72 HOURS RAW IN DUBLIN
PART SIX
“STRANGE VISIONS IN BRUXELLES...”
There’s an old story, maybe from East Timor, maybe from
West Belfast, maybe just some shit I pulled out the back
the head by way of providing some sort of context for
this debauched episode, aye, lust and demons and visions
fit to have a man crawling cross Grafton Street at 9 in
the morning babbling bout eyes and smiles and cherubs
wi’ vinyl phalluses where the wings should be.
Concerns a fella by the name of Bill, or maybe Johan, or
just as likely The Duke, fella maybe with a beard or
possibly clean-shaven, maybe shaves couple times a day,
in fact, so for sure, there ain’t no stubble, but
there's a bastard of a red rash from nostril to tit
throbs like a nuclear fart.
What happened, so they’ll tell you, sat round the
campfire with some floppy-fringed minstrel at the back
tunin up a G an then detuning it ever so slightly, on
account of the hurt, see, on account of the lo-fi. What
went down back in the day, maybe last week, maybe 300BC,
whenever it was, what it concerned was a fella headed
south on a pilgrimage, jacket pockets stuffed fulla
notepaper, cigarette hung out the yap, jitterin and
shakin on account of the caffeine and the lack a sleep,
eyes sunk to the back a the tongue, telling anyone
who'll listen about this vision he been granted, this
lass bathed in a purple glow, a wit could slice Everest
in nine, a smile burns the whites a the eyes every time
a man dares blink.
I’ll find her, he’s mouthin, tongues a madness, aye,
“I'll find her, pathway painted in the stars plain as
the nausea in the gills fresh off a knuckle-fuck, and
also, there’s the text messages and stuff.”
So what happened, folks’ll ask, and the ol’ fella at the
centre, he puts the pipe down, snorts the dust out the
nose, coughs, he says;
“He found her, sure enough there she was, stood right
there, just off Grafton Street, so the story goes.”
“And…?”
Narrator spits into the fire, wipes his mouth wi the
back of a gnarled fist. “He went mad. Mad as a fresh-
fucked goose.”
Cause some things you ain’t meant to see, so they say,
like the fella accidentally catches sight a God leaving
the men’s room in Central Station, Belfast one February
morning, been clickin an clackin ever since bout the
heavenly pee-drips kissin the porcelain.
What The Duke says, when the folks wander up and poke
him with a stick, “Tell us something, fucker, sat there
all rubber-yapped an damp-eyed, tell us something
marvellous”, what he says is “I shouldn’t ever a gazed,
man. I shouldn’t ever a seen Sinéad etched in seraphim
whispers, never shoulda seen such sights, on account of
how can a man look at anything else ever again, how can
Woody Allen hope to rip the soul asunder with some sense-
molesting slab of divinity in the 2:35 when outside the
confines a the Fourth Wall I saw, with my own smoke-
stung eyes, I saw the kinda sights even Blake at his
most wretchedly unreachable couldn’t a envisioned, the
kinda wonders St John in his cities of flailing
damnation would’ve been baffled by. The kinda beauty
can't help but burn the consciousness ragged an raw out
a man’s very skull.”
“Fuck my balls”, a fella hollers, looks a bit like an
Italian Ben Stiller, “I ain’t moving a gnat’s inch till
I hear some bastard Deicide!”
Deicide, shakin the walls of Bruxelles, four hundred or
more ranting, powerchord-bent maniacs heaving and
thrusting in a room tighter than a sewn-shut arse-pipe.
Bruxelles, Sinéad brought us here, truth be told I’d a
gone anywhere, crawlin round the inside of a razor-lined
exhaust if’n Sinéad had deemed it must be so, these are
the kindsa things a man in the grip of a mind-altering
obsession is capable of.
A glorious freedom, like a soul flung left an right
cross an opium nap, the wind snares the ankles an drags
it… where?
“Here”, Sinéad’s sayin, “It’s a fuckin sweatbox, though”.
And it is. Bathed in a red afterglow, ceiling and floor
three feet apart, the dropped D, the ragged E roarin in
every pore.
And glorious, it is.
And terrifying, also, least for a scrawny fella from Up
North with a fuckin absurd blue velvet jacket an a
Clerks t-shirt scrawls FANBOY cross the mug in neon wank-
wounds, thirty-nine minutes spent bent backwards over
the bar in pursuit of “A Red Bull, please, aye.”
