Brian
I REMEMBER THE mother and father talking about Matty Cummins and the two Walshes and Anselm Grogan and all them boys when they went to Australia a few years ago. A right shower of wasters they called them. Imagine fecking off to the far side of the world to drink their foolish heads off and the power of work to be had here! Context is everything. Pawsy Rogers used to be always saying that. Context is the first thing to examine in a statement. Aboy Pawsy, you were bang on on that score, boy. I’m fecking off to Australia now, and my mother keeps crying and my father won’t talk about it. He’s in denial. (He reckons if he doesn’t acknowledge something, it doesn’t really exist, like gayness, drugs or Marilyn Manson. When they were all on about Donal Óg coming out of the closet below in Cork, the father would only hum and look out the window when anyone mentioned it. Jaysus, what about your man of the Cusacks, Paddy? Dee dee dee dee …)
So I’m going to Australia in the context of a severe recession, and therefore I am not a yahoo or a waster, but a tragic figure, a modern incarnation of the poor tenant farmer, laid low by famine, cast from his smallholding by the Gombeen Man, forced to choose between the coffin ship and the grave. Matty Cummins and the boys were blackguards; I am a victim. They all left good jobs to go off and act the jackass below in Australia; I haven’t worked since I finished my apprenticeship. He has to go to the far side of the planet to get work, imagine, the mother does be saying to her ICA crowd. How is it at all we left them run the country to rack and ruin? How’s it we swallowed all them lies? You can be certain sure there’s no sons of bankers or developers or government ministers has to go off over there to get work. After all the trouble we had to get him through his exams and all.
What trouble? It was I had to do the bloody things. Boo hoo hoo, like. And the da’s eyes glaze over and he starts to suck his false teeth and squint out the window at nothing if anyone mentions it. If I was leaving a good job to go, he’d be every day telling me I was a yahoo and a blackguard and getting right thick. I could cope with that a lot easier. At least I could tell him to shut the fuck up and we could have a row and I could feel anger instead of guilt. I can’t tell him shut up if he says nothing. I wouldn’t say he even knows he’s humming.
I was only ever thinking about going to Australia because every single person I know went over there for at least a year and had unreal craic. Could the parents not just get over it, like? Jaysus, you’d think I was going to Afghanistan to take on the Taliban. I heard the mother giving out stink to the father about it the other night; she was doing the old shout-whisper: He’s too young, Paddy, he’ll drink his head off and spend all his money trying to keep up with the boy of the Farrells and he’ll get no job or anything. He won’t ever go to Mass out there, you can be certain sure. The Aussies is all turning against the Irish, too — didn’t they kick a crathur to death outside a pub over there only a few months ago? Dee dee dee dee, the father said. She was fairly torturing him. Paddy, will you talk to him about it? Will you tell him it doesn’t matter about the ticket, sure what about it if he loses the money, we’ll put it back in his Credit Union for him, Paddy, will you Paddy, will you? Paddy? Doo doo doo doo …
My young wan broke it off with me two weeks ago. She said there’s no way she’s going to have me riding all around me below in Australia while she waits here like a fool. She seen the lads’ Facebooks; in every single photo they were pawing girls in bikinis. Forget that, she said. Then she started looking at me really closely, and sort of laughing nervously, and asking was I crying. Are you crying? Jesus Bri, are you actually crying? I was in my hole. Dopey bitch. As if I’d cry over her. She’ll be crying the next time she sees me; I’ll have got rid of the belly, I’ll have an unreal tan, and I’ll be home for a visit only before heading back out to my beach house and my job making four or five grand a week. Slapper. Is that it so, she wanted to know as I put my runners back on, are you just going to go? Have you nothing to say to me? I hadn’t. I kicked her bedroom door before I left, though. JESUS, she went. Then I met her auld fella on the stairs, with his big manky tacher like Joseph fucking Stalin and his little beady eyes full of suspicion. I should have gave him a slap. Bollocks.
