Derry thought that was very funny. 'Let's do lunch,' he said.
The free lunch consisted of a bap filled with a cold knockwurst laced in German mustard and sauerkraut, a
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bitter apple, and my least favourite soft drink of all time, a Dr Pepper.
Take it from me, it was as minging as it sounds. I barely touched mine, much to Derry's delight. 'Aw, don't you like German food?'
'What's to like?'
'Shame. Give it here then.'
He was to regret all that gorbing sooner rather than later.
Because I wasn't full of food I was keen to go on a rollercoaster right after Derry's extended lunch. I'd seen one called Skyscraper which looked really interesting. It was built in something like the shape of the iron-worked skeleton of, surprise surprise, a skyscraper.
'Let's do the Skyscraper,' I suggested.
Derry rubbed his stomach. 'OK,' he said, not wanting to look like a gutless wuss.
We queued for fifteen minutes and then we got into one of the four-man cars. With the jingle of a bell the car lifted off, nice and easy, carrying us up and up and up round the outside rings of the ride. It was only at the top when things got hair-raising mad. One minute we were plummeting down, the next rocket-turning, the next spiralling, doing loops right left and centre. It was intense. Like no other experience I'd ever had. I was clenched in a screaming position the whole time.
Derry unfortunately took screaming a step further -into grossness. On the upward curve of one of the last head-over-heels, instead of just sound, he added colour to the mixture: totally chundering all over his head. (Thankfully not a single splatter came near my good self.)
'Fuck me,' was all Derry could say when we came to a halt. Whereas I was in hysterics over his barfing and
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losing my rollercoaster virginity, he was in a state of shock at what he'd done. That is until—
The guy from behind us yelled in our ears. 'Yeah, fuck you!' We turned round to see what this guy's problem was. It was only then we realised the mess Derry's boke and gravity had made. I stopped laughing. The couple behind, a Hispanic duo, were plastered in chewed-up knockwurst and sauerkraut and Dr Pepper. The girl, who was picking bits out of her hair, started gurning her lamps out. The guy - who must have been about eighteen or so - grabbed Derry by the back of the neck. 'I'm going to fuck you up real good SA.'
'It wasn't my fault,' said Derry.
'Leave them alone,' sobbed the Hispanic girl. 'They're only kids.'
'What have you been eating man, this stinks!' the guy yelled at Derry but let him go.
I looked at Derry. 'No Hulk?' I said.
He looked back at me, shaking his head. That's when I realised that Derry's fear-flight mechanisms were wired up different to his fear-fight ones. He wasn't always doomed to turn into the Hulk.
You don't need to be a genius to work out that the second those safety belts came off we were away like greyhounds out of the trap. There was no way that bokey guy was catching us, even if he'd tried.
We stopped our fear-flight at the bogs on the other side of the park. Derry went in to clean the barf off himself. I stood around. I thought about the hurling incident. And us getting away with it. And I thought about us getting away with what Derry did to the demon, Robert Englund. We seemed to be living charmed lives. That made me laugh, or snigger anyway.
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You'll never guess who walked by as I waited outside, sniggering?
Wrong! Not Phil and Helmut. Teresa. Without Kelly. I called out to her: 'Teresa!' She came over.
I was all smiles, all charm. 'Would you Uke to go on the Eagle with me?'
'Em—' she said and pointed to the Ladies'. 'Not right now.'
'Later then?'
She held her hands up. 'OK.' 'I'll meet you there at say, two-thirty.' She pointed at her left wrist. 'I don't have a watch, Wil.'
'It's one-thirty now and there's clocks all round the place.'
'OK, two-thirty.'
She rushed into the Ladies' just as Derry emerged from the Mens', completely soaking.
'What are you like?' I said to him.
'They were out of paper towels! Besides, people will think I got wet going on the raft-ride.'
'Yeah, if they don't smell the puke!'
He pulled his shirt up to his nose. 'Do I still smell of puke?'
'Nah. I'm only kidding.'