“What you want wi that?”
“No, just a Red Bull please.”
Curious glances. The fuck’s wrong with you? The fuck
kinda order is that to be makin in a bar seethin wi the
angry glares and the death-screams and the goth girls
either side with the promises of a soul-destoryin burst
a filth wi every flick a the jet-black shoulder-length?
Sir Fleming intervenes, holding a pint a Magners in the
air, hollers in my ear, “I’m fried to the back a your
teeth.”
I look at the barman, kinda way says “Don’t judge a man
by the beverage he orders, look at these eyes here,
black spirals in the white. Best you just hand over the
blue / white tin an we get this transaction over an done
with, since Mary’s Fuck, forty three bikers are gnawin
my neck with the thirst.”
And the Italian Ben Stiller, he lifts a chair, hammers
it offa the floor one time, three times, nine times,
Peace Sells buggerin the last ounce a inhibition out the
gash in his eyebrow.
He ain’t the only one fucked on Mustaine, the walls
partin every so often, the roar goes up;
“If there’s a better way,
I’ll be the first in line…”
Limbs tossed this way an that, Mustaine’s sneer like a
wasp in the piss-tunnel, and caught by the arm;
“You wanna go outside for a smoke?”
Aye, I do, feel like maybe the prophets lined up long
the back walls are the kinda folks all too keen for to
point out that no, The Duke, you’ve crossed over, you
got too close, best you take yourself to the open air
for a time.
Too much mania in the mind-vents. Too much Savage
Purple, aye, the note reads; “I doubt I’ll ever sleep
again, having seen Sinéad enter yonder establishment,
bikers and punks and goths and skaters filling every
conceivable space, eyes peekin out from the ear-holes of
folks in Venom shirts, and watching awe-struck as the
fleshy mass split before her, and she wanders through,
Moses with better breasts, no, scribble out, too divine
a lass for to be soiling with such thought.”
On account of the Moses in the brains, on account of all
these Old Testament concerns, I get struck in the psyche
with an image, a vision, the Prophet Isaiah racing into
the desert, flinging locusts at the heavens till his
heart blows backwards out his chest, his last words lost
to the sand screechin gainst the oesophagus, something
about “How can you grant me this vision whilst knowing I
can never ever be in her presence, what with the mutli-
thousand year stop-off?”
Realisation, heavenly, not a moment too soon, by fuck’s
knuckles;
What it all boils down to, see, the paranoia, the
prophets, the alarming sights and smells, what it all
points in the direction of is that aye, lust drives a
man mad.
And a friend saying to The Duke, back in the day, “Just
go an have a wank, get it out your system.”
But then no, because who has the time in this day and
age for to be masturbating? What with the notions
needing fired fore a man can even consider it, what with
the reading materials required for after the act when
the body needs to be clam for a time, when the heart
needs to limp back to the Regular Pulse, when the arms
and the lungs and miscellaneous sink back into position,
what with the four hours of weeping afterwards on
account of the self-loathing?
Who the fuck, I say, has the time?
Crawlin out past the bouncers, gore-drenched warriors
reaching out the bunkers, coughin enemy fire out the
guts, but it’s ok, Sinéad and Anna, they’re talking bout
the Phil Lynott statue, I’ll just listen for a time.
He’s the spit of your Da, runs the chat, and then aye,
makes it all the more weird, what with me wantin for to
fuck Phil in five, if’n he wasn’t dead an all.
But wait, where’s Sir Fleming?
“He’s inside wi’ Ellen, said he was in no fit state of
mind for to think about letting go of the wall.”
Pip, bass-playin fella, one of Sinéad’s wonderful
acquaintances, he’s offerin me a light, asking me how we
been spending our time here in this glorious city,
anyhow?
“Tell the truth”, I say, “I been kinda on the look-out
for the, y’know, the Ladies Of The Night.”
What I don’t tell him is, in all honesty, I’d settle for
a Lad Of The Late-Afternoon.
Pip shrugs, he says “Well, you are in the city.”
He’s right, I am in the city, stood on Harry Street on a
Saturday night, or Sunday morning technically, and not a
drip of the sticky been dropped.
What I don’t tell him is anything that insinuates I
wasn't joking.
