Born in the 1980s Read online

  He liked U2 – the fucking guy was Irish, of course he did! – and Rene loved him. She loved him so much that she could not (would not) leave him. And I’d asked her a bunch of times, ‘Why don’t you leave him?’ – not in those words – but I’d say, ‘Just stay a little bit longer’, which meant the same thing to me. And she’d always respond, as if singing a refrain, ‘I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…’

  I grew weary of her exits and tried to make it harder for her to leave – ‘Don’t leave the Honeycomb, baby!’ I’d say, playfully barring the door with my naked body and kisses, lifting her, then dropping her on the bed, hoping to screw her into a coma. But the sexual chloroform would never work, and she’d escape, one time saying, ‘God, you’re acting like you’re in love or something!’

  Bitch.

  I grew jealous of Paul’s ignorance – he never suspected a thing; even after the Halloween party. I bet he thought I was just some drunken asshole who’d gotten out of line. Fucking ridiculous! Who suggests BREAKUP!

  Maybe none of it ever happened. Maybe Rene and I were just some improvised scene, some mutation of a suggestion from the back row. I know I’m not the only one onstage. But there’s a scene in my head:

  I lie on my bed, denuded. RENE, wearing nothing but my grey t-shirt, exposes her buttocks as she turns over/away from me. I run my hands along her body – even though we’ve just made love, and I should know that she’s real, I’m still thinking of the possibilities. I decide to push it.

  ME (in my best brogue, which sounds quite Scottish): So, tell me about this guy. This guy you’ve been seeing. I know you have. I can see it in your eyes. Whenever you come home to me, you look like a new woman. A fair maiden, that’s what you are. Aye! I move her ponytail and kiss the back of her neck. So, tell me, this lover of yours…does he fuck you proper? Do you come with him? Aye! I move her hair again and kiss her ear. Does he love you proper? Does he love you as much as I do?

  RENE cries like she always does, and I’m there to spoon with her, until she has to go.

  It’s the last time she comes to the Honeycomb.

  *

  Dan and AJ roll around on the floor, and the audience comes alive again, their laughter almost sticky. Doug and Greg follow them downstage, and all four of them knock into the front row. Pretty soon they’re growling and slowly clawing at the patrons’ ankles, scratching the laughter out of their shins.

  I’m lost on the backline.

  *

  The word ‘wish’ tattooed on her ankle. The last grey t-shirt of mine she wore. The way she chose her words: ‘I don’t want to see you ever again.’

  Why didn’t she just sing, ‘I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…’?

  Two days without an R-E-N-E ring or vibration – I had to break the first rule! I had to run over to their apartment, bang on the door, force my way in no matter what the cost. I had to see where she slept when she wasn’t sleeping with me. I had to see the alternative Honeycomb. I had to see this poor mick bastard she loved ‘so much’ – I had to see if my impersonation was dead on.

  He wasn’t there. But the bedroom was. Rene was, standing in the living room, crying like she always did – even though there was no music playing, even though she was sober, even though the place stunk of rettes and laundry, even though it wasn’t my place. Not my Cocoon!

  ‘This is where you live? This your Honeycomb?’ I said, looking over the plaid loveseat. ‘Where do you sleep?’

  ‘The bedroom’s in there.’

  It was all bed. All bed and Winnie the Pooh. Figurines, birthday cards, posters, clock, nightlight. Every wall. Every inch of the place. ‘I’m obsessed,’ she’d told me one day. ‘You should see my bedroom.’

  Yeah. I sat down on the bed, felt smothered by the cartoon bear. She came to the doorway naked: paunch, pubic hair thriving, calves relaxed. She pushed me back onto a company of stuffed Poohs, unbuckled-unzipped me, then pulled my jeans and drawers down to my knees. I was pinned.

  ‘Let me stay inside you,’ I said, trying to bridle her hips. ‘I just want to stay inside you.’

  She held my arms at my sides, bared her unstained teeth, bit down on her lower lip, and closed her eyes. I went – shook till exhaustion.

  She let me pull up my pants, and then she led me to the door.

