We’re not being encouraged by getting free needles
We’re not interfering in God’s Holy Plan with contraception
We’re spreading diseases we know nothing about
We’re stealing to pay for our habits
We’re shooting to recover our debts
We’re suffocating in our boxes
We’re drinking whiskey for our regrets
It’s okay though
None of this is really happening
They tell us it’s not happening
SECTION FOUR, YEAH? THE NINETIES. THINGS HAVE BEEN GETTING WORSE FOR A VERY LONG TIME.
– The footpaths are painted green, white and orange.
The streetlamps are beginning to flicker.
You can feel the sun on your back.
There’s one less family at mass.
Corrugated iron windows. The grass has been burnt. Destruction. Don’t say too much. You don’t have to.
The space is as big as eleven acres, or as small as one. Looming over you. You’re standing across the road. It feels like the city has just stopped moving. It hasn’t. But that’s how it feels. You can hear humming. A red car passes you. You don’t see many of those nowadays.
Looking at all the windows makes your eyes squint. There’s all these holes in the walls and you wonder about them.
If you look past the railings that cage the whole thing in, you can see the dirty syringes in the muck where the grass used to grow. Or maybe you just saw that on television.
You walk inside and you can feel the weight of people inside. If you look up, it feels like everything might fall down.
There’s a Guard [policeman] standing here 24 hours a day.
He has to stand here all day.
And there’s a van at every block.
There are no other parts of the city now and this is a war zone.
– A war zone is better than a famine though.
– Yeah.
This is where everyone feels like they’re serving time, and the whole country comes to buy drugs.
And you can even buy a gun here, now that the troubles are over.
But you’re afraid to actually own anything, in case it gets robbed.
Where were you when Ireland lost in Italia ’90?
– That was the first time I saw me da cry.
– This is the part where everything gets terrifying.
Where all the colours are dark and nothing makes sense. Everybody is acting on impulse, or autopilot. This is the bit where we all stood up and ran. We left empty flats behind us and people moved in and started banging up.
This is the bit where the hero dies of AIDS, and the heroine gets raped.
Where the baby was born with an addiction, where the mattress was set on fire.
This is when her ribs were broken. Ireland lost in Italia ’90.
This was the moment when we got rich. And you might say, if you weren’t there, that this was when we split. Before we were all together, and some of us were poorer or less well off than others. But now this is the part where we’ve all succeeded, and everybody else has fucked it up for themselves.
This is the moment before the end of the war. The bit where the most people die. The bit where the most irrational choices are made. The camera pans out and all the casualties are lying in the street.
This is when we’ll feel like we can’t take it anymore. Where we’ll declare that we want to die. Where we’ll decide that the situation is inevitable, and that change is impossible.
Things have just been getting worse for a very long time.
We might come together for the very first time. We might organize effectively for change. We might use our fists. But when it comes to tell the story, we won’t be able to remember.
This is when we’ll knock it all down. Because we’re at our rock bottom. And now we need to fight.
This is what it feels like when pressure builds. When the emersion is left on for too long. When the pot boils over and something has to happen. This is the bit where the guy who was saying ‘What are you looking at?,’ actually beat up the guy who was looking at him.
– We’re moving now
We’re going
We’re putting ourselves on the agenda
God is saying they can’t grow poppies anymore
They’re flying over Columbia with poisons
We’re purring
We’re swimming
We’re going for gold
We’re spending money
We’re teaching children
We’re wearing tracksuits and getting our rings engraved
We’re coming together and doing things we saw in films
We’re getting guns and nicknames
We just don’t give a fuck
We’re killing Veronica Guerin
We’re paying off our mortgages
We’re getting jobs in Industrial Estates
We’re hearing the secrets from industrial schools
We’re moving
We’re kicking Josie Dwyer
We’re packing out our prisons
We’re taking down our net curtains
We’re going on holidays to Spain
We’re buying a new car
We’re complaining about insurance
We’re building
We’re moving
We’re blaring rap songs out our windows
We’re hopeful
Swings and roundabouts
We’re watching Saturday morning television
We’re wearing multi-coloured caps
We’re playing with our Pogs
We’re robbing cars and driving in the park
We’re walking into the bushes
We’re in an epidemic
We’re jumping off a tower block
We’re collapsing our veins
We’re injecting into our feet
We’re living in stairwells
We’re taking ecstacy with our Evian
We’re getting our pictures in the papers
We’re easing the sickness with methadone
We’re going to clinics twice a week
We’re breaking our balls to help people
We’re raising a profile
We’re understanding the situation
We’re on committees
We’re strategizing
We’re forward thinking
We’re building help in our communities
We’re making our marches bigger
We’re hearing that Brenda’s got a baby
We’re containing it off the beaten track
We’re hiding from tourists
We’re left to our own devices
We’re killing each other
I’m sorry
We can’t say it’s not happening anymore
SECTION FIVE. THE TWO THOUSANDS. YOU ARE NEVER GONNA UNDERSTAND.
