Alex's Journal 13/06

Uh hello, check two, testing... this thing on?

Alexandre (yeah the Frenchie version) O'Rourke here. Penning down my thoughts with the same kind of lucidity you'd expect from a half-asleep sloth. Figured I'd try and help some guy sell some book about me or something. Seriously, people will write about any old trash these days. I just read an article about how women with big thighs are plenty hot. Those actual words plenty and hot featuring in the title. First off this picture, which pretty much sums up the whole article in a j-peg:

A young arcade goers first love; the inimitable Chun Li

And second of all I wasted, like ten minutes, reading it and let's be honest what difference is the attractiveness of thighs going to make to my life?!

It's all down to those damn internets!

I remember when a server used to be the guy that gave you your drink in a hotel and if you wanted to be entertained you actively had to seek stuff out. But now it's like a big, kinetic strobe frenzy every time you turn on a computer. Flashy, flashy, cat video, flashy, flashy, fail video, flashy, flashy 'How would you like some dick pills?' Big brother is almost definitely watching you and god damn it if he doesn't have a whole bunch of wares he's itching to sell.

I remember buying 411VM VHS cassette tapes for like €20 just to watch an hour of skateboarding back when I was single digit (the phase did not last, imagine...). Thing was you'd watch that thing a trillion times* and it wouldn't even grate on you. Now we have this limitless database of information and we tend to use it to watch 7 second videos, talking dogs and Russian drivers mouthing off at each other.

And don't get me wrong, this isn't some kind of call to arms so everybody starts reading medical journals online, I'm as hypnotised as the next guy. But it did get me to thinking about how we're all building up this useless trivia with no real knowledge behind it. Can't remember exactly where I heard it but some guy recently said on the radio, or a podcast or something, that everyone in the whole world has information at the press of a button but we're all incredibly ignorant. Like Homer Simpson levels.

Where am I going with this?

I don't really know but to be fair you just read a poorly thought out stream-of consciousness-type article written by a fictitious character so...

Anyway weathers nice right now so even if you're full of information and ignorant as all hell (a la moi) why not go outside and try grab some vitamin D. 'Sides you're going to be as wisdom-less as the next guy so you may as well have a better tan.


*rough estimate

Black Coffee

 I used to work in a bar, I'd see the same faces as the days went by. Flies to the counter. They all had stories and were eager to share. One was a successful businessman who had lost more than half of everything he owned when his wife divorced him. He had to pay for her lawyer during the court battle and wound up paying for a good one. His knuckles would turn white grasping his whiskey soda and some days I thought the glass would surely break. Another was a sixty year old who had been in and out of the red brick for most of his adult life. He believed that aliens had abducted and probed him in his youth and was prone to episodes. The psychiatrists assumed it had been some kind of abuse that his young brain had tried to protect itself from. The several rounds of electro-convulsive therapy did little but slur words. After his father died he talked less of aliens and the doctors, like the rest of us, tried to put the connection out of our minds. Then there was the lady who'd drink Chardonnay steadily, a bag of colours and sketch pads for her son. He went through the art supplies fast, she'd talk of the future he had ahead. Gallery openings or maybe a job in graphic design, as long as he was happy. That seemed normal enough until my manager told me the boy had been a vegetable going on twenty years. Most days I would finish my shift and feel as if a great animal was looming overhead, waiting to descend. I had to leave the bar after three months. People talk a lot of energies and auras, echoes of emotions felt. I'm not sure if any of that is true but I am sure that had I stayed in that pub I would have become one of its regulars.

The café Isabella asked me to meet her at is modelled after a library. The green and red of classic spines are painted against the wall. The room is pleasant, spacious. It does not have any of the melancholy residue of the bar I once worked at. I order a coffee and sit next to the window wondering what I might leave behind. Outside a mild rain falls alongside oranged leaves. A white and red bus pulls to a stop, passengers get off, passengers get on. I hold my right hand over my red eye and watch the bus pull away, the lashes brush my palm. It hurts my eyelid. Soon there will be no leaves on the skinny, roadside trees but the buses will come, the buses will go and someone will sit here and someone will watch them.

-Hey.

-Hello, I say keeping my hand over my eye as I turned to her.

-Bad again?

I remove my hand, she makes an E with her lips. The waiter put my coffee down and asked for Isabella's order. Grapefruit and pineapple tea.

-I was drinking a lot at the start, she said, I didn't know.

-You couldn't have, no point worrying.

We had used protection intermittently. She wasn't on the pill, or the implant. I can't remember the name of it. It looked like a hair tie and sent some hormones out. She would keep it inside until her period and then change it. It stopped her getting spots, it was not uncomfortable. It hadn't worked.

-But I am worrying. I'm very worried.

-What do you want to do?

She became sour for a moment.

-I don't want to do anything alone.

I shook my head.

-I didn't mean it like that. Do you still feel the same?

We had talked about this happening when we were together, if she got pregnant we would have the child. People often say it's the woman's choice and ultimately they are right but to imply that the man should not be heard is as sexist as anything else. A foetus is the potential for a human life, to me this seemed important. I liked the idea of something mystical, but I could not convince myself. Potential was real though, I could believe in potential. Sometimes I would argue internally about whether I valued a non-living life over my own. I suppose I did, willing for my life to take unexpected, possibly miserable, bends for the potential life.

-I don't know how I feel, now that it's happening.

She turned to me as if to apologize.

-Do you love me? I asked.

She took a sip of her tea.

-Not the way you love me.

I nodded and drank some coffee. I would leave something malignant in this café but I would not let Isabella know.

-You would let me see him wouldn't you?

-Of course.

She put her fingers around mine. I felt that great animal looming once again.

-You'd be a good father.

I slid my hand away and squeezed my forehead.

-This is fucked, I said.

-Worse things happen to people.

-In the Middle East they'd pelt rocks at you, I said and she laughed and then we were quite again.

-I just need some time to think it over.

I nodded and stirred the black water.

-Yeah, I said, maybe it'd be bad for him to have parents that weren't together.

-It mightn't be a him.

-I'd feel weird calling him 'it'.

-Like that horror movie, she said.

-Like that horror movie, I repeated.

-But we could be friends?

-We could be, I said, but that's hard for me right now. You understand?

-I do but you'll move on.

-I am, I said surprised at how definite it sounded, but there's teething still.

She nodded, finished her tea and stood up.

