by Rob Doyle
The Poles invited us to see a Polish DJ. It was in a club on the city-centre fringes of the northside that I’d never been to before called McDargle’s.
In the club I felt invincible. Strobe lights pulsed; hard techno tracks broke down in the middle, then built up to prolonged, obliterating climaxes. We swallowed more pills. Scag was kissing a girl, a punky, blonde Pole who was like a boy. Then he was at my side, screaming into my ear that there was a guy who had microdots, did I have a tenner and we’d trip our bollocks off. I passed him my last note and danced some more. There was a different DJ now, or maybe not. Then Scag was dragging me into the hallway leading to the toilets, his face a cackling devil-mask. ‘Let’s drop this fuckin acid!’ he yelled.
‘Are ye sure it’s a good idea, with all this other stuff we’ve been takin?’
‘Relax, man. It’ll be fuckin cool.’
‘I’m a bit nervous. I’ve never done acid before.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s deadly. Remember I’m here – if you’re gettin paro or it seems a bit full on, talk to me. I’ve been takin acid for decades. I was takin it when you were in nappies. I was takin it when I was in fuckin nappies. There’s nothin about it that can faze me, man.’
‘Okay, thanks.’
We put the tabs under our tongues and let them dissolve.
The walls were spilling with the colours of music, and there he was, Matthew, standing in the middle of the dance floor, knowing what was to come, moving without moving, zooming through the cosmos while his body stayed very still, and all the surfaces bled together.
After the club we went back to a house on a dark, narrow street near Christ Church with the Poles, where the party continued. The acid was incredible; it must have been six hours after taking it and I was still tripping hard. The DJ from the club had come back to the house. At one point the techno got more intense and there was this Polish girl dancing in front of me. I could see that there was something wrong with her face. I peered at her through the smoke and noise – and then it was little Becky’s face and it caved in on itself, spurting out gore and crushed bones as the one eye peered at me from hell. I screamed and leapt back, falling to my knees and covering my head with my arms. Scag had seen what happened and took me by the shoulder and guided me to my feet. I was shaking and babbling as he pulled me aside, away from staring revellers. ‘Relax, Matthew, it’s only the acid. Don’t fight it, nothin ye see can hurt ye, it’s only Samsara, don’t fight it.’ I smoked a cigarette and tried to calm down. I started to cry. I turned my face to the window so no one could see. Later I wrote Jen a text that scrolled on for three pages, but I deleted it.
The techno thumped all night. Even the Poles dropped out before we did. Some time after dawn most of them had retired to the bedrooms to sleep, or have sex; or come down in more intimate groups, or gone home; or laid out on the floor of the sitting room, front room and kitchen to pass out.
Scag was sitting on an armchair, peaceful-looking, a roll-up dangling easy from his left hand. He was gazing out the window, emanating thoughtfulness even as the veins in his temples bulged to the point of rupture. I sat down on the carpeted floor at his feet – there were no empty seats – and listened to the ambient waves of soothing, vaporous silver that dissolved around us, the DJ’s gentle-comedown set. I felt sleepy and my head dropped forward a few times, eventually coming to rest against Scag’s leg. I closed my eyes and let darkness flood over me, thinking as I blacked out that dying would not be unpleasant at all.
‘I reckon it’s time to split, Matthew,’ Scag said after a while. I stood up and rubbed my eyes.
We took four cans of lager from the heaps of unconsumed alcohol that lay scattered around the various rooms, and left.
‘Fuckin hell,’ I said when we were out on the grey, early-morning street. ‘I’m still trippin.’
We let our legs carry us, hiding the cans in our pockets between swigs, in case the police were around. We walked down Dame Street and crossed the Liffey, then followed the river past the long, imposing hulk of the Custom House, which now seemed to have a face and a real personality – it struck me that the building only looked so stern and intimidating because it was insecure about who it really was. It was all a front. The thought triggered another fit of giggles.
