Here Are the Young Men (15 page)

‘In that case I'll have rum and Coca-Cola,' I said in a Jarvis Cocker voice as we pushed into the clamour of sweat and electroclash. ‘Actually, no, I'll have a double vodka and Red Bull.'

‘Same for me,' said Cocker.

‘Me too, please,' said Rez.

Me and Cocker clambered up to the DJ box and requested punk songs, and Cocker screamed that if the DJ didn't play ‘Accelerator' by Primal Scream he would sneak into his house at night and eat his children, or his mother if he didn't have children, or his bollocks if he didn't have a mother. The DJ didn't hear him properly and merely gave a pompous nod in recognition that we existed at all.

‘Cheers, you fuckin spanner!' yelled Cocker, smiling and giving the DJ the thumbs up. ‘The fucker can't hear anything.'

Jen decided that what we needed to make the night perfect was some pills; she'd been dead curious to try them since we'd all raved to her about how amazing it had been the first time.

They weren't hard to find. Jen paid again, though we made some
show
of cobbling together a few coins to help out. We bought eight pills and took one each, washing it down with vodka and Red Bull. Then we rushed on to the dance floor because ‘I Wanna Be Sedated' had come on. As we danced I kept thinking that looks were passing between Cocker and Jen. I considered putting my fist through a mirror. But moments later the pill came up on me and all the rage and jealousy fell away.

‘I FUCKING LOVE YIS!' I roared to the three of them on the dance floor.

Cocker threw his arms in the air and screamed in euphoria. I decided he was my greatest friend of all time.

‘So it's working then, guys? You're coming up?' Jen called out.

‘OF FUCKIN COURSE I AM! I'M HAVIN THE TIME OF MY FUCKIN LIFE!' I roared back, already too fucked to catch her irony. As I roared the words, it seemed like I was proclaiming a manifesto, the sum total of all there was that was worth saying. Jen was rocking with laughter.

A few minutes later, she was coming up as well. She had been dancing a few bodies away from me and now she approached, eyes huge and clear. She took my face in her hands and said, ‘My God, these are incredible.' I nodded and grinned as ‘Debaser' came on. She pulled me in again and said, ‘Matthew listen, I just want to tell ye, I think yer amazin, I'm
so
glad we got together. I've always liked ye. Did ye know that? I never told anyone and I never did anything about it, but I've always liked ye, I always thought there was something different about ye, something more interesting.'

I took her face in my hands and kissed her; we pressed our foreheads together and gazed into each other's eyes.

Then we prised apart, and suddenly I was babbling at her, the words pouring out of me, uncontrollable, one leading to the next.

‘Jen there's things ye don't know about me, like I'm not who ye think I am, or there's somethin wrong with me, I don't know how to explain it, like I'm not a normal human bein or, or I don't know,
but
when me and Kearney saw the girl gettin killed, I mean it was horrible, Jen. But Kearney was really into it and I smiled at him and it's like, now when I see them bombin Iraqis on the news and the children dyin and all that stuff it's like I can't even feel angry any more, like I'm no better than they are, I'm just a Yank up in a gunship, like shootin into schools and chewin gum or …'

I stopped talking and closed my eyes. I was sure I'd said too much and now she would leave me and go off with Cocker, or someone else who had integrity and substance.

I opened my eyes and Jen was still smiling a wide, lovey smile. She didn't look shocked or disgusted. Still dancing, she put her hands behind my head and kissed me on the lips. She purred in my ear, ‘You're amazing, Matthew.' I realized that she hadn't heard a thing I'd said. But still I felt better, like I'd been to confession and spilled out my sins to God, only there was no God, the sky was empty and there was only Jen and me and Rez and Cocker, and the music and the drinks and the ecstasy that surged up through me now and everything was radiant and epic and there would never be another moment like this one in the entire span of the universe. I beamed at Jen, euphoric, suddenly forgiving myself for all the terrible things I'd felt I'd done for years and years, without even knowing what they were. Then I thought of Kearney over in America and sort of wished him well but understood very clearly that I had to move on from him, that a lot was at stake here, there was more to life than hate and rage and it was crucial that you liked yourself and a good girl could help you do that, and so could friends like Cocker and Rez and –

My thoughts got scrambled because at that moment the song that had been playing fell away and the first scorched beats and squeals of ‘Accelerator' tore through the speakers. I planted my feet shoulder-width apart, clenched my fists, threw my head back and howled: ‘UUUHHEEEAAAGGGHHH!'

