Surviving Michael

by Birchall, Joseph

  And it took Alysha Devon all of five seconds to realise what it took me eight years to. And I’ve just got to admire her for that. One look up and down at me from those green eyes over the rim of her first cup of coffee that morning, and she had me sussed down to a tee. Guessed my past and predicted my future. He’s not worth riding, she thought. Not even worth a quick hand job in the toilets.

  So this is my worth. A five minute flirtatious tease every afternoon.

  ‘Nick, can I ask you about this?’ she says, conspiratorially, and then leans into me to show me some papers, as if presenting her cleavage to me for inspection, while every other pair of eyes in the place devours her. She says by the way I smoke my cigarette that I look like a young Martin Sheen from Apocalypse Now, when what I feel like is a very old Charlie Sheen.

  ‘You’re such a pet,’ she might add, and then touch my arm. Or chew on her pen. Or squeal with laughter at something I say. Or shake her hair loose with her free hand. And then off she’ll go back up the stairs. The hot summer days making her skirts as short as the nights. Up, up, and away. An angel rising to the heavens. Her heels clobbering on the wooden steps again. Bang. Bang. Bang. That sound like nails being beaten into a coffin. Bang. Bang. Bang. A gavel sentencing me to an eternity in this warehouse below. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  And then the shuffling sound as little Barry Stephens scurries his way out to the toilets again.

  After Aoife was gone, one of the things I most dreaded was coming home to a quiet and dark house. Actually, it turned out it didn’t bother me that much. In fact, I quite liked it. We were going out for just under ten years when it happened. Not that I had anything planned for our anniversary to celebrate.

  It’s strange that if I try to visualise her sitting in her favourite reading armchair, as I’ve seen her hundreds of times, that all I can see is an empty chair. Or if I sit and listen and pretend that I can hear the rattle of her keys outside and then the front door opening, as I’ve also heard hundreds of times, all I can hear is silence. But her perfume, her smell, her scents, all these I can smell and even taste in the air; smells that I never even noticed for years, ironically enough.

  People have asked me why I don’t move out of such a big house, but I know what they mean is away from her memory. Away from the past. How do I explain to them that it’s her memory that keeps me here? If I moved to a small apartment then my sense of loss would have nowhere to hide and could quite possibly smother me.

  We’d also been together so long that I never had a chance to hang out with myself, and I’m not so bad a person to live with after all, despite her complaints. She’s been gone for almost a year now, and there’s still lots of her stuff around the place, but I don’t mind.

  They’re right though that the house is too big for just one person, but I’d hate to have to rent out a room. Liam’s mother once walked in on him ‘mid-stroke’ in front of his computer and there was much talk of him finally moving out of his parents’ house. He asked me if he could move in here with me, and to be honest, I wish that I hadn’t just laughed at him. It was around the time that the banks were throwing mortgages at anyone who walked by them on the street, even Liam. But then after many debates, a solution was agreed with all parties in the form of a two euro lock from B&Q for his bedroom door.

  I generally don’t work at the weekends, unless there’s a big order that needs to get out, but there aren’t a lot of them anymore. Not these days. It’s funny how long the weekends are when you’re not going out with anyone. I usually have a few pints with the lads on a Friday night, but then when Saturday morning comes around, it sometimes seems like a desert of time before Monday. I particularly hate bank holiday weekends. My sister thinks I should get a hobby. I thought hobbies were something teenagers did. You spend so long with someone, they sort of become your hobby. We used to argue a lot in the last year. Maybe that was my hobby.

  To be honest, I’m happy enough at this stage to just plod along. Years ago, while in the abyss of possibility that is youth, I’d had other ambitions. I’d even toyed with the thoughts of a journalist’s or a writer’s life. Unfortunately, I spent too much time battling the torments of my own aging life and found little energy to wrangle with that of a writer’s. So I neither wrangled nor wrote, and resigned myself to years of merely aging.

  When I still lived in my parents’ house, over ten years ago, my brother jumped ship and moved to Boston. The house just wasn’t the same after that. Aoife and I tried it out over there ourselves for a couple of years, but eventually life there became as routine as life here. At least here you could get a decent pint, so we came home. It was worse living back with my parents. They had their own kind of shared companionship of silent routine that I felt I was intruding on, so Aoife and I got our own place.

  We used to rent a great apartment near Fitzwilliam Square when we got back from the States, but when we finally decided to buy a place, she wanted somewhere with a garden and near her mother’s, so I guess I’m stuck out in the sticks for the time being.

  My mam and dad had married quite young, then one day, like most couples, romance deserted them and they ran out of things to talk about so they did what most couples do - have children and talk about them, and then talk to other people who have children and like to talk about their kids too. They’d lived and loved once, though. I’ve seen some old black and white photos of a holiday in Galway. Their honeymoon, I think it was. Her in a long white dress that was probably yellow, sitting on a tall black horse that was probably brown, and himself, proudly standing with broad shoulders and smiling with big white teeth; and the dark grey mountains in the background looming benevolently over them. I wonder which he lost first, his teeth or his smile.