– I’m not doing this tomorrow night.
– And you know, you feel very alone
– She can read that book all she likes but she’s never gonna understand
– I’m sorry
I am sorry
I don’t think I can do this anymore
I’m lost
I’m falling apart
I’m losing
Sorry
I’m sorry but
I don’t think I can do this anymore
I’m sorry
I am really fucking sorry
I just want it all to end
I don’t think I can stay quiet anymore
I don’t know what to say
I’m sorry
I am
It’s all my fault
Nobody forced me to do anything
It is all my fault
And I’m sorry
I’m sick
I’m really feeling sick now
I’ve lost it all
And I need help
I don’t want to do this anymore
I don’t wan
t to do this anymore
I don’t want any of this anymore
Okay?
None of it
Nothing
I’m lost
I would like to be able to join in
I would like to calm down
Look at me
Please
Can you just look at me?
I feel like I never had anything to lose
I can’t do this anymore
I can’t even wake up
I’m finished
I don’t even know this
I can’t even notice
Can you please tell me what to do?
Can you please tell me what the fuck I’m supposed to do?
I don’t know how this works
I wish I could see a video of my life
I wish someone had recorded it
I wish there was a record
I wish I was caught on CCTV
Help me
Please
Can someone just help me?
Please
Can you just look at me?
Can you just look at me?
Please?
I think that might help
Look at me
Look at me
Look at me
I’m sick
I’m really fucking dying sick now
Please
– I’m in my dress just waiting to sing, look lovely, etc.
This is what happened
We took drugs
We took any drugs we could get our hands on
Because we were scared of being normal
Of having to live with our heads
Because horrible things happened to us
Or because nothing ever happened to us
Because our fathers drank and battered us
Because our mothers never washed our uniforms
Because we had no socks
Because we couldn’t tell the time
Because we couldn’t tie our laces
And we felt nothing
And we didn’t know how
And we ran
And I was there and I saw it
This is what happened
I was there and I saw it
And I wrote my name on a wall
This is what happened
We took drugs
Because we wanted to take drugs
We wanted to feel different
This is what happened
I stole handbags and wallets
And I smashed windows with bricks
This is what happened
I took cocaine
And crack cocaine
And I mixed my methadone with heroin
And I lied to the relieving officer
And I ran
This is what happened, my uncle took me into a room and told me to undress
This is what happened, I slept under a bridge
This is what happened, my teacher humiliated me in front of the class
This is what happened, my brother was better than me
My daughter kept crying
I didn’t know what the fuck else to do
I couldn’t fill in the form
I couldn’t give directions
I spread the poison
And nobody mentioned it
This is what happened
We were told we were nothing
We had nothing
This is what happened
Our address came with a stigma
We never did well in school
Our parents were bad parents
I was there and I saw it
And I wrote my name on a wall
I was there
This is about everything that ever happened
Because we needed to talk about this
Because we couldn’t
Because we needed to be on the dark side of life
Because we believed in God
Because we left the empire
Because we saw our fathers peddle death to people we didn’t know
Because we never saw anything
Because we were bored
This is what happened
I was there and I saw it
I was there
I was there
Because we had no sense of pride in ourselves
Because our parents shouted over our heads while they cleaned our faces
Because we injected cigarettes
Because we mainlined McDonald’s
Because we rubbed vodka into our pores
Because we were disqualified in Italia ’90
Because Tony Gregory had the balance of power
Because we needed something to feel well
Because we ran
This is about everything that ever happened
One day you will wake up and you won’t want this anymore
You will see everything laid out in front of you
For the first time
You will really see what’s on offer
And you won’t want it
It’s the minute when the choice is there
It only lasts a minute though
One day you’re caught or you have no veins to inject into And you claim that this is a crisis, a desperate problem that you need help in overcoming