-I'm glad we could talk, I can call you again? I'll need things and I can't afford-

-I'm not working either, I cut her off, but as soon as I can get work I'll help you as best I can. I promise.

-I still don't know what I want.

-That's okay, I don't know either.

-Thank you James, she kissed my cheek and left. When I got to the counter she had forgotten to pay for her tea. I barely had the change. Outside there was young, hooded girl sitting beside an ATM with a small puppy in her arms. In front of her a crumpled coffee cup with less than two euros inside.

-Can you help me?

The puppy looked up, his tongue falling from one side of his jaw. He was black and brown and white. I smiled at the dog, he seemed to smile back, unaware of how broke myself and his master were.

-I really wish I could help you, and I looked at her as honestly as I could.

She smiled and said 'that's okay.'

 -I really do, I said again and started walking away.

Zoo Story

No title for this one just yet, all ideas welcome!

There was never a bridge out, pop you in a boat for pennies and a few slices of Pat the Baker, you’d spend the day handy. One Sunday after mass I went down by the lake and the bird house was closed. Lines of yellow tape blocking the row boats and guards shaking their heads, notebooks and pencils, some chap in handcuffs. Normal face, normal build, his ma could have lost him in a crowd. It wouldn’t shock you in this day and age, but this was the seventies in a little summer village like. Yer man swam out there the night before, knife between the teeth kind of a job and just started slashing. Feathers and blood. They found him shivering knee deep in the water.

And that was the end of the bird house on the lake in Tramore.

I was young at the time, pushing eight maybe, I’d made the communion so according to the Big Fella I knew the difference between right and wrong. I’d heard of murder and robbing and all the rest but here it was right beside the summer amusements. Nowadays there’s lads getting stabbed in cinemas, or scumbags using choke wire behind some poor chap on a bus. It's been three decades but the only thing that puts the heebie-jeebies up me worse then what happened out there in the bird house is when I get a sense of ‘yellow’ off someone. Same as I did from that 'normal' looking man in handcuffs. He was the pus behind a white head and I knew something was infecting him.

A few years later my Grandad died and the mother moved us down to his old house in Wexford. Rosslare to be exact, the same place they opened the wildlife sanctuary last year, on the water with a swell of salt in the air. It’s no joke either the boys have the big cats, giraffes, zebras, if you can find it in Africa they have it down in fucken Wexford. That’s where I wound up anyway, the only town in Ireland with a chip on its shoulder. Ran the pet shop down there off The Bull Ring, selling young lads Australian Redbacks and all sorts. One langered conversation down there in The Funeral Home (a Wexford pub which doubles up as an undertakers, do you a deal on the wake like) and I was the Big Man, Numero Uno, The Sheriff round them parts. Yer man in charge of the whole shindig went ahead and made me the Park Warden.

I’ve read a dose of books on it and they all agree for every one hundred people you’ll find a psychopath. Now they’re not all killers but if they sat beside you on a train you’d have a few palpitations and not be knowing exactly why. Gun to my head I’d bet animals are the same, for every tonne there’s a Bundy or Dahlmer or what have you. To be fair the regular ones are dangerous even if they're not psychos, but most of them will give you a good three minutes before starting with the teeth and claws. A bear clicking its jaw, a lion spreading its paws, palm down and gorilla eyes looking for your pupils. If you don’t cop on sure that’s that. Good luck. But then there was that one lioness, Mandy they called her, and you could tell by her look she wasn’t right. Even the pride kept an eye on her and they never, ever, let her near the cubs. But at some point the pride forgot and she got three cubs before we got her.

A young red haired boy comes through the turnstile in a chequered shirt and blue shorts. The green runners puffy at the bottom of his skinny legs. The adult with him, his da I suppose, brings him over to Chimp Island. They stop against the moat surrounding the monkeys. The chimps ahead of them messing up in the trees. Doing a jig with thumbs in his ears, the young lad has the tongue on him stuck out. Normal old stuff, getting a rise off the monkeys, nothing unusual. And that's why most people would miss it. But I see it there alright in the eyes and the slant on the brow. You can almost smell it on the young lad, like fag butts in half empty cans.

Out here we let a few of the animals go around the park as they like. Most of the un-caged keep a bit of distance from the crowds. Not the geese though, they’d get in the car with a stranger for a few bits of pulled bread. You'd want to be a secret agent to get a drop on the rest of them but that said there’s a wallaby with the initials K.C. carved in behind his ear. That’s the stuff you’ve to be on the lookout for. If any of those animal rights types caught wind of it’d be hello RTE.

Burgers for a tenner and flat 7-Up but sure they pay it and the children screaming milk shake this and chicken nugget that. Jungle Jim’s is the name of the fast food place, across from the fruit bats, opposite the spider monkeys. Trina’s sweating bullets trying to take the orders so I jump in beside her and get on a till.

-Good man Noah, she says wiping her forehead.

-Have I earned a coffee? I ask when the crowds relax.

-G’wan you cur.

Trina used be a nurse up in Wexford general and took the early retirement. She does an odd day here and there for the cash in hand. Sound out she is, and sure we have a bit of the old back and forth.

-Any craic out there today Noah?

-Ah sure ya know yourself. Just keeping a look out for the old yellow fellas.

She frowns and tosses a bit of chicken gristle into the maw.

-Want to be careful with that now Noah, remember what the boss said.

-But he still bursts gaskets if one of the animals winds up taking a few slaps.

-I’m just sayin.

I pour out an Americano and wave to Trina. Families come from as far off as Mayo, on a bad day you’d do a thousand easily. That’s ten psychos, so the eyes have to be peeled. The da of the young red-head is sitting with his back to me, a cap pulled over his eyes. There’s a back pack beside his legs, a bottle inside of whatever has him asleep. The red head’s gone AWOL.

No sign of him down by Chateau du Cheetah, no hint of him by Meerkat Kave and Turtle Tenement is a no go. A few of us questioned the name of the last one, on account of this island's history but the boss shrugged and said c'est ca. Whatever that means.

After the ‘incident’ we’d a talk and he said I had to make sure an animal was in trouble before I started pelting lads out. 'Sure he’d a fist raised', I said and the boss goes 'Yeah but he hadn’t done anything yet.' How’s that for dull? Like the doctor telling you to fuck off with your cold and come back when you’ve a dose of pneumonia.

