Donal Ryan - The Spinning Heart

I don’t know why I spend so much time talking about and thinking about Réaltín. She never bothers her arse to think about me , that’s for sure. Like, I had to invite myself out to see her house. Then she tried to pick a day when her father wouldn’t be there, in case I jumped on him or something, and then she rang to cancel because Mad Bobby the Murdering Builder was calling to suck sludge from her pipes or something, and I had the day booked off and everything, but she didn’t give a shit. She suits herself, always. Mam was really sick last year, but I wasn’t allowed to mention it, because her mother is dead , so that meant I couldn’t be upset about my mother just being sick. When Darren broke it off with me, I couldn’t get out of bed for about four days, but it was lousy of me to text her to tell George I wouldn’t be in. I mean I was barely capable of speech, and absolutely incapable of coherency. Then she called up after about three days and all she could say was, ah Hillary, come on, he was a fucking prick , he didn’t even have an arse , just a hole in his back! It was funny, and I did start to feel a bit better, but actual empathy is just impossible for Réaltín.

It was the exact same when we used to spend every single Saturday in town. Like, it was brilliant craic, and I loved being with her, but I used to have to spend literally hours sitting on chairs in dressing-room corridors, watching her parade up and down in outfit after outfit, reassuring her again and again that she didn’t have a big fat arse. But if I ever tried anything on she’d be sighing and exasperated-looking and checking her watch (that I saved up to buy her as a present when Dylan was born) and saying ya Hillary, lovely, come on, I’m dying for a coffee and a bloody fag.

And when all that shit blew up a few years ago, when the recession had barely even started to kick in, with George telling her and me that since we were the last in and we were young and single, we’d have to take a massive pay cut because of the falloff in conveyancing, I had to do all the arguing on our behalf. I was like, you know, Mister McSweeney, there’s something in the equality legislation about discrimination on the grounds of age and marital status, and, ah, ammm … And George, the sleazy fucking asshole, just sat there with his eyebrows arched in mock wonder and his hands shaped in a V, just under his narrow lips, and a little shitty smile, as much as to say go on, tell me the law, ha ha ha, and she just stood behind me, like she wasn’t really party to any of this rebelliousness, but was just grudgingly supporting her errant friend out of loyalty, and she ended up shagging the old bollocks and getting a special career break , supposedly without pay, but I don’t know. I still love her, though.

AREN’T YOU LUCKY to have a job? That’s the stick that’s being used to beat us all now. Like, you can’t say one word about anything now, or you have that shit thrown at you. George sacked the cleaner. Then he started looking at me! The bastard. I was like, NO WAY, there’s no way I’m hoovering here as well as at home in my parents’ house because Mam is still sick with her mystery illness that not one doctor can diagnose in the whole country. And what about the goddamn toilets? Those horrible old biddies all shit like fat cows. There’s no way in a million years I’m scrubbing their skidmarks. For anyone or anything. No job is worth it. So I had to kick and scream and cry until it was agreed that a rota would be drawn up among the secretaries for the cleaning, and everyone would have to do a day every three weeks. Then I had to scream that it was unfair; the apprentices and junior solicitors should have to as well. So George made the solicitors go on the cleaning rota to shut me up — he knows I know things about him, he’s just not sure how much I know — but the sneaks always have an excuse: stuck in court all day, had to meet a client for early dinner, blah blah blah. So I’m stuck doing it most of the time anyway. For forty euros a week less than I used to get. But aren’t I lucky to have a job? Ya, like, I’m really lucky.

I DON’T KNOW in the hell where the name Seanie Shaper came from. I remember lads starting to call me it in secondary all right, but it didn’t seem like a bad thing to be called so I let them off to hell. Like, some lads got landed with awful doses of nicknames. Your man of the Donnells from Gortnabracken got called Vomity Donnell on account of he threw his guts up one time on the bus going to a Harty Cup match; a lad from town got called Johnny Incest because his parents were cousins; a fella that went with a wan that was in First Year in the convent when we were doing the Inter got called Kiddyfiddler forevermore. Another poor bollocks was caught pulling himself in the toilet in the gym one lunchtime and everyone called him Wankyballs from then on. There was a lad called Fishfingers because he was forever taking wans from the convent down the castle demesne at lunchtime and he’d give the rest of the day smelling his fingers. There were about fifteen lads from the real boondocks called Mongo. It was the townie boys mostly who gave out the nicknames, and we all went along with them like goms. When all was said and done, Seanie Shaper didn’t seem so bad a name to be called.

I was always a pure solid madman for women. I couldn’t stop thinking about them from when I was a small boy. I used to chase girls around the estate out the Ashdown Road, trying to pull up their skirts. I used to try to bribe them for a look at their knickers. When I was thirteen, I got my first proper feel of a tit, off a wan from Dublin who was down visiting her cousins in the estate, down past our house. Your wan was sixteen. Her tit felt small and smooth, her nipple was hard. She wouldn’t let me see it, only feel around under her T-shirt. I had a pain in my balls. She wanted to know did I want a go of her fanny and I only stood there looking at her, speechless. I panicked and ran. I wouldn’t have known what to do with her fanny. Then I got sorry and ran back, but she was gone. I never saw her again; her cousins told me she was gone back to Dublin. It was three years before I got near a fanny again. I should have gone for glory that day behind the Protestant church.

I SUPPOSE that’s where Seanie Shaper came from — I was forever fixing my hair and throwing auld smart shapes for fear there’d be girls along the road. I used to take a bit more care about myself than the other apes. I used to change my shirt every day, a thing unheard of in my circle. Some lads’ shirts would be stiff with the dirt before it’d occur to them to look in the hot press for a fresh one. We used to sit on a wall across from the convent every day at lunchtime and the odd day a little ugly wan would come over to know would someone, usually me, go with her friend. I seldom refused. I even gave the little quare wans a go, in fairness. I went off with hunchbacks, lispers, smelly wans, lesbians, the whole lot. I went with a wan one day who had a hearing aid and no front teeth. I got called a spastic-fucker for a few days after that but I didn’t give one shit. God loves us all, in fairness. Them wans needed a bit of a good time too.

For a finish though, my lack of discernment began to damage my prospects. The desperate and demented began to rely on me for sexual initiation while the good-looking wans with the lovely blonde hair and long legs and flaking tits began to view me as a bottom-feeder, a bit of a dirty pervert, and, eventually, an untouchable. I started to hang around the Tech then and things improved again. I still believe I did good work at the convent with those unfortunate young ladies; I made them feel good about themselves and showed them how to give a handjob without rupturing a man’s helmet. That’s a valuable lifeskill. That’ll have stood to them, I guarantee you.