Here Are the Young Men Page 3

  ‘Ye’ve just upset him,’ said my ma. I looked at the table for a moment longer. Then I opened my mouth and was about to say something. Instead, I shook my head, exhaled sharply through my nose, stood up and went to my room.

  I rolled a spliff and then I went out for a walk.

  4 | Kearney

  Snapshot Number 2: Typical schoolday

  The alarm goes off and Kearney opens his eyes. A phrase is resounding in his mind: Violence is my bread and butter. Only half lucid, still embroiled in slaughter dreams, Kearney nods his head in grim acquiescence.

  He eats his breakfast and leaves the house. On the bus into school, still irritable, and queasy from the food, he slaughters everyone onboard. This is routine. His expression is cold as deep space as gunfire tears through the upper deck, blasting out windows, ripping children in half amidst howls of terror. As the day’s first visions of carnage stoke his mind into a semblance of alertness, Kearney exhales in relief. He needs this shit to make his bus journey interesting, to make it bearable.

  At school he sits in class, more or less quietly, more or less obediently. Mr Landerton, then Maloney, then whoever, drones on about whatever the fuck it is – history, English, economics, Irish, biology – it all passes Kearney by while he stares at the back of the boy in front of him, or at the blackboard, lost to reveries of carnage and fucking. None of this shit is real for him; it is an alien world impinging on his reality, which is infinitely sexier. He perceives the offcial world through a kind of fog, dimly, and it nauseates him. He understands little of it and cares for less.

  Just before the first break it starts to get too much. Kearney bites his lip and stabs his compass into the desk. He wants to fuck something, fuck anything. The equations on the blackboard mean so little to Kearney that he is overcome by a wild inner hilarity – what a wretched cosmos, what a hateful existence! He giggles until first the boys around him, then the entire class, are staring in astonishment. It is time, he thinks. Slowing his breathing, he closes his eyes for a moment; then he reaches down into his schoolbag for the two heavy, fully loaded handguns. Matthew, sitting innocently at his left-hand side, is the first to go. His brains, gore and bone shards spew a horizontal fount across the room. Then Kearney is on his feet, pumping round after round into the soft teenage flesh of his classmates: Kearney, the void at the centre of chaos.

  And so on and so on.

  5 | Matthew

  On Saturday morning I went into town to meet Cocker and Jen. We met at the Central Bank, on the steps. The Goths were there as usual, a big gang of them, and the rockers in Slipknot hoodies and dyed hair. They were all the same. Some of the girls were nice, though. Most of the Goths had posh accents but they usually drank a lot. They smoked spliff as well, and probably even did other stuff, the kind of drugs that me and my friends didn’t know where to find. I knew a few of the Goths and rockers from school. I said hello when I saw Aido, who had this scraggly yellow hair in curls. He was into Death Metal. I didn’t like Death Metal at all. It made me want to die – too cold and hard.

  Jen came last, getting off the bus from Blackrock. She smiled when she saw me and Cocker, stopping twenty yards away to wave at us with exaggerated emotion, like we were long-lost siblings reunited. I nodded at her, but sullenly. Cocker’s greeting was brighter. Jen had been with Cocker before. They had kissed one night when we were drinking cans down the banks of the skinny Dodder that flows through Tallaght like a fugitive sewer. She had been with Kearney as well, and Mick Mooney, and most of the lads I knew – everyone except me, basically. She had even been with the Cabbage. Mick Mooney said he’d shagged her and she had never confirmed or denied it; all the others said they’d fingered her, and Kearney said she’d given him a blowjob, though she did deny that. She said she’d only ever kissed Kearney, once while she was drunk. That was a good while ago; they didn’t seem to talk that much, Jen and Kearney.

  We wandered around Temple Bar for a while, killing time. We went into Purple Haze and Spindizzy Records, rifling through the punk section, looking at the DVDs. We went into the new head shop, but it was a load of bollocks because they sold this ‘marijuana substitute’ for a score a bag, and all it did was give you a headache and make you thirsty. Besides, it wasn’t like real hash was exactly hard to come by, even if the stuff we got was always fairly shit.

