Between Dog and Wolf Read online

  They arrived in a dim room with no windows. Before leaving, the usher pointed to a small built-in bar in the corner, where an Asian girl in a trim three-piece suit offered them a choice of complementary beer or vodka.

  ‘Check out the cutie Korean!’ Oisín had whispered to Kev, but Kev was busy checking her out already. A red velvet curtain, rough with dust, spanned the width of the room, dividing it almost in half. Oisín thought it would pull back and reveal a large screen. He expected a gigantic woman with heaving breasts groaning and glowing out from the wall. Then music began from somewhere. It was slow electronic music, and it made him think of how the world sounds when you dunk your head under in the bath.

  The curtain screeched back, wavering gracelessly and his eyes fixed immediately on the wall behind it, thirsty for the image. There was no screen. The back wall was made of fat bricks painted a thick, glossy black. He thought briefly: ‘That’s varnish paint. That’s not for walls.’ His eyes scanned down to where the performers were positioned on the maroon carpet: a man sitting on a wooden chair, his penis almost erect, a too-young girl on her knees beside him, kneading the pink blossom of his foreskin. The scene looked shabby after Oisín’s vision of monstrous breasts.

  The lads walked back through the red-light district afterwards, making noise but not having conversations, hunching their shoulders, taking up space and elbowing each other when they passed a good-looking prostitute.

  They were not very friendly girls. They sat on high stools, looking glum and texting on their phones. The lads mustn’t have looked like potential customers. If you showed interest though, they smiled and looked down at their own bodies as though to say ‘You want?’ Denis was gone when they reached their hostel. He appeared two hours later, claiming to have lost his way, but smirking to show that it wasn’t true. Kev slapped the back of Denny’s head, ‘Denny you poor bugger!’

  ‘Bugger and more,’ said Denny, ‘I’m telling ye, man! You ever get a bird like the one I just had, get back to me then!’ Oisín envied his balls. He wouldn’t have been able to do it. He would have got too excited or something.

  Later, when they were alone, he asked Denny what she had been like. He told him the girls liked Irish guys. ‘They love us. Hate English lads. The English lads abuse them an’ all. Hurt them. We just ask for a bit of head and a poke. And we’re good looking. That’s what she said. Not like them English. She liked me. She likes blue eyes. Told her she was a good girl. She was a good girl …’

  The lads went to a handful of sex shows after that, until they ran out of money and their week in Amsterdam was up. The last show was in the same place, but it was a different performance. The tickets said ‘Ying and Yang’.

  The girls were different colours: one brown and one very white. She could have been albino if it wasn’t for the flat blue eyes. They were smiling as they licked each other, and made sounds as though they were coming. They locked eyes with each of the lads in turn as they did it, and whichever guy they were looking at said ‘Whoa baby!’ or ‘Oh yeah! Do it for Daddy!’ and things like that. Oisín hoped they wouldn’t look at him; he wouldn’t know what to say. He was semi-hard and he didn’t want it to go away but he didn’t want to get any harder either. The girls removed each other’s bras. They were flimsy, transparent things with sequins sewn onto them. The pale one had pink hair and a sequined cherry on her thong, right at the top of her ass crack. She looked him in the eye and smiled. I’m beautiful, her eyes said, but they were lying. Her eyes were jaded. She lifted her chin and nudged her lips at him, ran her tongue over her teeth: I want to lick you. She wanted him to believe that, but it wasn’t true either. There were thick red lines on her breasts.

  He was getting harder despite this; a warm thrill tumbling down his spine, up through his testicles. His beer bottle was cool against his fingers, but it couldn’t soothe him. His hands were slippery. He didn’t want to look at the others to see if they were the same, and he knew they weren’t looking at him. It was a matter of respect between the lads.

  He stared at the black wall. It had been painted quickly. Glossy bubbles had hardened in the valleys between the bricks. He concentrated on that and the cold glass in his grip until his erection eased.

  When he looked back at the girls the dark one was bending over, groaning, while the other one held the lips open, splaying the shock of pink folds, and flicked her tongue inside. He had never had sex with a black woman. His cum would look like milk on her skin.

  Pink inside. That surprised him. He would have thought purple-brown. The lovely ache in his groin made him want to keel over. He felt something terrible might happen if he didn’t reach down and grasp his cock: his whole pelvis might implode. That word cock. He wanted the one with the pink hair to say it, cock. She might not speak English. He would teach her that word, she would look at his lips and repeat after him. ‘Cock,’ she would say, the clean tongue flashing behind clean teeth, and she would laugh. Then she slipped her littlest finger into the eye of the black girl’s asshole. Usually in porn he liked that. Usually this was the moment he would go faster and faster. Something wasn’t nice though, or something was too nice. Something wasn’t working for him. It was to do with the way she moved her clean fingers with the glued-on nails; a child playing an instrument. Competent. The nails were pink like her hair.

  ‘Wahayhay!’ Aengus had said. ‘Oh baby, yeah!’