We can't track an individual animal. The boss said it's too expensive to put chips in the lot of them. There's a kind of a bracelet thing if one of them needs to be monitored. Other than that you've got your eyes and your feet, find them quick you're on the clock. Most of the mara are with the zebras and giraffes behind the fences. They're like a cross between a hare and a tiny deer, mad yokes altogether. As soon as they see you they're gone for dust, if the young lad can catch one of these he'll have a place with the Irish Rangers.

There's a buzzing now inside the chest, little waves of tension washing over me. I can't find the red-head anywhere. The orangutans start screaming, the ducks hold their heads under the water until the very last second, geese spit bran flakes back into open palms. The yellow is out there and the animals can feel it, roots of the jungle recoiling under the soil. I see it then, the work of powerful morons. The boss was showing some investor around the park earlier and all that's left is an open gate. It leads to one of several veterinary stations. This particular one being a maternity unit.

Grass grows high here, relaxing for the mothers-to-be they say. I'm crouched down, the head low behind long strands of grass. The first pen is covered over with thick plexiglass, a lioness' side rising with the breath. I put my hand against the glass and she looks at me with half closed eyes before looking away. I took up Tai Chi for the old head a few years ago. The doctor said that a bit of yoga or what-have-you on top of the medication and I wouldn't know myself at all. The old paranoia would settle. Brushing the grass away reminds me of those movements. I must go back one of these days. The second pen is empty. On the concrete floor someone's after leaving a mess, dry blood and straw. Rotten enough alright.

The grass parts left and then right and I feel as important as Moses.

It sticks against his cheeks, the grass just underneath his red hair. He's looking down at something below him, something small. I could stand up now, give him the boot, send him back to the main park, wake up his drunk da. He's yellow, if I'm sure of anything this young lad's yellow. He doesn't move, just keeps there, eyes to the ground. There's a few licks of fur between the grass, breathing slowly. By the back of it she looks like a wallaby, one of the cageless. They do that sometimes, go the vetinary stations when it's time to give birth, a sense they have maybe. The young lad kneels down beside her and I loose him altogether. Small slits of colour between the grass. There's no noise, no hissing out of the animal.

I stay down and wait.

This chap must be yellow.

-The fuck are you doing here!?

The young lad darts up and I hear the wallaby make a noise. Not a hiss or cry but a sort of shudder. Like something in the air's after changing.

-Look da, it's after having little babies!

Strands of grass moving under the weight of the father. The da towards the boy like a langered cheetah.

-Babies da?

The child saying it like a question.

A blunt sound and then the young lad starts bawling. Another sound, sharper now. And another.

I stay put, the grass cutting into the air above me.

Another.

And he pulls him by the arm, drags the little fella through the down trodden grass. The da closes the gate behind him and I'm left there lying on the dirt. I push the grass away until I get to the Wallaby, a joey lying there at her teet. The mother starts hissing at me, teeth under the wet snout like those yokes on the rooves of caves. I see myself mirrored in her black eyes. The teeth waiting to snare, ready for the yellow in the darkness of my reflection.  

Last Call

Here be's a poem type thing, though it's really just re-formatted prose.

Last Call

I

The auld lad’s still sitting there, arms spread, broadsheet between and

Ma goes by screaming ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the iron’s still on!’

Horsed clothes, creased as da’s Irish Times, waiting to be pressed and folded

In just a year they’ve greyed, steps a fraction slower

Only a few words at dinner

Quietly loaded

Palpable

II

Finally a decent pint of black and I almost forget the settle

Dark brown thunder rolling under white cloud

Old friendships, hard fought, fingers gripped around a neck

Stout stained lips shouting and balling ‘Any young ones?’

And sure you make something up for the tale of it

These two are having a baby

She’s off in England

Him?

Sure he went off the bridge

III

Then the light fades away and comes back

I haven’t been here in a year

The light fades away and comes back

A feeling as if I’d never left

The light fades away and comes back

One last chance

Fades away and comes back

Fades away and comes back

Excerpt from an almost finished short

Parts of the grass have been dug up by whatever tires the door belonged to. Some drunk kid, entitled as fuck I’d say, drink, drive and donuts. Either way the van city government are charging him for the repair work. We start at picking the tread marks, Andore asks if we’d be better off using the Stripper. Lucas doesn’t respond. Politely he asks again. No reply. I smile at the new guy and throw eyes to the skies.

                “The community asked us to do this slow, charge by the hour” Lucas says “teach the little piglet a lesson.”

                He stands by the car door and lights a fag. He doesn’t lift a pick. Sweat beads and rolls over my brows, stinging my eyes. I drop the pick and walk to the truck to get some water, I screw the top off and down some.

                “Who said you could have a break?!” Lucas shouts.

                “Thought you wanted to do it slow.” I yell back.

                Birdman stops picking and looks at me, biting his bottom lip to stop the laughter. Andore looks to Lucas, Remy keeps at the job. Lucas walks over to me carrying his bulk with clenched fists to the side. He stops a foot from me and stares, he grabs the water bottle from me and unscrews the top slowly. He begins drinking, water streaming down his heavy jowls. He keeps his eyes on me, head slanted until every drop is gone. He screws the top back on, hands me the bottle and glares.

                “Back to work” he says.

                I go back to work.           

                My arms start burning, heat rising off my biceps. Everything starts to hurt. Whenever I try to stop for a breath Lucas eyes me. Cumbersome isn’t the word at all. Lucky to get through ten inches in ten minutes. I start to see shapes in the ruffled dirt, people wrapped around one another, faces. Sweat dripping into tiny puddles beneath me, my breath heavy. I start to think about my childhood, ice cream lining my knuckles, da giving me maths grinds. He used to put me on his back in the pool before I could swim, holding on in the deep end. Floating. A cool breeze shushes somewhere behind my eyes. I feel the pick axe in my hand, my fingers calloused on the wood. An extension. I breathe in the leaves, the trees, the mark of the treads. Something is about to happen, I’m about to lift off the ground or be sucked into it and then Lucas shouts fifteen minutes and it’s break and I snap out. All the way out. Lucas walks to his truck, he never eats with us.

                “You doing okay Irish?” Birdman asks.

                “What’s the deal with Lucas?”

                “He’s got a mood thing, don’t take it personally. He feels worse about that then you do.”

                “You should have seen him before he kicked the drink.” Andore says.

                “He was a fucking demon.”