The next thing I knew a bouncer was shoving me towards the side of the dance floor with his shoulder, pushing me against the wall,
saying,
‘Don't be a fuckin cock-merchant, alright? Give it the fuck over or ye can gerrou.' I looked in his eyes; he was pure brawn, skin-headed, and scarred under the right eye. But in his face I saw woundedness, strangled compassion and the capacity for immense love.

‘It's okay man, don't worry about it. Yer a great guy, I know ye are. Here, have a cigarette' – I pulled the pack from my back pocket and held it up to him. A joint protruded from the top; I ignored it, putting the pack away again. ‘It's great, I know yer only doin yer job, I know I'm actin the bollocks a bit. It can't be easy, like, on a Saturday night and all that, but fair play to ye. I mean like, yer not bad at all. I respect ye, ye know what I mean? I really fuckin do, I respect ye. All I'm sayin is I think yer great, man, seriously.'

‘GET THE
FUCK
OUT, YE CHEEKY LITTLE CUNT!' he bellowed, grabbing me by the scruff and dragging me to the front door, then shoving me on to the street. For a moment I thought he was going to hit me. ‘Ye can forget about ever comin back here again.'

‘What's wrong?' I pleaded, genuinely bewildered.

But he repeated that I was a cheeky little cunt and walked back into the club, rolling his shoulders and making sure he looked mean and cool. I held out my opened hands in a futile gesture to no one, an orphan before howling cosmic winds. Moments later, Cocker and Jen came hurrying out. Jen was laughing. Cocker's face was a glaze of indiscriminate bliss.

‘I'm barred!' I announced. The words sounded momentous, prophetic, and once again I started to come up, mad with euphoria.

‘The important thing is this,' Jen said, pulling a cocktail glass from underneath her jacket. ‘I smuggled out your drink.'

       

Some time later we were in the Iveagh Gardens, sitting on a bench, surrounded by the darkened windows of office buildings and the faintly rustling treetops of the city-centre green space. We were
passing
around one of the bottles of red wine we had bought from a secret, late-night counter. With all the drugs inside me the wine felt strange, like a trickle of cool, sweet blood running down to my guts. I had the vivid sense that as long as there was wine and cigarettes, everything would be okay. I looked up into the sky and felt a magnificent, heightened peacefulness. You never know, I thought, maybe there
was
something out there; not like a God, but something vast and beyond our understanding, some immense mystery that gave everything a kind of dignity and even a meaning. I thought of Becky and how she died but still I felt serene – maybe even that horror had a significance as part of some great cosmic blueprint. It seemed that everything was basically alright, that even tragedy and violence were not proof of how vile the world was, but only elements of it I couldn't yet understand.

Each reflection triggered many more, my mind cascading with wonder and insight. Then I wanted to be with the others. ‘Try Rez again,' I said to Jen, gurning my jaw, lighting perhaps my thirtieth cigarette of the night. ‘Rez is a great guy, pure fucking quality.'

There were purrs of agreement, then Jen phoned him.

‘We're in the Iveagh Gardens, come on around, we're all waitin for you,' she called into the phone. I could hear the crackle of speech on the other end. Jen laughed and put the phone in her pocket.

When Rez arrived a few minutes later, we greeted him like he'd been away for years. There were hugs and cheers, roars of random approval and aggressive bliss.

‘The last I saw of you, Rez, you were chatting up some gorgeous girl at the bar,' said Jen.

‘I saw her as well,' said Cocker. ‘Fuckin cracker. That was just before Matthew got slammed by the bouncer. What happened to her, Rez?'

‘Ah, I don't know,' said Rez, looking a little sheepish. ‘I think I scared her away. It was a bit of a rant.'

‘What did ye say to her?' I asked.

