‘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.