Rob Doyle - Here Are the Young Men

Town was silent and still like the land before time. We followed the river, past the spindly, sinister figures of the Famine Memorial and the docked yachts, to the port. There, we turned north into the city and kept walking, drinking, tripping, smoking, eventually re-meeting the coast out at Fairview. We walked along the Clontarf Road, by the sea that churned grey foam in a perpetually descending hiss, the sound of the world collapsing in on itself.

Out past the city centre, where the edges frayed into coastal suburb, we climbed over the low wall separating the road from the sea. We clambered down the rocks until we reached a meagre strip of grey, stony beach. Towers and chimneys of industry fumed in the distance along the coast, while cargo ships hulked in and out of Dublin Port. I looked behind us and couldn’t see over the wall, couldn’t see the road or the cars.

Scag sat down on the pebbles and rolled a joint with a bit of grass we’d been given at the party. When we smoked it, it seemed to rekindle the acid in my system so that once again I was tripping at full intensity.

For a while we stared out at the murky sea under a heavy, dismal sky, saying nothing. The foamy low tide hissed at our feet.

Then Scag pointed forward — at the grey sea and the grey sky that were coupled, almost one thing, one void — and said, ‘That’s the abyss, Matthew. That’s the abyss at the edge of the world.’

And when he said it, something astonishing happened: out on the horizon, behind the sullen murk of the sky, I began to make out the shifting, restless contours of a great void that was opening up, as wide as the horizon itself. I became terrified, I couldn’t look away.

‘Do ye see it?’ I heard him whisper, urgent and reverential.

The abyss was expanding, a great heaving vortex, spreading out across the sky like the Aurora Borealis, wider than the city. And then I could see that the light, the sea, the dead sun and the cargo ships, the seagulls and the city itself — all of it was being sucked in, slowly and inexorably, lurching forward to be swallowed up in the great void.

‘Do ye see it?’ he whispered.

I fell backwards on the ground, shielding my face with my arms and elbows in a useless instinct of self-protection. I screamed. Then Scag rose to his feet. He started to speak in a thundering voice: ‘How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire fuckin horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Where is it movin now? Where are we movin now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually fallin? Backward, sideward, forward, in all fuckin directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not strayin as through an infinite nothin? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night comin on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the mornin?’

As he spoke these words, Scag tore the clothes from his body so that by the end he stood completely naked, his shaded skin like the bark of a tree sprouting from the grey shingle. Black tattoos snaked up the lines of his body. He stepped forward and plunged into the grey sea. After he went under, I watched the surface undulating in its vast indifference, thinking he would never come up again. I felt a desolating loneliness, deeper and colder than anything I had ever experienced.

Then I saw him resurface, thirty metres out, head bobbing on the waves. He called to me and there was laughter in his voice. ‘Come on in, Matthew, the water’s lovely!’

I stood up, took off all my clothes, and stepped down into the cold sea, wading out until it was waist-high. I dove and swam, holding my breath, kicking with all my energy away from the shore, along the murky floor and out into the cold, deep greyness.

Problems with Reality: What Kearney Brought Back from America

The red-eye flight was only sparsely booked. Kearney sat, alone in his row, watching the lights of the Eastern Seaboard recede far below, overwhelmed by the creep of Atlantic Ocean darkness.

What a trip it had been, he reflected. A month in the Great Satan. Dwayne was still back there, in Boston. Kearney had left him in the airport bar after beers, whiskey, spliffs and a couple of lines of coke left over from the night when Stu had called around. Kearney partly envied his brother for staying on in the States, but mainly he was keen to get back home, where he could boast to the lads about his adventures, and show them how fucking clueless they were. And, more importantly, when he returned to Dublin, he could begin to put his plan into motion.

As the plane penetrated the cloud cover and his view was clogged with darkly uniform grey, Kearney closed his eyes and basked in the pride of his newfound confidence and life experience. Through a low electronic shimmer he heard Fallen Henry the Titan’s paternal purr: You done good back there, nigga. I got my eye on you and listen here, we be expectin big things from you, G, real big things .

Kearney opened his eyes. A blonde, idiotically smiling air hostess was coming down the aisle towards him, from the direction of the cockpit. She was pushing a refreshments trolley and had a firm, luscious pair of tits on her. Kearney waited till she was beside him: then he rammed his hand up her skirt. Next came the rape-squeals in the tiny toilet, the grunts and gasps as he pressed her face into the sink, impaling her from behind with his straining teenage sex …

Ever since that night with Stu, Kearney’s fantasies had reached a new pitch of intensity. He felt he was becoming an artist of inner butchery. I am the Beethoven of Brutality, he told himself. Then, admitting that he didn’t actually know any of Beethoven’s paintings, he revised his self-bestowed nickname: I am the Aphex Twin of Cutting Motherfuckers Open. That was more like it.

He was still refining the syllabic rhythm of his new moniker when he realized that the air hostess had stopped in the aisle beside him and was turned his way. She smiled brightly and said, ‘And look at you , flying across the world all on your lonesome. My oh my.’ She chuckled a little.

Kearney’s eyes were wide and happy. He returned her grin.

‘Is there anything I can get you, honey?’ said the hostess with what Kearney thought to be a flirtatious inflection. Warm and fuzzy from the hash and whiskey, he felt his groin heating up with delicious blood throbs, like red flashes of light.

‘Bloody Mary,’ he said.

The woman gave another fluttery little laugh. ‘Well now I’m afraid I’d have to see some proof that you are old enough for liquor. How about a soft drink? Now I’m not saying you’re not a man, but …’ She chuckled again. ‘How about you show me your passport?’ She was finding it all very charming.

Kearney grinned back at her. Then he said, ‘How about I show ye me manhood?’

The woman’s imprecation was loud enough to turn several near-sleeping heads in the back end of the economy section. She stared with an open mouth for a moment, but then some instinct of shame or professionalism kicked in and she turned away, gazing straight ahead as she pushed her trolley down the aisle, not stopping until she vanished into the rear of the plane.

Kearney overflowed with giggles, charmed by his own devilish wit. He imagined what his friends would say if they had witnessed his antics, and wished especially that Dwayne had been there to see that last display. ‘Fallen Henry,’ he heard himself whisper a moment later, ‘am I a bad motherfucker?’

And Fallen Henry’s voice was rich with solemn pride as he replied: You a BAD motherfucker, Kearney. Ain’t NO motherfuckin doubt .