Me, Myself and Them

by Dan Mooney

  He locked the bathroom door and changed his clothes as he listened to the echoes of mocking laughter drifting up to him from the kitchen.

  “I know what you’re doing in there,” Plasterer called suggestively through the door.

  “Fuck off,” Denis said without much enthusiasm.

  He didn’t want to leave the bathroom, so he didn’t for a while. He stood staring without looking at the mirror in front of him. He would go to town and drink. In the company of strangers he would erase his own ability to think in a place he knew they would never go. There, with dark beer and whiskey, he would find a way to make them quiet and a comfort all of his own making.

  Penny O’Neill was waiting for him as he made his way out of the bathroom and down the stairs.

  “Don’t you look dashing?” she asked with a mocking smile. “Maybe you’ll find the love of your life out there,” she called after him as he trudged for the door. “I know women are just dying to meet a man who’s terrified of odd numbers and can’t bear to be touched. You’ll be beating them off you.”

  She was trying to be clever like Plasterer had been. Women meant intimacy, and intimacy meant contact with others, and once again the words had been chosen to inspire fear in him, to make him pause, to fill him with doubt. He loathed Penny O’Neill and her ridiculous swaying walk, loathed her for her hatred toward Rebecca. He couldn’t wait to get away from her. He let her words bounce off his back.

  Their mockery followed him to the door of the house. Deano barred his path and began tugging at his coat as he threw it about his shoulders. There was something urgent about the way he was pulling at Denis. He was pointing at Denis’s face, jabbing his hairy finger at it, but the mockery of the others propelled Denis past the fur ball and out the door of the house. He deliberately neglected the door-locking procedure. He pointedly refused to count his steps. He had no idea where he was going, or why he was going there, but there was no question about it. He could spend not one more minute in that house with them. He strolled out the gate and deeply breathed in the fresh morning air, trying desperately to find something to enjoy in it. He used to do that a lot, when he wasn’t broken. He picked up the pace, putting as much distance between him and them as he possibly could. Home was where the hell was.

  ISN’T IT RICH?

  A cloud of despair settled around his head as he walked from the house. His vision seemed darker, tinted with a kind of blackness that he knew instinctively was from within. There was something else too, a weight in his stomach that caused it to roil and heave, provoked as it was by the anxiety and overwhelming sense of isolation.

  The local children were playing on the green again, kicking a ball with no apparent goal in mind. Denis hated their carefree running, their easy way of colliding with one another and their peals of laughter. Their game stopped as they saw him coming through his gate and out onto the road. There was no titter of laughter now; in fact, they looked alarmed at the sight of him. Perhaps it was his scowl, or his shoeless stunt of the day before, but they recoiled from him as he moved.

  Their judgment was another sting, another arrow to the thousand that had gone before it. Why, he thought to himself, did everyone want to judge him everywhere he went? Why was his life something that other people felt they had the right to look down on? He felt the first stirrings of anger as he moved. Plasterer didn’t tolerate other people’s judgment. A thug and a bully he might be, but nobody looked down on the clown. In his mind’s eye he could see the big man sitting in the armchair, his gloves, one white and one red, gripping the armrests.

  Tell them to go fuck themselves, Plasterer seemed to whisper.

  Denis ignored him, but scowled harder at the children anyway. Down the street one of their parents watched with a look bordering on alarm. She had always been a kindly woman, but now she was appraising him as if he might hurt one of her children. The anger rose in him. Never, not even once, had he been anything but polite to her and her lousy, messy children, and now she was judging him as if he was some kind of bad guy.

  Tell her to go fuck herself too, Plasterer whispered from the couch. What’s her problem? Nosy bitch.

  Denis ignored the voice again, but it was harder this time. He wanted to know why she was being so judgmental. He swallowed the rising anger; it dropped into the ball of unease that was his stomach. Barely looking at her as he passed, he picked up the pace of his walk and headed for town. He toyed with the idea of taking the bus, but people are people and Denis was Denis and, in being Denis, was absolutely not in the mood for people, so he plowed on on foot.

  His walk typically took forty minutes, but he was making good time, spurred on by the judgment of the people all around him and the cloud of despair that followed him. He considered the idea of trying to outpace it, but clouds of despair just don’t work that way. It seemed to him that everyone was staring at him, as if they all knew what he had done. There was, of course, no way that was possible, but something about the way passersby looked at him caused his ire to rise further.

  If this keeps up, you’re going to have to punch one of them in their damn nosy heads.

  Through his rising anger and Plasterer’s running commentary, the cloud of despair still clung to him, and the feeling in the pit of his stomach continued to gnaw away at him. Something was terribly wrong. He chose not to examine it too closely.

  He arrived in town in a record-breaking thirty-three minutes. He considered doing a lap of one of the blocks until his arrival time at the bar coincided with a much more satisfying number, but in the grand scheme of problems he was having, it seemed like an unnecessary flamboyance.

  Outside a small hidden bar where he had gone to play pool and drink pre-match beers with Eddie and Frank and Ollie, an elderly man stood smoking a cigarette. His eyes widened when he saw Denis coming, and for a moment he stood blocking the door.