A photograph of thirteen people, everyone of them dead but you
And now you have to look at it and stop running
We learn to find hope in small things
In the mundanity of everyday life
We are afraid of reliving our past, that looking back might finish us off altogether
Nobody is forcing us to
Nobody can
We’re getting something to take the sickness away
We learnt to find hope in the small things
We’re sleeping in one of thirty detox beds
We are afraid of reliving our past
But we’ve collapsed all our veins
We can’t take one more turn on
So they gave us something to take the sickness away
We can’t bury what had happened under a ton of drugs
We can’t face thinking about what happened
We’re taking something so we won’t get sick
But we’re not getting better
We’re drug free, and we’ve never looked back
We’re starting to live in the world again
We’re trying to be adults, but we never learnt how to be children
We’ve stopped stealing, we’re legal, above board
And almost as sick as ever
Sick, but different
We’re telling our story
We’re sweating and our teeth are rotting
They gave us something so we wouldn’t get sick
But we are not getting better
We were bored
And the temptation was too strong
We couldn’t move forward
We couldn’t face it
So we ran again
We smoke heroin at the weekends
We are confronting it all head on
We feel all the pain and the guilt
We surrendered
We are were powerless
And we are still sick
We have switched to smoking crack
Our teeth are rotting and we can’t even smile
We can’t go on holidays without their permission
But we are were living
We are here
Still
Just
Just here
We are here
We are standing here
In the moment that is the aftermath and the beginning But we don’t know what yet
– We’re sticking around for longer
We’re fighting a war on terror
We’re shaking hands in Northern Ireland
We’re roaring for a while – we are
We’re mixing our heroin with cocaine
We’re getting weaker hits for big
ger prices
We’re slitting skin for seventy quid
We’re all working in offices
We’re drinking Starbucks and wearing Gap
We’re getting LA tattooed on our necks
We’re moving now
We are
We’re moving now
We’re taking off our rings
We’re injecting into our groins at this stage
We’re taking a ten percent cut
We’re talking about leaving
We’re robbing and selling people to feed our habits
We’re really fucking dying sick
We’re paying off our sons’ debts
We’re using our guns like toys
We’re spreading out
It’s countrywide
We’re crying about not seeing our children
We’re trying to be better
We’re putting other people first
We’re watching people nodding off on YouTube
We’re taking shits in lane ways
We’re buying weed in shops
We’re drinking more than we ever have
We don’t know how to stop
We’re living on the streets
We’re getting our dole cut
We’re contracting Hepatitis C
We’re knocking it all down
We’re operating the bulldozers
We’re having wakes for buildings
We’re tasting dust in our mouths
We’re documenting our past
We’re putting our gardens at the front
We’re not living on top of each other
We’re shaking hands with politicians
We’re making murals about Hope
We’re missing a generation
We’re feeling this huge sense of loss
We’re trying to forget
We’re thinking it doesn’t affect us
We’re feeling this huge sense of loss
We’re talking about our memories
We’re watching it all crash down around us
We can’t believe it’s happening again
We’re worrying about what We’re leaving behind us
We’re strung out on methadone
We don’t know if we want to stop
We’ve accepted
We’ve separated
We’re being fragmented
And screaming about feeling fragmented
And this is what We’re up against
We feel this huge sense of loss
And we’ve lost
We have lost
We’re starting again
We’re starting again
TRADE
BY
MARK O’HALLORAN
All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be made before commencement of rehearsal to the Author c/o Oberon Books Ltd. No performance may be given unless a licence has been obtained, and no alterations may be made in the title or the text of the play without the author’s prior written consent.
The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Irish Plays Page 3