Surviving Michael

by Birchall, Joseph

  ‘Look,’ Charlie says to me, ‘that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Ask me bollocks, Byrne,’ I tell him.

  With that, Liam comes back with what looks like a double vodka. He’s too wrapped up in his own nervousness to notice the change of mood in our group. We sip on our drinks in silence. The music bounces off the walls around us.

  ‘Are we going to do this or not?’ Danny finally asks.

  ‘What do you mean “we”?’ Liam says.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Charlie says, making eye contact with me. ‘How do we know he’s going to say what we told him to?’

  ‘What the fuck else am I going to say?’ Liam almost laughs.

  I still have a lump of anger in me, but it’ll have to wait for another time. ‘He has a point,’ I agree. ‘One of us will have to stand near him so we can hear him.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Charlie says quickly.

  ‘No, I should do it,’ Danny protests, ‘it was my idea to do it.’

  ‘We’ll all take turns,’ I tell them. They’re happy about this and Charlie even rubs his hands in anticipation.

  ‘Okay, but I’m going first,’ Danny says.

  ‘I’m second,’ Charlie shouts out, raising his arm into the air like a child in a classroom.

  Liam begins to take deep breaths, and I see a couple of lines of sweat run slowly down both sides of his face.

  ‘I feel sick,’ he mumbles.

  ‘Where’s your usual aplomb, Liam?’ Danny asks.

  ‘A plum?’ Liam asks, ‘what the fuck are you talking about?’

  I take the glass out of Liam’s hand. ‘Give me that and listen to me. Let’s get this over with. The longer you take, the worse it’s going to get.’

  He takes another long look around him. Charlie, and even Danny, are starting to get a little eager, smiling at each other in anticipation. I look around the club, and spot a dark, curly haired girl sitting at a table on her own not too far from us.

  ‘Start over there,’ I tell him as I point at her. He looks over at her and then his head drops down like a cord has been cut above him.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ he says to the ground, and shakes his head.

  ‘Ah, Jesus,’ I say.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he almost cries. ‘I just can’t do it.’

  Charlie steps forward and shouts at him, ‘you are doing it. Cop on to yourself for fuck sake.’

  ‘I can’t, I can’t.’ He’s almost in tears now. Charlie, Danny and I look at each other. We’re all a little shocked to be honest. Here’s someone who’s watched women shagging more times than the three of us put together, and he won’t even walk up to a girl and say hi. We look at him, half sobbing to himself for a while.

  Eventually Danny steps up. ‘Christ Almighty, Liam. Just start for fuck’s sake. Once you get going it’ll be easier. The first one is half the battle.’

  Liam raises his head and turns to look at the girl. It finally looks like Danny’s self-help books are starting to pay off. Liam makes the slightest baby step to the right. Then another. We all hold our breaths as if a winning goal is almost a certainty.

  And then, like a truly dedicated loser, he gives up. His size and bulk appear even larger and heavier than they normally do. As if the whole building could fall down around him and he’d be the only thing standing alone in the rubble. His head bends down. His shoulders stoop. I lie to myself and say he’s not weeping.

  I’ve never seen anything so abysmally pathetic before. I want to smack him right now, right here and just go home.

  Charlie

  IT’S FUNNY THAT while Liam is using all the willpower he can muster to walk up to a girl and convince them to sleep with him, I’m using all my willpower not to. Being able to walk into any nightclub or pub or any room for that matter, and knowing you can sleep with any girl in there, whether she has a boyfriend or even a husband, well, there’s a certain power in that. Like a kind of superpower, I guess.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ Liam whines.

  What a fucking joke. Two girls are staring over at him. I don’t feel angry with him. I’m simply embarrassed. Mortified if anyone should see us. Well not him, me. I can’t imagine it’ll take much longer before those goon-bouncers come over. If I had known Liam had such a problem with talking to girls, I could have helped him out a bit. He only had to ask. I see Nick take a step towards him. His fist is clenched. That’s not going help matters. I’ll try to convince Liam first before it’s all over. I reach out and put my hand on Nick’s arm. He spins his head around and looks at me, and for more than a second I think he’s going to hit me instead. His eyes are full of anger, and it takes a couple of moments of us staring at each other before the intensity in his eyes simmers somewhat. I take my hand off Nick, and grab a hold of Liam’s new but unironed shirt.