  Get out of the way, old man.

  “Move,” Denis barked at him. His sharp tone surprised even himself.

  The elderly man jumped to one side hurriedly.

  Denis grunted at him as he stepped into the dark interior of the bar.

  “Guinness and a whiskey,” he snapped at the young bartender. His voice was independent of him now.

  “You okay, buddy?” the youngster asked, as he dried a glass.

  None of your fucking business.

  “I’m fine,” Denis snapped. “Guinness and a whiskey.”

  “Bit early for that sort of thing?” he asked, nodding in Denis’s direction.

  Oh this little shit is just begging for a punch.

  “You gonna get me my drinks or not?” Denis shot back, raising his voice slightly.

  The young man swallowed hard and began filling the pint glass.

  He surveyed the bar as he took his seat. The pool table had a long wooden particleboard covering it, stained with the rings of countless pints of Guinness and beer. The windows, tinted to keep the small cramped interior in permanent darkness, were dirty. Besides the bartender and the elderly smoker who had crept back inside warily, there were only two other customers, both men, apparently in their sixties.

  “Is this some kind of a joke?” one of them asked as he lifted his pint.

  You’re a joke.

  “No. This is a person having a couple of drinks. Got a problem?” Denis asked. He had had enough of being polite to people who judged him, enough of trying to please other people. The clown had it right all along. Take respect. Earn it. He had allowed Rebecca to demand a place in his life. He had tolerated Ollie and Frank joking at his expense. He permitted his mother to visit once a week even though it was hellish each and every time. For what reason had he done all this? To impress them? To pretend to himself and everyone else that he was okay? His rage grew a little greater, and his hand tightened around the pint glass as his drinks were placed before him.

  The bartender shrank from him. Th
at was good; they weren’t judging him anymore, they were showing him the respect he deserved. He drank the Guinness in one swift motion and shook the empty glass at the young man behind the counter.

  “More,” he demanded, as he picked up the whiskey glass.

  The bartender nodded at him, his eyes down.

  And so Denis sat in silence with only his despair and his anger and the deep weighty feeling in his stomach that something was terribly wrong.

  He didn’t know how long he had been sitting at the bar when Eddie first crept into his head. He had drunk more than two for sure. He had been staring at the pool table when his friend’s image reared up, unannounced and unwelcome, standing with the pool cue drawn across his shoulders, his arms across it. The bar was close to the stadium where the local soccer team played, and this had become a warm-up spot for the two of them, sometimes all four of them, on game nights.

  Get out now.

  He took the clown’s advice and walked out, leaving a sense of relief behind as the customers inside released their collective breaths.

  Outside, the sunshine stabbed at his eyes, and he winced. A teenager standing nearby saw him and laughed.

  Punch him.

  “What are you laughing at?” he growled at the youngster. His anger had a life of its own now. It seemed to be growing almost too big for his body. The tiny voice that told him this was all wrong was barely audible over the rushing sound of the fury inside that had burst its banks. Everyone decided everything for him, forced him into corners, made him play by their rules.

  “Er...nothing,” the youth replied, looking startled.

  “Fuck off, then,” Denis told him. The drinks had gone to his head, and he felt fuzzy as he made his way through the town. Still they judged him wherever he went. Each person passing him in the street looked at him with the knowledge of what he had done in their eyes.

  Killer. Breaker of hearts. Who cares if they know?

  He strode on, trying not to sway as he moved.

  The next bar was a much more popular spot, but so early in the day only two customers and a lady behind the bar were waiting for him when he arrived. He strolled in, almost daring them to judge him. Daring them to pass a remark or laugh or do anything except keep their eyes to themselves.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asked. She looked worried, almost disbelieving.

  Watch your damn tone, Plasterer seemed to say.

  “Beer and a whiskey,” Denis replied, leaning toward her. He was trying to loom a little, like Plasterer did. Looming is an acquired skill, however, and it was not one Denis had picked up. So instead he just leaned, drunkenly.

  “Are you sure you’re okay to drink?” she asked.

  What are you? Our mother?

  “I’m fine. A beer and a whiskey,” he repeated.

  She hovered for just a moment before picking up the pint glass and filling it for him.

  Denis turned to face the other two customers. They were staring at him. He stared back until they realized what he was doing and dropped their eyes.

  After his third drink in the new bar, Denis began to feel that the plan was not working. He was definitely drunk now, and most of his thoughts seemed to float away before he had a chance to form them properly, but pouring alcohol into the mess of anxiety in his stomach had done nothing to quell it, and the cloud still hung about his head, coloring everything he saw in a shroud of darkness and misery.

