Here Are the Young Men

by Rob Doyle

  ‘Ye write poetry?’

  ‘Of course I do. If this wasn’t such a cretinized culture, all real men would be writin poetry. It used to be a sign of manliness – and now they’d have ye think it’s effeminate! Can ye believe that, how far we’ve fuckin regressed?’ He lit his smoke, took a puff, and added, ‘Look out for me buke, Matthew, it’s in a few of these shops around town. I had it printed meself. Blazin stuff it is. Poetry as nailbomb, poetry as napalm. Poetry to fondle your testicles. Decimation in the service of a higher ideal. It’s good stuff, Matthew.’

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘Molesting Your Inner Child. I’m tellin ye, there’s more truth in a single page of it than you’ll find in most of the bukes linin the shelves of Hodges bleedin Figgis. It’s my ambition to say in ten sentences what other cunts say in whole bukes – what other cunts don’t say in whole bukes, more like it.’

  ‘I’ll look out for it.’

  ‘Ye will in yer bollocks,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘But go on ye mischievous cunt ye, enjoy those yokes and remember, the sacred and the ecstatic are your fuckin birthright. Don’t let these Fianna Fáil pederasts tell ye otherwise. They wouldn’t know God if she bent right down and sucked their balls.’

  I nodded along as if I knew what he was on about. He told me to give him a call some time and we’d ‘tear this city a new arsehole’. I said I would. Then I hurried off to meet my friends.

  It was around six in the morning. The last pubs and clubs had long since closed and me, Cocker, Rez and Kearney were roaming the city. Jen had gone home earlier (she was the only one who hadn’t taken a pill). We were still off our heads, watching the streets run pale with morning light. All was eerily, magically still. Had this been any other morning, people would have been going to work, the city coming to life, but today was a holy day.

  ‘It’s like 28 Days Later,’ said Rez as we approached Merrion Square.

  ‘And we’re the zombies,’ added Cocker.

  I rolled my jaw and watched Rez gazing about in blitzed wonder. He looked kind of beautiful in the light of dawn, sallow and gaunt, his hair slicked back in waves of grease and sweat. My mind was blasted, my ears still ringing hours after the gig.

  We reached the gates of Merrion Square.

  ‘It’s closed,’ said Rez.

  We stood around for a while in aimless, contented silence. Rez made flicking movements with his fingers, engrossed in the motion and sensations. I looked up the street, towards the National Gallery. This was a very Georgian part of Dublin, I had been led to believe, though I had no real idea what that meant, nor did I care.

  Still the contented silence. Some birds were singing. Eventually Cocker said, ‘Will we go somewhere else, then?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘The park is closed.’

  With that we started walking, heading up past Trinity, following the road around to Pearse Street Station.

  Now Rez was at my side, going on about Quentin Tarantino.

  ‘He’s just the only relevant director, the only one. Every other film ye see is just totally obsolete, just completely dishonest. The thing with Tarantino is that he doesn’t pretend there’s a real world out there for his films to show us – there are only more films. And the “real world” is only a copy of films – Tarantino knows this. Ah, he’s just amazin. But all these other directors, they keep tryin to make films about “real” people – as if they still exist! They just don’t get it. I mean, like, ye see a guy in a film, and he’s sittin in a doorway down some alley, wearin a dark coat and drinkin whiskey from a hip flask. And we’re supposed to believe that what ye see is what ye get, and this character is doin all this in a natural way, and he’s not even aware of the glamour of it, of how much it reminds ye of, like, fifty other films. Whereas in “real life” the camera is always on you. You’re always in a film.’

  He paused to inhale through his nostrils, tilting his face to the sunlight. ‘That’s the point of Tarantino – he’s after givin up on reality. He knows that it disappeared back in the forties or whenever. He doesn’t pretend we’re still livin in that time when people had, like, emotional journeys and dramatic conflicts and, ye know, moral dilemmas. He’s cut the crap.’

  I grinned and nodded along, caught up in his enthusiasm. He looked happy, glad of an audience.

  I noticed that we were by now surprisingly deep into the north-side. It was shabbier, dodgier than the city centre, and unfamiliar. There were some homeless people on the streets; alcos and junkies. We ignored the alcos and looked at the ground when we passed the junkies, and hid our drink from all of them.

