Rob Doyle - Here Are the Young Men

He was a pro by now. He sat with the scruffy tramp and plied him with booze. Feeding him the second can Kearney said, ‘Listen now, Padre Pio. There’s only one thing I ask of ye on this fine mornin. Ye can have all the drink ye like from me, but I hope ye won’t mind if I make a little film of ye. Just for, like … the Church. To show them the good work or whatever. Alright?’

The tramp was indifferent. Kearney took out his mobile and started filming. This smelly fuckhead wasn’t as manic or embittered as the first one. He didn’t say much at all, just supped on the can with quiet gratitude. Kearney giggled freely, not bothering to mask his derision. The alco had an innocent-looking face, which made it all the more hilarious. Kearney poked his cheek with his finger, pushing in the skin and making noises like you’d do for a baby, gurgling at him. The alco didn’t give a fuck.

When the tramp had finished his third can of Devil’s Bit, it was time to cut the banter. Time for a little vino.

Kearney gave him the bottle and made him wave for the camera. He laughed and slapped him in the head, eliciting a low, tremulous whine. Then he went for a walk.

The lack of sleep was starting to catch up on him. He stopped off at Insomnia for two double espressos — a tip Dwayne had given him in Boston, useful for getting to work when there was no speed or coke around. Wired anew, he marched back into the centre, crossed O’Connell Bridge and stopped in at Dr Quirkey’s arcade. He played House of the Dead for a spell, exhilarated by the exploding faces of zombies and chainsaw-motherfuckers as he shot them repeatedly at close range. The crossfire thrills — caffeine, guns, blood and noise — coupled with the awareness of what was waiting for him back on the canal bank, fused into an intense and indiscriminate eroticism. As Kearney unloaded again and again into the screen, his cock pulsed in his jeans, his jaw fell open and his eyelids fluttered. During a pause in the game action, he scanned the teeming din of the arcade: everywhere, eager little sluts, moaning to be defiled, pouting for the rape.

He couldn’t take it any longer. Killed by a chainsaw stuck into his face, he jammed the blue plastic gun back in the metal holster and paced into the toilets. Barely had he slammed the cubicle door behind him than he’d pulled his cock out and was pumping frantically. Images hurtled through his mind, relentless filth. Everything was porno, everyone a victim. Within seconds, groaning at high volume and biting his lip till a hot trickle of blood ran through his saliva, Kearney jizzed all over the place. It pumped out of him in violent spasms, splattering his chin, his hands, his chest, the door and the partition. The spasms didn’t abate for many seconds, the spunk gushing out of him like he’d struck milky oil. Kearney continued to moan, overpowered by bliss, not in control of himself. His legs gave way and he crashed backwards on to the toilet seat, falling off and sliding down the partition wall. As the waves of rapture slowly subsided, Kearney started to giggle, then laugh uproariously at the state of himself. He’d never seen anything like it.

He may have passed out for a moment. He blinked awake. His mind was blank. Then he remembered: it was time to go back to the drunken cunt. He gave himself a hasty clean-up and hurried back out of the arcade. He half-ran down O’Connell Street, over the bridge, up Grafton Street, through the Green and down along Leeson Street till he was back at the quiet, sheltered bank of the canal. The water calmly gurgled through the black crescent of the archway, beside which Kearney had left the alco perched on his bench.

And there he was, still in exactly the same place. Kearney glanced behind him to make sure no one was around. All clear. He took out his phone and started filming as he approached the tramp, then stood at the bench beside him. The tramp still reeked of piss and fuck knew what else; he still had dribble or pus or something leaking from the cracked corners of his mouth; he was still a laughable human wreck. Only this time, he wasn’t breathing.

You pathetic old fuck, Kearney thought, standing over him and looking down. You pitiful old man, you fucking wretched, disgusting old bastard. Sickened by the sight of the alco even in death, Kearney stepped forward and delivered a forceful kick to the corpse’s ribs. The body jolted on impact. Then it lurched to the side, teetered for a moment and fell over, rolling down the bank to fall with a plop into the canal’s flow, as Kearney’s camera phone drank it all in.

You pitiful fucking wreck. You dirty stinking cunt.

He didn’t go out much. His parents felt that he probably should, but at the same time they were reluctant to let him out of their sight, in case he ‘tried it again’, as they always referred to the possibility of another suicide attempt.

A little over a week into his convalescence, Rez’s ma deemed it time for him to start seeing his friends. For a few days no one came. Then, as Rez was watching a mid-afternoon omnibus of US talk shows, the doorbell rang. The doorbell in the Tooley household was one of those old-fashioned ones that actually went ding-dong . Rez heard his ma going to get it.

It was Matthew.

Matthew stayed for less than twenty minutes, during which time he clutched a teacup and looked at the floor or into the telly, swaying faintly in his chair. It seemed to Rez that Matthew’s sentences were slurred.

They talked for a while: awkward, stilted questions, and barefaced platitudes in response. As they sipped their tea and stared at an ad for Power City on the telly Matthew said, ‘So you’re watchin a lot of telly?’

‘That’s right, I am yeah,’ replied Rez.

‘That’s good, telly’s good,’ said Matthew, nodding slowly, staring into the screen. ‘It’s good for ye to watch a bit of telly.’

‘Yeah,’ mumbled Rez. ‘I think it is. It’s good to watch a bit of telly.’

They watched telly for a bit.

Somewhat later, Rez said, ‘How’s Cocker? Alright?’

‘He’s not bad, not bad,’ came Matthew’s response, followed by another sip of tea.

Cruising on Xanaxed autopilot, beginning vaguely to enjoy this series of exchanges, Rez asked, ‘And how’s Kearney?’

On being asked this simple question, Matthew became weirdly nervous. He stuttered and fidgeted, looking away from Rez, first at the wall, then at the floor. He gave no intelligible reply.

Why was he being like this, Rez wondered. But the effort of thinking about it was too great. He had just turned away to face the telly again, when Matthew, in a strange, desperate voice, blurted out: ‘Rez, Kearney is gettin all messed up.’

Rez turned back to stare at him.

Matthew said nothing else.

‘Matt, you’re sayin that like it’s a surprise,’ said Rez.

Now Matthew looked straight at him: his eyes were pink; he seemed almost frantic. ‘No Rez, I mean he’s gettin really messed up. He’s doin weird things, he’s …’

He trailed off. They looked at each other, the mid-volume chatter of the TV filling the silence between them. Rez waited. Then he said, ‘What do ye mean? What’s he doin?’

Matthew didn’t answer. He appeared to sink into himself. Eventually he muttered, ‘Nothing, never mind. He’s just mad, ye know yerself. He just keeps goin on about his games all the time. It’s wreckin me head. There’s nothing goin on.’

Rez turned away and stared at the telly. There was a rocket launch being broadcast live on the news. Distractedly, Rez noted the eager tone of the reporter’s voice as the rocket took off: you could tell she was hoping it would malfunction, combust in mid-air like the Colombia a few months ago. After the countdown, as the shiny spacecraft corkscrewed moonward and all seemed to be going well, the disappointment in the reporter’s voice was blatant. Why else would they bother showing a rocket launch in this day and age, if not for the possibility that it would blow up live on air?