  He could no longer picture Plasterer sitting on the armchair, which seemed like a good thing to him. It occurred to him, through his haze, that drinking was a paradox much like so many other of his favorite activities. Here, he was trying to control his own lack of control. He had avoided drinking for so long. Feared it for the slightest hint in his mind that it had played a part in the death of his sister and his best friend. Now it was helping him, feeding his anger, which was feeding his sense of authority. It was also feeding the terrible anxiety. It was putting Denis in charge of himself, a position he disliked, so he talked like the clown and drank like his old self and hoped people would not judge him to his face. His mind wandered to the last time he was drunk and the new bar he had been in with the gang. He had touched her there, had left his hand to linger on her back, and it was as if this little gesture had spurred her on. In this gesture he had ceded ground, and from there she had not stopped conquering him, piece by piece, until she had ruined his life. He had tripped. It was the ground’s fault.

  He hauled himself out of his stool as he decided to make his way back to that bar, back to the moment when he had silently given her permission to touch him. He reeled just a little as he moved, his shoulder colliding with a passing pedestrian.

  “Oh I’m sorry,” the man said without looking. Then he made eye contact and swallowed hard.

  “Watch where you’re going,” Denis told him, turning on his heel.

  It was still bright out, still early he guessed, but didn’t bother to check. He weaved through a sea of judgmental faces, each one staring at him as though everything was his fault. He looked back with contempt. They could all rot as far as he was concerned. The tiny voice in his head urged him to think about the implications of what he was doing, to think about the people, not just his family and friends, but all the people who were looking at him. He refused and continued walking, secretly hoping that someone might bang against him again, but they didn’t. They melted out of his path.

  Inside the bar a handful of people sat around beers and coffee cups and soft drinks, talking cheerfully. It was brighter here than the previous two bars had been, and there was an air of joviality that he instantly found disagreeable. Conversations broke off on his arrival, a dark cloud into their otherwise bright days. He loathed every one of them with their healthy relationships and their clean hands. No blood on them. They were staring at him as he strolled up to the bar.

  “Beer and a whiskey,” he ordered.

  “Absolutely not,” the bartender replied. He was Denis’s height, but burlier, with a large, expertly groomed red beard and short red hair that had been shaved at the sides.

  “What?” Denis asked, feeling the anger swell and surge again.

  “I’m not serving you,” the bartender replied matter-of-factly.

  “And why the fuck not?”

  “I think you’re crazy, and drunk, but mostly I just don’t want to,” he said casually.

  Denis seethed at the judgment. He railed against it.

  Punch him. Punch him in the face. Then they’ll respect you. All of them.

  “Get me the damn drink!” Denis shouted.

  “No,” was the reply as the bartender narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. “You’re not getting a drink. I’ll get you water and a face towel if you want, but that’s about the size of it.”

  It was there for everyone to see. The pure undiluted judgment that was being thrown at him. This time he wouldn’t let it slide. This time he would make someone pay. Denis stood his ground, his jaw clenched.

  The bartender met his challenging look for a moment.

  “Let me get you some water,” he said, shaking his head as he moved away.

  He had been blocking a large mirror that hung behind the bar.

  As he moved away from it, Denis saw his own face.

  It was a terrifying face.

  Covered in makeup, thick white makeup, red around the lips, blue under the eyes. It was rough, a crudely drawn approximation of a clown’s face. A clown he knew. Not the sharp, clear edges and expert style of Plasterer, but a jagged, terrifying mess under greasy hair that stuck to the white in places. The lip makeup wasn’t smooth, but splotched on haphazardly. His eyes looked black and menacing and tiny in the hollow of his head.

  He looked in horror at his own reflection. How had it happened? When? Were they playing a prank on him? Had they done it in his sleep? His memory stirred as he recalled b
eing locked into the bathroom before he left. The implications stung him. He had done this to himself. Torn by the coup in his home and the smell of Rebecca’s perfume lingering in the air, he had done this to himself and couldn’t even remember it.

  They had been judging him, all the way to town, everyone he met had been judging him, but not for who he was, for what he showed them.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to the bartender in confused dismay. “I’ll leave.”

  The man was looking at him in a new way now, concern painted on his face.

  “You okay, buddy?”

  “No.”

  “You want me to call someone?” There was a newfound sympathy in the man’s eyes. A touching gesture of humanity to a lost soul.

  “I don’t have anyone,” Denis told him as the grim reality of that fact rammed into the inside of his skull.

  He made his way out of the bar, on unsteady feet, trying not to make eye contact with the people he had frightened. They were all looking at him with concern now. Through the shock he found a small worm of hatred for their pity.

  He had to go. Somewhere where there was no piteous looks or fear or malice. No such place existed as far as Denis knew, and so he just walked.

  His feet powered him through streets and past shops. His head was down, his eyes dodged people and focused on his shoes. Shiny and well-polished. His lips trembled as he passed groups of people. Anger now forgotten, he could feel the ball of uneasiness in his stomach growling at him until he could ignore it no longer. And so, as he walked he tried to feel it, really feel it in his body and in his mind, and to analyze it. He tried to unpack the feeling and see what it was. It had grown in him over days, but he felt like it might have always been there, hiding. Had he truly always felt this way? Why had he never noticed before? He pondered as he moved. He had no idea where he was going until he found himself standing outside Riverside Cemetery. Its cast-iron gates stood open in between marble pillars. The driveway leading in split an immaculately trimmed lawn, which was home to beautifully maintained shrubs and trees.