by Rob Doyle
‘This is me mate Matthew,’ said Scag, slapping me on the shoulder.
‘Howaya,’ grunted Dowdall with a complete lack of interest.
‘Dowdall here used to play bass with Mickey and the Master Race,’ Scag informed me.
‘Oh right yeah,’ I said, acting impressed though I’d never heard of them.
‘Here now, not to mention three years and two albums with Footnotes to Plato, and a tour of Slovenia with Abject Phallus,’ said Dowdall, wagging his finger like a schoolteacher. ‘The Footnotes were a serious punk act, not like these gobshite posers ye get nowadays. Am I right, Scag?’
‘Yis had yer moments,’ said Scag coolly.
‘C’mere, Scag. I hear ye think yer a writer now,’ said Dowdall.
‘Sometimes I catch meself thinkin that, yeah,’ replied Scag. ‘I put out a buke there a while back.’
‘That’s what I heard,’ said Dowdall. ‘Don’t go expectin me to read it, now. Scag the poet, wha? Merciful Jaysus. I can imagine what they wrote in the biography yoke at the back. “Scag was awarded a C Plus in English for his Junior Cert. His ma considers him one of the top five writers to have slithered out from between her legs. He divides his time between Dolphin’s Barn and the Walkinstown roundabout.”’
Scag granted him a wry chuckle. ‘That’s it, more or less. I don’t really think of meself as an author, though. I’m more of a conduit. There’s a force deep down inside me. He speaks and I just write it down. I call him The Fat Controller.’
I laughed, though I wasn’t sure I was meant to.
‘I’ve got two more bukes almost finished,’ said Scag. ‘Sincerely L. Cohen and Fine Day for a Holocaust Denial.’ He paused to observe a passing arse, then added, ‘I’m thinkin of puttin them out under me pseudonym.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Seamus Heaney.’
‘Tsss. Good night and good luck. So are yis on yisser way out to the festival?’
‘Yeah. Sure we thought we may as well. Young Matthew here has had some lady trouble. His tender young heart is in danger of bein broken so I’m takin him under me wing for a bit of a blowout to cheer him up. Yerself ?’
‘Yeah, I’m goin out. I couldn’t give a fuck about the festival but there’s a bird out there I have to see. Little Spanish thing. Mad for me mickey, she is. Blank Frank has some yips for me as well.’
‘Oh yeah?’ said Scag. ‘Haven’t seen oul Frankincense in a while. How many are ye gettin?’
‘Ten. Do ye want some?’
Scag hissed, all indignant. ‘Does a bear shit on the pope? When have you ever known me not to want some fuckin yokes?’
There were thousands thronging the seafront at Dún Laoghaire, sitting on the grass in groups of eight or ten, drinking cans and bottles. There seemed to be little point in being here, other than to drink and talk in proximity to others who were drinking and talking. Maybe that’s what a festival was: that and nothing more. There was a huge stage up near the Forty Foot but we felt no desire to push through the hordes to better hear the world music that was blasting from it. (‘World music,’ remarked Dowdall derisively. ‘Where else is it supposed to be from?’) I called Cocker and we shouted into our phones till we found each other.
‘Any relation to Jarvis?’ said Scag, when I introduced them to one another.
‘Yeah, I’m his da,’ replied Cocker.
Scag laughed. ‘I thought so. Right then lads, I’ve to head off now for a bit, but I’ll be back. I’ve another mate who lives out here who I haven’t seen in a while. I’m goin to drop in on him. Dowdall, if I don’t get around to Frank’s before yis leave, get me them yokes and I’ll fix ye up later, okay?’
Dowdall looked reluctant, but muttered yeah. Scag ducked into the horde, then me and Cocker walked off with Dowdall, stepping over hands and legs till we were past the thickest crowds.
‘Where are we off to?’ Cocker said, frowning, as we fell a few steps behind Dowdall. ‘I thought we were just goin to hang around the festival and have a few cans. Who the fuck is this piece of work?’
‘Relax. It’s just a mate of Scag’s. We’re goin to pick up a few pills. It’ll be cool, don’t worry.’
‘These are some weird-lookin cunts,’ he muttered.
We followed Dowdall down a side street, passing big, rich houses where I wouldn’t have minded living but knew I never would. Blank Frank was paying a home visit to one of his wealthier customers. Dowdall phoned him when we got to the house. Frank appeared a moment later at the second-storey window, mobile at his ear, gazing down at us. He was huge, bald, bearded and leather-clad; Blank Frank was an old-school biker.