  She was looking at Oisín. He tried to say it too, ‘Way – yeah, come on baby!’ but when he opened his mouth the sound didn’t come – only a breath without voice. He felt nauseated. Too much dope, maybe? Too much drink? His mind was moving in all the wrong directions and he couldn’t focus.

  ‘Oisín’s smitten – oooh! Hey Pinkie! Oisín lurves you – Ha ha!’

  ‘He wants you to give him one backstage – don’t you Oisín? Whatd’ya say Pinkie?’

  Kevin reached out to touch her bum. Her eyes flashed. The wiry, jaundiced bodyguard stretched out an arm, restraining him gently and easily. Kevin backed away, palms up in surrender.

  ‘Ah no – I’m only messin’ baby! It’s just you’re a lovely looking girl you know that? Nah, you’re sound-out baby, I’m only messin’ with ya. You’re sound-out, so you are.’

  If they had known what Oisín was really thinking they would have called him a pussy, a college boy pussy! Pinkie didn’t really want to say cock. She wanted him to think she did though, and that made it worse. That made him hate her.

  Aengus and Kevin were both staring at him now. Any moment they would realize what was wrong. They would know he was a pussy college boy, too good for them, not one of the lads any more at all.

  He thought ‘Pussy,’ but not in a sexy way. ‘Bitch,’ he thought. Then he thought the word ‘Man’ – ‘Man. Man. Man.’ He took a swig of beer and swished it about, wetting his cheeks and palate. He sucked a breath and the air felt cold against his teeth.

  ‘Wooooaaah – come on Pinkie! Give it to her! Oh that’s right, yeah, that’s right like that. Oh yeah!’

  Relief. He really meant it – she was hot, hot, HOT! He was one of the lads again. No one had even noticed him transgress. He shouted louder.

  ‘Woooaaah baby! Good girl …’

  The lads didn’t speak after the performers finished. They had a drink – paying for it this time – and went back to the hostel. The barman at the hostel stayed on late into the night. When the lads were the only remaining customers, he served them something like hash, only it was black and squidgy and could be kneaded between fingers and rolled into a worm shape that lay neatly beside the tobacco. That night, his head on the damp hostel pillow, forcing his mind to wade through speech, Oisín asked Denny if he had liked the show.

  ‘It was hot,’ he said, but confessed that he preferred the private sex shows he had been to last time he was in ’Dam. They were less embarrassing. You sat in a booth in the dark, he told Oisín, not even the performers could see you, and there were clean tissues provided to wipe up your cum. He took Oisín to one the
next day. He was right, they were less embarrassing.

  Sitting up in bed, Oisín kept his hand pulsing on the mouse. A blonde with pigtails, a huge red lollipop entering her open mouth, gazed out from the screen. Her school shirt was torn open to reveal weighty breasts: large nipples as red as the sweet. Another girl licked the lollipop too. She was facing away from the camera. Her white knickers said ‘Princess’ on the bum. They weren’t really schoolgirls so it was okay. They weren’t really that young. Not with tits like that! Oisín reached into his jocks with one hand and kept clicking with the other.

  That night after the ‘Ying and Yang’ show, he hadn’t been able to sleep. Denny had snored heavily in the bunk below him. Every time Oisín closed his eyes he’d seen that bodyguard, the gentle, firm way he had eased Kevin back. The long neck had held up a shrunken face, a glassy-eyed expression that never changed. He looked like a meerkat, Oisín thought. His arm wasn’t very thick but it was strong, and Oisín could see the ligaments and veins all twirled together and moving slightly under the yellow skin.

  Sometimes at these moments – Oisín’s hand moving vigorously, the delicious warmth twinging higher and higher, pounding towards release – that bodyguard would stalk into his room and run a chilly finger down his spine. That blunted his arousal. It was the girl-on-girl action that had reminded him. He clicked his way to the deep throat pictures. ‘Gagging Bitches’, said the link. Then there was a description of the site:

  You know what we say to foreplay? We say Fuck OFF! We take hot young cunts and fuck their little faces until they’re gagging and their mascara runs. Then we fuck up all their other holes. She may weep all she likes. Stopping ain’t our style …

  There were twelve options: girls’ names with thirty-second teasers. There was a picture of a blonde woman in a pencil skirt and a white blouse. She was wearing librarian glasses and chewing a biro: ‘Joan from downstairs,’ it said. ‘Let’s begin by smashing those specs. Watch us turn the secretary from hot whore to cumbucket. See love tunnel turn to train wreck while three men fuck her till she weeps …’ Under the name ‘Helen’ it said ‘This dumb whore thought vomiting would get her off the hook … but there’s more than one way to fuck a kitty.’ The picture was of a girl in red lacy underwear with a vice fixed to her jaw. She was cute as a doll. She had small, round breasts hugged proudly by the lacy red cups, cartoon-yellow hair in a high ponytail, and slutty silver eyeshadow. There was a penis in her mouth, and a man’s hands holding the handles of the contraption. There was semen on her stiff, black eyelashes.