  We didn’t buy any CDs because we didn’t have much money, and we wanted to get drink later. We went down to Meeting House Square and smoked two of the spliffs that me and Cocker had brought, pre-rolled. The smell and taste of the hash was sickly, pungently sweet and not pleasant at all. But I sucked hard on the joint, and when the second one was half gone I felt panicky because there was nothing worse than that feeling of not having anything left and all you wanted to do was keep going. There were more joints for after, though, so it was okay.

  It was kind of sunny that day, but cold like the autumn. When we were stoned, Cocker led us out of Temple Bar, across Dame Street and down a narrow side street. He ducked into a doorway and we followed, into a grimy stairwell that led upwards to a roof at the top of the city. There was nobody around to tell us to go back down. We stood up there and leaned against the wall, looking over at Trinity College, all stern and proud like some hostile alien fortress. Behind College Green and to the left was O’Connell Bridge and the Liffey, and then the whole of O’Connell Street, running up past Easons and Clerys and all the rest of it. There were big statues on that street but I’d never bothered to learn who they were. Jen probably knew. There were books in her house.

  We were leaning against the low wall, alone up there. Jen was in the middle, with me and Cocker on either side. She leaned over and spat down. We watched it fall, spiralling out in widening arcs before landing on the path near a trendy-looking woman with spiky blonde hair and a shiny green jacket. Stoned, I thought of how there were so many people in this city who made me feel strange, different, alien, just by looking at them.

  Jen and Cocker had shuffled closer to each other, and she was running the toe of her Converse runner up his calf. She was giggling a lot, and he wasn’t laughing exactly but he had a smile on his face as he murmured to her, words that I couldn’t hear.

  Fuck them, I thought. But I looked at Jen’s arse, round and trim in her close-fitting jeans, and was nauseous with stoned desire.

  Jen had stepped back away from the edge and was doing a dance, flailing her arms about and closing her eyes. Cocker watched her and I pretended not to. ‘Dublin’s burning with boredom, now! Dublin’s burning dial nine-nine-nine-nine-nine!’ she chanted.

  I started worrying that I wasn’t stoned any more, or that I was still stoned but less so, which would mean it was all downhill from here. ‘Let’s smoke another joint,’ I said, already fishing out my hash box from the back pocket of my jeans, where I had placed the row of pre-rolled spliffs.

  ‘I’m still stoned,’ said Cocker, but he didn’t try any harder than that to dissuade me. I lit up, sucking hard on the spliff, constantly monitoring the progress of my buzz, anxious that because I’d already been stoned it would be hard to get back to that level again. Maybe it was time to start drinking.

  I passed the spliff to Jen and she drew on it, letting smoke spill slowly from her nostrils. Then Cocker puffed on it meditatively, quietly. He smoked like he could take it or leave it – that made me feel inferior, chronically unsatisfied.

  ‘Give us a blow-back,’ I said to him when it was near the end. We cupped our hands and he brought his mouth close to mine, puffing out a cloud of smoke through the tunnel of our interlinked hands. It shot into my lungs and made me wheeze, my eyes watering.

  Jen was laughing. ‘Too much for ye, Matthew, was it?’

  ‘Fuck off. You do it and see if you can not splutter,’ I said when I had regained my composure.

  ‘Fair enough,’ she said, surprising me. Then Cocker was leaning over her, his forehead pressed against hers, their eyes close together, mouths nearly touching. They stayed pressed together for a lo
ng time. Then Jen inhaled and she drew back. Cocker’s hands slid down to rest easily on her hips, lightly holding her belt. She held the smoke in, looked at me over Cocker’s shoulder, smiled, and then carefully let the smoke flow from her nose, a swirling stream of wispy grey.

  ‘There ye go,’ she boasted, grinning. I shrugged and turned away, looking out over the city. It was nearly evening, the sun starting to disappear further on up the Liffey, towards the Four Courts. The sky was pink-splashed and streaked with high cloud. It was kind of beautiful. A chill arrived suddenly, an end-of-the-day, stoned sort of chill.

  ‘Let’s go down,’ I said. ‘We should go and get the drink.’

  Walking slowly, giggling now and then but not saying much, we crossed the Liffey and headed up O’Connell Street. The buzz from the hash made everything warm, like the world was coated in a soft, amber light. Everything felt more vivid and more interesting than usual – the hash was like a tool to drain the banality out of life. I looked at people’s faces as they streamed past me, fascinated; how strange they all were.