  ‘Come on,’ I shout at him, and drag him after me. He comes along willingly as I push my way through the crowd, holding his arm with one hand as if towing an over-sized lorry behind me. Danny and Nick follow. I shove open the door of the toilets. There’s a toilet attendant handing some guy a paper towel as we come in, and they both take a step back. Grabbing Liam, I slam him up against the wall, harder than I had intended. The guy drying his hands runs out, and the attendant gathers up his coins but stays. Danny and Nick stand either side of me.

  I turn my head back to both of them. ‘So, who wants to go first?’ I ask.

  Liam looks up, realising I hadn’t brought him in for a pep talk.

  ‘I do,’ Nick says.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Liam says.

  I ignore him. ‘Okay, Nick,’ I say, ‘Liam raise your head so that Nick doesn’t break your nose. Trust me, that’s pain you just don’t want.’

  I step to the side to allow Nick to stand in front of him.

  ‘Take it easy, lads,’ the toilet attendant calls over.

  Danny turns around to him. ‘Stay out of this and shut the fuck up.’

  Nick and I look at Danny and then at each other.

  Liam has raised his hands to his face and has started sobbing.

  ‘Alright, then,’ he mumbles from behind his hands, ‘I’ll do it. I’ll do it.’

  Danny grabs him and pushes him hard against the wall again. I’ve never seen him so wound up. ‘Are you going to do it this time?’ he yells at him.

  ‘Yes, I’ll do it. I’ll do it.’

  A few more guys have come in and are staring at us, not sure whether to go back out or stay for the craic.

  ‘Do you remember what you have to say?’ Danny continues.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Liam whimpers.

  ‘Say it then,’

  Liam takes his hands down from his face and wipes his eyes.

  ‘Say it,’ Danny shouts at him.

  ‘I think you’re very cute,’ he mumbles through his tears, ‘would you like to come home with me?’

  Well, Nick and I nearly piss ourselves laughing. I know I should feel sorry for him, being my cousin and all, but just to see him in the toilet reduced to a mere shadow of his twenty two stone self is simply comical. It’s as if he’s being forced across a bridge that he’s tried unsuccessfully to cross on his own for the last twenty years.

  ‘What?’ Danny shouts at him again. ‘I can’t hear you.’

  ‘I think you’re very cute. Would you like to come home with me?’

  Someone behind us sniggers. Danny turns around and tells him to ‘shut the fuck up, you,’ which he obeys.

  ‘Are you ready then?’ Danny asks Liam. Liam nods. ‘Let’s do it, then,’ he says a little more encouragingly, and straightens Liam’s shirt collars.

  Nick holds open the door, and I slap Liam on the shoulders and he follows him back outside. Danny walks over to the bathroom attendant and throws a coin into the guy’s tip tray. He chooses the Calvin Klein aftershave and sprays it on himself liberally. I walk behind him, and look at his reflection in the mirror. He doesn’t look at me.

  ‘You okay, mate?’ I ask him.

  He
puts the aftershave down but continues staring at himself

  ‘What do you think?’ he says, and then walks out ahead of me.

  Danny

  AS I OPEN the door to the toilets and walk back outside, the music attacks me from all sides like a swarm of bees. I feel Charlie slap me on the back as we walk back to where we were. He’s all hands, Charlie. Always has to be touching something or someone.

  Nick is giving Liam some words of encouragement as if he’s in the corner of a ring with a boxer. ‘Go Nike on this Liam. Just fucking do it. Let’s go.’

  ‘The curly haired brunette with no tits is still over there,’ Charlie tells him.

  ‘Come on, big man,’ I say to him. ‘I’m going to go over and stand beside her.’