                Someone asks Remy what he did back in Montreal and to be fair the chap gives us the best answer ever. A Pedobaiter.

                “What the fuck is that?” I ask.

                “I would set up fake facebooks” his French Canadian accent is weak now “be a fifteen year old boy or whatever. Get them to say some weird shit and then tell them to put a grand in my account or I’d send all the shit they said to me to their families.”

                No one says a thing.

                “Snagged a cop by mistake, had to get out of Montreal.”

                The door on the truck opens, fifteen minutes isn’t a lot. He walks towards us. His torn dungarees caught in a mild breeze. We walk towards the pick axes, horizontal beside the treads. Lucas hands me a water bottle as I walk and nods. There is something terribly desperate in the way he looks at me, like a dog that shit the bed. Thanks I say and drink. He walks away before I can hand him the bottle.

                It’s mine now.  

Abortion In Ireland

The ‘Right or Wrong’

It would seem that Ireland is going to be brought, with some citizens kicking and screaming, into a pro-choice world. So far the main proponents of the debate are those with liberal attitudes and agendas and those who, for the most part, are right wing, conservative and religious. Unfortunately, as is often the case when debates start to gain public recognition, there is rarely a discourse for people who may believe or at least question elements from each argument.

                We live in an era of scientific knowledge and beliefs that refute various religious ideas. This has seen a profound number of people stray from their local parish in the past twenty or so years. The Catholic church, for its part, has remained an archaic institute which refuses to change as social attitudes and customs do. It has fallen from an immensely powerful structure in society to something that has become relic like. While this seems true for many religious institutions the Catholic church is alone in the fact that it has been publicly disgraced for its transgressions again and again. Many people have turned away from the institution primarily for this reason while for others the community of church and belief is important and they recognize that it wasn’t ‘their’ priest who was involved. It has become obvious through recent inquiries and media attention that the upper echelons do not act with the interests of community at the forefront rather interests of appearance but the fact remains that religion can be a source of warmth and healing to people. Many others would argue that they are spiritual to some extent or believe in something transcendent though what they couldn’t tell you. The truth is that there is no way to prove or disprove any of these ideas and the act of endeavouring to do so often causes more damage than good.

                A growing number of societies and governments have decided that a foetus’ life cannot be called a human life and in doing so have paved a way for abortion. There is no point getting into the idea of a human spirit or soul being housed in a foetus or at what moment it becomes active. I can’t know this, neither can you. But one thing we can accept is that a foetus has the potential for human life. A foetus can grow from child to adult and live their lives whatever way they deem fit. To create life is a legal responsibility and those found guilty of neglecting their children face legal ramifications. As a society we have accepted that once the baby has been delivered it has the same rights and legal standing as any other citizen. We have not decided to which point this legal right extends before birth. I have no statistics on what point a brain develops but the fact that the potential for these things exists should bring a bigger argument than it’s a woman’s body, a woman’s choice. From a humanitarian point of view abortion would be unethical should we extend the same rights of a foetus to a child. Where then does this stand when we consider that a foetus is the potential for a child? And then of course darker arguments begin to spring up: what about cases of incest or rape, mental or physical illness or death? We can say that a foetus has the potential for life but also it has the potential to cause a devastating effect on life that already exists. Also there will always be cases where abortion is used flippantly. I would never argue that people would knowingly use it as a source of contraception, that argument seems shallow. However I do believe it relieves people of a certain amount of responsibility that they should have, but then the reality is that these people will probably make far better parents when they are ready, whether than is together or apart. There is also the argument that abortions cause people to experience depression. This is probably due to stigma and the fact that an abortion itself is a traumatic experience rather than evidence of anything inherently evil about it.

                Should abortion be made legal? I myself would not want my partner, sex buddy or one night stand to get one. I believe that the potential for a child is an important thing and without knowing if a foetus has some kind of cosmic or otherworldly energy I couldn’t stand by a decision to abort one. But that’s me and I don’t have the right to extend my sensibilities and ideologies to anyone else. Just because I believe in something does not make it real. I believed in Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, I even believed in the Abrahamic God I grew up with. The reality is that abortion should be legal for those that feel they need it for whatever reason that may be. Anyone who believes a foetus has a soul will not get one anyway. Whether this is right or wrong is a purely subjective matter. But if abortion does become law, we as a society, must stress that an individual be responsible. We must give them all the ideas, all the beliefs and all the mental and physical factors that go into getting an abortion. I’m sure many more people regret having abortions than children, and we should have a detailed list of the various coping mechanisms available to pregnant mothers. Above all else we must approach this with compassion for the person involved and not judgement. For most people the decision to get an abortion cannot be easy and times may well be tough in the preceding months that one has been completed.

                The abortion argument should not be about who is right and who is wrong. It should be about compassion for people regardless of which side of the line they stand on and a recognition that no matter what your beliefs are they don’t transcend the experience of being human. If you were brought up Catholic put yourself in the shoes of a young woman who isn’t. If you’re not spiritual or religious consider the possibility that the foetus may be more than growing cells or at the very least consider that it holds the possibility for life. When you have considered all these things and the various other ideas and arguments not expressed here make your decision but you must have the integrity and responsibility to consider these things. Once you do there is no one on either line of the argument that can convincingly say you were wrong.

  

               

               

      

                  

Curracloe

Little one for the summer...

Curracloe

The cars looking for parking and granddad saying out past the sand bank are basking sharks. That he used swim with them out in Dungarvan and he gives a wink. Young lads green coming off the waltzers and through the P.A. there’s a seat left on the Future Dance. The roar of holiday money thrown to chippers and arcades, pin balls smashing records. And in the marram grass the big fella is climbing up on the missus, half clothed the big red neck on him. Little men with ice cream snots dripping off the top lip shouting and bawling as a skinny chap in atomic green togs, water to his ankles, wonders the point of it at all. And granddad says they’ve no teeth on them but by Jaysus they’d swally ya whole. And now the big fella, covered in lumpy sweat apologizing to the missus, just gimme a few minutes says he and I’ll be ready again, the sand plastered up his inner thigh tearing the hole off him. Mothers with sun screen palms and everyone trying to make memories, forcing too hard, some. But we lie down and bask in it all, melanomas and our skins not able. And there he is now a little bit further out, shaking with the cold and the waves turning black. The chap in atomic togs swimming with sharks.