What I don’t say is how, few streets back, myself and
Sir Fleming passed a lass stood by a lamp-post, thighs
alive wi commerce, and for sure, I don’t think she had
any teeth, but who the fuck am I for to get all body
fascist, this shambling caffeinated awkward gangly bust-
yap fucker reduced to looking for to pay for a couple
minutes a the kinda shame takes fourteen baths and a
month spent in the grip of a support group for to get
rid of?
So I gave her the kinda look says “You have no idea how
desperate I am”, but no, no counter-gaze along the lines
of “I don’t give a roast wank, all I’m worried about is
the fistful a euros you got shoved in that ridiculous
blue velvet jacket.”
So I wasn’t sure, so I kept on a-wanderin.
Because you can’t just go assuming that ladies stood on
dark street corners looking all entrepreneurial are
hookers, you can’t just go saying “Scuse me, you look a
bit rough, I’m guessing you’ll, y’know, accept payment
for a couple minutes filth?”
Same way you never know if someone’s a vagrant or if
they just had a rough night, woke up late, didn’t get
the hair combed, didn’t get a shave, still wearing
yesterdays wank-riddled jeans. What you need is for them
to say “Any change?” and then, yeah, here, same way what
you need is “Fancy a quick one at the wrist for the
price of a motorhome?” and then aye, read my mind you
did, and also, any chance of some sort of bondage of
some kind?
How can a man hope to deduce these things for himself?
How can a man be expected to make any sortsa decisions,
reach any sortsa conclusions, when his mind hangs in
jagged tatters on account of the indescribable grace
with which Sinéad paints her every movement?
How can any sortsa thoughts worth thinking be
entertained when all the while, seeing Sinéad yonder
with the Marlboro Red, The Duke’s a hoo-hah’s whisper
away from Huxley, fried on mescaline and lost in the
creases in his trousers, baffled by the infinite wonders
arising from such.
Rising from the static, Victoria Clarke’s voice, she’s
talking bout Shane MacGowan, she’s saying; “He
romanticises Ireland out of all proportion. He
romanticises me out of all proportion.”
Thinking bout it’s impossible to overstate this scene,
though, thinking bout how no words yet etched or mouthed
could do justice to the visions, to the burning in the
senses.
And all of them getting further away from sobriety, the
Jägermeister pourin upwards from the street, the smell a
poppers in the air.
An ambulance pulls up at the door, a fella being carried
out on a stretcher, leg busted all sortsa sideways.
Screamin, he is, went a couple notches too far in the
direction of maniacal, Black Metal casualty, that Venom,
motherfuck, it’ll wind a man thrice over he don’t watch
what he’s doin.
Some sort of solidarity being professed by the couple or
three painkillers I got in my hand. For sure, my knee
ain’t pointin south out the flesh, but I got a caffeine
headache comin on could cripple a man six times over. I
raise a fist, I know the fuckin score!
“You wanna score?” It’s a fella with one white glove an
a pair a red sunglasses, all Jackson via Hacienda ‘89,
but I say no, I’m sorted, touch the nose, all well an
good, and then he’s away, bantering to a fella with the
hair done up in a faux-mohician, a hardcore three-chord
terrorist for a couple hours on a Saturday night, wakes
up Monday mornin ‘hind the screen with the coffee and
the suit and the plants, but it’s ok, it’s all good,
cause every internal memo takes him that bit closer to
the moment when he once again stands outside the bar
arguing with the bouncers because no, he IS fuckin
Danzig, an he’ll take a knife to the nuts a any bastard
wants to say different.
Fairly soon I realise I’m stood here on my own, Anna and
Pip done skidaddled five tunes back, Sinéad, I dunno
where she is, but I can see how she got there, the
trails a light still huggin the pavement.
Back at the bar, making a note on the back of a soaked
beer-mat, Sir Fleming asking what it’s all about, anyhow?
I reach him the note; “Does the beauty of the vision
make the agony any more bearable? No, just makes it
difficult to breathe, truth be told, but still, I ain’t
ever been so thankful for asphyxiation.”
Sinéad leans across, startles me, I get the beer-mat in
my pocket the fuck out anyone’s line a sight, God forbid
she should lay the blue ‘pon it.
“We’re goin to Eamon Dorans, my friends went out for a
smoke an the bouncers won’t let them back in.”
What can a man do?
Follow her, is all, all a fella can hope to do in this
state, all a man wants to do in any state.
Thanks folks
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