Town was silent and still like the land before time. We followed the river, past the spindly, sinister figures of the Famine Memorial and the docked yachts, to the port. There, we turned north into the city and kept walking, drinking, tripping, smoking, eventually re-meeting the coast out at Fairview. We walked along the Clontarf Road, by the sea that churned grey foam in a perpetually descending hiss, the sound of the world collapsing in on itself.
Out past the city centre, where the edges frayed into coastal suburb, we climbed over the low wall separating the road from the sea. We clambered down the rocks until we reached a meagre strip of grey, stony beach. Towers and chimneys of industry fumed in the distance along the coast, while cargo ships hulked in and out of Dublin Port. I looked behind us and couldn’t see over the wall, couldn’t see the road or the cars.
Scag sat down on the pebbles and rolled a joint with a bit of grass we’d been given at the party. When we smoked it, it seemed to rekindle the acid in my system so that once again I was tripping at full intensity.
For a while we stared out at the murky sea under a heavy, dismal sky, saying nothing. The foamy low tide hissed at our feet.
Then Scag pointed forward – at the grey sea and the grey sky that were coupled, almost one thing, one void – and said, ‘That’s the abyss, Matthew. That’s the abyss at the edge of the world.’
And when he said it, something astonishing happened: out on the horizon, behind the sullen murk of the sky, I began to make out the shifting, restless contours of a great void that was opening up, as wide as the horizon itself. I became terrified, I couldn’t look away.
‘Do ye see it?’ I heard him whisper, urgent and reverential.
The abyss was expanding, a great heaving vortex, spreading out across the sky like the Aurora Borealis, wider than the city. And then I could see that the light, the sea, the dead sun and the cargo ships, the seagulls and the city itself – all of it was being sucked in, slowly and inexorably, lurching forward to be swallowed up in the great void.
‘Do ye see it?’ he whispered.
I fell backwards on the ground, shielding my face with my arms and elbows in a useless instinct of self-protection. I screamed. Then Scag rose to his feet. He started to speak in a thundering voice: ‘How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire fuckin horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Where is it movin now? Where are we movin now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually fallin? Backward, sideward, forward, in all fuckin directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not strayin as through an infinite nothin? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night comin on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the mornin?’
As he spoke these words, Scag tore the clothes from his body so that by the end he stood completely naked, his shaded skin like the bark of a tree sprouting from the grey shingle. Black tattoos snaked up the lines of his body. He stepped forward and plunged into the grey sea. After he went under, I watched the surface undulating in its vast indifference, thinking he would never come up again. I felt a desolating loneliness, deeper and colder than anything I had ever experienced.
Then I saw him resurface, thirty metres out, head bobbing on the waves. He called to me and there was laughter in his voice. ‘Come on in, Matthew, the water’s lovely!’
I stood up, took off all my clothes, and stepped down into the cold sea, wading out until it was waist-high. I dove and swam, holding my breath, kicking with all my energy away from the shore, along the murky floor and out into the cold, deep greyness.
PART THREE
ORGASM OF HATE
Everything is evil.
—Giacom
o Leopardi, Zibaldone
31 | Kearney
Problems with Reality: What Kearney Brought Back from America
The red-eye flight was only sparsely booked. Kearney sat, alone in his row, watching the lights of the Eastern Seaboard recede far below, overwhelmed by the creep of Atlantic Ocean darkness.
What a trip it had been, he reflected. A month in the Great Satan. Dwayne was still back there, in Boston. Kearney had left him in the airport bar after beers, whiskey, spliffs and a couple of lines of coke left over from the night when Stu had called around. Kearney partly envied his brother for staying on in the States, but mainly he was keen to get back home, where he could boast to the lads about his adventures, and show them how fucking clueless they were. And, more importantly, when he returned to Dublin, he could begin to put his plan into motion.
As the plane penetrated the cloud cover and his view was clogged with darkly uniform grey, Kearney closed his eyes and basked in the pride of his newfound confidence and life experience. Through a low electronic shimmer he heard Fallen Henry the Titan’s paternal purr: You done good back there, nigga. I got my eye on you and listen here, we be expectin big things from you, G, real big things.