You know the way you get used to getting the ride? And then you’re cut off, like, all of a sudden? That’s what all them wankers do be feeling when they’re going around crying over women. They’re only missing the ride. Love is a physical mechanism that ensures humanity’s survival. It’s an abstract concept as well, for people to write songs and books and make films about. Either way, it’s nothing but a construct. That’s the kind of auld shite I used to write in English. Pawsy used to cream himself over it. You have a keen mind, Brian. I do, ya. In me hole. You should look at arts or humanities, Brian. Avoid construction, Brian. Don’t be tempted by the high wages, Brian, they won’t last. Don’t waste your brain, Brian. All right, Pawsy, leave it go, in the name of all that’s good and holy, let it go.
I won’t think about Lorna again after I start tapping some fine blondie wan below in Australia, that’s what I’m getting at. It’s only the want of a ride is making me all emotional at the moment. That’s the pervasive influence of popular culture: I think I’m sad over Lorna. It’s all this shite on MTV. On an intellectual level, I couldn’t give a shite about her. It’s a strange dichotomy, so it is; feeling and knowing; the feeling feels truer than the knowing of its falseness. Jaysus, I should write this shite down and send it to Pawsy before I go.
Kenny came over earlier. He has a load of Es bought, and we heading off in less than a week. He’s some spa. We’ll be off our heads all week youssir, he says, we won’t hear the auld wans bullshitting. Kenny is afraid of his shite of the flight; I know well. He’s also afraid of upsetting his parents. We’re all afraid of our lives of upsetting our parents. Why is it at all? Why have we to be bound by this fear of the feelings of others? Is it because my actions will always affect them? Am I the anti-matter particle to their matter particle, always having a direct effect on each other, even with a galaxy between us? Will the Earth’s largest ocean be deep enough to drown my guilt? Whoo boy, I have to stop thinking. I’ll be writing in a diary next, like a right prick.
I know for a fact now it’s going to be a big huge ordeal going to the airport. The mother will want to come. She’ll mither the whole way. She’ll roar and scream at the father. He’ll drive along at about forty, hunched over the wheel, knuckles white, teeth gritted. If I see him crying, I’ll start crying too. Kenny will snigger and slag me the whole way to Australia. He’ll probably find the sexiest airhostess to tell all about it. Well gorgeous! Hey, you should a seen this lad the whole way to Shannon! Crying like a child! Will you give him a lend of your make-up there hey, it might fuckin cheer him up a bit! Fwahahahaaaa! Put on a bleedin chickflick for him there, hey! Fwahahaha! Sometimes I’d love to box Kenny in the face. But I’m getting thick over things he might say, which is a tad unfair on the chap, in all fairness. I’m living on my nerves. I’m like a young wan on a heavy period. Let me out of here, for Christ’s sake.
I SAW Bobby Mahon this morning, over beyond at the Height. I was up with the da, pulling weeds and letting on to be praying for the souls of the Faithful Departed. I might as well humour him another while, in fairness. Bobby was coming over the stile beside the locked gate as we came to it. He’s meant to be tapping a flaker of a wan from town that used to go with Seanie Shaper that bought one of the houses in Pokey Burke’s estate of horrors. There’s war over it. You should see his wife as well, your wan Triona — she’s a ride and a half. Bobby is a pure bull, though, so he is. He probably rides the two of them every day. Things come easy to guys like Bobby Mahon. He’s not the brightest star in the firmament, but he’s a proper man. He has nothing to prove. Kenny reckons he’s like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke; no fucker could break him. He wore his hurley off of the McDonaghs’ full forward at the end of The County Final We Nearly Won. Then he flung it away and lamped five or six fellas before Jim Gildea the sergeant and about twelve other bollockses got between him and the McDonaghs’ boys. I was only a small boy at the time. I wanted to be Bobby Mahon. I still do, imagine. I’m some loser. Why can’t I want to be me?