Here Are the Young Men Read online

  He looked at his plate: beans, fish fingers and chips – the usual shite. He went to the fridge and poured himself a glass of milk, then sat back down. As he chewed the first mouthful, he observed his ma watching the telly. She was a fat, ugly slapper. To rectify this, Kearney stood up, walked into the sitting room and stood above her, blocking her view of the telly like a cruel eclipse. He switched to baseball bat, raised it behind his head, and brought it down in her face with a vicious swing. She was dead on the first smash, but he switched to pistol and shot her repeatedly in the face nonetheless, just for the craic.

  Kearney finished his dinner, left the plate and empty glass on the table, and returned to his converted-attic bedroom.

  9 | Rez

  Problems with Reality: Rez and the Postmodern Condition

  Rez watched himself having sex with Julie. Glancing down across their chests and stomachs he saw his erect penis, condom-wrapped, gliding in and out, in and out of her vagina. The erect penis didn’t seem to be a part of him – it was like the baby creature in Alien.

  They were in Julie’s bedroom. It was Monday afternoon and Rez hadn’t slept after his night with the lads. Everything was pitilessly visible in the daylight. They’d been having penetrative sex for five minutes. This was a reasonable time for Rez to allow himself to ejaculate and bring it to an end. But Julie hadn’t come. He had to make her come.

  He could hear himself panting and see the winces and grimaces he made – he couldn’t tell whether these reactions were genuine, or just imitations of pornography, echoes of someone else’s long-vanished pleasure. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on pure sensation: the sound of her breathing, the feel of her skin where it pressed against his own. But he couldn’t dam the gush of his thoughts. He wondered whether he was even excited, whether there was any lust in this at all. He had an erection, therefore some excitation must have been taking place. But maybe the erection was a mechanical reaction to the gestures they were making that they’d picked up from films, telly, porno …

  Julie still hadn’t come. Rez wished it was all over. These noises they were making: who were they trying to convince? But he had to keep going. He had to make her come. Julie’s face was bobbing up and down beneath him. She panted and rolled back her eyeballs but Rez couldn’t blot out the sense that they were both alone, imprisoned in their separate minds. He kept seeing flickers in Julie of film-sex, responses downloaded from beautiful actresses. It was the over-eager way she contorted her body, the hyperbole in her whispered incitements and dirty words. He felt like he was having sex with a hologram. But he had to make her come.

  They manoeuvred themselves through various positions. Rez was concentrating hard, trying fiercely to enjoy himself. Eventually Julie seemed to come; at least, she made a loud, prolonged warbling noise and went, ‘Oh fuck!’ Then she formed an O with her lips and began to take noisy breaths, in and out, as if recovering from a near-fatal pleasure. Rez’s orgasm was imminent: it would all be over soon. Determined to enjoy these last few seconds at least – otherwise what was the point? – he urged himself to stop analysing and just be in the moment. But it was hopeless: he registered the mechanism of ejaculation taking place in his penis and testicles without the faintest tremble of pleasure. Miserably frustrated by his inability to stop thinking and just enjoy things like a normal human being, as he ejaculated he let out an anguished, gasping whine. Julie, mistaking it for a sound of pleasure, renewed her moany porno-noises. ‘Yes, Rez! Oh yes, oh yes!’ she cried, not looking into his eyes. Shuddering as the last spit of ejaculate squeezed into the condom, he groaned and slumped down into her shoulder. He buried his face in her neck and hair, and wished he never had to see anything ever again.

  It wasn’t only when he had sex that Rez saw it, but that was when it was most visible, and most excruciating. Sex, real sex, had a lot to live up to. Real life had a lot to live up to.

  Rez worried. He worried that he was losing it, smoking too much dope and falling out of orbit with the world. For as long as he could remember, he’d had the sense that he wasn’t as fully connected to reality as you were supposed to be. But he had always struggled to express the specifics of this condition, even to himself.

  Recently, so much had fallen away, no longer trusted as being real: emotions, pleasure, music, art, even gestures and expressions. Nothing was simply itself; everything was a reflection of something else. Nothing was to be trusted.