Kearney opened his eyes. A blonde, idiotically smiling air hostess was coming down the aisle towards him, from the direction of the cockpit. She was pushing a refreshments trolley and had a firm, luscious pair of tits on her. Kearney waited till she was beside him: then he rammed his hand up her skirt. Next came the rape-squeals in the tiny toilet, the grunts and gasps as he pressed her face into the sink, impaling her from behind with his straining teenage sex …
Ever since that night with Stu, Kearney’s fantasies had reached a new pitch of intensity. He felt he was becoming an artist of inner butchery. I am the Beethoven of Brutality, he told himself. Then, admitting that he didn’t actually know any of Beethoven’s paintings, he revised his self-bestowed nickname: I am the Aphex Twin of Cutting Motherfuckers Open. That was more like it.
He was still refining the syllabic rhythm of his new moniker when he realized that the air hostess had stopped in the aisle beside him and was turned his way. She smiled brightly and said, ‘And look at you, flying across the world all on your lonesome. My oh my.’ She chuckled a little.
Kearney’s eyes were wide and happy. He returned her grin.
‘Is there anything I can get you, honey?’ said the hostess with what Kearney thought to be a flirtatious inflection. Warm and fuzzy from the hash and whiskey, he felt his groin heating up with delicious blood throbs, like red flashes of light.
‘Bloody Mary,’ he said.
The woman gave another fluttery little laugh. ‘Well now I’m afraid I’d have to see some proof that you are old enough for liquor. How about a soft drink? Now I’m not saying you’re not a man, but …’ She chuckled again. ‘How about you show me your passport?’ She was finding it all very charming.
Kearney grinned back at her. Then he said, ‘How about I show ye me manhood?’
The woman’s imprecation was loud enough to turn several near-sleeping heads in the back end of the economy section. She stared with an open mouth for a moment, but then some instinct of shame or professionalism kicked in and she turned away, gazing straight ahead as she pushed her trolley down the aisle, not stopping until she vanished into the rear of the plane.
Kearney overflowed with giggles, charmed by his own devilish wit. He imagined what his friends would say if they had witnessed his antics, and wished especially that Dwayne had been there to see that last display. ‘Fallen Henry,’ he heard himself whisper a moment later, ‘am I a bad motherfucker?’
And Fallen Henry’s voice was rich with solemn pride as he replied: You a BAD motherfucker, Kearney. Ain’t NO motherfuckin doubt.
Kearney sighed in deep contentment and put in his earphones. The hard-tech thump began battering his brain. Things could hardly be better. There was only one way to round off this perfect night flight …
Kearney took a deep breath and then stood up in the aisle. ‘ALLAHU AKBAR!’ he roared, his confidence feeding on the belligerent surge of his own voice. He brought his blade down on the neck of the bald businessman sitting in front of him, delighted by the fount of blood that gushed forth, spraying the seats and window, painting Kearney’s T-shirt. With rising glee he heard the panic-screams of doomed families. He marked the faces stretched in terror as he walked calmly up the aisle, blowing the brains out of any motherfucker who might even consider trying to stop him. He screamed and shot a baby, not giving a fuck if a stray bullet punctured the plane’s side. Now he kicked down the door of the cockpit and cut the throat of the pale and whimpering pilot, and shot the co-pilot through the face, feeling the wank-spurt of hot blood on his gun-hand and wrist. He locked the cockpit door and, wearing a lusty slash of a grin, took the controls. Seeing the expanse of city lights come rushing beneath him, he pitched the plane forward to a fresh surge of screaming from the carriage behind. ‘ALLLAHH!’ he bellowed, and sent the plane missiling into the heart of Dublin city like a great bolt of holy fire. ‘AALLLAAHHH!’
32 | Matthew
It was on a Tuesday, two days after I got home from the weekend with Scag, that Rez didn’t kill himself.
