Rob Doyle - Here Are the Young Men

‘But it’s just cos of Julie,’ said Cocker. ‘They haven’t been gettin on at all.’

‘No, even before that. He’s always frownin and goin off on his own. He just seems dead edgy, or cagey, or whatever the word is.’

‘Yeah,’ said Cocker. I thought he was going to elaborate, but he just muttered, ‘Nicholas Cagey.’ Then he turned to look out the window at the passing coastline.

Kearney was sitting in front of us. I could hear relentless techno played at full volume on his headphones, but he must have been listening with only one ear because he turned around to face us.

‘Maybe he is depressed,’ he said.

‘Why would he be depressed?’ I asked.

Kearney grinned. ‘I don’t really know. Possibly cos he’s a willy master. As gay as a pink doorbell.’

‘Give it a rest, Kearney.’

‘I’m only messin with ye, Matthew. I’m only messin with ye. I’m only messin with ye. I’m only fuckin messin with ye. Rez is a fuckin quality fella. A-One, boss. I reckon he’s a saint or the second comin of Jesus Christ. I’m goin to name me first three sons after him. The fourth one will be named after Gay Byrne.’

‘What about yer daughters?’ said Cocker.

‘Riverdance,’ said Kearney. ‘And Slán Leat. If I have a third, I won’t give her a name. I’ll lock her in the attic and throw her slabs of meat.’

‘God help any kids you’d ever have,’ said Cocker.

Kearney grinned again, taking it as a compliment. He was known to be anti-life, pro-compulsory-abortion. He turned back around in his seat.

‘Do you reckon Rez is depressed?’ I said to Cocker.

‘I don’t know. He was in great form the night of the gig, when we were flyin on them pills. Well yeah, he got a bit quiet-like, and then goin on about weird stuff. There’s always this stuff about reality or whatever. It’s like he’s obsessed or something. But … ah, I don’t know. Fuck it. He’ll be grand.’

The train bombed along and a few minutes later we reached Killiney Station.

We got off the DART and walked along a spiralling road that petered out into a muddy track that took us to the top of the hill. We drank whiskey and watched the dark clouds swarm in on the city from the sea. From up here Dublin looked like one enormous suburb, a dreary sprawl of semi-detached houses, electricity pylons and new roads leading to new suburbs, to roundabouts and Atlantic Homecare superstores. I wondered if every other place in the world seemed so dismal to the people who lived there.

‘So how’s this new job goin?’ Cocker asked.

‘Grand. I mean, I’ve only done one day, but already it’s the easiest job I’ve ever had. Total lack of responsibility. It gives me time to, like, ponder things.’

He laughed and said, ‘You’ll end up like Rez.’

‘He’s startin a job as well, tomorrow.’

‘Yeah I know. Doin night security work at some office block out in Citywest.’

‘No way.’ I’d assumed he’d be working in a supermarket or a garage. I pictured Rez sitting alone all night in an empty building in some deserted business park. ‘It sounds like something from Fight Club ,’ I said. ‘I’d say that’s the last thing he needs, though. He seems to be gettin weirder the more time he spends on his own like that.’

Cocker shrugged. ‘Well, he says he’s lookin forward to it. He has a big stack of books he’s goin to read up there. He says it’ll give him time to think and write.’

I snorted. ‘What’s he goin to write?’ Really I was envious: I should have thought of being a writer first. Maybe I could be a musician instead. Or an artist.

‘Mostly just more of that stuff he’s always scribblin, I suppose,’ said Cocker. ‘His philosophy. All these essays he does write — he has tonnes of them by now. But apparently he’s writin some kind of book as well. All about our lives. Something like that.’

Kearney sniggered. ‘The world is really holdin its breath for that one.’ He handed me the shot he’d just poured. ‘Here then, let’s drink to Rez’s new job as nightwatchman, and to my departure for the pussy farm that is Boston. Total fanny holocaust it’ll be.’

We lit cigarettes and felt the kick of smoke in our throats, laughing and looking down on the city. It didn’t feel like it was our city, or our country, or our people. I scrolled my blurring eyes over the sprawl and felt a loathing for all of them, the fuckers who lived down there and raised their families, worked their jobs, asked no questions and listened to Joe Duffy or Gerry Ryan or whoever-the-fuck-else. As the whiskey pulsed into my brain, the hatred kept gushing out of me, laying waste to the city in a crescendo of contempt. Ecstatic, I wanted to drink myself into the ground, into total oblivion, and let all those cunts do what they wanted.

‘What are ye up to this weekend?’ I asked Cocker some time later. Kearney was off throwing stones towards the town. ‘Do ye want to meet up tomorrow?’

‘I’m workin tomorrow,’ he said.

‘Yeah, but after that?’

‘Eh, actually I’m goin out …’

I waited.

‘I’m headin out to meet another couple of friends. I mean, like, ye wouldn’t really know them.’

‘What, is it a party or something?’

‘Sort of. Not really a party, just a little thing. It’ll probably be crap.’ He laughed weakly and looked at the ground. He said nothing more.

Now Kearney was standing a bit down the hill, pissing and waving it from side to side, giggling to himself. It looked like he was pissing all over Dublin. ‘God is in his church!’ he roared. ‘God is in his church! How does yer garden grow?’

Turning to me, Cocker pointed at Kearney with his thumb and said, ‘Here, this boy is really off his nut, do ye know that?’

‘Of course I know that.’

‘No seriously,’ he said, grinning, eyes wide. ‘He’s even worse than I thought. Listen to this. I was around at his gaff this mornin, before we went into town. We were havin a spliff up in his room, and then he had to go downstairs for a while. So I started havin a look at his computer, and I found all these videos he’s been makin. He’s been recordin himself — just him sittin there talkin into the webcam. Just fuckin rantin away, like, makin all these mad voices like some actor. But it’s real weird stuff, what he’s sayin. All these fantasies of him killin people. Like, he’s even talkin about his own ma and all, and weird stuff about homeless people. It’s fuckin mental. And there’s one of the videos that’s different, where he’s just sittin there dead still, not sayin a word, just starin into the camera, starin right at ye. I skipped forward and that video is the same all the way through, and it lasts, like, fifty-six minutes. What the fuck? I was goin to rip the piss out of him when he came back up to the room, but when he climbed the ladder and saw that I’d found the videos he started screechin his head off and havin a total fuckin mickey-fit, like pullin his hair out and screamin at me and everything. What a fuckin nutjob.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ I said, laughing. Cocker was laughing too, so much he couldn’t talk any more. Kearney was coming up the hill, watching us.

‘What’s so funny, Cocker?’ Kearney asked.

Cocker pointed at him. ‘You are!’ he replied, still shrieking with laughter. ‘You and yer home videos. What the fuck is all that about, Kearney?’

Kearney stood looking at him, saying nothing. He stayed like that for a long time, while we laughed till our stomachs hurt. Eventually, Kearney sat back down beside us. I poured a shot and passed it to him. ‘We’re only havin a laugh, Kearney,’ I said.

We stayed up there for a good while. We drank the whole bottle of whiskey and then, all of us pissed, we wanted more.