  I try to call around to them a few times a week. With my brother living abroad, and never bothering his arse to come home for a visit, and with my sister’s continual doctor and school appointments for her litany of kids (perhaps she should have got herself a hobby), there’s no one else except me to annoy them on a consistent basis. I also like to go by in order to show them that just because Aoife isn’t around anymore, everything is normal, in that I’m still as dismally despondent as everyone else in the world.

  I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be cheering them up or vice versa, but we do our best. They provide me with tea and offer me safe, perfunctory questions, to which I obligingly reciprocate between sips of scalding tea and an occasional custard cream, with customary and soothing answers.

  It’s an innate flaw in all of us. We wish so much for our parents to be omnipotent, and for many years they are. And they, in turn, wish us so much to be irreproachable, and for many more years, so too are we. Then we both realise that we’ve been lied to, that one’s offspring is merely a normally dysfunctional human being like everyone else, and that one’s parents are our exact equivalent, only older and duller. Inevitably we get angry at each other, and spend years in obscure habitual impatience at best, and hysteria at worst. And then finally, acceptance, hopefully sooner rather than later, and a realisation that their infallibility is as fatuous as our own. Only then can we sit, and drink tea, and dunk custard creams, and nod, and lie to each other that we’re okay, and that everything is going to be okay, and that there will, after all, be a satisfactory conclusion to each of our own individual stories.

  There’s an eclectic bunch of fellow travellers on the Luas this evening. Must be the heat that has them all out. That’s why it’s always those hot countries like in the Middle East that seem to be constantly at war. The heat just pushes them over the edge. Charlie spent a little bit of time on a kibbutz in Israel about ten years ago. Somewhere in the desert. I don’t think I could stand this heat all the time. Anyway, when he came back he read the first three chapters of Conor Cruise O’Brien’s ‘The Siege’ and ever since thinks himself an analytical expert on the Middle East. We just try to avoid the subject entirely in conversations now.

  He has an amazing apartment in the docklands that must have cost
a fortune. I’ve been to a few of his plays so I know for definite he’s lying about his acting paying for that place. I met Richard, his agent, or whoever he says he is, a couple of times. He looks a lot like Stephen Fry or some sort of Oscar Wilde character; only better dressed and even more English looking, but without the wit or charm. Liam told me he saw Charlie in a porno once, but Liam’s seen so many pornos that if he told me he’d seen me in one, I’d believe him.

  Charlie texted me earlier to say that he was coming in. It’s been a while since we were all out together for a pint. ‘Will b der later Nicolas,’ he wrote. I hate when he calls me Nicolas, but I try not to say it as it only provokes him to use it more often. I don’t think I’ve been called Nicolas by anyone else since Father Jim poured holy water over my head and made me a fully-fledged member of the Catholic Church. I can’t think of any other international organisation with fewer entry requirements and vetting policies than the Vatican; any sort of a pulse and you’re in. Even Facebook demands a certain level of computer skills and an email address before signing you up. However, adding someone as a member before they acquire any say in the matter has to be handed to them as a stroke of genius.

  Naturally, I was baptised Nicolas because like all Nicolases I was born on Christmas Day. One day later, it would have been Stephen. One day earlier, I don’t know, maybe Rudolf. Such banal insipidity by my parents set the stage for my development into a mature member of society. Either way, I’m pretty sure that by the time I had left the church grounds, I was Nick. Choosing a name for your children has to be the most personal and intimate thing you can do for anyone.

  Lately, my mind’s become a little erratic, bouncing from one subject to another like a pinball machine. Danny suggested I try meditation. He’s into all that shite. Self-helping himself with every new book that comes out on the market. He’s obviously looking for an answer to something, but I’m not so sure that he even knows what the question is. If it’s not self-help then it’s some other author that everyone’s heard of but that nobody actually reads – Joyce, Beckett, Martin Amis, Sebastian Barry. He doesn’t do it to impress anybody; I think he does it to impress himself.

  When Danny and his dad were doing the go-karting together, I used to be so jealous of how close they were. They seemed to be hanging out together all the time, and almost every Saturday they’d be off racing in one part of the country or another. You certainly wouldn’t think that looking at them now.

  On a Saturday in my house, my Dad would sit in his armchair all afternoon, its armrests worn to a lighter shade of brown than its back and sides, watching one horse race after another, and studying open newspapers on the coffee table beside him, trying to unearth a positive result from an equation of betting odds, race times and strange horse names such as Peggy’s Paradise, Sting like a Bee, or Rose’s Delight.

  Whether he won or lost, my dad would give a little cough, circle the winner with his chewed pencil and look at the line up for the next race. Whenever I asked him, which was all the time, if he’d won, he’d tap the side of his nose with his forefinger and nod towards the kitchen where my mother would be either cooking a meal or cleaning up after one. I’d nod back smiling, happy in our shared, if misunderstood, secret and he’d give an ambiguous ’ah’, and concentrate harder on his paper.

  Only two stops to Stephen’s Green. I shouldn’t have come out tonight, but I had to. We always get together on this night. Nobody ever mentions why, of course, but all four of us always turn up.