  He takes a few deep breaths with his eyes closed as if about to attempt a bungee jump. I walk over as nonchalantly as possible to the girl. She looks a little rougher close up than from a distance but never mind. Liam is still going through a whole deep breathing exercise. He finally takes one deep breath, then twists around on his heels. He charges so fast that he ploughs straight into a lounge girl, knocks her sideways and sends her tray of drinks smashing to the floor.

  She lets rip into him and he just stands there in shock. His shirt is now wet with some of the splash back from the tray. I can see him murmur a few words to her, but she just pushes him hard in the chest and storms off. He looks up, not sure what to do. Nick points over to where I am, directing Liam to carry on.

  He takes another breath and starts again. I can see Charlie put his hand onto Nick’s shoulder as they both watch him walk away. They can hardly contain themselves with the excitement. Liam is charging at me like a bull; his eyes locked on the girl sitting near me. His face is contorted as if he’s in pain. I can almost hear the soundtrack to Jaws playing in my head.

  I look down at the girl and as if sensing the impending danger, like a rabbit smelling a fox, she raises her head up and looks around. Liam is still at full speed as she turns and looks directly at him. He stops dead.

  Fuck.

  ‘Sharon.’ One of her friends calls her and she looks away. Liam continues to stare at her. Nick and Charlie are open mouthed, looking at him. His shoulders fall ever so slightly and he turns back around towards them.

  Nick’s expression turns to anger. As Liam is walking back to them, Nick makes a fist and slams it into his other hand, then points back towards the girl. Liam stops again. Charlie points at her as well. Liam turns and looks over at her and then at me. For several seconds I think he’s going to make a run for the exit. I’m sure the thought crosses his mind.

  He closes his eyes again, takes another deep breath and marches back towards the girl. Nick makes a fist in the air. Charlie clasps his hands together and almost hides his face behind them, as if he were watching a horror movie. In a way, he is. The girl senses Liam again, but this time she’s too late. He’s already almost on top of her. I lean over quickly to listen, and nearly fall over the table.

  I hear him mumble something but it’s incoherent with the music.

  ‘What did you say?’ she shouts up at him.

  I hear him mumble again, and I can just about make out, ‘...do you want to come home with me?’

  She looks him up and down for a second. ‘Piss off, fatso,’ she shouts and turns away from him. Now that, I heard. What a bitch.

  Liam’s expression doesn’t even register any shock. He simply nods and starts to walk off to another table. Nick and Charlie are looking over at me. I’d hardly call the incident an overwhelming success story, but I have no choice but to give them both a thumbs up. They jump a little in celebration and all previous arguments are obviously forgotten as they hug each other. I take off after Liam.

  I can hear his monotone proposal to each girl, but it sounds more like he was asking them if they want salt and vinegar on their chips, than he’s asking them to copulate with him. The music is loud, and I don’t think a lot of the girls can even hear him properly.

  The first two girls just look at him in disbelief and then turn away. The third girl isn’t too bad - ‘not tonight honey.’ The fourth is a little harsher – ‘dream on tubby.’ The fifth is brutal. She bursts into laughter and screams at her friends, - ‘did ye hear what he just said to me, the dirty prick?’ She then tells them and they all laugh at him. He walks away slowly, a look of utter dejection on his face. I want to go over to him and tell him to stop, but watching him is somewhat like the involuntary desire of watching the victims of a car crash as you drive by.

  Generally, the less attractive girls give him the worst time, quite plausibly because no one has ever said anything like that to them before, and they’re too embarrassed and don’t know what else to say. He goes through about another six or seven girls. I have to hand it to the guy, there aren’t that many men who can take that much sheer rejection and still soldier on. It’s as if he’s doing it as a sort of self-penance for all the times he had wanted to approach a girl over the last twenty years and hadn’t had the guts to do it.

  I feel a tap on my shoulder, and turn to see Charlie. ‘What are they saying to him?’ he shouts into my ear.

  ‘It’s brutal, man,’ I tell him. ‘Brutal.’

  ‘It’s my turn,’ he says and practically pushes me out of the way.

  Liam

  ‘I’M SORRY. What did you say?’

