(dear fiend. press play and read to your jolly heart’s content)

…I just couldn’t ever understand.

It’s a bit like looking through the window on the top deck of a bus. I’m watching you and I’m watching her, but through my own reflection. It’s a bit like opening my eyes in a church when everyone else is praying …and watching people’s tiny fidgets. I am un-forgetting. And then the oak doors opening slowly… flapping… like an injured bird trying to take flight.

It was an odd thing to sit at my own funeral and reflect on my sexual aptitudes, and on my last days… to think about you and I. Still, I hope you got everything you wanted. I sure did. You volunteered, remember? You volunteered. I just wanted to know if you could cry. I just wanted to know if you would bleed. We’re finished now, I said. I remember that. Go home. Run like hell. Harsh words indeed, but what did you want me to say?

What do you want me to say? Would it really make a difference? Would it change what actually happened? You fucked him (somebody anybody) didn’t you? You fucked him in our bloodletting bed. It didn’t mean anything of course yeehaw (lying bitch). Does that make it better? Does that make it okay? I can still taste him on you where he touched you, where he put his fingers inside you and broke the seal. The expiry date has passed. Curdled milk. I don’t think there’s anything more I can say. That’s it. Oh well. One thing: I hope you gave him better head than you ever gave me.

Lord help you the bitch replied. She told me I was jealous of her. I had shared with her a secret, you see. I told her that I had tried the homosexual experience once as a teenager. Actually, it was about eight years ago now. I was seduced by a muscular Connemara man on a grey western marsh. He broke me in like a bucking horse. That’s not to say it was entirely against my will, you understand. I got drunk with freedom and curiosity and they found me a willing participant. The experience taught me that I was certifiably heterosexual, which was no small revelation for me at that insecure age. But in my mind the battle for gay rights had already been waged and won. A person’s sexual preferences are their own business… so long as children are safe. His voice drifts back to my mind occasionally…my Tom, the Heathcliffe to my desecrated Kathy. Is maith liom buachailli. Is maith liom milseain. But I digress and digress. That experience might explain some of my nocturnal activities, I think. Which ones? Where to begin? Let’s see then…

Once upon a time I went for a filth walk. The first place I tried was closed. This had been the genesis of my filthy desire: The Garden of Eden, on the quays. I gazed across the neon swimming in the stinking Liffey and scratched the enflamed red hood of my flaccid penis, my little red riding hood (as I liked to call it at the time). I cosied my shoulders up about my ears and pushed my hands down deeper inside my pockets. I’ll go somewhere else. Conquest is the name of my game. That and loneliness, of course… horrible, horrible loneliness. I must boldly go and trekly cum. That creature “Data” would never understand. I longed for the enviable machinations of un-remorse. The Americans pronounce it differently, of course. We say Data as in dats-a nice pair of breasts on you missus as you pass me by with averting eyes, but he was Data as in you would never date a dirty dog like me. To boldly go, or rather: to go boldly. The shadows on the ground swooped around me in their street light orbits. Night town gives me the fear. I sang with the ghost of Barry McCormack. Those awful fucking perverts walking with me down Leeson Street in the prickly cold of late February all deserved to die. Dublin needs a street dentist. Fucking bouncers. They want eye contact. I can’t be everyday about this. I’ll tear those fucking eyes out for you…faggots. They’re like the men in the woods collecting faggots of timber. They only delay the wolf. They don’t deny him his meal. Puke scores of cultural fucking tourist bastardheads Joycean scholars getting into the true spirit of night town… Professors reciting passages to their selves as some junkie prostitute sucks them off down a dank alley… all adding to their anthology of experience. Posterity has no business with me. Inside. My heart beat faster as I surveyed the dimly lit interior. I want the barmaid. Now that would be a conquest. I took a seat and enjoyed my invisibility. Men don’t communicate with other men in these places. They know it would be a waste of time in this non-world of perfume and unrestricted inventories. I was approached by a pretty woman wearing a white dress that made her teeth look yellow. Hi she strained over the music. What’s your name? I made something up… and you? Valerie. Probably not, I thought. I glanced around the room over Valerie’s shoulder. I didn’t want her. Her breasts were too small. (Still…I could slit her belly). I noted with disappointment that most of the women were modestly endowed. They beamed up longingly at men who were old enough to have fathered them… laughing, touching elbows and drinking white wine under darting money scan glances. I’m from South Africa Valerie said. Oh, I said. Cool. You’re too handsome to be in here. Valerie had just become utterly fascinating. We looked deep into one another’s eyes. She desired me. What a good actress she is, I thought. I wonder if she can do terrified. I glanced down at her thighs. I could smell the perfume from her breasts and a faint scent of cigarettes from her lips. I think I’ve had too much to drink she said, flirting. It was a quiet night and they let us have a free bar. That explains the noticeable lack of mammary, I thought.

These fuckers think we’re stupid but they go home with sore balls and empty pockets so who’s stupider?