  ‘I don’t want to see you ever again.’

  *

  Whatever the guys’ scene is, it reaches its apex, so I edit it. With our 25-minute set coming to a close we probably have room for just one more. I have a scene etched in my mind already; I initiated it about a week ago:

  I stumble – drunk of course – into Donovan’s Pub, Halloween night. Unable to find an adult-size costume, I was forced to buy a children’s size (6-8 years old) Winnie the Pooh suit. I cut it up and fitted the pieces to my frame as best I could: leg warmers, sleeves that covered my forearms, Pooh’s torso worn like a backpack, his head as a helmet. A yellow polo shirt and blue shorts cover what Pooh’s pelt cannot.

  I get wrapped up in some synthetic gossamer that’s been draped across the entrance. Witches, nurses, angels, devils, mullet wigs, false crooked teeth, etc. take up most of the space in the pub. James’s ‘Laid’ plays on the jukebox.

  RENE, hair pulled into a side ponytail, sips from a martini glass. She is surprised to see me.

  ME: What are you doing here?

  RENE: What did you do to Pooh?

  ME: I had to, Rene, I was freezing to death. I had to survive. (Pause) So, who are you supposed to be?

  RENE: Deb from Napoleon –

  ME: You know, I was gonna wear that. Would’ve been embarrassing, huh?

  RENE: Please leave.

  ME: You here alone?

  RENE: Just leave, I don’t want there to be any trouble.

  ME: Then what’s the point of me staying?

  I stumble into her, grab hold of her ponytail, and kiss her hard and sloppy. Her martini glass falls to the floor. She tries to push me away, but I have her by the hair. She cries.

  I’m struck on the back of the head; then I’m thrown into a wall. I look up at PAUL, wearing his cheap costume. I’ve seen three others just like him already.

  ME: Fuck you, Napoleon Dynamite!

  I charge, my open palm connecting on Rene’s reddened face. I’m soon on the floor, being stomped, bottles breaking around and under me. I cover my face and crawl to the door. Paul’s on my back, breaking his hand on my head. Napoleon Dynamite is beating the shit out of Winnie the Pooh! Fucking ridiculous! Breakup!

  At some point, I’m free to run away. It’s so cold outside. The blood in my moustache is drying. I check the slice in my shirt, the gash runs deep under my skin. I’ve lost my Pooh head.

  ‘I feel like Christopher Robin’s crawled up my asshole and ripped me from the inside out.’

  The audience takes this in, as do the rest of The Baldwins. I’m by myself for what feels like forever.

  Dan springs forward and justifies my line: ‘Pooh’s overdosing! C’mon, everyone!’

  I fall to the floor and do the OD-shake. Dan cradles my head in his lap, pretending to weep. The other guys come off the backline to support:

  Stay with us, Pooh!

  You can’t die!

  Dreams don’t die!

  Where’s the rent!

  The audience is in hysterics. I convulse for the last time and play dead.

  ‘He’s gone,’ Dan says. ‘Just like Eeyore.’

  Blackout.

  Applause.

  *

  We bow and give thanks to the audience. There’s some leftover Southern Comfort, which we offer to those who want it.

  ‘That was my suggestion,’ a white kid in a hooded sweatshirt says as he takes a Dixie cup. He downs the shot and leaves the room, happy with Breakup.

  Really, he could’ve suggested anything and I would have thought of Rene. Try it. Pick a word, and try not to follow it back to your lover of nine months, try not to obsess over every detail, every traumatic, hysterical, ridiculou
s specific. The stuff that made your scenes.

  Grainne

  Gareth Storey

  A little background to this story is that my ma and da split up and divorced when I was still playing with He-Man figures. I ate peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner (when my ma let me). I was sent to Dublin hospital after an older kid with the same name as me, and who lived on my street, threw a brick that hit me on the left side of my head, and I had been in a coma for three days. The whole time I was in that hospital bed my da’s favourite song ‘Purple Rain’ played in my head.