  I’m not in the mood, but I’m even less in the mood to stay in and start a fresh bottle of Jameson. I’ve only got into whiskey in the last six months. I’d buy a bottle every Sunday evening and it would easily do me for the week. Then one Thursday I went to pour myself a drink and the bottle was empty. This evening would have been my third bottle to open this week. I know I’m on a slippery slope downwards to alcoholism, but so far, I’m enjoying the ride down.

  Charlie

  I’M SITTING ON the edge of the bed, and I’m wearing nothing but my Rolex. It says three o’clock, but it doesn’t just say it – it smiles it. It says, ‘the whole world could go to shit at any moment, but I’m telling you, no, I’m guaranteeing you, that at this precise moment it’s three o’clock’. What a beautiful watch. A Daytona Oyster with a white face. Waterproof. Shockproof. Breakable proof. The second hand runs smoothly, doesn’t jump from second to second like the fakes. I love the weight of it hanging from my wrist. I never take it off. Only when I’m at the gym, or the pool. Or when I’m jogging. Quality and style, that’s what you’re paying for. Not that I bought it. It was given to me by one of my regulars. A politician from Cork or Kerry or someplace. She said she was only up in Dublin for the night and didn’t have time to get the cash. I’m a fool for taking it, but she’s a regular, and you’ve got to look after your regulars. I mean, they’re your bread and butter. They say that everyone’s been affected by this recession. And it’s true. Even my business. Having said that, the rich still live in the nice areas and the poor haven’t moved out of their estates, so I don’t see what exactly has changed. They used to say that all ships rise in a booming economy, but I think that’s something the upper classes tell themselves to justify fucking over the working class. I don’t listen to the news, but I’ve certainly seen a slowing down from Irish clients. I reckon my home visits have been cut in half over the last few years. Which is a pity, as I always prefer the home visits to the hotels. Lately, I find myself imagining it’s my house that I’m in, and that the photos on the walls are of my family. What a dickhead I’m becoming for thinking something like that. Thank God for the Germans and the IMF though. Lately I’ve had a lot of Danish business women. Don’t know why. I never ask. It’s not as if they don’t like to talk, though. Christ, do they like to talk. It’s part of the job though. Sometimes I think they’re paying me for my conversational skills as much as my bedroom skills. But I listen when I need to listen, and talk when I need to talk. The Americans generally like a good natter beforehand, but they’re very business-like and focused when it comes to the actual act, which suits me fine as I’ve a job to do, don’t I? There’s nothing worse than someone babbling on while I’m trying to perform. Worse than that, are the screamers. I’ve nothing against a little sexy moan every now and again, but there’s no need for the fog horns. I had this Spanish client a couple of weeks ago, and man did she let loose. Started screaming all this Spanish shit, and the sweat was rolling off me as I’m trying to keep up with her enthusiasm. Someone started knocking on the wall, so I put my hand over her mouth. Her eyes bulged wide and she seemed to get off on this, and it doubled her excitement, and she bit down hard on my hand and then I started screaming. What a fucking nightmare. Literally! She was apologetic afterwards – lo siento, lo siento, she kept saying. Gave me another two hundred euro for my inconvenience. Five years ago, I’d have told Richard to take her off my clients’ list, but not these days. These days, you take what you’re given. Any nationality. Any age. Any size. But he doesn’t usually give me too much from the low end. He knows that I can perform and I won’t let him down, if you pardon the pun. The client always walks away happy. That’s if she can walk away at all. Plus, I don’t do any gay stuff, so my market’s a lot more limited than most of the other guys.

  ‘Did you just look at your watch, Charlie?’

  Fuck. Rule number one – never look at your watch. Gives the client the impression that there’s somewhere else you’ve got to be, or something else you’ve got to do, or worse, someone else you’ve got to do. Shatters their fantasies. The illusion of exclusivity, as Richard calls it.

  ‘What? Of course not.’

  Christ, what was her name again? I’m terrible with names.

  ‘But I just saw you looking at your watch.’

  Her cockney accent is always more prominent after the act.

  ‘It’s a Rolex, Berna... Bernie. I always love looking at this watch. It’s a real one. You see the second hand? Well...’

&nb
sp; ‘I don’t doubt it, darling. Presumably a gift from some tart.’

  Shit. This is going to cost me time. And I’ve got to get going.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You know I love spending time with you.’

  I jump up onto the bed, and start kissing her neck. She pretends to push me away, and I pretend to struggle. Most women like their little games. Their fantasies. That’s what they pay me for. Sure, I fuck them, and physically they desire me, but that’s only a by-product of what’s going on. I’m their bad boy. Their bit of rough. I give them chivalry and equality. I listen to them. I desire them. I understand them. I can be anything that they want me to be. And all charged by the hour. Or at least I can pretend to be all those things. I’m not a big reader, but I do remember reading in one of those men’s magazines that are always lying around Richard’s office, that even Freud couldn’t figure out what women want.

  ‘Oh, Charlie,’ she moans into my ear.

  Freud should have asked me.

  ‘Again, Charlie, darling. Again.’

  I figured that one out after only a few months in this game.

  ‘Oh, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.’

  Everything, Herr Freud. Women want everything. And who am I to deny them it?