I was downcast, irritable, still wading through the debris of that prolonged, wrecking bender. I stayed in my room in fading light, lying on my bed and looking at the ceiling, thinking about the abyss at the edge of the world. I was thinking about Scag, too, wondering if he was the kind of person I would become, years down the line. Of all the older people I knew, it was with the likes of Scag that I felt the clearest affinity. It was kind of scary.
Music had been playing but the album finished and I didn’t bother putting anything else on. The room was silent.
My ma walked in. I creaked my neck to look at her. I waited for her to say something. She just stood there, watching me. It struck me how vulnerable she looked, how small and frightened. These days I was having the recurrent insight that the adults around me were really still children, in grown-up bodies. They were not, as I had assumed, in possession of the answers about life, some kind of grand truth that everyone was gifted with on reaching a certain age. They were about as lost as I was, maybe more so.
‘What is it?’ I snapped, irritated by everything and wanting to be left alone.
She kept standing there, still far away. Then she said softly, ‘There’s bad news, Matthew. Rez has tried to kill himself.’
‘What?’
‘He’s okay, his brother found him, he’s alive.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘He’s in hospital. He’s okay, he’s fine.’
I had stumbled out of the bed, reaching pointlessly to put on my shoes. My ma was crying. It struck me that she believed I was distraught. And maybe there was a part of me that was. Mostly though, what I felt was excitement.
I wasn’t able to see him until the following day. I walked to the hospital with Cocker, bringing fruit and sweets from my ma, and a music magazine that I’d bought.
The corridors and wards of the hospital were painted in that dulled, turquoise colour that they always are, a tone with all the cheer drained from it, as if any vibrancy might aggravate the patients’ conditions. Rez was in a ward with two other men, a pale-blue curtain hanging down to screen him off from them. A single, square window let in dull sunlight, only heightening the depressed pallor of everything.
‘Heya Rez,’ we said, stepping into the ward. His mother was out in the waiting area, dry of tears, staring at the ground and rocking back and forth. She had gone outside so Rez’s friends could have a few moments with him. Maybe it would do him some good, the doctors had said.
He gazed at us for a few seconds, then muttered a hello. He didn’t smile. Why would he?
I cleared my throat. I had no idea what to say, how to act. Already this was excruciating. Cocker was dealing with it a little better, though. ‘Fuckin hell, man, what were ye up to?’ he said, sounding close to anger, as if
he had been personally insulted, or judged, which was probably the truth. Maybe we had all been judged.
Rez seemed dazed by whatever medication they were pumping into him. His responses were delayed, like an internet phone call to a far-off country. He spoke in a throaty kind of drawl, which, I weirdly found myself imagining, would probably be seductive to girls.
Propped up by a wad of puffy white pillows, Rez shifted a bit on the bed, as if he wanted to kindle a flicker of life in himself. But all he said was, ‘What do yis want?’
‘What do we want? Fuckin hell, Rez, we came to see ye, that’s what we want,’ I said.
‘Really?’
I thought that because of all the sedatives, or something, he was being sincere. ‘Yeah, really. Jesus, Rez. Your ma is out there, destroyed she is. You’re killin her.’
While I was speaking, I began to grow uneasy; I had the feeling, as I did so often with Rez, that he could see right into me, and what he saw in there was next to nothing. Under his gaze I felt insubstantial, meagre. Everything I might have said would have sounded like a cliché, what you were supposed to say in these circumstances, devoid of feeling.
As if to confirm these notions, Rez looked right at me and said, ‘Matthew, do ye actually care?’
There was silence. Cocker turned to look at me, his brow all furrowed like an upset child’s.
‘Of course I care. What do ye mean do I care? Of course I care.’
A defensive edge had crept into my voice. As if sensing he had found a sore spot, Rez reared up further from his tranquillized torpor and struck again.
‘Are ye sure ye really care, or is it not that it excites ye? Cos that’s how I’d feel, if a mate of mine had tried to kill himself. I’d be dead excited about all the drama and glamour and all. A bit of serious reality. Is that not it?’