Dowdall hung up. ‘We’ve to go upstairs,’ he told us. ‘Now don’t go makin bollockses of yerselves, do yis hear me? These lads won’t see the funny side.’ In a quieter voice he added, ‘Frank is … he has his problems. He isn’t that bad when ye get to know him, but it’s very easy to set him off. And that’s not somethin ye want to see.’
We ascended a marble staircase, passing framed posters of Bruce Lee and Eric Cantona, and stepped into the sitting room. Other than Blank Frank (who used to be called Frank the Fuck when he did vocals for Consumers of Atrocity back in the eighties, as Dowdall had informed us on the way), there was a bulky, crewcut guy with suspicious eyes. He wore a white T-shirt with Prada printed brazenly across the collar in navy lettering. Though it was clearly this man’s house we were in, he had that inner-city look to him; the raw, blemished face, the ugliness. There were two women as well, in their mid-twenties, both of them trashily blonde, faces caked with makeup. One of them was resurfacing from the coke she’d just been hoovering up from the glass table. She regarded us coldly. Blank Frank looked at me and Cocker.
‘This is just Matthew,’ Dowdall said quickly. ‘And that’s his mate.’
Blank Frank the Fuck shrugged. ‘So how’s things, Dowdall? Long time no see.’
Bottles of beer were offered all round by our jerky, shifty host, who had obviously done plenty of coke before we arrived. The girls said little, lighting cigarettes and watching us with hard, cynical faces.
‘Cut them all a line, Eileen, will ye?’ said the host, whom Blank Frank introduced as Seamus. I guessed he was some kind of gangster or high-end dealer. He was an erratic in a rich suburb like Dún Laoghaire, full of posh old cunts who spoke with near-British accents and looked down on the rest of us.
Dowdall, Seamus and Blank Frank sat down around a low wooden table on one side of the huge room, and started exchanging stories and jokes. Me and Cocker sat on a couch, listening to their loud, aggressive, uneasy laughter.
After some chat, Frank asked Dowdall how many yokes he wanted.
‘Ten for me,’ said Dowdall.
‘We’ll take ten of them as well,’ said Cocker, fishing out some notes from his jacket pocket.
Frank the Fuck looked up. Cocker fidgeted beside me, putting the money back in his pocket. The girls watched Frank. Suddenly he made a sweeping gesture and said, ‘C’mon up here lads, sit down with us for fuck’s sake. Yisser lookin all lonesome over there, huggin yisser beers.’
We shuffled over, smiling awkwardly, and sat down with them.
Now Frank was slamming his massive paw on the table and saying, ‘Dowdall, did I ever tell ye about the time me and Seamus here got caught with five hundred yokes outside the Point when Orbital were playing?’
‘No, what happened? Did yis get arrested?’
‘No, hang on and I’ll tell ye. We were just outside the entrance about to get in past security – the plan was to sell the yokes inside – and suddenly this plain-clothes cunt comes out of nowhere. I’ve still no idea how he knew we had the stuff. But he grabs hold of Seamus’s shoulder and starts screamin into his walkie-talkie, and he’s obviously callin the lads for reinforcements. And while your man has his hand there, Seamus just looks at me for a moment, then he turns around and CRACK, he loafs him right in the face. So your man goes down like a sack of fuckin shite and we leg it, peggin it down along the quays, in t
hrough the IFSC. We legged it down this lane and went into a pub and that was that. They didn’t catch up with us. We ended up goin on to some fuckin club – where was it, Spirit? – and sellin most of the yokes in there instead. And then all I remember is Seamus wearin the face off this big fat trendy bird, and next thing I follow them into the jacks and he’s ridin her over the fuckin sink!’
Seamus was slapping his thigh and laughing proudly at the anecdote. ‘Ye know what they say, lads: when war is ragin, every hole is a trench. Fuck me, that was a good night. I was still pissed off we never got to see Orbital, though.’
‘Orbital, now there’s a great band,’ said Cocker, nodding his head – even though he’d never listened to them in his life. No one paid him any regard.
Seamus said, ‘The next morning I bought an Aer Lingus ticket to Amsterdam and I fuckin stayed over there for nearly two months. I was bleedin shittin it that they were goin to hunt me down and lock me up for years. Or do ye remember that time we dropped a fuckload of acid and went to see Blade in the big cineplex on Parnell Street, do ye remember that?’