  After this I moved to England. Out of the choices my ma chose Slough because my Uncle Johnny lived there and she wanted to get away from Ireland. Living with a single parent wasn’t the greatest ride but I did get to do a lot of things that other kids didn’t. I ate crisps and drank cans of coke for breakfast (my ma never woke up before me); I watched violent films like Robocop, The Terminator, Predator and Aliens when other kids at school couldn’t; and as an only child on payday my ma would treat me to a Happy Meal at McDonald’s (I just wanted the toy) then a film at the local cinema. We saw many films there in that old cinema with its two screens and dirty red carpet and I thought of it as a home away from home. This is where I developed my obsession with films and since those days I don’t think a day has gone by without me watching at least one film. Apart from that time I stayed with my da and his new wife in County Wicklow, Ireland. They didn’t have a video player in the house they rented – Jesus, they didn’t even have a TV. It felt like a bad dream.

  I was staying with my da for two weeks in this house, in the middle of nowhere without being able to watch films, which seemed pointless because I’d mostly packed my bag with videos my ma had bought for me: Nico, Marked for Death and Kickboxer. I swear I looked at the video covers every day, studying the pictures and imagining the scenes that happened before and after that particular picture. This helped me get through those two weeks where my da thought he could get me interested in flying a kite (what?), walking up mountains (no way), and reading books (boring). All I wanted to read were the synopses on the back of the video covers. That was until my da’s friends came to stay for one night. They brought their daughter with them who was ten, a year older than me, and everything changed.

  I didn’t really play with girls much at school. It wasn’t because I thought they smelled or they had some disease, it was because at my school boys and girls didn’t play together. The boys – we either spent our time talking about toys, trainers and films or we played football. The girls – from what I could tell – played hopscotch and all of that, or stood around in divided groups: 1) Ugly girls, 2) Fat girls, 3) Skinny girls, 4) Popular girls (they were usually skinny and blonde), 5) Weird girls (these girls didn’t speak or just smelled).

  So here I was, desperate to do something in this nowhere land of Wicklow and the only hint towards having fun was playing with a girl. Her name was Grainne, she was skinny (maybe popular), she had shoulder-length brown hair and was wearing a red and white tartan dress. I wonder what she thought of me; I had a side parting (which I did myself) and was wearing a Ghostbusters t-shirt with Slimer on it, blue jeans and big Nike trainers. I had to have those Nike trainers because at school you were only as cool as your trainers: if you wore Nike or Reebok – you were cool; Gola or Hi-Tec – you were sad and no one cool would like you. So I guess we sized each other up as far as kids do, then we sat around in the living room while the adults talked. After half an hour of us sitting there without saying anything to each other, my da turned round from his chair and says to me: ‘The two of you go on outside. John, show her the stream.’

  The stream was crap, a little bit of clear water from the mountains running through some green grass. Wow! The beauty of Ireland!

  We walked out of the house. There were no other houses near us – my da said our neighbours were three miles away. I didn’t know what to say so I asked her did she like TV. Her green eyes lit up then and she started telling me about the cartoons and shows she watched. I liked most of what she liked apart from the crappy girly shows.

  ‘Why isn’t there a TV at your house?’ she asked, like it was my fault.

  My interest for her started growing with this question. She liked TV – we had a common interest. I looked at the stream, thinking of an answer.

  ‘My da works in television and sees it all day and all night so this is his holiday away from it,’ I replied.

  She nodded and smiled. She believed me.

  ‘I’m gonna be like my da when I grow up,’ I said, ‘but I’m not gonna work in TV. I’ll be an actor like Arnie or Van Damme.’

  The words that came out of my mouth were new to me. I had never thought these things before.

  ‘Wow! Really?’ she asked. ‘How much do you like films?’

  I answered straight away.

  ‘Loads – I’ve seen Gremlins a 113 times. I even collected the cards. It’s great! I write it down in my book whenever I watch a film so I don’t lose count, and the other film I’ve watched the most is Robocop. I’ve seen it 98 times but that came out after Gremlins so that’s why I haven’t seen it as much.’