  ‘Gis a smoke, lads,’ demanded a junkie in a shrill whine, emerging suddenly from the doorway where he had been perched. I was nearest to him and he had seen the pack in my hands, so I gave him one. His skin was the colour of your fingers after you’ve smoked eighty cigarettes. ‘Gis another one for later,’ he demanded. I refused. ‘Lads have yis got some change for a hostel,’ he said. Nobody believed for a second that it was really a hostel he wanted and nobody was expected to.

  ‘No, sorry,’ said Rez, starting to walk away.

  Cocker fished in his pocket for some coins, but Kearney shot him a disgusted look and said, ‘Don’t go givin anythin to that junkie cunt.’ Cocker looked at then obeyed Kearney. We all turned to walk away.

  ‘Girrup to fuck!’ the junkie screeched after us. Now his grey, squinting face was scrunched up with hate. ‘A few fuckin pence for a bleedin hostel, are yis tellin me yis don’t have a few fuckin pence?’

  ‘No,’ me and Rez muttered, walking faster, heads down, tensing ourselves for an assault, possibly with syringes. I noticed that, to my side, Kearney was slowing down, like he was deciding on something.

  The junkie kept screeching at us: ‘Go on yis pack of cunts, yis fuckin liars. I can hear the fuckin coins rattlin in yisser pockets. I’ve got nothin, all I’m after is a bleedin hostel.’ A wave of sentimentality flooded his voice on the last sentence, like he was suddenly believing his own spiel. He sounded close to tears.

  Kearney came to a stop. ‘Just leave it, Kearney,’ I said.

  Kearney turned and walked towards the junkie. I cursed. He was going to start something, and here we were in some dodgy part of the northside. Rez shouted at him but Kearney didn’t turn around. The junkie watched as he approached. The junkie wasn’t nervous; he knew the street people around here. We were the outsiders.

  And then I heard Kearney’s voice, soft and low, talking to the junkie – he was being friendly. He put his hand into his pocket, rooting for coins, keeping up his pleasant stream of chat. The junkie looked baffled. I started to giggle. ‘Holy fuck,’ said Cocker. Now Kearney, holding a fistful of coins in one hand to drop into the junkie’s palm, raised the other and placed it on the junkie’s shoulder. He patted him softly. ‘I can’t believe what I’m seein here, lads,’ said Cocker.

  That was when Kearney loafed him. He just lunged in and brought his forehead smashing down on the bridge of the junkie’s nose. There was a loud moan and the junkie went down, ejaculating blood. As he crashed to his knees he put his hands to his face, wailing horribly. I roared. Kearney stood above the kneeling junkie for a moment, looking down at him, serious and intense. Then he lifted his heel to waist height, took careful aim, and brought it crashing down on the junkie’s head. The junkie toppled over, his face hitting the ground, crying and gurgling through a mess of blood.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ Cocker whined. ‘Kearney ye prick! Leg it, lads!’

  We were gone, not caring if Kearney was caught there and beaten to death by a horde of junkies and winos and scumbags.

  We didn’t stop running till we were back near the river, down Marlborough Street where it was quiet. Kearney wasn’t with us. ‘He’s probably gettin his head smashed into the path as we speak,’ said Cocker.

  ‘Good,’ Rez muttered. ‘I hope he is, he’d fuckin deserve it. I can’t believe this. What an arsehole.’ I had rarely seen Rez so angry. Fighting had never b
een our thing, despite the punk-rock attitude and the cynical agenda. In fact, we were against it.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Cocker, looking at me. ‘Yer hands are shakin. Here, have a smoke.’ I took the cigarette, sat down on the kerb and lit up.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Rez said every few moments, pacing up and down.

  ‘Do ye think I should ring him?’ said Cocker.

  ‘What’s the point, fuck him,’ Rez replied.

  A minute later, my phone beeped. I read the message: ‘gone to dwaynes gaff. see yiz l8r. dat was MENtal!’

  I showed the others. ‘He’s an arsehole,’ said Rez. ‘He thinks we all find it hilarious.’

  ‘His brother will appreciate the story,’ said Cocker. ‘I’d say that’s why he’s goin there.’

  ‘Not to mention to keep gettin off his face,’ I said. Kearney’s brother, Dwayne, lived in a flat near the Black Church, not far into the northside. He’d been living there with his girlfriend until recently, but she had left him. Now he just got wrecked all the time, so said Kearney. The brother was a weirdo; Rez reckoned he was autistic. I’d met him a couple of times and you got the sense that he wasn’t really there with you, even when you were talking with him. He laughed too harshly at things that weren’t funny, and just stared into space when you made a real joke. Dwayne was about to head over to the States to work for the summer and Kearney hoped to follow as soon as he could.

