Donal Ryan - The Spinning Heart

You know the way when you start going with someone first, and you don’t really mind if there’s a bit of a smell off them sometimes? Like, I used to think Den’s BO was sexy, because it meant he’d been doing physical work and was strong and manly. There’s something about that, like, it’s scientifically proven that women are attracted to men’s body odours when they’re in the first flushes of fancying a fella. But I’ll tell you one thing — it soon wears off. Sweat is fine when it’s fresh, on lovely hard muscle, but when it’s dripping off a big flabby man-boob or dried into a filthy T-shirt it’s a different thing altogether. When BO is just there because someone would rather sit on their arse watching soccer matches than have a two-minute shower, it’s just repulsive. Although I suppose it was a bit lousy how I reacted the last time Denis tried it on with me. Get your big sweaty arse away from me . That was a bit harsh, thinking about it. He looked really hurt. He went off downstairs and put on the telly and watched his Sopranos DVDs for hours. I wonder if he cried? I think he thinks he’s a bit like Tony Soprano.

I HAD a dream one night last week. Denis took Nuala for a spin in his van. I saw him stopping at the end of the cul-de-sac for her. I followed them down the road. I caught up with them in the car park outside the church. I crept up to the window of the van and looked in and they were in the back. She was straddling him with her little denim mini bunched up around her middle. The van doors were locked. I was shouting and screaming and slapping my open hands against the glass. It was like I wasn’t there; they just stayed doing it. I could see right up Denis’s hairy nose. He was lying on his back. He raised his head and looked straight at me and smiled. She turned around and smiled as well. Her teeth were small and sharp. The door suddenly gave way and I realized I had a hose in my hand. The hose streamed fire. I pointed it at them and they caught fire. I pushed the door closed and listened to them burning and screaming. When I woke up and realized I was dreaming I didn’t feel that sick relief that usually accompanies waking from a horrible dream. I actually felt a bit disappointed. Jesus. What kind of a weird bitch am I?

I KIND OF thought actually that Trevor was gone completely mental when he called up here a few weeks ago. Like, why would he not text or email or Facebook? What’s with all the reality, I thought. Does he not know he’s a million times cooler in virtual form? God, he’s misshapen. He wanted me to help him to kidnap a kid . I thought he was pitching something to me, some concept or something, some angle to keep the Dryffids guessing in Warlock Universe — like the thing he thought of last year where we hacked into their harems and stole all their girls (and boys in Ming’s case) and totally screwed up the spec of all their sex slaves and made them into fat animal-headed creatures and wiped out millions of their cred points. But he wanted me to actually swipe a living child with him: he was going deep undercover as a goddamn Montessori teacher in some nursery or something and all I was meant to have to do was drive up, he’d hand over the kid and I’d keep him for like, a night or some shit.

Mom was here like three weeks ago. I let her in this time. She saw my bong. I watched her for ages while she glanced at it, again and again. I knew she knew what it was. She was alive in the sixties, for fuck’s sake. I hadn’t left it out on purpose, but this apartment is so goddamn small that shit just piles up everywhere and you lose your ergonomic perspective. The bong was torturing her. I saw beads of sweat lining themselves up along the skin between her nose and her upper lip. What’s that part of the body called? I can never remember. I started to really enjoy myself as her initial discomfort turned to pain and the pain wrote its signature across her stupid face. And I wondered what part of her was in me. Then I remembered. Every part. As she left she said please, Lloyd, please … and I said what, Mom? Please what? And I raised my eyebrows and half-smiled in a mock pleasantness that I know for a fact creeps her right out. Creeps me right out.

Just take care. I … I …

And she turned and scurried away, like a little white mouse, down the communal stairs and back to her terrified, dipsomaniac life.

MY DAD fucked off when I was a kid. I think he just couldn’t stand to look at her any more. I remember the last time I ever saw him. He looked different, wearing a T-shirt and jeans and a jacket with the collar turned up. I remember thinking he looked really cool. He kissed me on the top of my head and said love you, kiddo. I didn’t say anything back, just stood looking at him from the hallway, wondering why my mother was taking giant breaths and covering her face with one hand while pulling at my dad’s arm with the other. Mom told me some bullshit story about how he had to go and do important work for the government to fix the hole in the ozone layer. I made myself believe that for years, until I overheard her on the phone to one of her mental-case friends, talking about him. He’d had another kid with another woman. A boy. I started to grind my teeth that night, and didn’t stop for years, till finally I ground through to a nerve and the pain made me pass out.

I know now that all that shit was a series of tests I’d set myself. I think I failed some of them, that’s why I’m still groping around in the dark.

I DREAMT I killed the kid. That kind of fucked things up, I can tell you. And not in the way you might think. I didn’t mean it; I only wanted to see how far I’d go before I made myself sick and stopped. Then I woke up and the kid was standing up looking at me over the edge of the travel cot with his big scared eyes and I shouted thank fuck and frightened the crap out of him, literally. But being a solipsist, I know the danger of crossing boundaries in the dream dimension. It’s a dream precedent; I know now it’s an actual possibility. It’s something my inner warrior wants to do and is not able to, being bound by the strictures of this false human reality. I still won’t allow myself to be fully immersed in the truth: I am alone in the universe; the universe is created by me and for me and nothing exists outside of my consciousness. I have to explore the edges of myself. I have to learn more before I can break through the barrier. I have to not care about the feelings I ascribe to my creations. Why did I do this to myself, cripple myself with conscience? It must have some meaning, the fact that I worry about doing certain things, when I know that nothing has any consequence outside of me. It’s another test I’ve set myself, obviously. But I don’t know how to pass it — am I overcoming an obstacle by giving in to my urges to destroy, or by resisting them? What do I want from myself? Why am I so unknowable?

Having killed the kid in my dream bugs me, no matter what way I think about it. Now I don’t know what to do. Opacity has trumped clarity again. These tests, these tests. Trevor has some meaning — he must be like a behaviour modifier or something. Obviously he’s an integral part of me. He’s an impulse, an instinct, a fight or flight mechanism. Him giving me this kid is me showing myself something. Maybe I should just ask straight out. I’ve always tried to stay icy cool around Trevor, though. I don’t think he knows he doesn’t really exist as an entity independent of me. Actually I’m sure of it. I need him to feel inferior to and fearful of me. I think that’s how I’m supposed to make all my creations feel. It’s easier with Mom. But then I’ve been working on her for longer. Solipsism isn’t as easy as it might seem. It’s difficult living in a universe with a population of one. But you already know this, being me.