‘Fuckin right I do,’ said Frank the Fuck. ‘Or at least I remember coming to me senses in the cell the next mornin. Fuckin hell.’
Seamus was in tears of laughter. After a couple of false starts, he managed to get a few sentences out to deliver the anecdote.
‘We’d taken a whole sheet between the two of us, and we were just gettin into the film – which is total shite, by the way – and Frank was gone dead quiet, just fuckin engrossed in the film, or so I thought. And then, completely all of a sudden-like, he starts screamin his head off, just fuckin screamin like a mad cunt, this mad, high-pitched fuckin noise, like a lamb bein slaughtered. It was like he was on fire or somethin, or some mad fuckin animal. He had his hands to his face and it was like he was tryin to tear the skin off it, and all the time these mad fuckin screams comin out of him. People were leggin it out of the cinema and everythin, thinkin there was some kind of fire or I don’t know what the fuck. And I’m just sittin there pissin meself laughin, and next thing Frank is leapin up on the seat, lashin out at everythin. Kicked me in the fuckin jaw. Then he falls over into the next row and gets up, still screamin his fuckin head off and clawin at his face, and he legs it down the aisle and out of the cinema, into the fuckin foyer or whatever ye call it, upstairs where the bar and café is. By the time I managed to get up and leg it out after him …’
He couldn’t go on because he was laughing too much. We were all laughing by now. After a while Seamus controlled it enough to continue.
‘And so I leg it out after him, and I’m completely off me fuckin tits as well. And every cunt in the cinema is standin there in shock, starin at this mad cunt. He’s after leapin in behind the bar and he’s just pullin bottles down off the rack – whiskey, vodka, all kinds of shite – and he’s fuckin them out of the bar, at the walls, on to the ground. He must’ve smashed about thirty bottles by the time the big golliwog security guard came burstin in and floored him.’
‘Kicked the fuckin shite out of me too, when I was on the ground,’ said Blank Frank proudly. ‘Or he must have done, cos when I woke up in the cell I was in a right fuckin state. Me head was like the fuckin Elephant Man.’
‘He did, he knocked the bollocks out of ye. He fuckin had to, man, ye looked like ye were a total fuckin psychopath. Every fucker there was shittin themselves. I thought ye were goin to kill someone.’
‘It’s a miracle I didn’t, hurlin all them glass bottles across the gaff like that,’ said Frank wistfully, eyes wet from laughing.
‘What did the police do?’ I asked.
‘Not a fuckin thing. I was able to convince them that I was off me trolley and therefore me actions were beyond me control. It wasn’t that hard to do – only a fuckin genuine nutjob would do somethin like that, that’s how they saw it.’
‘They weren’t fuckin wrong,’ declared Dowdall.
Blank Frank was drying his eyes. ‘Fuckin hell, I’m goin to piss meself.’
Beside me, Cocker had gone quiet and still. I thought he was freaked out and wanted to leave. But just at that moment, he jolted upright in his chair, slammed his palm on the table and said, ‘That’s very funny. Frank, you sound like a real demented cunt alright.’
The room fell silent. Surely Cocker hadn’t meant it to, but it had come out sounding like a blatant insult. The two girls on the sofa jerked their heads up, scenting brutality. Blank Frank stared at Cocker, who melted into his chair. Seamus inched backwards, eyes locked on Frank.
I expected an explosion but when Frank spoke, his voice was low and even.
‘What the fuck did you say, sunshine?’
Cocker stuttered. Unable to work up a sentence, he attempted an ingratiating grin. I heard myself speak: ‘He wasn’t bein sarcastic, Frank. That’s just how he talks.’
Blank Frank turned to me. I could see his lower lip trembling. His breathing was fast and shallow.
‘Didn’t mean anything,’ whimpered Cocker. The two girls were squirming with anticipation.
Frank turned back towards Cocker. Dowdall was looking at the floor, shaking his head and muttering under his breath. The room felt like it was about to implode.
And then:
‘GET DOWN HERE AND LET ME IN, YIS NEFARIOUS NAZIS!’
The roar came from outside, beneath the balcony.
Dowdall broke into hysterical laughter. Seamus leapt up and looked down on the street. Leaning over the balcony railing, he called out, ‘Scag ye mental cunt, look at the fuckin state of ye!’
Frank turned his head. ‘Ah Scag’s here, the brazen cunt. I haven’t seen oul Scag in ages.’
