Rob Doyle - Here Are the Young Men

‘That makes sense. Ireland would do that to ye,’ I said. But my instinctive cynicism was boring even to me. I thought for a moment then said, ‘Maybe they see through things, though. Maybe they do it because they’re aware of the reality of what we’re living in.’

I enjoyed hearing myself pontificating so I continued: ‘I mean, like, maybe the ones from this generation who kill themselves are the ones who would have been, like, priests in earlier times, or, like, shamans in other parts of the world. Ye know? Like maybe they’re kind of, like, diviners for, like, the emptiness all around us, and they kill themselves because while everyone else just rushes out to buy things and smile at the computer and all that, these suicide fellas know that it’s all bollocks, there’s nothing out there. Ye know what I mean? Like, have ye ever seen that film, Logan’s Run ? Me and Rez watched it a while ago. It’s mental. There’s this underground society hundreds of years in the future, and every year there’s this ceremony where some of them try to escape to the earth’s surface to find this place called “Sanctuary” — but they always get killed before they reach it by this big laser thing. But then this fella Logan actually manages to escape to the surface but all he finds is, like, desolation. Just total wilderness. So he goes back down and he starts screamin, “There is no Sanctuary! There is no Sanctuary!” But the rest of them have such a need to believe in it that they just hate him. And, like, I think they kill him or something. I can’t remember, we were fairly stoned by that stage. Ye know what I mean, though? Maybe there is no Sanctuary.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ she said. But her mind wasn’t on my speech or on Logan’s Run — it was still on Rez. ‘You should go and meet him,’ she said in a low voice. ‘In the article in the paper it said that the big reason most of these guys kill themselves is that they feel isolated, they can’t talk to anybody about what’s goin on in their inner lives. Maybe that’s how Rez feels.’

‘But Rez does talk to us. He tells us all his ideas, all this stuff about why the world is so used up and he can’t connect or whatever.’

Jen didn’t reply. She watched a little girl playing on the grassy slope with a rubber dog. The girl reminded me of Becky.

My phone beeped again.

‘ never mind its fine just thought maybe u were around c u later .’

I showed Jen and shrugged. ‘He must be alright.’

She made a vague noise, looking into the distance, thoughtful.

A while later she said, ‘I wonder what it was like to live hundreds of years ago.’

‘Why are you thinkin about that?’

‘I don’t know, it just came into my head.’

I pondered for a moment. ‘It wouldn’t have been very good, probably. I mean, ye wouldn’t have been allowed to do anything, just get married and work and be poor.’

‘Yeah, but do ye think they were happier than we are?’

‘I don’t know. It’s possible. I remember talkin about this with Rez once. He reckoned that people were happier in the past, anyone who lived before these times, basically. He reckons it’s impossible to be happy in the modern world, because we’re not human any more. We’re just, like, abortions of technology or something.’

‘Do you agree with him?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t really get what he’s talkin about. Or only sometimes I do. Rez can be kind of pretentious. I mean …’ I hesitated, feeling bashful. ‘I mean, I feel kind of happy at the moment. Like, here with you.’

‘Awww!’ She laughed and jabbed her finger into my side. I grabbed her leg and tipped her over on the grass. She squealed in pleasure as she fell, pulling me down on top of her.

As we lay there I had an urge to tell her what had happened out at Killiney, how I had grinned for Kearney after the horror. But I couldn’t do it. I leaned down and kissed her.

We lay quietly in the grass and put our sunglasses on. An expanse of cloud glided across the sun and in a few minutes we felt chilly. We got up and walked out of the park. We wandered around to George’s Street Arcade and browsed the CDs. Jen bought me a Mercury Rev album that she had heard at a friend’s place.

‘This will get you out of that punk-rock ghetto you’ve been living in,’ she said. She kissed me and added, ‘There’s more to life than only hate and rage, you know.’

When I got home that evening I put on the Mercury Rev CD, and lay down to listen to it. Life was better when Kearney wasn’t around, I decided. Being with Jen was helping me see that. Kearney was a deadener, a nullifier. He talked things into nothingness and you got sucked in by his cynicism, drawn into a void where everything was at the same zero level, pointless and contemptible. Rez had said before that Kearney was a nihilist. I’d replied that we were all nihilists, that was why we were into punk and sabotage and all that stuff. Rez had said yeah, but Kearney was different: he loved death and hated everything else. I hadn’t really seen it at the time, but now I felt stupid for having been so blind.

The music played on, strange and mysterious, as if floating in from some other, more magical realm. Soon I drifted off to sleep, into weird and enchanted dreams.

The instant before Rez opened the email, a shiver of dread ran through him. What if it was a premonition? Maybe he should just turn it off and never log on here again. But then he clicked the message and it was too late.

Before he even fully read it, the blood had drained from his face and his insides seemed to melt. He stood up, but his legs were weak and he had to sit back down — and then he saw them again, her words on the screen like atrocity footage. He clicked the browser closed but he knew it was too late: this would be with him for the rest of his life.

He grabbed some money and ran out of the house. The 151 took him to Parnell Street. He got off, went straight into an offo and bought a naggin of Jameson. The man at the register was about to ask for ID, but when he looked in Rez’s eyes he just muttered the price and handed him the bottle. Then Rez was outside, swigging greedily.

He paced on to Parnell Square, outside the walls of the Garden of Remembrance — the very place where she’d dumped him. He swigged again on the whiskey. Why hadn’t she changed her Hotmail password? She knew he knew it. Had she known he was going to look at the emails she sent to her friends? Did she get some kind of buzz out of it? A diving instructor, on a fucking Greek island! Rez could see him, this Marley, in his mind’s eye: a hulking shadow-man, handsome, ruthless and predatory. He could see him boasting about it afterwards — how willing Julie had been, how eager, how orgasmic . It was all there in the few lines he’d read. Nothing could have made him feel more inadequate. He swigged long and deep but the words sliced into his most vulnerable parts: ‘ It’s like I didn’t even know what sex was before him. Last night he made me come twice before he even, you know, put it inside of me — after that I lost count! Rez NEVER used to make me come .’

Outside the Hugh Lane Gallery he brought his hands to his face, clawing at the skin. He felt he was about to vomit. An old woman stopped to stare but Rez ignored her.

‘ Rez NEVER used to make me come .’

The worst part was how she had capitalized the word ‘never’. He paced around Parnell Square to the front of the Ambassador. He crossed Parnell Street and headed down O’Connell Street. Outside Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium a teenager in a hoodie broke away from his gang to stand in Rez’s way. He sneered and opened out his arms in challenge. Rez knocked him aside with his shoulder and didn’t turn around when the teenager’s mates jeered and called out threats. ‘He’s a mad fuckin thing, did ye see the head on him?’ the teenager screeched behind him, trying to save face.