Donal Ryan - The Spinning Heart

I remember when I told Trevor I’d decided to be a solipsist. He laughed like a fat, retarded duck. He honked at me. Wow, he said, that’s like a really good excuse to give yourself for not having a job . I disgusted myself by suddenly dropping my cloak of aloof superiority and becoming defensive. I can’t help the economy , I said, in a pathetic, loser voice. Pardon , the bastard said, with glee in his eyes, you can’t help the economy? But didn’t you create the fucking economy, being a solipsist? And then he started to do his honking laugh again and I slapped him in his fat face. The tears that sprang immediately to his eyes fascinated me. I hurt him; I hurt myself. I felt my cheek sting later. This battle I’m having with Trevor is obviously some inner conflict, some breaking-down-building-up process of growing and strengthening, like a muscle being worked out. It has to be damaged to develop.

So, now I have this kid, who is wrecking my gaff. I’ve put myself in this position, that’s obvious; I just have to figure out why. The kid is kind of cute. Dylan is his name. He keeps saying Mama and Gaga and crying and pointing, and the only thing that shuts him up is showing him things. Like, I have to pick him up and point at stuff and say look, Dylan, look at the stereo, look, Dylan, look at the cooker, look, Dylan, look at the fucking sofa. The kid loves looking at shit. I’m getting a bit pissed over this whole situation. Like, I could go down for this. I’d be in the news and everything. Sometimes I forget the solipsism thing and start believing myself to be vulnerable to outside forces. They’re really inside forces; the things I’m afraid of are the weak parts of myself that I have to deal with. When I feel no fear, I’ll have completed my journey. Then I’ll become the being I was meant to be. I’m not sure what my true form is. I won’t discover that until I’ve slain every demon.

THIS SUMMER WAS shaping up great and all. We had the World Cup to look forward to — it’s nearly easier to watch when we’re not in it — the weather was looking half-decent there around May and late June, and Bobby was making shapes towards going out on his own doing insulation and all that environmental shite that everyone says is going to be the saving of us all. He rang me to come up and all one evening and I gave a hand stacking blocks of an ash tree he’d cut the evening before and he told me all about it while we worked. I like that way of talking, so you haven’t to be nodding and agreeing and trying to hold a person’s eye. It gives you room to stop and think; the work fills the silence between words. I went home delighted off my head. I even told the mother and father about it. The mother got all dramatic like she always does and started saying how she’d say a novena for the plans and thank God for Bobby Mahon and the father agreed away and he said begod tis the likes of Bobby will put paid to this auld downturn and isn’t he a solid sight to God altogether and if anyone could get something like that off the ground and running it was Bobby and stick with Bobby and by the end of the night I nearly hated Bobby and wondered why in the name of all that’s holy I’d opened my big fat mouth about it at all. Still though, at least they were happy for a while.

Then Bobby went pure solid apeshit. That whole thing about him doing the dirt on Triona with Seanie’s wan was all bullshit, but that was the start of all the madness. I reckon it was that crazy-looking auld bint that lives in the only other house in that estate that’s lived in that started all that auld talk. She was forever eyeballing him going in and out doing them jobs for Seanie’s wan. We didn’t even know she was Seanie’s wan till it was too late. The weird bollocks never told us nothing about her. He can be an awful oddball sometimes. But Bobby, though, if Angelina Jolie gave him the come-on he’d leave her hanging. He’s like a fucking priest, so he is. Well, a priest that’s married to a flaker. Then he upped and murdered his auld fella. I didn’t know should I go up near him after he got out on bail. I never rang him yet or anything. What would I say? Howya Bobby, sorry you killed your auld fella? Maybe he didn’t, in fairness. Jim Gildea came on him below with a length of timber in his hand though by all accounts, and the auld boy stone dead with his head smashed in. Bobby rang Jim and all to come down. Like he wanted to go down or something. He was a bad yoke, Bobby’s da, a real twisted old fucker. Bobby must have finally had enough of his shit.

Whatever about that, I’m left high and dry now, without a hope of getting anything local, so my London plans are kind of back on and the mother and father are going around with two pusses on them like I was after telling them I have brain cancer or something. Every bollocks is going around cribbing about the country being fucked. It’d wear you out, so it would. The country’s fucked, the country’s fucked, the country’s fucked; the same bollockses that were going around cribbing that the whole country was gone mad for money a few years ago. They do be below in the shop, standing in miserable little circles, comparing hardships. I’d love to tell them all they’re a pack of miserable wankers only they’re the same pricks I’ll be looking for a job off of if things pick up or London doesn’t work out, which it’s looking like it won’t, in fairness, on account of the auld fella going around like he’s going having a stroke over it, saying them Olympics contracts is all stitched up, there’ll be no Irish boys taken on off the boat no more, and the mother crying onto her rosary beads while she says novena after novena. Jaysus. How could I leave them like that?

I WISH I had an imagination, and more balls. I’ve thought about this — I think a lot more these days than I used to — and I reckon some are born to follow others. Like, Bobby is well able to think out all that stuff about going out on his own with the insulation thing and go off and talk to fellas about it and give in business plans to the enterprise crowd and look for money off of the Credit Union and all. I could do all them things too, only I haven’t that thing that he has in him that makes all that stuff easy and makes people believe he can do it. It’s a mix of imagination, balls, confidence and something else that I can’t put words on. Something that makes you know he was born to give orders, not take them. It never looked right to see Pokey sitting on the chair in between the window and the desk and Bobby looking across at him with his back to the door. Pokey always made sure the chair facing the desk was smaller than his as well. He done his best to try and shrink Bobby and show who was boss. We all knew he was afraid of his shite of Bobby. Pokey was only boss because of his auld fella handing him over the whole works. It’s Pokey should’ve had the bad auld yoke of a father and Bobby that was born with the silver spoon. Or would Bobby have turned out to be a sneaky little prick like Pokey then? God only knows how it works.

Sometimes thinking about things can balls you right up, though. I was inside in town the other day, looking at a poster for a gig in the Warehouse. A little flaker came up beside me and asked to know was I going. She had a tidy little pair of tits on her and short black hair and too much make-up on her eyes but I kind of like that, and I knew straight away without checking that she’d have a lovely arse and I managed to talk back to her no problem, probably because I hadn’t been thinking about what I was going to say for five hours before I said it. I had a Pixies T-shirt on me and she told me she loved them and I looked a bit like Black Francis. What, I asked her, because I’m fat? And she went pure red and said no, no, Jesus, I meant your hair and stuff, oh God … And I felt like a prick for embarrassing her like that and I said I was only messing and asked her did she see them in ’04 and she said she was in the Phoenix Park and the Point and I said I was too and it turns out we were right near each other both times and after about three minutes I was starting to panic that this was going to be the highest point of my whole life, this random conversation with an accidental pretty girl on a dirty street while I waited to sign on. Here, she said, I have to go, I have an interview for a shitty job, call me out your number. And she sent me a text right there and then: Holly is all it said. So I know her name and I have her number and she likes the Pixies and before she walked off she said text me if you’re at it and I said, like a dopey bollocks, at what? And she laughed and said the gig you fool and walked off laughing softly and I was right, she had a lovely arse.