In the few seconds it took Scag to come upstairs, Frank turned back to Cocker, pointed a finger at him and said, ‘You just take it easy, sunshine.’ But it was almost good-natured, the menace all dissipated from his tone. Cocker nodded frantically. I began to breathe again.
When Scag entered the room, Blank Frank grinned at him and said, ‘Scag, me oul flower! The last time I saw ye, ye were rollin about on the ground down some fuckin lane, with yer jaws round the ankle of some cunt in a suit. Frothin at the mouth ye were. Ye just wouldn’t let him go. What in the good fuck was all that about?’
Scag smiled. ‘It’d seem very reasonable if I told ye who that person was. Which I’m not goin to do. Ye know me, Frank, I prefer to abide in the mystery.’
Frank roared with laughter and slapped his belly. He was like a gigantic baby. ‘Yer a fuckin headcase!’ he bellowed.
Scag noticed me. ‘I hope yis are bein nice to young Matthew here,’ he said. ‘This handsome renegade, he’s a good skin.’
‘A mate of yours, Scag, is a mate of mine,’ said Frank.
Everyone was cheerful now, opening beers and cutting out lines. We stayed for half an hour. Then Frank gave us our pills. Me, Scag and Dowdall swallowed one each. We said our goodbyes and wandered back towards Dún Laoghaire.
When we were away from the house Cocker said, in a deflated voice, ‘Listen, I’m gonna head home.’
‘Ah come on, we only met up an hour ago. The day’s just gettin started. What’s wrong? It’s gonna be deadly.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t feel up for it any more. You can hang on to those pills. Just throw us a few quid whenever ye have it.’ I tried to persuade him to stay out but he was adamant. ‘What were we doin in there, Matthew?’ he said quietly, letting the other two walk ahead. ‘This isn’t our scene at all. These people are horrible. Why don’t ye stall it home as well? Or just come for a pint in town.’
But I wasn’t ready to go home or even to have a normal night. I left a pale, diminished Cocker at the bus stop, then hurried to catch up with Scag and Dowdall.
‘Is there anything decent on at this festival?’ Scag was saying as I fell in step beside them. ‘What about this bird ye mentioned earlier, where is she? She might have a few mates for me and Matthew here. Oul Matthew, he’s a bit of a fuckin sex-hound, you’d wanna see the fuc
kin cracker of a Norwegian he scored last night.’
‘No, man. The Spanish bird’s on her own,’ said Dowdall. ‘I’ve to meet her here and then we’re goin back to her place, that’s the plan. I’m goin to drop a few more yokes and nail her to the wall. That’s if I can even get it up. But are ye not throwin it into that big jungle-momma ye were with last time I saw ye?’
‘Not any more,’ replied Scag. ‘It was alright for a while but I started gettin fed up. She had this big fanny on her as wide as the bleedin Congo. Ye couldn’t get a bit of friction in there at all. It was like throwin a sausage up O’Connell Street.’
Dowdall chuckled. ‘Still and all, fine set of mangoes on her. But right, I’ll have to love yis and leave yis, lads. Have a good one, don’t stop till ye get enough.’
When Dowdall disappeared into the crowd, heading towards one of the smaller stages, Scag turned to me and said, ‘What a wanker. I really doubt there is a little Spanish bird he’s goin to see. He’s fucked off now and he’s goin to be yoked out of it on his own all day, just cos he had to pretend that he was meetin some bird to impress me. What a tosser.’
I could feel the ecstasy coming up on me, bleaching through the tiredness and the jerky, frazzled anxiousness that had crept in across the weird hours.
For a while we smoked spliffs with black lads who were watching a reggae band in a beer garden. Then we gave up on the festival and took the DART back into town, attaching ourselves to a bunch of Poles who sang and guzzled litre bottles of Paulaner and Lech. We swallowed our second pill each as the train was pulling out, and I lost all sense of where the highs and comedowns from the various drugs – ecstasy, cocaine, alcohol, grass – began and ended.
We blathered with the Poles all the way into town, punctuating our rants with peals of madcap laughter and slugs of lager. Scag gave up on the farcical attempt at meaningful dialogue and took to leaping up and down the length of the carriage, swinging from the metal bars between ceiling and floor, screaming ‘COME ON YEE BASTARDS!’ over and over. People laughed and cheered him on, but everyone looked tense whenever he got close to them. He was all loved-up on the pills, though, and meant no harm.