  Take Cocker, leaning against the wall the other day, smoking a cigarette – it was stylized, he had learned that from telly and films. Or Jen, raising an eyebrow and smiling as she walked away from Matthew one night – that was straight off the telly as well, probably from Sex and the City, or Friends, or something. It was a cheap imitation; there was nothing genuinely enigmatic or seductive about it. Was there? Rez couldn’t tell. He had begun looking around at the people in his life – his ma and da, Michael and Trisha, his friends, Julie – and seeing them more and more as unreal, sinister, holographic entities, hardly human at all. Then, with rising unease, he had begun to look at himself in the same way. He had turned his gaze inward, but found no depth or substance, only froth and fever. There had arisen in him the weird and inchoate sense that he was a centreless chaos, becoming self-aware.

  Whenever the anxiety threatened to engulf him, he would tell himself that surely the best way to deal with this was to try and talk to someone about it, to communicate what he was going through. Maybe even Julie could help him.

  Later that afternoon the two of them took a DART out to Howth, to walk along the cliffs. It had turned into another dull, windy day. Fatigue weighed heavily on Rez. He wanted to sleep and sleep and not wake up for days.

  As they walked away from the town, through the heather and scrub, high above the sea, he told Julie he had been barred from attending the graduation.

  ‘What, even you?’ Julie said.

  ‘Yeah. They sent letters out to our parents. I mean, Foley likes me cos I read books, so I thought I’d be alright. But no, I’m barred as well. Me ma and da are goin mad.’

  ‘But the school will be sorry they barred ye when they see how well ye do in the Leavin Cert …’

  He gave a cheerless laugh. ‘I doubt it, Julie. Honestly, I think I’ve probably failed half the subjects. I know ye don’t believe me, but ye’ll see for yourself soon enough.’

  Her voice was strained with anger. ‘I don’t see how you could fail, Rez. You’re so smart …’

  ‘But I just … I told ye, I just couldn’t concentrate. All year. I … there’s too much goin on in me head.’

  She pulled away, sick and tired of hearing it. He didn’t blame her. He couldn’t even say what he meant. An older guy with a moustache and a shaved head approached them on the trail. Rez happened to glance up at Julie as they passed him: she caught the guy’s eye and smiled faintly, not realizing Rez was watching. Rez said nothing.

  Julie suggested they stay for the sunset, and watch the darkness drift in over the Irish Sea. They sat on a perch and waited. Rez didn’t want to be there. These days, situations like this always made him miserable. He wished there was a switch he could flick to turn his mind off, and he’d sit there and look at the darkening sky, untroubled by doubt or rumination.

  ‘Isn’t it gorgeous?’ Julie murmured, lying back to enjoy the panorama of crashing waves, cliffs, and the dissolving day.

  Rez sniffled. ‘I don’t know, is it?’

  ‘What do ye mean? Of course it is. Just look at it.’

  ‘I am lookin at it. It’s just, I don’t know if I can see it properly.’

  ‘Is there something wrong with your eyes?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me eyes. Well, there is and there isn’t. I mean …’

  He was determined to articulate what was in his head. Otherwise the isolation would suffocate him. He tried again.

  ‘When ye look at it, are ye not just thinkin it’s beautiful cos ye’ve seen so many pictures of sunsets in magazines and car ads and everyw
here, and ye’ve been told that they’re beautiful? Do ye know what I mean? Is it like an automatic thought, like ye look at it and ye think, “Ah, a sunset, it’s beautiful,” but really ye feel nothing? Or even worse, maybe what yer really admirin is yerself, sittin there and bein all cinematic, starrin in something like a film or a novel or whatever. Or like ye’re sayin to yerself, “This is what an experience looks like,” only ye’ve never really had one – just the experience of not experiencin anything at all. Ye know?’

  Julie was shaking her head. Her voice was low, almost hostile. ‘No, Rez. It’s gorgeous.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think ye get what I’m sayin, I –’

  ‘I do get what yer saying, but I don’t agree. I look at the sunset, and the sea, and I like it. I think it’s gorgeous. It’s very simple, Rez.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he muttered, more unsure of himself than ever. Maybe it was just him, maybe his mind was fucked up. He felt terrible. He couldn’t even enjoy a fucking sunset. Julie made everything so simple. That was why he liked her, he reflected. He drew her in and squeezed his body against hers. The evening was getting chilly. He kissed her cheek and she put an arm around his waist. He could feel her heat coming into him, protection from the chill that drifted in over the Irish Sea, cold and insidious as doubt, as questions.