She might be drunk. I gave her some money. She took my hand and led me across the floor. The eyes of the other men followed me. Is maith liom milseain. I killed those bastards… squeezing them like puss filled mind spots until they popped, puss on the floor like cum. Valerie spread my legs and pushed my hands out on the leather. I could see the left knee of a brute bouncer protruding from where he sat beyond the beaded doorway. She kissed me on the cheek. Ugh… the strangeness of that intimate act. She moved on me with naked sexual intent but none of it was as intimate as this simple kiss. Now I really wanted to snap her neck. Men want to make sluts of virgins and virgins of sluts. Regretfully, I left the club in a big rush and consoled myself with thoughts of Valerie standing at the bar crying that she had let such a beautiful soul pass through her life and could not hold him with her. I hailed a taxi. John Mc Cluffe nine zero six one one. What’s that? I asked pointing at the dash. It’s a mini DVD player replied John Mc Cluffe nine zero six one one. I’m watching Bruce Springsteen on it. All the videos. What big teeth you have, I said smilingly. John Mc Cluffe nine zero six one one looked confused. I tapped my fingers along to the sound of dancing in the dark. I felt for my giddy knife in my pocket. John Mc Cluffe nine zero six one one thought I was a dirty feeler and he pulled over the car. I slit his hairy gut. Covered in hair. I drove myself home. The following morning I stared at myself in the mirror, utterly transfixed. I stared into my pupils until the flesh of my face melted away. I longed to see the bathroom tiles on the wall behind where I stood… to polish away the smear of my own reflection. Instead I noosed my necktie and caught the bus for work.

I was indecisive on the bus. I wasn’t really being forced to go into the anus after all. Or was I?  I arrived late. I hate my colleagues, especially that balding fucker Tom King. They talked their shitey talks: It’s a Chinese snack box breakfast roll and every body in the house is gonna get their hole in your mouth up your ass with your wife with your kids all night long with your dad with your mum cumming on your face ‘til you die blah blah. At lunch time I went and read my pleasure books anthology. I love how fairytales are so malevolent and real. Fearing in your book it might escape some little people’s sight I did not want that one should lose what would them all so much amuse.

Worklife is never as interesting as you anticipate while you’re still in college. For me at least (now that in not in school… now that I’m done - isn’t it exciting?), it seems that all I’d ever done was go to school. This was a first, this September. And so I guess now I’m a chemist. Doesn’t it seem so arbitrary? I went to a certain number of classes and was given a piece of paper that dictates who I am. It just doesn’t feel right. I have so many questions about the world. How does it work? Of course, I never thought that in four years I could learn anything but looking back I learned quite a lot. But it’s the bigger picture, the broader explanations that are missing. Most of my classes were for telling me how people fuck up the world but didn’t I know that already? A Professor once said in class: people spend their lives studying one certain thing. They learn everything…but in the end is it really everything? Marshall is a gaylord, he’s a moany bitch…etc. I thought of your underwear again. Sarah Evans…I love you and yet we’ve never truly met. We are the same Sarah Evans… you stupid bitch. I often drift like this until quitting time. Thank fuck. Down to business.

7:05 pm: I got home from work. I was tired. 7:10 pm: I showered and got dressed. I wore that new purple shirt I bought last week. It looked pretty good. Sexy. 7:35 pm: I got the bus. I recognised the driver from this morning. We exchanged awkward glances. 8:10 pm: I arrived at the house. The party was mid swing. I was almost tempted to go home but then I saw her standing in the kitchen. She was radiant with beauty, almost too delicate to touch. 8:30pm: We spoke for the first time. She actually seemed kinda nice which surprised me for someone so pretty. 8:50pm: It was clear that I wasn’t going to get anywhere (at least not without a penis transplant). But as a wise man once said: desperate times call for desperate measures. Is maith liom milseain.  9:10pm I helped her find her way upstairs. It was kicking in pretty strong by now. I think everyone thought she’d just drunk too much. 9:12 pm: As I laid her down on the bed…h-how could I resist? How could I resist? Rape mittens rubbing against her skin, her thighs, rubbing against her chest. She looked happy. I hope she can forgive me. In the end she was almost asleep so I left her and rejoined the party. When I got there someone informed me that the world was due to end that very night so I squatted down on the living room table with my trousers around my ankles and tried to emit. I was shown to the door.

The following morning the gaping anus of work dashed me once again. Morinin’ said Tom King. I didn’t reply. I have known him for eight years now and I’ve wanted to murder him offensively for approximately seven years eleven months three weeks and seven days. Tom King … I said eventually… FUCK YOU. Everyday I go out. I just want you to turn up but you don’t Tom King, no you don’t. This is your symphony of remorse he said, noticing that I was hung over, but he was wrong. I felt no remorse for anything but his prolonged subsistence. Tom King, my willing participant when will I mar you?

Still I was growing bored so I set about devising a plan for that evening. I came up with a real peach. I walked into a strangers kitchen, put my head on the table and said I am Lucifer chop my head off. I felt the serrated edge eating the back of my neck. It was really cool.

Love is one of those things that…

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