  An anti-abortion group had gathered outside the GPO to protest. Their violent slogans were slashes of blood-red over long white sheets and boards.

  ABORTION: THE SILENT HOLOCAUST. WILL YOU LOOK AWAY WHILE THEY SLAUGHTER THE DEFENCELESS? ABORTION IS THE MURDER OF THE INNOCENT

  The protestors had set up a stall and, just as we were walking past, they unrolled a huge image of a bloody foetus, whose head was partially crushed and oozing green and dark-red matter. You could see that it was a human, a baby. ‘Uugh,’ said Jen, crinkling her nose in revulsion. ‘They’re not allowed show that, are they?’ Up further, another group was protesting the invasion of Iraq, and claiming that the Irish had blood on their hands because they let the Yankee war planes stop over in Shannon. The fighting in Iraq was supposed to be finished already, only a couple of months after they’d gone in, back in March. But every day on telly there was slaughter and mayhem, and some said that the guerrilla war would go on for years and years. Kearney was gleeful at the prospect: according to him, anyone who protested was a wanker, because the fact was: people loved war and loved watching it on telly, and if we didn’t have wars like Iraq and Afghanistan we’d all be bored senseless and turn on each other to get our fix of violence.

  We walked on, to the end of the street and the big monument to whatever social hero it was, his arms outstretched, his face stern and domineering. Rez had gotten sick at the base of that statue one night, it was hilarious. I wondered where Rez was today: probably out somewhere with Julie. They didn’t seem that close any more, though. Maybe he was out wandering around on his own again. Something was up with him. I thought of Stephen Horrigan and wondered if someone would find Rez like that some day, slung up by his belt, staring at you with dead, bulging eyes. That would be weird.

  We turned on to Parnell Street, which is where some of the dodgier offos were to be found, and looked around for someone to buy us a daddy-naggin and eighteen cans of Dutch Gold.

  A few hours later I was sitting on the couch in Jen’s spacious living room out in Blackrock. Xtrmntr was playing loud on the stereo. The lights were low and the telly was jittery with late-night images. Kearney, who had come into town to meet us, was passed out on the floor. There was a joypad in his hand and dribble glistened under his lip. I watched him for a while. Then I opened the last of the cans and drank.

  Jen’s da had gone away for the weekend, and her alcoholic ma had long since moved out, so she had a free house tonight. But in the sitting room there were only me and Kearney. Jen had gone upstairs with Cocker more than an hour ago. I kept thinking I could hear noises from them, and put the music up louder to drown it out. It was hate music, fast and vicious, and I relished how it made me feel, the rage and power. I drank more and felt a surge of omnipotence, but then I heard the creaking from above and it was like there was nothing inside me.

  I wished I had something to get high with. I got up and went into Jen’s da’s garage, not sure what I was looking for until I stood beside the red petrol container. I hesitated for a moment because it could kill your brain or whatever. Then something that fella Scag had said on the phone came back to me: Do one thing every day that ye know yer goin to regret. I unscrewed the cap, cupped my hands over the hole, lowered my face, and inhaled slow and deep on the fumes.

  My brain hurtled and I let out a shriek of laughter, then fell backwards, crashing through toolboxes and shelves before slumping on the cold concrete floor. A spanner clattered down beside me and I laughed again, sprawled out on the ground. I saw a weird image in my head: a line of silent abortions, all floating serenely down a sewer, being washed out to sea. It was sort of poignant. When the buzz wore off I got up and went back into the living room and sat down on the couch, beside where Kearney was passed out.

  The sky had started to pale outside the window. I wasn’t ready to stop just yet. But I hated being there on my own, the only one still going. I wished Kearney would wake up. ‘Kearney!’ I called, kicking his shoulder. ‘Kearney! Are ye awake?’ He kept lying there, snoring into his armpit. I turned on the telly: Sky News. There was stuff about the insurgency and clips of soldiers returning fire from street corners and dusty alleyways, the camera shaking with the force of their guns. Nine Inch Nails was playing on the stereo, making the footage seem like an action film. Then I noticed that on the floor behind the telly there was a can of Dutch Gold that we had overlooked. I picked it up and cracked it open.