  He spoke into her ear. ‘Julie, don’t listen to me. I’m just … I just need to get me head clear, that’s all. Don’t mind me.’

  She exhaled in frustration. ‘But Rez, you’re always like this now. What’s wrong with you? You’re not the way ye used to be. You’re like a different person. How come we never laugh when we’re together any more? You always used to make me laugh, but now it’s always this analysing, all this weird stuff. Jesus, Rez, I’m starting to feel lonelier when I’m with you than when I’m on me own. I –’

  ‘I know, Julie. I said I’ll snap out of it, I’m just –’

  ‘But when are ye goin to snap out of it, Rez? It’s ever since ye started gettin all those books from yer cousin. I know ye look up to him and ye think he’s cool. And there’s nothin wrong with that, but –’

  ‘I don’t “look up to him”,’ he said gruffly, pulling away. ‘Jesus. Just cos I like talkin to someone about books and films and stuff, ye have to make me out to be some kind of child. For fuck’s sake, Julie.’

  ‘But it’s not only that, Rez.’

  He sighed and shook his head. ‘Here we go again.’

  ‘I know ye hate me sayin it. But I mean it, Rez, ye smoke too much. It’s messin yer head up. Some people can handle it and some people can’t, and you just can’t. It’s makin ye … it’s makin ye into a different person than ye were before. And I don’t like bein with ye as much.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Julie. I don’t smoke that much. Just a joint or two in the evenin, that’s all. What else am I supposed to do? I just like it. Dope is my thing, it’s not some big deal. It’s just for listenin to music and helpin me think about things.’

  Her voice was low and she looked dead ahead, across the sea. ‘Listen Rez, do whatever ye want. I’m sick of havin the same argument over and over.’

  They fell silent. Most of the daylight had drained away. Rez felt Julie shivering at his side. He leaned into her again and buried his face in her hair, breathing her in. ‘I don’t feel anything any more,’ he whispered into the pulse of her neck, a dry sob caught in his throat.

  ‘Shhh,’ she replied, stroking his head, looking out to sea.

  10 | Matthew

  I groaned and pulled the covers over my head. It was Tuesday morning and I was still fucked from the long weekend. My ma was banging on my bedroom door. Dull light filled the room and I could hear the muffled tune of an ice-cream van out on the road. Eventually I willed myself into getting up.

  I drank tea and watched telly for a while, though I couldn’t concentrate and my ma kept at me to go and look for a job. Then she had to go out. Although I’d had a full night’s sleep, I was still affected by the pills: little things irritated me more than usual, but I kept having these surges of euphoria and intense emotion, triggered by random memories or whatever happened to be on telly – even a car ad or the benign smile of a celebrity chef. I watched a few music videos, hoping Christina Aguilera would come on, or just some decent band. In one of the videos, from a rubbish American indie band, four tousle-haired guys were walking down a lane in slow motion as an apocalyptic sunset blazed behind them. There was an old woman standing nearby, with a trolley full of what looked like chicken heads and voodoo paraphernalia. A deranged grin crept over her cracked face. She started to giggle, then it looked like she was choking. An expression of horror came over her, as if she’d peered into the depths of hell. Then one of the band members put his hand on another’s shoulder and looked intensely into his eyes. He smiled. His face turned into a frog. At that moment, I had a vision of Kearney smashing the junkie’s face. I heard the crack, felt the surge of pain as if it were my own bones being broken. I scrambled to change the channel, calming down only when the screen glowed with a soothing Pringles ad.

  My ma had come back. ‘I’m not tellin ye again, Matthew,’ she said harshly. ‘Get on out there with them CVs and find something. There’s no shortage of jobs, you’ll have something by the end of the day if you want.’

  What I wanted by the end of the day was to be drunk and stoned. To this end, I called Cocker.