  I stopped countin’ after the sixth or seventh girl. That is to say, I lost count after the sixth or seventh. But it’s been about twenty now. Possibly more. I can’t see Danny. He must of got bored. What’s worse is, a lot of the times, like this one, they can’t even hear me, and I have to repeat meself. So that makes it more like fifty times then.

  This one is sittin’ on her own, but the table is full of drinks. She has blonde hair. She’s sort of pretty. The pretty ones are a bit nicer, but not always. Her clothes are a bit baggy. Loose.

  The other three have fucked off for all I know. I say me piece to her.

  ‘I didn’t hear what you said,’ she says to me.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I tell her.

  ‘Well, it kind of does,’ she says and stares up at me.

  She might call the bouncers for harassin’ her. ‘I said,’ I say to her, ‘I think you’re very cute. Would you like to come home with me?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought you said,’ she says. ‘How much did they bet you to say that to me?’

  I look down at her. ‘Twenty euro?’ she asks.

  I don’t answer.

  ‘Fifty?’

  I just stare at her like a goon.

  ‘My friends gave you a hundred euro to tell me I’m cute?’

  ‘No, no it’s not like that,’ I tell her.

  ‘What’s it like then?’

  Not for the first time tonight, I don’t have a clue what to say. I open my mouth as usual but nothin’ comes out.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mumble to her and walk away. I decide to finish. I’ll look for the others. First I’m going to get a drink. As I walk away from the girl though, I get a bad feelin’ in me belly. There was somethin’ about the way she looked at me. I stop. She wasn’t angry or embarrassed like the others. She just looked, kind of sad. Like she was goin’ to cry.

  ‘I did it for a dare alright, but it wasn’t for money.’ She looks up at me again. ‘I don’t want you thinkin’ that it’d take a bloke money to have to talk to you or anythin’ like that. I’m mean, you’re gorgeous. I’m sure every bloke in this place would love to... you know... be with yeh, like. I just don’t want you to get the wrong impression or anythin’.’

  She keeps looking at me. She has nice green eyes. I nod at her. As I walk away, she grabs me by the sleeve.

  ‘No wait,’ she says and smiles at me. Not many girls have ever smiled at me before. It’s nice.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘I was a bit rude to you. It’s been a rough day, you know.’

  She lets go of me shirt. ‘That’s okay,’ I says, ‘I know what you mean. No
harm done.’

  I’m not sure if she wants me to shake her hand or somethin’, like mates from school who just had a fight. I walk away but she grabs me shirt again.

  ‘You see,’ she says, but she’s not lookin’ at me now. ‘My boyfriend left me a couple of weeks ago, and well, you know yourself, it kind of throws you off balance a little.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her.

  ‘You’re sorry. I’m sorry. My mum’s sorry. My friends are sorry. Everybody’s sorry.’

  I know I should go but I don’t. ‘If you weren’t in the mood, then why did you come out?’ I ask her.

  She looks straight into me eyes again. ‘My friends thought it would help cheer me up.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Over there,’ she says and nods at two girls chattin’ and flirtin’ with two guys.

  ‘So why don’t you just go home then?’ I ask her.

  ‘You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?’

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘And you apologise a lot too.’

  ‘I know. Sorry.’

  She laughs. I smile at her laugh, but I still feel a little uncomfortable talkin’ to her. No, that’s not true. I like talkin’ to her. I just don’t like the silences in between.

  ‘What happened between you and the other fella?’

  ‘Well,’ she says, ‘since you ask, and to be totally honest, which is not somethin’ I’ve done lately, he said I’d put on a lot of weight since last year. That I’m not the girl I once was.’

  ‘I’ve put on a few pounds meself in the last year,’ I tell her.

  She throws her head back and laughs loudly. A few girls have done that to me this evenin’, but this is different.

  ‘No honest,’ I say. ‘I was only about seventeen stone this time last year.’

  She laughs again.

  ‘You wouldn’t have recognised me.’

  This time we both laugh.

  ‘Listen, I better go so,’ I tell her. ‘I hope everythin’ works out for you. It usually does.’

  ‘Thanks, you’re sweet,’ she replies. ‘What’s your name?’