Rob Doyle - Here Are the Young Men

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.