  I thought with this kind of spiel from me she would run back up the hill to the house. I had no control over my mouth when it came to films, but instead she smiled and looked at me. I felt unusual; I can’t remember a girl before her looking at me that way.

  We spent the afternoon messing around by the stream and talking until I asked her if she liked kites. She said she did, so we went back to the house and I asked my da if we could play with the kite because he seemed more interested in it than I did until now. He looked at me and laughed. I could see empty bottles of wine on the kitchen table and the rest of the adults were smoking. He took it from the shelf in the coat cupboard near the front door and said: ‘Have fun, son.’ He only called me son when he was drunk, or when he picked me up or dropped me off at the airport. But when he said it I felt more like his son than I usually did.

  We took the kite down the hill to the stream then walked up another hill. It was windy and looked like it would rain but it didn’t rain until about an hour after – when we were at home and bored by the kite already. Grainne was great with the kite and I had way more fun with her than with my da. She looked happy controlling this thing flying in the air and always laughed when the kite crashed to the ground, unlike me or my da. When it happened with us I had to run and pick it up and be careful not to get it tangled up. With her I didn’t mind, I liked running to pick it up.

  We got back to the house and the rain poured. The sky that was a bright blue most of the day had now turned a dull grey. I was glad to be inside. We ate dinner with the adults who were still drinking wine and smoking. They were listening to a band called Talking Heads which I thought was a cool name. After dinner Grainne and I went to my room so I could show her my video cases. She hadn’t seen Nico or Marked for Death, my Steven Segal films or The Terminator. I wanted her to see them. I wanted to know if she would like them as much as I did. I told her to ask her parents if they would rent or buy them for her when she got back to Dublin and she said she would.

  We played board games that were left in the house by someone else until around ten thirty when my da’s wife came into my room and said we had to go to bed. There were two beds in my room and she said that Grainne would sleep in the spare one. We were told to go straight to sleep. She closed the door.

  We were both excited. We had become good friends throughout the day and we were happy to have met each other. We brushed our teeth together and then jumped into our separate beds. In the dark we talked in whispers. Grainne said she wanted to move her bed closer to mine so I got out of my bed and she got out of hers and we pushed the beds together. We were quiet because no one came in to check on us. I had never kissed a girl but I could sense it was coming. I reached my hand over to her bed and asked her to hold my hand. She did. Then she moved closer to me. I could smell her breath. She s
melt of garlic and mint toothpaste and I’m sure I did as well – we had both eaten the same dinner and both brushed our teeth. We held hands and talked. I had no idea about love or sex. I was a naïve child of divorce on holiday in Wicklow. I told her I really liked her and she said the same to me. Our bodies met together and we kissed using tongues, we didn’t touch each other though we kept holding hands. I wanted to tell her that I loved her. I wanted her to stay or for me to go with her when she left for Dublin. I didn’t want to be left alone in this house for another week.

  I asked her to wake me up before she left but when I woke up she was gone. I started crying and sat in my pyjamas in the moved-together beds. I pushed them apart and opened the curtains. It looked like it would rain. I counted the days I had left with my da before I was pushed on to one of my nanas and the tears kept coming. I missed my ma, I missed watching videos, I missed Grainne.

  Fucked

  Katharine Coldiron

  ‘Whaddya say?’ One and a half of the sweetest words in the English language. We stand there, and I breathe in and out, and he looks at me with oh-God-those-eyes, and I raise my skirt even higher and lean against the wall, fiery. One leg up, one foot on tiptoe, and sensation, that’s all I am for another ten minutes. How does it end? How should it end?

  *

  I knew this guy had a temper as soon as he laughed at one of my jokes. The smile was too easy. Any guy who can smile so fast, teeth slipping out like knives, has definitely got the same kind of quickness to his temper and that’s just not a good thing. We were in a noisy bar a few weeks ago and I shouted, ‘Nice place for meditation, right?’ He laughed, and I saw that easy smile, and I thought ohhh, I’m all in, dealer. It wasn’t even an hour later that he was pounding me against his mattress and I was thinking about Charlie.