He did though, faintly, but that was OK with me. I'd have put up with him if he'd shit himself. I had a date, a real date.
It took forty-five minutes of queueing to get on to the Tidal Wave. The time dragged by. All the while Derry was so wet he looked like he'd been hit by a tsunami. I
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was actually beginning to think I'd miss my date when we finally got on board my first big rollercoaster.
I made sure Derry sat on the outside. As we were clicked into our safety harnesses I said to him, 'If you're going to puke again, lean out the side, eh?'
He glared at me, and the ride began. We shot off up and up and up this big rail which just ended mid-sky. My heart leapt into my mouth . . . Before we shot off the top though, like we'd seen in the queue, we just went screaming back down the way we came, past the starting point, and up another big rail which just ended in the sky.
My heart was still in my mouth when the Tidal Wave stopped. And I think I actually split the corners of my mouth what with screaming so much.
I made my date with two minutes to spare basically because Derry and me ran the whole way from the Tidal Wave to the biggest wooden rollercoaster in America, the American Eagle. Teresa wasn't there.
Judging by the signs, the queue was thirty minutes long. I waited around at the end of it for her until two-thirty when Derry said, 'Join the queue. She can join you when she comes - if she comes.'
'She's coming,' I told him.
We joined the queue.
Five minutes passed. All around us the people were ogling the ride and getting scared way in advance like they were supposed to.
'You can feel their fear,' Derry said - almost as if it was the first time he'd ever felt that ol' hackle-raising tingle off a load of fatuous people.
'When she comes, make yourself scarce,' I said.
'What?' he said.
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'I want to ride the Eagle with her.' 'No problem,' he said with a tut. 'I'll just make myself scarce.'
Ten minutes passed as Derry sulked in the queue. Twenty.
'Looks like you'll be riding the Eagle with me after all!' Derry gloated.
That was when I saw Teresa waving at the back of the queue.
'Come on,' I yelled to her. 'I've kept you a place!'
Unfortunately, I hadn't seen Seamus beside her. They both bunked the queue and took places behind us.
'What's he doing here, Teresa?' I asked.
'I'm escorting her, Wil,' said Seamus. 'Like a real gentleman.'
'Really - and what would you know about that, Seamus?'
'I'll show you,' Seamus said.
That's when he kissed her. And she kissed him back. Right in front of me.
Derry tried to stop me but I was reeling watching them. All my dreams of romance and blow jobs on the hood of a pink cadillac went up in smoke before my tearing eyes. I'd lost her. 'Don't, Wil!' I kind of heard Derry say. But the Alien in me erupted out of my guts and had Seamus by the balls before anybody, including me, really even knew what was happening.
'Euck!' squealed Seamus as the Alien in me applied fearsome pressure.
'Wil?' Derry said. 'This isn't a good idea.'
'Back off, Derry,' I said. 'This is my business!'
'Let him go, Wil!' shouted Teresa, all angry and shocked - like I was with her.
'I hope you like eunuchs, Teresa,' I said. 'Because I'm going to break his fucking balls.'
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'You're a fucking homo!' yelled Seamus and grabbed me by the neck.
I redoubled the pressure and he let go. I could see
the sickening helplessness in his eyes. I felt strong. I felt like doing what the Godfather would do to a Mafia stoolpi-geon - tearing off his cock and balls and shoving them into his Taigy gob.
'Wil - a lot of people are watching,' Derry tried to tell me.
'Let him go!' said Teresa. 'Let him go, please. Please.'
'Aw fuck,' I said. 'Why? Why him and not me? Because he's one of your lot, that's why, isn't it?'
Teresa just started bawling her eyes out.
'Fucking Taigs,' I said and let Seamus go.
'I'm going to fucking kill you,' Seamus gasped, bent double. 'My brother's in the Provos. When we get home I'm going to get him to blow your kneecaps off.'
'Was that a death-threat, Seamus?' I said.
Seeing men in the queue were going to intervene for the sake of Fatherly law and order. Derry dragged me away. 'Time to go, Wil,' he said.
