Rob Doyle - Here Are the Young Men

‘Yer gorgeous, that’s all. C’mere would ye,’ I said again, and this time I leaned in to kiss her. She gasped and hissed something, trying to pull away, but I dragged her face towards mine with my hand on the back of her neck. I succeeded in finding her lips, or the part of her face just above them, with my own lips — and immediately felt myself being smacked in the side of the head.

Recoiling, numb from the drink, I assumed one of the males present had walloped me, but soon realized it had been her.

‘You fucking prick,’ she hissed.

‘I’m not a prick,’ I said.

‘You are, you’re a fucking prick. Get lost. Jesus Christ.’ She turned to her friends. ‘Did you see that? God, you’d swear he’d never seen a woman in his life.’ There was a chorus of mocking laughter, which at least meant I probably wouldn’t be getting my head kicked in by an irate, macho mob.

‘Look I’m very sorry, I just thought ye were a bit of a ride,’ I said as I clambered to my feet — maybe a compliment would take the sting out of the situation and save me some face.

‘Do you hear him? Get lost , will you.’

‘Fair enough.’ I left the swirl of mocking faces, along with Grace’s low-cut silver dress and the possibility of sticking my face in her tits. My concerns now were elsewhere; namely with my head, which was swimming badly. I stumbled upstairs, towards where I thought the bathroom might be. I thought I’d fallen over but I hadn’t. I needed to get sick. I barged ahead, shoving randomers out of the way, falling up the steps, mostly on my knees.

I shoved against the door to the bathroom. It opened and I fell into blackness, one hand held out, feeling for the bowl, the other slapping my mouth, holding in the upsurging puke. It was past the tipping point, already halfway up my oesophagus, when I realized that I wasn’t in the bathroom at all, that there was a bed in front of me, half-lit from the doorway behind. And I realized that Jen was on the bed, with Kearney on top of her, pushing her knees back behind her head, both of their faces turned towards me.

I fell to my knees and spewed. Some of it spurted on to the bed, splashing over the pair of them; the rest splattered into a big puddle on the carpet beneath me. I remained on my knees for a moment, wobbling. I could hear Kearney shrieking with laughter, and he was still fucking her, fucking Jen — he hadn’t even slowed down. Then my momentum caught up with me and I fell forward, my hands rising up too late to stop me toppling right into a puddle of my own vomit, as Kearney cackled and Jen moaned and moaned and moaned.

Sex, he felt, was never only about the sex. Sex was revenge, aggression, a terrorist attack on the world, on women, and on men as well. Every time he fucked a girl — not so many as of yet, but he was young — he knew that he was taking a little bit of her soul away, stealing it from her and locking it deep inside, to nourish himself with. Whenever he had sex, and could make the girl come, and make her remember it, Kearney knew he was planting himself in the girl’s heart and soul like a seed, and he would be there forever, in the background, watching and sneering, controlling. Even if a girl he fucked eventually married someone, and was really in love, he would still have that piece of her, that part she could never take back. It was power: over the woman, and over every man she’d ever be involved with, for Kearney would look on with cruel, gloating eyes at the girls he’d fucked as their decent, kind, weakling lovers tried to give them what he hoped they knew they never could.

The night after the party, he lay in bed with a faint smile on his face, reliving his still-fresh memories of Jen, Jen, Jennifer. That lovely red hair, those pale and bouncing tits; how she had giggled and murmured as he’d laid her out on the bed, her eyes half-closed; how she’d grown confused and scared but he had whispered shhh, it would all be okay, whilst sliding off her knickers, and then he’d laughed and she’d laughed too and from that point on she was eager, pliant, his. Languidly he pulled himself off, stroke after stroke, until he came across his belly, feeling it trickle over his knuckles. A cool night breeze from the skylight caressed his skin, drying his come to a delicate crust. Moments later, Kearney was asleep.

He went back into town a few times to look for the tramp. He wasn’t there, where he always was. There were only shadows, and rubbish blowing down the lane like dead leaves in a world after nature, and a whiff of piss in the empty space where the tramp used to sit.

Each day he carefully scanned all the papers in the newsagents, looking for stories of a dead wino. But there was nothing; that, he knew, was because nobody really gave a fuck. It was like the tramp had disappeared, silently fading from existence down a litter-strewn lane.

Kearney didn’t hear from Matthew after the party. He didn’t expect to. Obviously he was hurt, angry, betrayed. But boredom was boredom, and both of them needed someone to smoke and drink with, and none of the other lads were around.

Kearney waited until Tuesday, then called him.

‘Alright Matthew.’

‘Alright Kearney.’

‘…’

‘So what are you up to?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘…’

Kearney sighed: Matthew was playing hard to get. He couldn’t be bothered humouring him and decided to cut the crap. ‘Are you pissed off with me cos I shagged Jen?’

‘…’

‘I take that as a yes.’

‘…’

Kearney made his voice sound aggrieved. ‘Fuck’s sake, Matthew, she was the one who was all over me. Anyway, it’s only a fuckin shag, man. Yis had broken up, hadn’t yis? Jesus, get over it, will ye?’

‘Yeah well. Ye could have waited a while.’

‘What, half an hour more? Three days? How long? It was a party. I was pissed, she came on to me and we had a screw. Jesus, Matthew. Get over it, would ye. Don’t be a hypocrite. Or have ye forgotten about the time I walked in on you and Rachel, in me own fuckin house? At least you and Jen had broken up when I did it. Fuck’s sake. I won’t be doin it again, anyway.’

‘Yeah, whatever, man.’

‘What are ye up to today?’

‘Fuck all. Watchin telly.’

‘Me ma’s in work. I’ve got a half-ounce here that I bought off Bowser.’

A pause. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. Ye comin around for a smoke?’

‘I dunno.’ Another pause. ‘I was goin to stay here and watch a film.’

‘Stall it. I’ve got the new Kill-Tech game, I borrowed it off Decko Byrne.’

‘Is it any good?’

‘Yeah, it’s deadly. Stall it.’

A final, longer pause.

Then: ‘Right, I’ll be around in a while.’

Kearney hung up.

We sat in the dimness of Kearney’s room, the shutter pulled, his shit techno like a coma-pulse on the stereo.

Already we were on the third joint. I lay back into the beanbag, half closing my eyes. It was a weird feeling, being stoned off your head in the middle of the afternoon. There was no way back, you had to deal with it for the rest of the day. I would have to sit there and eat dinner with my ma and da later that evening, tense with concentration, trying hard not to look stoned.

Through the haze of smoke I studied the strips of paper sellotaped randomly across the bedroom walls. It was the same sentence, over and over: ‘ You will never defeat us, because you love life and we love death .’

The quote came from some Al-Qaeda warrior. Kearney had talked about getting it done as a tattoo that ran up his bicep, with death on the neck, but he couldn’t afford it. We played Kill-Tech: Obliteration for a while, not talking much. Kearney was already an expert. The triangular hover-fighter responded deftly to every flick of his thumbs and fingers: launching missiles through narrow cracks, obliterating command posts, incinerating enemy personnel. I flew clumsily, bouncing off walls, narrowly avoiding collisions with huge, floating Battlehulks as Kearney pursued me — toyed with me — above an elegant future city.