  I drank the can slowly, because when it ended there wouldn’t be any more, and I smoked many cigarettes as the sky continued to brighten and my thoughts swirled and blurred together and I could get no more satisfaction from the music. Then I passed out.

  6 | Kearney

  Snapshot Number 3: A selection of titles, notes and sketches culled from Kearney’s sixth-year notebook

  – Jihad: the Age of Outrage, a first-person shooter based on the War on Terror.

  – Sleeper Cell: The Enemy Within, in which you play a young extremist, trying to climb the ladder to martyrdom.

  – Towelhead Onslaught, a third-person shooter/fighter set among US commandos in Afghanistan. The climax takes place deep within the tunnel networks of the Tora Bora mountains, and involves a brutal fistfight with Osama Bin Laden himself.

  – A historical saga called Baader-Meinhoff: Operation Apocalypse.

  – A game called Sexkrime where you play a rapist in a squalid inner-city high-rise, and a related title, Hatekrime, where you play a member of a skinhead gang.

  – Pusher: City Business, where you play a ruthless smack dealer.

  – Alcoholocaust, merging autobiography and zombie-slaughter, an atmospheric first-person shooter set in Dublin.

  – Nigga B Real, a GTA-style rape-’em-up where you play a crack-addicted gang-banger, betrayed by his ex-crew and now taking on the LAPD and the city’s underworld single-handedly.

  – The London Cunt, another GTA-influenced pimp-sim with bitch-slap elements and a roaming, free-world environment.

  – Slaughter High, an RPG/first-person shooter comprised of lovingly detailed, Columbine-styled atrocities. Defiantly plotless.

  – Orgasm of Hate, Kearney’s ‘baby’, the project he felt most invested in, spiritually and intellectually. Though only sparse and enigmatic plot notes existed – the game seemed to involve some kind of Dublin-based, Fourth Reich genocide, possibly aimed at the homeless, the elderly and the itinerant community – Kearney felt sure that one day this game would make him the legend he knew he was born to be.

  7 | Matthew

  The next morning I was the first awake. I was still drunk, having slept only two or three hours on Jen’s couch. I played the PlayStation and waited for the others to get up. Later, Jen cooked a fry-up. I didn’t say much as we ate, ignoring Cocker but for a few muttered words. I wished someone would suggest we start drinking again. Instead I drank tonnes of coffee because it gave you a buzz as well. I had to take some Paracetamol, though, cos my head w
as killing me.

  I told the others I’d see them that evening. Then I went into town to pick up the pills from Scag. I met him in a lane behind Dame Street. He looked around twenty years older than me, with a crewcut, black leather jacket, Doc Martens, and the All-Cops-Are-Bastards dots tattooed in uneven green ink across his knuckles. He looked like a serious punk. Or like he’d been a serious punk years before, but had evolved into some nameless, dangerous kind of outsider. I’d heard from Rez’s cousin that Scag was a junkie. Or ‘a former junkie who still liked to use’, as he allegedly labelled himself. I noticed that Scag’s black T-shirt had the word Wittgenstein! printed on it.

  ‘So what’s yer story, anyway?’ he said, rolling a smoke after he’d given me the pills.

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have much of a story.

  ‘Are ye a workin man?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Not at the moment. I’ve just finished school. That’s why me and me mates are celebratin this weekend.’

  ‘Good. Fair play to ye, Matthew. Long have I fuckin dreamt of the day when the workin classes refuse to work. Don’t do it if ye know what’s good for ye. There’s nothin noble or dignified about workin, it’s just degradation. Are ye gettin me, Matthew?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘“Beware the eulogizers of work” – those are the words I’ve got painted on the wall above me bed, to remind meself of what’s important. This is an age of bitterness and resentment, so make yerself at home. Do ye follow?’

  ‘Yeah. So ye don’t, like, work yourself then?’

  He hissed, all indignant. ‘I wouldn’t work even if they paid me for it. Never get out of bed for less than ye got into it for, that’s my way of lookin at it. There’s a hundred solid reasons not to work. The big one for me is that it distracts me from me poetry.’