Dream Diary

Diary thing...not really sure how it's all gonna go. I'm trying for a semi biographical/semi fictitious blog diary. Fictitious cos I'm well aware my life isn't that entertaining.
G'luk

Day Fucking One

The Shape chased me again last night. I was in his house this time, all shadows and creek. He had a prisoner, a girl. Maybe I was trying to rescue her...maybe I was just trying to rescue myself.

                That last sentence is overly dramatic.

                The Shape’s been chasing me for years now.

                It started on the 31^st of October. The lads went out knacker drinking or whatever. I stayed in, wanted to see the scary. John Carpenter’s Halloween. I mightn’t have watched it if I knew how severe it would leave me. Everyone calls the killer ‘Michael Myers’ but that’s not right. If you ride the movie out until the credits the killer’s name is ‘The Shape’. You know the one; walks after you in a white mask/jump suit ensemble. Got a carving knife as long as your forearm. Nothing seems to kill him and you never seem to get shot of him. Little piece of trivia: the budget on the original was so small that they actually bought a William Shatner mask and spray painted it white.

                So now I’m afraid of Star Trek too.

                Fear had me like a surrogate mother. If The Shape was real then Batman or someone would be real too. If Myers showed up to slice me then it was possible for Spiderman to show up and web him. That’d settle me. Eventually I’d yawn out the panic and sleep. That’s when the dreams started.

                I’m way older now and the dreams haven’t stopped. What’s slightly more unnerving is that they usually pre-date something bad. I’m not saying I’m psychic or anything. Just that my nightmares are. November 1^st, the first day after my first Shape dream, my grandmother died. They’re not Banshee dreams, like I have one then someone kicks it. But something bad always happens. June 7^th 2001, I fell and knocked out three teeth. April 20^th 2002 Mam lost her job due to a ‘re-organising’ at work. December 25^th 2004, or as I’ve dubbed it: Black Christmas, the first year where my folks decided I’d stop getting presents. All post Shape dream.

                They’re the only instances I can remember but I’ve had way more Shape dreams. It’s time to get serious about keeping track. If I go down in a hail of bullets tomorrow maybe someone will find this and put some money into a study on slasher-flick themed dreams. Like right now it’s ten forty five and there are a load of craze-balls screaming outside my window. The God damned zombie apocalypse might have started. Though it is football season...

                Anyway that’s the crux of it. I’ll take it day by day. If I’m gonna get Freddied in my dreams by Michael the internet will know. But I’m getting tired now, I woke up at six in the morning and couldn’t get back asleep. This is goodnight.  I’ll post up day two tomorrow, maybe I’ll tell you about the POV-style movie dreams I have. We’ll see how it goes.

                Whatever you do don’t fall asleep...

New: Book/Idea/Short Story/Who Really Knows?

Been a long time since I updated this thang. You'll be glad to know (possibly) Milligrams is in fact finished. I'm going to be sending it off soon so hopefully something will come out of that. They say most novelists only get their second novel published. So at least the time hasn't been wasted, kinda...

Anyway this is an idea I had for a book, I'm kind of playing with the word structure, do let me know if it's too wacky. I'm having a lot of fun with it though I know it may not be the easiest to read.

Laters!

I wore sun cream to the funeral. The family went sweat red. Black suits and sunshine. I was on the outside. No blood, meant I didn’t have to dress up. Not like I have a suit anyway. Church was full inside and out. In death Moses could sure pull a crowd. The woman guiding the hearse flicked her hair back with leather gloves. They opened the boot, took out the wreathes. The coffin slid into family hands. They held it up all Valkyrie  like. 

                I go to Mass Christmas and funerals. Death and birth. Leftover Catholic shit. When you shed the belief a part keeps the fangs in. Maybe it’s just being Irish?  The smell of incense comes on strong. Priest swings the mace thing in pendulum arcs. No one cries during the speeches. Mother sits in the front pew. Hair hangs like willow weeping.

                I stand at the back. Eyes down, don’t look at the family. Tiles are sliced diagonally. Muddy and red like the drinking blood. Dusty. All things in here are dusty. Dust on the top of Christ’s head, dust on Mary’s heels, dust on the bleeding heart. Someone’s polished the snake. He chokes under Gabriel’s foot.

                Chime time. Everyone stands. I’m already standing. Hum dung Druid chants. We wade through words. Like instinct they come off my tongue. Blessed be’s and also with you’s. They’re all there. Waiting in the back of my brain. Everyone sits. Not me.

                Moses  made money the easy way. The hard way maybe? Not my game, ask someone else. Sold out dope. Cut quarters and charged fifties. 

                “He was very popular in the community.”

                Priest says it like it’s not a joke. I see seven people smile. Seven. I count the lips.

                Moses played the last chord his own way. I don’t know much about it. Truth: I didn’t know him. Never met him, never heard a good word. Nail like tough. Looking for trouble. Finding it. Always smiling. Hyena grin. Intimidating. So what am I doing here? Good question. I’m not really sure.

                Ignoring Voice is never a good idea though. He’ll ramble all day otherwise. Start off quiet, by night he’s screaming like a city made of vocal chords. Voice said to go to the mass. Wait, wait. Something important to say before we walk on. I’m not crazy. Not in the I-say-I’m-not-crazy-so-I’m definitely-crazy way. Legit. I hear voices, well I hear Voice, but I’m not schizo.   Http://www.voicesireland.com/Home.htm:  Hearing Voices Ireland (HVI) was founded in 2006 by Brian Hartnett to ‘promote and foster acceptance of voice hearing as a valid human experience’. So that’s that out of the way.

                Anyway Voice told me to come to the funeral. We had a back and forth. Voice won the debate with shouting. He always does that. We have an agreement though. No messing after ten. And he can only talk to me when I play video games if he’s helping. Strategy wise.

                Mass is big with people. The old ones cough heavy. Come on like thunder claps. Nose blows here and there. Painful for ears. And everyone has two. Voice is keeping quiet. That was the deal. Go to the funeral but no talking in between. Only Head Voice is allowed right now.  Head Voice is the one everyone’s got. The one you hear with your brain. If you’ve only got Head Voice then they don’t offer you atypical’s. That means drugs. Abilify, Seroquel and all the others. Psych offered me the antipsychotics before. He thinks I might be crazy. They’ll give a PhD to anyone. Side effects include (not limited to) diabetes mellitus, pancreatitis, tardive dyskinesia, akithisia, dysphoria etc. That sound healing to you?