‘
Ah, some stuff, I don't know. I told her about how the music at the club, it wasn't any good, most of it was ten or fifteen years old. I mean, the music
was
good, but it's not of the here and now, it's not our music. Ye know what I mean? All this is music that came out years ago. It's like the epiphanies of other generations, in Manchester or wherever. Like, it's great music, but I wish we could hear real music from now, instead of what people were amazed by fifteen years ago. It all feels second-hand. The music that they do play from now doesn't count, cos it just sounds like the stuff they put out back then, regurgitated.'

‘No, I don't agree with you,' said Jen. ‘It's not all like that. There's some amazin stuff we listen to that's just come out.' She named some good bands from the here and now, a few electronica acts, some techno stuff.

‘I know, yeah, you're right. But that's only a little part. Mostly we're listenin to The Clash or The Stone Roses or MC5 cos they came from times when things still meant something, or when it felt like there could be something new, or … ah, I don't know. I mean, I'm only sayin.'

‘What about Joy Division? You're obsessed with them,' I said.

‘Even Joy Division. Even The Smiths. It's amazin stuff but it's not my music, it's a different era.'

‘I don't know,' said Jen, looking at Rez in a thoughtful way. ‘It seems almost like your brain is made like that, that you can only see what ye don't have, or like you're determined to believe that everything is corrupt.'

‘So this girl didn't like what you were sayin?' I said.

‘Well, no. But it wasn't only about the music, I was really fucked and I started tellin her how everyone in the club, every person I saw as I looked around, was made up of bits of television and films. It was true – it was really fuckin incredible, I saw it all so clearly, with completely new eyes. We're just not real people any more, we're all just types, it's like our personalities are these costumes we wear, and
we
choose them and mix and match from a fuckin pre-designed range of possibilities.'

‘I don't really get you,' Jen said. I saw that she was listening keenly, though; Rez had that power. He had started to cut through the air with tense, slicing hand gestures, and I imagined I could see veins bulging at the side of his head, but it might have been an hallucination. He drew people in, Rez; he could unnerve you. Talking to him was exhausting; you couldn't do it for too long or you'd start to feel as lost as he was. But that was what made him so interesting. His mind was a vast, sinister labyrinth – I saw all this clearly, in a moment of deep chemical insight – and Rez was down there somewhere, running through it, looking for a way out but only losing himself more hopelessly. Maybe he wasn't trying to run towards the exit, though, maybe he knew he was running away from it, deeper and deeper. Maybe he didn't want to escape.

Rez kept speaking: ‘What I mean is, everyone is a type. It's like the replicants from
Blade Runner
. You're an artificial personality construct who thinks it's human. We're not human any more, we don't have any real feelings, we don't have any depth. We're just types, just fuckin reflections, echoes. Like, ye can be the cynical outsider, the slacker guy, kind of doomed and romantic, but it's only an image, something that the fuckers let ye have to keep ye off the streets. Or ye can be, I don't know, the family man, or the quiet, intellectual type in a white shirt, or whatever. Or the artist or the punk or the nihilist. They're all images, outfits; they're not real. Nobody is real any more.'

I was becoming entranced by Rez's monologue, which accelerated and intensified as he got into it. It was almost too much – there was the feeling of hurtling towards the edge of an abyss, with Rez screaming and leading the way with mad eyes and raised fist, dead set on hurling himself into the void.

Cocker was the one who put the brakes on it: ‘Lads, I am off my fucking head!' he declared.

Rez
seemed to snap out of it too: ‘Yeah, fuck, those pills are amazin. But have we still got the one left each? Please God tell me we do. It brought me down when I scared that girl away. I thought I was in there. I reckon if I can get with some other girl it will take the sting out of what Julie did.'

A loved-up Jen groaned sympathetically and gave Rez a hug. ‘Aw, don't worry Rez, there are plenty of gorgeous girls out there who'll be crazy for you.'

I said, ‘You're right, Rez, we should take the last pills now. Where are they again?'

‘Here,' said Jen, taking them out of her purse. ‘Who's goin to be the priest this time?'

‘You do it, Jen,' Rez said. ‘It's about time we had female priests in this fuckhole of a country. Though I still wouldn't go to Mass, obviously.'