I yelled back at Seamus: 'Don't ever threaten unless you can back it up.'
I shook off Derry's grip and walked away of my own accord.
Somehow, with me just walking to get away from Teresa and Seamus I ended up in front of the big sign for the Demon - it was this pair of red snake eyes staring out from the black of the Void.
There was nothing to be scared of. I joined the queue.
Derry did too; he stood beside me in silence.
And when our alloted time came we rode the Demon into the Void, the howling underworld beneath Great America.
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1
Three
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The Blanket Man
Nothing.
I remember nothing of the journey back from the park. I have only one impression to offer: for me the yellow bus and all those Projectees in it were not perched precariously on a single stack above the Void. They had fallen in. Or rather, Freddy had sucked them in.
Nada.
I did nothing the next day. I refused to get up in the morning. I refused to have the curtains opened. And no matter what Derry said or did I would not have a bite to eat, I would not break my fast. Hunger strike! If it was a good enough form of protest for Body, I mean Bobby Sands, and those other Taigs it was good enough for me.
Zippo.
I felt nothing when Mom Horrowitz came into the bedroom around noon to sweet-talk me and feed me milk and chocolate-chip cookies.
'What's wrong?' she said.
I wouldn't say.
'Is it this girl?' she said.
Silence.
'Derry said you liked her, right?' Silence.
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'She's not the only one. There are plenty more girls in the world, you'll see. When you grow up they'll all be running after you.'
I used silence as my defence.
'Why don't you and Derry go out and do something? Wouldn't that be fun?' Defence.
She went to the window. She ripped open the curtains. 'You can't stay in bed all day moping. It's not good for you!'
Defiance.
'Get up!'
Passive resistance.
She came over and pulled me out of bed. I was naked when the covers fell away. Embarrassed, she wrapped a blanket round me. 'Now come on, Wil,' she said. 'You're not staying in here a moment longer!'
Diddlysquat.
She could take me out of the bedroom and sit me down in the TV room, but there was nothing she could do to make me come back. I sat there with a blank look on my face, and a blanket round my body. Yeah, that's how I sat the whole of that Saturday.
Mom Horrowitz kept laying food in front of me and making me iced teas, none of which I laid a hand on.
'He isn't eating. Do something!' I heard her tell Derry in the kitchen.
'What?'
'Anything!'
'Just leave him alone Mom. If I know Wil he'll snap out of it when he's ready.'
But she wasn't to be told. 'I said, do something and I mean it!'
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Nothing.
Derry took me outside, into that garage full of American antiques, and tried to show me how to refit Suzi's engine, but he could see I was far far away so he gave up trying and did nothing.
That is, until my own dirty protest against the Project and the hated Them. The Them that had brought me this low. All those fucking dirty Taigs! Aye, I thought - Fuck you, Seamus! Fuck you, Teresa! Fuck you, Peter! Fuck you. Counsellor Ciaran! And fuck the Pope and the IRA most of all!
I protested against them all by voiding myself; yeah, I pissed myself; I pissed myself and shat out a snakey turd that coiled round my calf.
'Aw Jesus, Wil,' Derry said.
Then he did something that meant something, something that was not nothing, something tender, that made me want to come back for him, for us, for the Metal Mafia if nothing else. Without another word, he got some ol' rags and cleaned me up and then he mopped up the pool of piss. And the way he did it I knew he wouldn't ever tell. That's loyalty for you! Brotherhood unto death!
Thing is though, it's hard to come back from that far gone, and I couldn't quite make it.
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28
Nightmare 2
When what people call the real world ceases to be, the inner world - as opposed to outer - comes into focus. When the ego - the instrument the Father fashioned in His own image for acceptable social intercourse - breaks up - the self, the true archetypal instinctual mind, is revealed. When dreams are no longer metaphors of the passing day but metaphysical realities of the eternal Void-night, we cannot help but see what is what for what it is. I say 'we' because thanks to your man Wes Craven you'll probably have had something like this nightmare too.