                Head Voice is wondering how thick the walls are. He thinks it might be two meters-ish. I think that’s what she said. Art teacher in Secondary. Gothic architecture. Pugin and all that. Impression of a sunrise. Monet, like cash, Manet like man. That’s something else entirely. Church is gothic. Are there impressionistic buildings? Head Voice can’t remember. I sigh. Mass is starting to get boring. Still on the sermon. “We’ll all miss Moses, Moses was a good man”. Priest will have to confess later. Lying is one of the ten. Priest doesn’t call Moses ‘Moses’. He calls him John. That was what Moses’ ma and da baptised him. I like Moses better.

                Chime goes off again. Time for the bread. It turns into flesh in your mouth. Transubstantiation. That’s what the Catholics believe. B-E-L-I-E-V-E. And doctor calls me crazy. Bunch of cultish cannibal types. Even Voice says the Jesus-flesh-thing is bollocks. And Voice is the part of me that doctor thinks IS crazy. Consubstantiation I can live with. That means the flesh thing is just a symbol. Like an ideogram but not exactly. That’s Protestantism. Makes more sense than Catholicism. Old Irish are too afraid to admit it. Ninety-Five thesis on a Whittenburg church. Leo X excommunicated Martin Luther for making sense. Silly-stupid.

                Everyone walks up the aisle. Hands held together. Otherwise God gets pissy. Send another flood like the one in Japan. It’s okay though God’s on Valium. He’s not angry anymore. Or he wouldn’t be. If I believed in him. Definitely something out there. But it’s not in the skies and it’s not God. Sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings. Better to find out now though. Priest can put the bread in your hands or on your tongue. Old people get it on the tongue. I like it in the paw. You have to say ‘Amen’ or no Jesus-flesh.

          

Chapter 8 of Milligrams

This is it. This is all I'm giving away for free. Just finished the first draft of book. 209 pages of absolute codshite. Remember to buy a copy.

8

I take a few more Xanax before bed. It helps slow my thoughts down. I’m not really anxious but I don’t know how to process what Zed’s just told me. I look across at her and she’s already asleep. Zed’s in for the chemo. She can’t afford a private hospital so she has to spend some time in Wexford General every few months. Tests and stuff. My nan died of cancer when dad was in jail. She just kept getting weaker and weaker. Eventually she fell into a three day sleep and didn’t wake up.

            Ma came up to Dublin after the guards rang her. They had found me throwing arm-fulls of fag butts into the canal. They said technically I hadn’t really broken any laws. They also said that they hadn’t checked me for drugs. I think that was guard for “were letting him off with this one.” Whatever it was ma pretty much copped I had been out of my face the night before. The only thing she said was “thank God this didn’t happen in Wexford”. After that no one said anything. That kind of suited me. I could feel a coldness on my neck and every few minutes I’d get this little pang of anxiety. I wasn’t really in a talky mood. At one point I turned around and saw a tear sliding down the corner of her eye. She went into this story from when I was a kid. I came home from school one day crying. Apparently the teacher had been talking about how we were put together, biology wise. I came home balling and saying that we were only flesh and bone. Ma hugged me and said “what do you feel when you hug mammy?” I sniffed and said happy.

            “Can you see happy?”

            “No but I can feel it.”

            “Exactly.” She pointed at my stomach. “There’s lots of things in there you can’t see. It’s magic.”

            We reminisced about me and Jess being kids for about two hours. For the first time that day I felt something other than scared. I can’t imagine how Zed feels. To know that soon you’re going to find out if there really is any magic in you. Or if it’s all just flesh and bone.

            In the morning the doctor tells me I can go. It’s really early. Like seven or eight. No one else is awake yet. Within about two hours I’m packed up and ma’s outside to collect me. Zed’s still asleep. I walk over to her and shake her by the shoulder. She opens her eyes and looks at me. Angry glare that is. I can hear her tongue peel off the roof of her mouth.

            “Wha?!” It sounds like one of those zombies from Dawn of the Dead.

            “I’m going. Home like.”

            “Yeah. Bye.”

            Zed turns over and closes her eyes. That’s it. I thought it might be a bit more sentimental. Especially after what Zed told me last night. I mean if you were watching that part in Terminator 2, where Arnold Scwartzennegar goes into the lava with his thumb up, and John Connor had just gone “Yeah. Bye” that would have been a major anti-climax. I walk downstairs with my bags and stuff. I’m pretty pissed off. I thought we had a click or something. Like Thelma and Louise. No wait they were both girls. I don’t even know who Bonny and Clyde are so not them. Batman and Robin? No. I don’t know.

            I open the back door to ma’s Lexus and throw my stuff in. I get into the front seat and sit down. Me and ma blab for a bit, nothing too important. Just how my guinea pig is. Roger and C.A. are fast becoming friends apparently. She tells me dad won’t be home until tomorrow. He’s out on business somewhere. Yeah I know, you’d think tax evasion or whatever would pretty much guarantee a break from the business world. Not my dad, he’s cunning like a fox. People tend to forget fox’s eat all the hens when they use that phrase. We pull into the drive. I’m taking my bags out of the car and thinking about how blasé Zed was about me leaving. Then I remember I’m outside. At first I kind of go “oh yeah, I should be freaking out”. Nothing happens for a minute then I feel the fear creep in. I’m inside before it gets too intense. It makes me think I might be less broken or something.

            My room is exactly how it was before I left for college. There’s still a Batman poster on the wall and three cardboard boxes full of comics by my bed. Ma’s put the almost-stolen 32” HDTV on a rack on the wall. She’s even arranged some of my old toys around the laptop on my desk. I look around for C.A.’s cage. It’s not in my room. Downstairs ma is cutting up some grapefruit.

            “Do you still like sugar on yours Alex?”

            “Yeah. Thanks.”

            She puts half the grapefruit into a bowl and sprinkles some sugar over the top. I go to take it off her but she says we should eat in the conservatory. It’s not really sunny but for this time of year I suppose it’s a good day. C.A.’s cage is in the conservatory. The pig comes up to the cage bars. I open the clips on the side and take her out. C.A.’s dressed like a pirate. I’m not hallucinating or anything.

            “What’s the story with this?”

            “Oh it’s lovely isn’t it? Roger and I decided we’d make little Harry here a costume. Jessica showed him that film with Johnny Depp and now he’s going through a pirate phase.”

