Donal Ryan - The Thing About December

It’s easy be happy in July.

YOU COULD nearly call him a man of the world now. He kind of knew what it was like to have a pal to talk to. Only kind of, because he had never returned Dave’s warmth and they had never really had conversations; it was more a case of Dave never shutting up talking and Johnsey being forced to listen to him all day and into the night. Johnsey was a captive audience Daddy would have said. He couldn’t help finding the bollix funny at times, though. And he did seem worried about Johnsey the time of the infection and the hot fever. Maybe if Dave hadn’t been so smart and forward with Siobhán Johnsey would have given him more hop.

He knew now what it was like to be in love. One-way, hopeless love, he knew, but still love. They’d had a stand-in teacher one time inside in the Tech, a little blonde lady straight from university. She was a fine thing all the townie boys said, and they gave many a break time over to discussions of her body and how she was definitely gagging for it and how you could definitely see her nipples pointing out through her blouse and her bra and that was a sure sign she was mad for riding. Johnsey admired their brave talk, but secretly he preferred her pale-green eyes to any other part of her and the soft sound of her voice. She read out this poem in class one time. Johnsey never forgot what it was called: The Dong With The Luminous Nose . It was about a woeful ugly creature called The Dong who was head over heels in love with a beautiful woman who could never return his love. His love for her was un-re-quit-ed . Miss had written the word on the blackboard and underlined it twice and Johnsey had not forgotten the spelling nor its meaning. Unrequited . Not returned, not given back.

The whole class stayed quiet for that whole long poem and afterwards, instead of guffaws and smart comments, there was only a strange sort of silence, like some kind of desperate sickness had befallen lads who only a few minutes previously had been full of the joys of spring. He was one of the thickest lads in that class, but even Johnsey knew what she was at, that little blonde lady from the university, that shining angel among all the dirty devils: she was telling them all they were only a shower of lovesick dongs and she knew full well they talked about her fanny and how she was panting for sex but she also knew each one of them was some way in love with her and they could sail away in their little boats and drown themselves in a sea of longing for all she cared; she’d never return their stupid, sweaty love. It was unrequited .

And he knew now what it was like to have somebody besides himself or that doctor that checks small boys’ balls put their hand on him. There surely wasn’t too much more a man could need to experience to consider himself worldly. The townie boys used to boast regularly about having gotten handjobs off of girls from the convent at lunchtime below in the castle demesne. Whenever a lad came in with this news it would cause a great stir. Some would be wide-eyed and want every detail, more would look sulky and roll their eyes and tell the boaster to go way out of that, he was bullshitting. One day a lad from Pearse Park arrived back from lunch claiming to have had the lad nearly tore off him by a wan from the convent and all were goggle-eyed at his story about how she had grabbed it near the top and yanked down and he roared out of him and she was awful put out over the aspersions he cast over her abilities and vowed not to leave him near her any more. The place was in stitches and the fella with the injured mickey was cock of the walk for days after, with fellas wanting to know how was his langer.

Dwyer had told him long ago that if you sat on your hand for long enough the blood would stop flowing through it and it would go pure dead. If you could manage to close the fingers of that dead hand around your mickey it would feel for all the world like someone else was touching you. Johnsey had tried it, but no matter how long he sat on his hand, it never went dead enough so that he was able to fool himself. Dwyer used to have a great imagination, though. Maybe he could convince himself more easily. How’s ever, he was one up on Dwyer now, that was for sure.

UNCLE FRANK drove him home from the hospital. It was the fourth of July. That’s Independence Day for the Yanks. They goes mad beyond on this day, by all accounts, celebrating their routing of the dirty English. How come the Irish didn’t do that? Didn’t we beat the fuckers out as well? Bruce Springsteen had a great song about being born on this day. Frank threw an odd eye over at Johnsey’s bag. You haven’t much stuff, he said. Johnsey told him he only had the few bits the Unthanks had collected from the house and brought to the hospital. You’ll be a while adjusting now to being on your own. Would you not stay with us a while? Teasie would love it.

Teasie . It nearly made her sound kind. She would in her hole love it, Johnsey felt like saying, but she would love to be telling all the biddies in the ICA and above at Mass how she was killed looking after the imbecile nephew and they’d tell her she was a saint and when her time came the gates would swing wide for her for she’d have her penance well and truly done and she’d be left stroll straight in past smiling Saint Peter to sit at Our Lord’s table.

The Unthanks were waiting in the yard for him. Johnsey could nearly feel the wave of relief breaking over Frank and splashing about the car. Good luck now and mind yourself. Grand, thanks, Frank. He fairly high-tailed it out of there. Poor old Frank, his life was made up of doing one thing after another that he didn’t want to do. He probably would have loved to hear Johnsey’s story about lovely Siobhán the sexy angel nurse and the black bra strap and the way she smiled after he exploded all over the place and gave two wipes and all the stickiness was magically gone and then leaned over and kissed him on the lips for a second and winked like a wan that would be on the telly late at night trying to make you ring a dirty phone line and sure a fella could hardly really still consider himself a virgin after all that had happened. And even still it probably wasn’t enough of an affront to the Church to warrant his feeling guilty if he was to meet Father Cotter. There was no rule, as far as he knew, about handjobs before marriage.

See you soon, she had said, and he had not seen her again. How soon, he wondered? As soon as hell freezes over, you great ape. You big auld dong with a luminous nose. Don’t be codding yourself.

AFTER HE HAD a fine lunch ate of juicy chops and floury potatoes and the Unthanks had finished fussing and were gone away, the warmth he’d had in his belly ever since the handjob and the kiss and the big manly hug he’d gotten off Mumbly Dave before he left and the promise to see him soon from Siobhán and the promise of going for a few pints at the weekend with Dave started to cool and fade away, like a dream that you really try to remember, but it just breaks up and floats off out of your mind and you can try to snatch it back but it’s like trying to grab a hold of thin air. It probably wasn’t real, any of it. Siobhán probably did what she did out of pure sympathy: she knew he had no hope of ever getting a woman to touch him. Nurses cared about people as a rule; she probably said Feck it, he’s had a horn since he first clapped eyes on me, he’s no trouble, really, the poor God-help-us, he didn’t whinge about the infected mickey, I’ll do him a turn to hell. For all Johnsey knew it was standard practice for nurses to relieve male patients in that way, just as they helped you empty your bladder and your bowel. Although surely to God Mumbly Dave would have loudly forecasted such pleasures. And that Mumbly Dave was a plámáser of the highest order; he probably invited everyone he met to go for a few pints. Anyway, he’d go through you, the auld talk out of him and the way he’d smirk behind Siobhán’s back and make dirty gestures and then he’d be all auld froth to her face and you’d love to slap the puss off of him.