  ‘Listen,’ I said when Cocker picked up, ‘I need to get away from the gaff for a while. Me ma’s houndin me to join the workforce. The only force I want to join is, like, Delta Force.’

  ‘Or Air Force One,’ said Cocker dreamily. ‘That’d be alright. What is Air Force One? Is it the plane, or all the planes?’

  We arranged to meet in town and head to the beach. Cocker rang Rez and I rang Jen. No one rang Kearney.

  We took the DART to Portmarnock, already two cans in apiece by the time we got off at the station and walked across the bridge, then out on to the beach. It had turned into a sunny day, a brief opening in the grey cloud-wall that had hidden the sky for months. There were a lot of people making the most of it before the sky-blue was swallowed up again. Pasty parents laid out mats and kept an anxious eye on their children, who waded into the sea like a generation of suicides. Every father, no matter how young, seemed to have a beer belly, and all the mothers had flabby, cellulite-lined legs. The men stripped off their GAA or English football jerseys. The women wore bathing suits of pink or idiot-yellow. In the hazy sunlit drunkenness I felt deflated by the scene.

  ‘All the happy families,’ said Cocker as we spread out a blanket and sat down.

  ‘Don’t ye think ye’d ever like children?’ asked Jen with a playful grin.

  ‘What, with you? You’re off yer head.’

  ‘No, not with me!’ she protested, taking the bait. ‘In general, I mean. I wouldn’t let you put your seed into me, Cocker. In your dreams.’

  I looked at her. ‘In your dreams’ – did that mean Cocker and Jen hadn’t actually had sex the other night? The dejection brought on by the sight of the milky sunbathers disappeared and I perked up.

  ‘No, I don’t think I’d ever want to have kids. But who knows, ye know? What do ye reckon, Matthew, do ye see yerself as a da some day?’

  ‘No way.’

  I meant it. Shrugging, I cracked open a can. ‘The thought depresses me. I don’t see myself livin that kind of life. It just doesn’t appeal to me. Once ye have kids, that’s everything fucked. Ye may as well give up on yerself at that point. And as far as I can see, that’s just what people do. They give up on themselves. They get these flabby bellies and start listenin to fuckin FM104 and they start to think that a visit to Atlantic Homecare on a Saturday is a great day out. Goin on about motor tax and fuckin wheelie bins. No way.’

  Jen laughed. ‘Well, ye never know.’

  ‘I do know. I know very well. But what about you, Rez?’

  Rez was staring at the sea, sipping his can. He turned to me, gazed for
a few moments and said, ‘What?’ He was scarcely with us at all. His face looked grey, sagged with worry. A surge of vicious feeling – hatred for Rez, the desire to see him suffer – flared up in me, and then was washed away by the blur of drunkenness. ‘Children?’ he said eventually. ‘Jesus. The thoughts of it. I don’t even know if I want to be in a relationship any more, let alone have kids.’

  ‘Well don’t go tellin Julie that,’ said Jen with a smile.

  We sat there and drank until our heads felt fogged and heavy in the high afternoon sun, and all was hilarity. The fact that everyone else was sober made us feel drunker, and we sneered and denounced the beach, the humans, the whole wide world. Cocker announced that he’d ‘gotten the goo’ on him and insisted we start doing shots of vodka, not that we needed any insisting.

  When we had just downed our third shots, an inflatable ball plonked down into our midst, throwing a coating of sand over the fringe of our blanket. A little blonde girl trotted over, naked except for a vest. I looked at her, my head starting to spin. She reminded me of my sister Fiona when she was little, when I used to tell her stories in bed and feel big and strong, protecting her. I picked up the ball and smiled at the girl when she was beside us. She held out her hands with an impatient look, frustrated at every second spent away from her playmates. I held the ball out to her. She grabbed it and ran, shrieking with delight. It all made me feel sad.

  ‘I’m a bit fucked,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll take a swim.’

  The water wasn’t too cold, or rather it probably was cold, but the drunkenness acted as a kind of wetsuit. I crashed into the foam, exhilarated by the sudden sensation, opening my eyes underwater to a silty murk.