            “Harry?”

            “Well I didn’t know what his name was. Harry’s a nice name. What do you call him?”

            “Captain Anxious.”

            “Captain Anxious?” Ma laughs a bit.

            “Weird name eh.”

            “It’s not that. It’s just such an Alex name isn’t it.”

            “An Alex name? How’d you mean.”

            “Well you called the dog Ultimate Bear, the cat was the Clawed Avenger and remember your fish?”

            “My old goldfish, what did I call him again?”

            “Aqua Commando.”

            We both laugh. I’m twenty now and still naming animals like they’re superheros. I may as well make the most of it. If I ever have a kid I’ll have to name him something boring like John. I won’t though because that’s my dad’s name. Maybe I’ll call him something cool like Ezekial. He’ll either get bullied badly or turn out to be really popular. If he gets raised in Wexford it’ll probably be the first one.

            “Hey this isn’t funny man. I look like the most retarded pirate ever!” C.A. chirps.

            “Back to being a guy then are we?”

            “Sorry?” Mam says.

            Living by myself for the last few months has made me forget it’s a little short of normal to talk to a guinea pig.

            “Oh, nothing just thinking out loud.”

            “You’re all right aren’t you?”

            “Yeah I’m fine.”

            I blamed almost everything on the break up. Dropping college, moving home and all the general misery. Problem is mother’s are smart. Half the time they know what you’re thinking before you do. Ma knows that ever since I took drugs and got arrested I haven’t been the same. She was really bringing on the heat before I moved out. Saying she was going to ring a councillor, asking why I never went outside. Luckily, well depending on your definition, things between me and dad were strained as they always are. Meant I got to move out to my own place in Cromwell’s Fort. Ma says she paid the rent but dad pays for everything. That’s generally how he handles a problem: fires a shit load of money at it and pretends it’s not there. 

            “Are you busy on Friday?”

            “Friday? I don’t think so. Nothing planned anyway” I reply.

            “Good.”

            “Why is that good ma?”

            “Mam. I’d like you to see a friend of mine. A psychologist or a psychiatrist. Some sort of councillor anyway.”

            “But...”

            Ma cuts in.

            “One session. That’s all Alex. See how you feel afterwards. Please.”

            Maybe Zed was right, if I’m going loony tunes there’s no point fighting it. At least with this I can go one way or the other. Poor ma, god only knows how she’ll explain it to the neighbours if it turns out I’m going mental. I imagine her telling everyone I’ve gone travelling for a few months. “Alex got a job in Australia” will be code for “Alex responded well to electroshock therapy”.

            “Okay. One session.”

            Ma takes the grapefruit off me and heads to the kitchen. C.A. looks up at me.

            “It’ll be fine Al. Even if you do go to the mental it’s not like they won’t let you back out.”

            “How do you know C.A.?”

            “Too many budget cuts this year.”

            The first rain drop hits the see through roof. The others follow. It’s like heating pop corn or something. I hear ma turn on the television. Some celebrity is plugging their new film. Some new superhero flick. Green Arrow. They bullshit on about how they’ve always been fans of the comic book. Then they forget that Green Arrow’s real name is ‘Ollie’ Queen and refer to him as ‘Larry’. The rain gets harder.

            I hear a key in the door. It shuffles around and eventually catches the lock. The footsteps give him away. Heavy and direct.

            “I didn’t think he was back until tomorrow?” C.A. chirps.

            “Me neither.”

            Dad walks into the conservatory. He looks at me. He has one of those cardboard take away coffee cups. He takes a sip from it and keeps his eyes on me. I remember some nature show about alpha male gorillas. If you break eye contact they’ll attack. He takes the cup from his lips.

            “How are you?”

            “Grand.”      

            “Good.”

            I’m not sure if ma even knows he’s here. He doesn’t go into her anyway. His feet come down heavy on the stairs. I wait for C.A. to chirp or something but he stays quiet. I drop another Xanax.

Chapter 7 of Milli

Penultimate chapter of book. Then I really don't know what I'm going to put on this thing anymore. Good times.

7

I know I complain about digital television but it beats the shit out of terrestrial. In the hospital there are only four channels. Rte 1, Network 2, Tv3 and T na G. Rte 1 is almost always crap. Occasionally you’ll get a good film or something but 80 per cent of the time it’s just boring. To be fair Network 2 is one of the better stations. Plenty of good shows and stuff. Tv3 is okay, kind of like a trashy magazine or something. I reckon I’d love T na G if I could speak Irish. Those Ross na Run ads look interesting. It’s been dark since about five o’clock. It’s probably a combination of this and bad entertainment that has everyone asleep.

            Me and Zed are in the toilet smoking fags out the window. There’s tension for sure. I want to know about her scars and I’ll bet she wants to know why I pulled a runner earlier. I don’t know what it is about people. We always want to know about everyone else but never want to tell about ourselves. It feels kind of like it’s just me and her in the ward. If you had to guess the odd one out you’d probably choose the African woman. Not racism or anything just because five out of six have the same skin colour. But I bet if you had some sort of nifty glasses that let you see the...I don’t know...inside someone, you’d put me and Zed in our own little corner.

            “What’s the deal with those totem poles man?”

            “I don’t know. I was looking at them the other day, couldn’t figure it out.” I reply.

            Zed hands me the fag.

            “You want to level?” She says.

            “Kind of. You might think I’m mental though.”

            “Can’t be more mental than my arms man.”

            “Okay so who goes first?”

            “Got a coin?”

            “Call it.”

            The coin spins in the air and Zed calls tails. It lands on my palm. I flick my right hand on top of my left and then lift it off. It’s tails.

            “Okay so you want to go first or me?”

            “Me.”

            She inhales deep on the fag. The area around the window goes amber. Zed holds it in for a second then breathes the smoke out. She rolls up the sleeve on her dressing gown and points to a small white line on her elbow.

            “This was the first. There aren’t a lot nerves in your elbow skin.”

            “What age were you?”

            “Sixteen.”

            It’s not really the explanation I was looking for. She’s obviously cut herself. I want to know why.

            “I don’t know. It was just an impulse. I went with it.”

            “If it’s any consolation I burned myself pretty bad when I was around the same age.”

            I slide the left shoulder of the dressing gown down. Just under those two injection marks everyone has there’s a small, scarred blotch.

            “How’d you do that?”