  ‘Jesus, that’s after bringin me down,’ said Rez. ‘I’d never felt so good in me life, then he had to go and do that. Jesus. We should go somewhere we can sit down and drink the cans, and take the last pills as well.’

  We decided to take them in a church, for a laugh. We went in just as Mass was starting and knelt down the back, behind the scattered oul ones and oul fellas, off our faces. All the oul ones looked like Yoda. The priest was old, but probably only half the age of most of his audience. We passed the cans between us and said ‘Body of Christ’ when putting the pills on our tongues. Then some oul one shrieked at us for drinking in the house of God and we fled.

  It was turning into a sunny morning. We walked back down over O’Connell Bridge and into the grounds of Trinity College, where we found a quiet, grassy corner to finish our cans. Rez started rolling a spliff and we had a laugh about the scene in the church.

  ‘That oul one probably thinks we’re Satanists,’ said Cocker.

  ‘Beelzebub,’ I said.

  ‘As if we gave a bollocks about any of it, one way or the other,’ said Rez with a chuckle.

  ‘The Catholic Church,’ said Cocker, sneering. ‘Who’d bother to give a fuck about them any more? Bunch of paedos – all they want to do is ride the arses off little boys all day.’

  My mind was fucked from the drugs and again I had the vision of thousands of little abortions, holding their hands to make a foetus chain and singing in harmony, flowing down the sewers and out to sea. It was deadly.

  Rez said, ‘Lads, what is the fuckin story with Kearney? Seriously. He’s turnin into a scumbag. Remember when he used to always be dead quiet and shy? You’d have sworn he was an altar boy or something. Since when has he turned into a fuckin psychopath?’

  ‘Maybe it’s to do with his da,’ I said.

  ‘What do ye mean?’

  ‘Just, ye know, the way he headed off to Thailand and married some young one basically the same age as Kearney.’

  Rez looked unconvinced. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I really doubt Kearney even cares about that. I’d say he’s glad. That was just the card he played in school whenever they were about to kick him out. Lashin on the waterworks and then laughin as soon as they’d turned their backs.’ He frowned, thinking for a moment. Then he laughed and said, ‘That boy needs therapy.’

  I said, ‘Well I suppose we’ll be seein him on Wednesday for the graduation. Or outside the graduation, more like it. There’ll be no keepin him away. But ah, that’s alright though. That’s the kind of night ye actually want Kearney around on.’

  They nodded. ‘Yeah, he’s a good soldier, no one can deny that about him,’ said Cocker. ‘Anyway, that junkie was a total knacker. Maybe next time he won’t go screechin abuse at people in the street. So what are we goin to do at the ceremony? I can’t wait. The fuckers will rue the day. It’s goin to be like Baghdad.’

  ‘A final fuck you,’ said Rez, grinning.

  ‘Our 9/11,’ I added. That was a phrase we threw in anywhere we could. Cocker passed me a can and I gulped on it. ‘What a night this has been,’ I said. ‘Welcome to the summer, lads.’

  The sun cheerfully mounted the morning sky and we lay about, off our heads and laughing in the sunshine like it was all a big fucking Coke ad.

  8 | Kearney

  Snapshot Number 4: Kearney B Real!

  Kearney finished off the whore in the pink miniskirt with a crack of a baseball bat to the skull, then shot her in the face for good measure. The name of this bloodied mess was Jen. Now an innocent bystander came strolling around the corner – it was Matthew! Seeing what was happening, Matthew let out a terrified yelp, turned on his heel and ran. Kearney walked after him, switching to the shotgun as he reached the street corner. He hoisted the gun to waist height and fired. A circular flash of blood coloured the murky middle distance. Still Matthew staggered on. His moan withered to a protracted, tearful gasping. Then Kearney switched to the assault rifle and wasted the cunt with a languid spray of gunfire.

  That cleared the area of any other innocent bystanders. No one is innocent, thought Kearney, breaking into an easy jog to get himself out of these back alleys and shady laneways. He hijacked a Mercedes and shot the driver in the jaw. Then he cruised towards the city’s main shopping district. He was supposed to be picking up a backstreet abortionist from a house in West Town and taking him to Eddie Fly’s in Kingsland. Or was it that he was supposed to ferry a trunkful of coke to Sly Diamond the Mexican and then kill the greaser punk when he paid for the shit? He couldn’t remember, cos he didn’t give a fuck. Following the missions was good once in a while, a diversion. But most of the time Kearney preferred to just cruise and kill.