I was lying in bed that night lost in sleep when one, two, Freddy came for me. I could smell him in the room - he stank like you'd expect a rancid corpse fart to.
I sat up, tensed, all ready to fight for my life.
I heard his laughter mock me.
I stood up, in a boxing stance, and I called out for all I was worth, 'He got out, Fonz, he got out of the cubicle!'
That's when the bed opened up beneath me Uke the mouth of hell.
I went in feet first.
Then it had me up to my knees.
Trying to get a grip on something, I grabbed a hold of
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my pillow. I clawed at the sheet on the mattress, but the hell-mouth swallowed me down.
Falling.
Falling.
I would fall until I hit rock-bottom.
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29
Rock-Bottom
The Rev decided it wouldn't be right for me to go to church the next day in a blanket or anything else. The family left me in Derry's care and went to pray for my love-sick soul as the Rev put it.
When he was sure they'd gone, Derry, my brother unto death, went to work on me. He shot off upstairs to raid his secret stash of sonic devil worship and returned with a record.
'Now this,' he said, putting it on, 'will rock your world!' And it did. What was it?
The devil himself's Holy Diver, that's what.
Yeah, it was Derry that dived down into the Void for me, but it was Ronnie James Dio who he used to rock the part of me I knew as me back from the bottom.
Of course, Ronnie James Dio isn't the devil. He might hke to think he is, and us angry young Metallers, we liked to make believe that too. That's half the fun of Heavy Metal after all. But no kidding, the devil is more than a Satanic fantasy. See, the Christian devil is phenomenologically real. He is the Winnebago Trickster transfigured. He is Loki, Baachus, Dionysus, Prometheus. The fiery creative intelligence of the self, the very essence
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of the shaman, hidden within us all. He is the Rainbow Singer. And he is evil only if you apply non-existent morality to his behaviour.
The Rainbow Singer is the opposite of God only if you believe in God the Father, and the rebellion of the son, and the original sin of patricide, and the fall from group grace. In the same way that God is not dead, neither is the devil. But he fell a long long way down fr
om heaven. You have to try really really hard to call him up from the primitive depths.
I was glad to come back from those depths then; I can't tell you how glad, but now I really wish Derry had left me down there.
See, rock-bottom is the place where shamans travel to willingly to unmake themselves, to kill the Father in them and to be reborn free as sons of Mother Earth. There, they find their Fonz if he can be bothered to show up and save them. There, they leave all the childish things of the Father's ego behind. Whereas I, Judas Carson, when I was called back by the fake devil, all I had was a shattered ego and no self, nothing to cling to: all I knew how to be was an Ulster Freedom Fighter. One of them. A dyed-in-the-wool Daddy's Boy. In point of fact 'God!' was the first sound I gasped when I got back.
'Wil,' was the first word I heard when I got back for sure.
'Derry,' was the second word I said.
At that moment, almost like it was fated to be, I can honestly say those three words meant everything to me. Father. Brother. Me. I believed being part of this unholy trinity meant love. Father. Brother. Son. Love. Who needed women when you could be so hopelessly in love with men and their man's world
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When Mom Horrowitz and Tiara arrived back they were surprised to see me up and about, stuffing a tuna-and-cucumber submarine into my gob. In fact, or rather - in faith, they thought it was nothing short of a miracle.
'Praise the Lord!' said Mom Horrowitz and hugged me around the waist.
She grabbed me so tight I spat some tuna down into her face. She forgave me though, right off.
Tiara said, 'I want you to know I prayed for you, Wil, even though you're such a little Irish creep.'
Mom Horrowitz didn't hear Tiara because she was too busying saying 'Hallelujah! Wait until Pops sees this risen Lazarus.'
When Pops did see me later on in the TV room he was pretty darn impressed with his foretelling abilities (which of course he hadn't shared with anyone but God in case he was wrong.)
'I knew it,' the Rev said, pointing at the ceiling. 'I knew Jesus would heal you.'
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