            “I was trying to burn the Superman sign into my arm. Tried to do it with a poker. As soon as I felt the pain I stopped.”

            “Haha, you used to be a super nerd?!”

            “Used to be? One Christmas I asked Santa for Spider powers!”

            “For what?!

            “You know like Spiderman. I was about eight. I woke up Christmas morning and tried to jump off my bed and stick to the wall!”

            “Hahaha you freak!”

            “That’s not the worst part! My ma came down stairs after she heard the bang! She walks into my room and there I am lying on top of a broken bed with a fractured wrist!”

            We laugh for a long time. Zed wipes tears from her eyes and takes another smoke out of the pack. She remembers to hold the match towards the ground.

            “Your turn. Why’d you pull a homeward bound today?”

            “Honestly I don’t know. It just felt like I had to leave. Like if I didn’t get back inside I was going to die or go crazy or something.”

            “What like agoraphobia?”

            “I don’t know. It happens outside all the time but I freak out inside too.”

            “When did it start?”

            I pulled a 2.1 from my first year results. English and History. Not a particularly great 2.1 but it was a good enough mark. The first couple of weeks of second year were all drinking and smoking. Missing lectures, sleeping in and generally being irresponsible. Me and Ellen were pushing the three year mark, Roger had turned three and dad was back home. I hadn’t really talked to him. Scratch that, I still haven’t really talked to him.

            Me and Bobby (the ladder pusher) were living in a two bed house near enough to the Burlington hotel. Bobby had to work back home on the weekends so it was just me and Ellen. I was nineteen and so was she. It felt like we were pretending to be adults or something. Cooking dinner, drinking cheap bottles of wine and sleeping together for a couple of nights a week. I used to look forward to every weekend. Ellen was on campus. She was living with a family friend. Thing was this family friend was more of a family spy. If I stayed over or Ellen didn’t come home one night her folks would find out. Lucky for us she went home on the weekends. Friday and Saturday were ours. No Bobby and no spies.   

            It was coming up to the midterm. Halloween and all that. I used to like getting comfortably scared watching all the horror films. Nowadays I freak out a little too much. I was planning a mad Halloween party: ‘The Hellowe’en Fest’. No points for festival names. So it’s the 31^st of October and everything is set up. Everyone, and I mean everyone, starts arriving. There’s got to be about two hundred people in the house and garden. It’s one of dad’s properties in Dublin. He’s got a couple of flats and stuff. If he’s on business he stays out in Monkstown Avenue. Like I said, I didn’t see much of him. Ellen arrives dressed as Psylocke from the X-Men. She looks amazing, or amazing to a comic nerd. I joke with her and say she should have died her hair purple for the full effect. That’s when the night turns sour.

            Ellen is really pissed off. I tell her I’m only joking but it doesn’t seem to do anything. We go into my room to talk. She’s sauced and slightly slurring words. What happens next is like a levy breaking. Ellen says she doesn’t know anymore. She starts crying, I start crying. There’s someone else. I know before she tells me. She starts by saying three years is a long time, that we’re just kids, that she’s in a weird place right now. All the stuff you’ve heard from girls before. Right up until she tells me about the kiss. The kiss with Bobby. It blows my mind. He’s like my best friend. She tells me it ‘just happened’. She tells me she’s sorry. Says it didn’t mean anything, that she doesn’t care about him but it’s made her think differently. That maybe we’re not meant to be together. I get up and walk.

            Downstairs the party is roaring. I need to get outside, try to categorise what just happened. I can’t feel anything. No panic or sadness. I’m just numb. I open the front door. There are a few kids dressed for Halloween walking around outside. Optimus Prime, Dracula and a banshee. Prime and Dracula are boys but the banshee is a little girl. The three of them are laughing together and looking through their white plastic bags. One of the little boys hands the girl a fun size bar. Then the other little boy quickly offers her a bar of his own. She takes them both.

            A while later I’m sitting on a bench by the canal. The grass is covered in dying leaves. The water is still. I want to feel something. It’s like I’m sitting beside myself. Some guy comes over to me and tries to sell me some acid. I remember thinking who goes around selling LSD at night? Next thing I know I’m sitting there with a stamp. There’s a picture of the Mad Hatter on it. I guess this is like my elbow scar. I just wanted to feel something. I’d never taken any serious drugs. Smoked a bit of hash, that was about it. I put the stamp on my tongue.

            “I haven’t been the same since.”

            “What happened?”

            “I don’t really want to talk about it. It makes me kind of...I don’t know.”

            “Were you okay?”

            “Not really. I wound up in the Garda station.”

            “Shit buzz. Have you been to counselling or anything?”

            “No. I dropped college and moved out by myself.”

            “Why didn’t you talk to someone man?”

            “Has that worked for you?”  

            We’re both quiet for a second. Zed sparks a match, blows on it and throws it out the window.

            “My sister is on at me to go. I don’t know, maybe” I say.

            “Nothing to lose man.”

            “I get this fear, like what if they put me in a madhouse or something.”

            “If they put you in St. Senan’s then you’re probably better off.”

             I’m not sure what to say to that. Things aren’t getting better. To be honest they’re going south of worse. I’m about two steps short of recluse. It’s like every time I have a panic attack I think I’m closer to the last one. Not ‘last one’ as in then I’ll be better, ‘last one’ as in then I’ll be mental. First you get nervous, then you can’t go to school anymore, then you can’t go outside. At this point sanity is the only thing left to take.

            “Relax man I’m jesting. People like you don’t go to the mental.”

            “People like me?”

            “My dad was in there before I was around. He talked about it once. The people he met or whatever. Doesn’t sound as if people like you get sent there.”

            “Sorry I didn’t know.”

            “They could make a documentary on what you don’t know about me.”

            “Is he okay?”

            “He is now. He’s never really told me why he was sent there.”

            “And your mam?”

            “She died when I was younger.”

            “That’s rough Zed. I’m sorry.”

            “Relax you didn’t kill her.”

            Zed takes out another fag and lights it. I put my hand on her shoulder. Maybe I imagine the water in her eyes. It never drips off her lash. She scratches her eyebrow, smiles and passes me the fag. I take a drag on it and realise that I haven’t asked Zed why she’s in the hospital.

            “So what’s wrong with you? Why are you here?”

            She doesn’t say anything until I hand her back the fag. She takes a pull on it and breathes out. The words almost get lost in the smoke.

            “I’m dying.”