we smuggled in our own vodka or cans of Dutch Gold, but tonight Jen insisted we let her take care of the drinks. ‘Relax, don’t forget it’s all on daddy’s bill,’ she said when we made a faint, insincere protest. ‘I know he’d want us to have a good time.’

  ‘In that case I’ll have rum and Coca-Cola,’ I said in a Jarvis Cocker voice as we pushed into the clamour of sweat and electroclash. ‘Actually, no, I’ll have a double vodka and Red Bull.’

  ‘Same for me,’ said Cocker.

  ‘Me too, please,’ said Rez.

  Me and Cocker clambered up to the DJ box and requested punk songs, and Cocker screamed that if the DJ didn’t play ‘Accelerator’ by Primal Scream he would sneak into his house at night and eat his children, or his mother if he didn’t have children, or his bollocks if he didn’t have a mother. The DJ didn’t hear him properly and merely gave a pompous nod in recognition that we existed at all.

  ‘Cheers, you fuckin spanner!’ yelled Cocker, smiling and giving the DJ the thumbs up. ‘The fucker can’t hear anything.’

  Jen decided that what we needed to make the night perfect was some pills; she’d been dead curious to try them since we’d all raved to her about how amazing it had been the first time.

  They weren’t hard to find. Jen paid again, though we made some show of cobbling together a few coins to help out. We bought eight pills and took one each, washing it down with vodka and Red Bull. Then we rushed on to the dance floor because ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ had come on. As we danced I kept thinking that looks were passing between Cocker and Jen. I considered putting my fist through a mirror. But moments later the pill came up on me and all the rage and jealousy fell away.

  ‘I FUCKING LOVE YIS!’ I roared to the three of them on the dance floor.

  Cocker threw his arms in the air and screamed in euphoria. I decided he was my greatest friend of all time.

  ‘So it’s working then, guys? You’re coming up?’ Jen called out.

  ‘OF FUCKIN COURSE I AM! I’M HAVIN THE TIME OF MY FUCKIN LIFE!’ I roared back, already too fucked to catch her irony. As I roared the words, it seemed like I was proclaiming a manifesto, the sum total of all there was that was worth saying. Jen was rocking with laughter.

  A few minutes later, she was coming up as well. She had been dancing a few bodies away from me and now she approached, eyes huge and clear. She took my face in her hands and said, ‘My God, these are incredible.’ I nodded and grinned as ‘Debaser’ came on. She pulled me in again and said, ‘Matthew listen, I just want to tell ye, I think yer amazin, I’m so glad we got together. I’ve always liked ye. Did ye know that? I never told anyone and I never did anything about it, but I’ve always liked ye, I always thought there was something different about ye, something more interesting.’

  I took her face in my hands and kissed her; we pressed our foreheads together and gazed into each other’s eyes.

  Then we prised apart, and suddenly I was babbling at her, the words pouring out of me, uncontrollable, one leading to the next.

  ‘Jen there’s things ye don’t know about me, like I’m not who ye think I am, or there’s somethin wrong with me, I don’t know how to explain it, like I’m not a normal human bein or, or I don’t know, but when me and Kearney saw the girl gettin killed, I mean it was horrible, Jen. But Kearney was really into it and I smiled at him and it’s like, now when I see them bombin Iraqis on the news and the children dyin and all that stuff it’s like I can’t even feel angry any more, like I’m no better than they are, I’m just a Yank up in a gunship, like shootin into schools and chewin gum or …’

  I stopped talking and closed my eyes. I was sure I’d said too much and now she would leave me and go off with Cocker, or someone else who had integrity and substance.

  I opened my eyes and Jen was still smiling a wide, lovey smile. She didn’t look shocked or disgusted. Still dancing, she put her hands behind my head and kissed me on the lips. She purred in my ear, ‘You’re amazing, Matthew.’ I realized that she hadn’t heard a thing I’d said. But still I felt better, like I’d been to confession and spilled out my sins to God, only there was no God, the sky was empty and there was only Jen and me and Rez and Cocker, and the music and the drinks and the ecstasy that surged up through me now and everything was radiant and epic and there would never be another moment like this one in the entire span of the universe. I beamed at Jen, euphoric, suddenly forgiving myself for all the terrible things I’d felt I’d done for years and years, without even knowing what they were. Then I thought of Kearney over in America and sort of wished him well but understood very clearly that I had to move on from him, that a lot was at stake here, there was more to life than hate and rage and it was crucial that you liked yourself and a good girl could help you do that, and so could friends like Cocker and Rez and –

  My thoughts got scrambled because at that moment the song that had been playing fell away and the first scorched beats and squeals of ‘Accelerator’ tore through the speakers. I planted my feet shoulder-width apart, clenched my fists, threw my head back and howled: ‘UUUHHEEEAAAGGGHHH!’

  The next thing I knew a bouncer was shoving me towards the side of the dance floor with his shoulder, pushing me against the wall, saying, ‘Don’t be a fuckin cock-merchant, alright? Give it the fuck over or ye can gerrou.’ I looked in his eyes; he was pure brawn, skin-headed, and scarred under the right eye. But in his face I saw woundedness, strangled compassion and the capacity for immense love.

  ‘It’s okay man, don’t worry about it. Yer a great guy, I know ye are. Here, have a cigarette’ – I pulled the pack from my back pocket and held it up to him. A joint protruded from the top; I ignored it, putting the pack away again. ‘It’s great, I know yer only doin yer job, I know I’m actin the bollocks a bit. It can’t be easy, like, on a Saturday night and all that, but fair play to ye. I mean like, yer not bad at all. I respect ye, ye know what I mean? I really fuckin do, I respect ye. All I’m sayin is I think yer great, man, seriously.’

  ‘GET THE FUCK OUT,
YE CHEEKY LITTLE CUNT!’ he bellowed, grabbing me by the scruff and dragging me to the front door, then shoving me on to the street. For a moment I thought he was going to hit me. ‘Ye can forget about ever comin back here again.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I pleaded, genuinely bewildered.

  But he repeated that I was a cheeky little cunt and walked back into the club, rolling his shoulders and making sure he looked mean and cool. I held out my opened hands in a futile gesture to no one, an orphan before howling cosmic winds. Moments later, Cocker and Jen came hurrying out. Jen was laughing. Cocker’s face was a glaze of indiscriminate bliss.

  ‘I’m barred!’ I announced. The words sounded momentous, prophetic, and once again I started to come up, mad with euphoria.

  ‘The important thing is this,’ Jen said, pulling a cocktail glass from underneath her jacket. ‘I smuggled out your drink.’

  Some time later we were in the Iveagh Gardens, sitting on a bench, surrounded by the darkened windows of office buildings and the faintly rustling treetops of the city-centre green space. We were passing around one of the bottles of red wine we had bought from a secret, late-night counter. With all the drugs inside me the wine felt strange, like a trickle of cool, sweet blood running down to my guts. I had the vivid sense that as long as there was wine and cigarettes, everything would be okay. I looked up into the sky and felt a magnificent, heightened peacefulness. You never know, I thought, maybe there was something out there; not like a God, but something vast and beyond our understanding, some immense mystery that gave everything a kind of dignity and even a meaning. I thought of Becky and how she died but still I felt serene – maybe even that horror had a significance as part of some great cosmic blueprint. It seemed that everything was basically alright, that even tragedy and violence were not proof of how vile the world was, but only elements of it I couldn’t yet understand.