Rob Doyle - Here Are the Young Men

On the beach, rigs of strobe lighting had been set up alongside the sheltered DJ tables. Ravers came in clusters, stationing themselves around the dance area and along the edge of the sea. The grey skies had fallen away in the late evening and the night was clear. Stars shimmered, the moon was big and bright. We sat down to the side of the main dance area, rolling joints and drinking.

Watching the dancers, Rez said, ‘It’s all just sexual advertising. Look at the males, the way they spread their limbs out and twist like that — they’re tryin to show the females how virile they are. It’s all so obvious, it’s just embarrassin.’

‘Rez, yer soundin like yer old self. Good man!’ laughed Cocker.

‘Yeah man, he’s right. It’s good to see,’ I said. ‘Seriously Rez, yer mad to have done what ye tried to do. I hope ye never try it again, or I’ll kill ye meself. I mean it, man, ye have yer mates, ye know.’

Sentimental from the drink, I reached across and squeezed Rez’s shoulder. But after a slight, embarrassed nod, his expression shadowed over and he pulled away, drinking his can and retreating into himself, thinking thoughts he chose not to share. I wondered again whether there was some kind of awful secret in his past that he had never told us about.

‘Lads, it’s nearly midnight. It’s about time we started lookin for some yokes,’ said Kearney.

‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ I replied. The idea filled me with a vague dread. ‘You’re not going to take any, Rez, are ye?’

‘I think I will, yeah,’ he said.

‘But … don’t ye reckon ye probably shouldn’t? I mean, it might not be good for ye at the moment.’

Kearney butted in. ‘Ah, give over, will ye, Matthew? Let him make up his own mind, for fuck’s sake. It’s only a pill or two we’re talkin about. Jaysus.’

‘Maybe Matthew has a point, though, Rez,’ said Cocker weakly, intimidated by Kearney.

Kearney snorted. ‘You as well? A bunch of oul ones, yis are like. Jesus Christ, the fella gets out of hospital and he’s goin through all this stuff, bad times, like, and all youse want to do is tell him not to have any fun.’

I wanted to challenge Kearney, ask him in front of the others why he was so keen for Rez to drop some pills. I knew the answer: the possibility that Rez would get badly depressed after them and try to kill himself again excited Kearney. But I knew too that he would deny this, throw it back at me somehow. You couldn’t win with Kearney. I said nothing.

‘I’ll go look for them,’ said Cocker. ‘I’m in the mood for a walk. Stall it with us, Matthew.’

‘Okay.’

‘So how many are we gettin?’

After a brief debate, we decided to get five each — a proper end-of-summer blitzkrieg.

We left Rez and Kearney and set off along the beach. Up ahead was a huge bonfire, its pyramidal blaze animating a stretch of choppy sea. Squatting around the fire in a big circle, bearded, dreadlocked lads and girls with army jackets and hoodies were beating drums. Joints and cans were being passed around.

‘It’s like some tribal ceremony or something,’ I said eagerly. ‘We should be able to find some pills over there.’

The fire glowed on our faces as we approached. Tall, slender girls danced near the drum circle, spinning flaming poi in swirls and arcs. We reached the fire and stood there, drinking cans and feeling awkward.

A guy with long red hair who was sitting on a log gestured for us to sit. We did so. The drums throbbed over the crackle of burning wood, and the fire danced. After a while the red-haired guy turned and shouted to me over the beat, ‘Are yis on a good one, lads?’

We nodded.

‘Cool. Are yis looking for a bit of smoke by any chance?’

‘No, we’ve already got some. But listen, do ye know where we’d be able to get some yokes?’

‘How many do yis want?’

We bought twenty pills for eighty euro. When we got back to the lads Kearney said, ‘Five each! This is goin to be a quality night.’

‘Let’s double-drop to start things off with a bang,’ said Cocker.

‘Yeah, fuck it, let’s go for it,’ I said, tired of being the sensible one. I took out eight pills and gave two to each person. ‘They’re speckled Mitsubishis,’ I said, peering at the face of one of my pills, seeing the tiny blue crystals glint in the white logo. I rewrapped the remaining pills and slipped the bag into my back pocket, intending to give them to the others later on.

Rez raised one pill above him. ‘Body of Christ,’ he said.

‘Amen,’ we replied in chorus.

Ten minutes later I could already feel it coming up on me. I walked out on the dancing area and flung myself against the waves of sound, crashing into the barrage of dancers and strobe lights. Coming up higher and higher, I had the sense of being nothing, no one, fused with the night and the music and the lights, merged with the flux all around me.

Now a girl was smiling at me. I saw her as a fixed point within the swirl of light and noise. She was pretty, with bare arms and shoulders, black hair falling straight down the sides of her face. I smiled back at her. The beat speeded up, the volume intensified. I moved through the crowd, towards the girl, her big round eyes, her smile. Nothing could ever be wrong.

I leaned in closer to her and shouted, ‘Hello there, how’s a goin. You’re not Irish, are ye? Where are ye from?’

‘Where I’m from? From Germany. Berlin,’ she shouted back, laughing. I lightly took her hand and we began to dance. At that moment, the volume rose even higher and the music raced towards a crescendo. The strobe lights pulsed brighter and faster. Then everyone around me was roaring, a great surge of sound like the earth was being rent open.

The girl was pointing at the sky, tugging on my wrist with her other hand.

I looked up: the shadow of the earth was sweeping across the face of the moon, devouring it. A third, a half, three-quarters of the lunar disc were swallowed up. Then the entire thing had vanished and the world was plunged into darkness. Every light on the beach had been switched off the instant the eclipse began. Now the crowd’s roar subdued into an awed, tense hush as eerie ambient sound washed over the scene through the stacked speakers.

Everything stayed that way for a timeless moment, the frozen darkness. Then a curved blade of white light slashed the sky. The moon re-emerged. Another great roar rose up from the beach, like an offering to some weird new god.

The strobe lights flashed and the beats pounded once more. The girl was dancing, arms flung up in an arch above her head. I threw my arms to the sky and roared.

Something was calling to him. It was like a muffled voice, urgent as the help-cries of someone trapped underground. The ecstasy was infusing him steadily. He sat with Kearney and Cocker, the two of them chatting animatedly but Rez saying nothing. For a while he lay back on the stones, looking up at the night above. The stars were distant and, he knew, dead, non-existent. The universe was vast, unutterably vast, the earth a cold, tiny stone that hurtled through it. There was no grand reason for anything. There was no plan, no purpose, no punishment or reward, no hope and no divine meaning to it all. It was chaos and mad accident, violence and raw energy. There was only the fluke of human life, a tiny flicker in an immense darkness — the darkness that filled Rez’s dilating eyeballs, a limitless ocean of night-time.

He got up, leaving the others to their talking. He walked along the beach, away from the sound and lights of the dance area, past the bonfires, out to where no people were. He walked closely alongside the water, and waves broke over his feet, soaking through his runners. It was cold but he liked how it felt, the shiver of cool, the high-energy tingle.