  He broke the red lights as he arrived at the glitzy city-centre plaza, then pulled a handbraker and flattened an old man as he screeched to a halt. Onlookers screamed as Kearney emerged from the car, slow and deliberate, a man of steel. He hammered the combination to activate the Maximum Weapons Cheat – he had resisted it thus far, knowing that total overkill all the time could become monotonous. But now the moment was right: it was time to climax.

  ‘Are yis ready, humans?’ he bellowed across the plaza. ‘Are yis ready for me, human race?’

  He pulled out his rocket launcher and fired randomly. ‘ALLAHU AKBAR!’ he roared as the missile swooshed across the dark expanse of the plaza, tracing a horizontal plume of smoke. It slammed into the side of a building and Kearney, exultant yet sober, relishing every moment with cold intensity, saw his own face lit up in the orange flare of the explosion.

  Cars were skidding on to the scene, unsure of which way to flee. Kearney launched a rocket into the side of a dark-green Mazda. It burst on impact, a thump of flame igniting the car behind, which also exploded a moment later. The cops were swarming in by now. Kearney took cover behind a burnt-out car and switched to sniper rifle. He picked off a few pigs as they ran for position, savouring the founts of blood that spouted from their neck wounds. He pinned a copper in the shoulder and he spun in the crosshair once, twice, slowing with each turn – lo and behold, it was Kearney’s da! ‘Ye fuckin paedo ye!’ Kearney roared. Then he pulled the trigger and the pig’s face vanished in a halo of dark gore.

  ‘YOU ARE SURROUNDED! THERE IS NO ESCAPE! DROP YOUR WEAPONS OR YOU WILL BE KILLED!’

  The voice came from the sky; they had set the cop chopper on him but Kearney got it in his sights with the rocket launcher and took it out with the first shot. The helicopter bled smoke and began to spin earthwards in drunken spirals. ‘Fuck yis, humans!’ screeched an ecstatic Kearney. The people below screamed and tri
ed to run, but there was no way of knowing where the bird would fall. It crashed finally into the entranceway of a skyscraper at the side of the plaza, killing three innocent bystanders.

  No one is innocent, insisted Kearney – and as he did a single crack of gunfire sounded behind him and his face exploded in a drenching of blood and gore. He had been shot through the back of the head by a lone copper who had stealthily taken position to his rear – it was Rez, the gay bastard! ‘Ask me hole,’ Kearney gurgled poignantly through a clot of facial tissue and splintered bone. Then he crashed face first on to the concrete.

  Kearney saw his body from above, and as he spiralled into the night sky, keeping his gaze fixed on his own corpse and the carnage that surrounded it, he was informed of the following.

  You have been FUCKED!

  Kills (total): 316

  Cops slaughtered: 32

  Missions completed: 0

  Depravity rating: 94%

  Appraisal: Loose cannon/psychopath

  Fallen Henry the Titan says: You a mean motherfucker, kid, but you ain’t never gonna climb to the top in this business – too goddamn crazy. Shit, you the kind of nigga we send in when the situation be really fucked up, to clean shit up when all hell be breakin loose. But you can’t be trusted, man. Too goddamn crazy. Shit.

  Kearney’s ma was calling him. She sounded angry, by which Kearney surmised that it was her third or fourth time to call.

  ‘Joseph, I won’t fuckin call ye again! Would ye come down here before this is cold!’

  ‘Yeah, hang on will ye, I’m comin.’

  She threw the plate on the table in front of him when he sat down, and called him a selfish bastard. She brought her own dinner into the living room on a tray to watch Judge Judy. She left the door open and Kearney was able to see the screen. Judge Judy was arrogantly presiding over the fate of some tubby black guy who was supposed to have stolen his girlfriend’s dog or her daughter or something. It was all so fucking boring. What kind of crime was this? Where were the cracked neo-Nazi spree killers who unleashed Armageddon on high schools, or emptied Uzis into shopping-centre crowds? It was all so fucking boring. ‘I’m innocent!’ pleaded the tubby nig-nog. No one is innocent, mused Kearney philosophically.