Rob Doyle - Here Are the Young Men

There were a lot of people at the party. Some lads from school; Aido the Death Metaller, for some reason, and a gawky, Trenchcoat Mafia friend of his I’d never spoken to. I thought his name was Jonathan. The two of them sat under a cloud of gothic doom, drinking cans and ignoring everyone, even each other.

I didn’t know most of the people in the sitting room. They all had these D4 accents and they shouted and laughed loudly, some of them sprawling over beanbags strewn across the floor. Smoke hung in the air but it was bright in the room, the orange wallpaper and bulbous lamp warming everything. A group squatting on the floor were talking about the big rave that was set to take place in a couple of weeks, on the night of the lunar eclipse. It sounded like it was going to be a fairly big deal.

‘We should put our cans in the fridge,’ said Cocker as I was listening in.

‘Here, give us them, I’ll do it,’ I said.

Jen was standing there when I stepped into the kitchen. Her back was against the counter and she was talking to a guy I didn’t know. The first thing I thought was how pretty she looked. I felt like turning around, leaving the house and going home. It was going to be too painful to be here with her, and not able to touch or kiss her. But maybe I could talk to her, see if everything wasn’t completely wrecked between us.

‘Oh, hi,’ she said, coldly, when she saw me.

‘Hi,’ I replied. But she had already turned away, back to the guy she was chatting with, breezy and cheerful as anything. So much for trying to fix things. I flung the cans in the fridge and walked out, cursing to myself and resolving not to say a word to her, not even to look at her, all night.

In the green-carpeted room between the kitchen and sitting room Kearney had already found the games and was absorbed in Manhunt , breaking out of his trance only to swig from his can and accept a joint. Cocker came in and sat with me on the couch. We drank our cans and talked, but my attention wasn’t on what either of us said; I was wondering where Jen was, who she was talking to, what she was doing at every moment. I watched the girls that came and went, giggling and calling back over their shoulders. Mostly they ignored me.

Jen entered the room. She smiled at Cocker, who beamed up at her and asked her how she was. She ignored me.

After her pleasantries with Cocker, Jen sat down on the floor beside Kearney. What the fuck was this all about? She was talking to him, smiling, looking at his face while he hammered on the joypad. Kearney seemed confused, suspicious of why Jen was lavishing her attention on him. I simmered with hate. It was like she was trying her best to hurt me. She was laughing at Kearney’s jokes; he was making her laugh. Sickened, I remembered something he had said once, while we were smoking with Rez in the industrial estate: making a girl laugh, he’d said, is a symbolic way of making her come. You started by making her laugh — or by dancing with her, that was symbolic too — and it went from that to fucking. If you could make a girl laugh, he’d said, you could be fairly sure she was going to gush for you when you got her clothes off.

And Jen was laughing hard at his jokes.

Straining to act cool, I inched forward, trying to make out what was being said now in more hushed tones, accompanied by intimate-sounding laughter. She was asking him about his time in the States.

‘… amazin. It pisses all over this fuckin city. Ye can do whatever ye like over there. Everyone is on drugs all the time. Nobody takes anything seriously — work and all that shite. Dublin is full of wankers, I’m goin to save up for a while and get the fuck out of here, go back over there to stay. Only pricks would stay in a fuckin shit-hole like this. What a load of fuckin cunts.’

A faint smile was fixed on Jen’s face. She looked at Kearney with complete attention, leaning in as if fascinated by every word. Kearney was still managing to play Manhunt while talking to her. Jen was laughing a lot. Then Kearney stopped playing and turned to face her. He just looked at her for a moment. ‘Hold on a sec, Jen,’ I heard him say. ‘Let me get ye a drink. I learned to make some deadly cocktails in the States. Here, take this. Keep slammin yer man with the cosh.’ He handed her the joypad, then stood up and darted into the kitchen. I couldn’t believe this crap — I’d never seen Kearney do anything for anybody. Sitting on the floor, holding the joypad, Jen finally turned to look up at me.

I got up and walked out of the room. Cocker stayed where he was, grinning and content with everything like a total imbecile. I decided I would drink as much as I possibly could, as quickly as I possibly could, just for the hell of it.

I was already pissed as I veered towards the living room, where a group of laughing strangers were pouring shots of absinthe at a low glass table. Grace was there. ‘Matthew, come and have a shot with us,’ she called, and I decided she was alright after all. I got on my hunkers with them, six of us on the carpet crouched around the table, while Aido and Jonathan or whoever sat on the couch, looking on in morose, contemptuous silence.

We all downed a shot together. I started coughing, spluttering. My throat was blazing like I’d swallowed petrol and thrown in a match. ‘Jesus Christ,’ I rasped, only to trigger another fit of coughing.

‘It’s real absinthe,’ said some goon to my side, a pure D4 head. ‘The last time I drank this it literally blew my head off.’

‘Literally?’ I barked.

Grace was at my left side. Her breasts jiggled and pressed against me, warm and full and soft. I envisioned sticking my face into them. Suddenly euphoric, I turned and started leeringly trying it on with her.

‘Grace, fair play to ye for havin the party. Yer amazin. Yer a lovely-lookin girl as well, did ye know that? I mean it, yer gor geous.’

She laughed, not in an embarrassed way. ‘Ah thanks, Matthew. But are you sure you’re not just a bit drunk? You look like it. I think you are.’

‘No! I’m not drunk, I swear,’ I slurred, wobbling forward slightly. ‘Yer just gorgeous, that’s all.’ I raised my hand in an attempt to touch the hair behind her ear, but either she drew deftly away, or I completely missed her. Either way I was all-in by now, and too fucked to be embarrassed. I was considering another swipe at her hair but one of the voices from around the table shouted, ‘Another shot goys, let’s go!’

Glasses were refilled. Faces swam. I felt all-powerful, though it was getting hard to remain upright as I squatted at the tableside. I downed a shot. Then I slammed my glass on the table and turned to face Grace again. She was laughing at what someone across from her was saying. I reached out and pulled her shoulder. ‘C’mere, Grace.’

‘Stop it, would you?’ she said with an uneasy little laugh, then turned back to the one she was chatting with.

I put my hand on the back of her neck, caressing her hair.

‘What are you doing?’ she said, clearly irritated now. But I had it in my head that what was needed here, what girls respected, was persistence — barbarian persistence. So I simply leered at her. I stroked the hair above her ear.

‘Seriously, what are you doing?’ she said.

‘Nothin. Just touchin yer hair. Yer gorgeous,’ I said. Surely that was the clincher.

‘Right. Well, would you stop doing it, please?’

She seemed to be saying it more for the benefit of the others than for mine. She’d crumble yet. I thought of Mick Jagger and all the posh girls who were allegedly crazy about him — I’d seen a documentary. Not to mention the Gallaghers, though they were cunts. There were sniggers from around the table.