  While he waited for the teaser to load, Oisín tried to think of the real Helen, the girl from last night, but she kept eluding him. The video failed to load so he scrolled down for another. The deep throat album had been updated since last time. There were more Asian girls now. Their slender necks bulged like a snake that has swallowed its prey. Oisín liked the Asian girls – they were so neat. Their red-lined lips and pink cat’s tongues looked sophisticated against the slop of shaved testicles.

  Aengus sent the best free porn links. His taste was the same as Oisín’s: really sexy girls, definitely no airbrushing. Like Oisín, he wasn’t into gross stuff. He preferred the girls with natural tits touching themselves and licking their nipples, drinking shot glasses of semen or popping beads up their bums and things like that, not the really mad shit.

  As for shit – not into that at all. None of the lads were – except maybe Kevin.

  Kevin had once sent him a mobile phone video of a fifteen-year-old being fucked in an alley by three different guys. It was rape. It was on the news and the boys had to go to juvenile prison. You couldn’t really see much. One of the guys had recorded it and sent it to someone whose brother sent it to Kevin. That’s how they got caught, by sending the video around. The girl hadn’t told on them. Oisín didn’t know the girl, but he recognized the uniform. She was heavy with white breasts. He had deleted the message.

  Cleaning up with a piece of toilet roll, Oisín remembered about changing the sheets and decided he’d do it later. He noticed that his cum was clear this morning. It was strung together like snot. After taking a shower he made some coffee in his kitchenette, stirring the granules languidly until they were completely dissolved.

  * * *

  Cassandra is in the shower when you leave. She hears you and roars, ‘Bye Helen!’

  With that simple phrase, ‘Bye Helen’, Cassandra makes you feel accused, as though you have betrayed her by leaving, as though you were sneaking off. This is a talent that Cassandra possesses.

  You walk into the library and then out again the other side. You head up Grafton Street and down again and all the way to the quays. It’s one of those dull, dank days when the cold is in your bones and your face feels too exposed. The river has risen with the rain. It has swallowed the strings of decomposing apple butts and faded crisp packets that are usually visible over the water line, dried to the cement walls of the Liffey.

  You buy cat litter at the pet shop on the quays, then walk to Dunnes Stores for granary bread, hummus, and washing-up liquid for the kitchen. Then, feeling bored and careless, a tub of chocolate cornflake squares and some ready-made raspberry jelly from Marks & Spencer’s that you consume in your room, stroking the kitten and reading the same page of As You Like It four times, each time forgetting to pay attention.

  * * *

  I’ll go for a walk before that lecture. While Helen’s getting dressed I take a thorough shower, exfoliating with an expensive body scrub prescribed by the make-up artist on my last modelling gig. The packet says it contains ‘peach-stone extract’, and ‘organic walnut’. There are words like ‘sensual’ and ‘indulgent’ written across the lid, but it’s unpleasant stuff really: pink, peach-smelling goo with orange grains in it. These grains represent either the peach-stone extract or the organic walnut bits. It says to use a loofah, but I only have a sponge. There are instructions on which lathering methods to use for maximum exfoliating effect. The whole project is extremely tedious and I don’t think I’ll have the willpower to repeat it daily, whatever the make-up artist says.

  I can hear Helen’s door click shut. She passes the showers without saying goodbye and starts down the stairs. I call, ‘Bye Helen!’ It makes me feel stupid and needy, shouting after her like that.

  After making the effort to exfoliate I decide to go the whole hog and put on make-up as well; evening out my skin tone and brushing on some too-black mascara. This makes my eyes look larger and darker than they already are, which is complemented by the black of my bobbed hair. The effect I am going for is big smudges of eyes framed by a glossy black ball at the top of my neck. The bob is a bit ‘two seasons ago’ – Helen told me that – but if I blow-dry my hair this look works well for me. Otherwise it sticks up and out as though someone has knifed it off in clumps and I look like a crazy person. When I look like this, men don’t evaluate my bum and the ladies in Brown Thomas do not offer me perfume samples. On those days I wear tracksuit bottoms. I sit in the park and no one sees me.

  I change my mind about wearing jeans, and put on boots and a skirt instead.

  Nothing has happened today but it’s already the afternoon. The days just slip off in college; it’s the sparse timetables, the hanging about. Helen’s lazy, happy mood has rubbed off on me. I like the softness of the afternoon air and the pain of the cobblestones through my shoes. I even like the sound of someone playing with a guitar in his room; a vain boy’s hope to be heard. What a sin to have ever been sad. I will give everything in my purse to the homeless man at the Nassau Street entrance and, having done all I can, let him drift softly out of mind. This is the best way to live. This is the only way to be happy, and sane, and good.

  He is not there today. Next time, then.

  Grafton Street is full of strangers. You can lose yourself in all their bustle, all their purposes, all their loves and the little pet hates, all their self-importance.

  A stout refugee woman tugs at my sleeve. She is my age with proud f
eatures around her snarl. Her baby is swaddled in a filthy tiger-print shawl. It has an ancient, knowing face and its nostrils are sealed with snot. She pushes it at me so that its face is inches from mine, and we blink dumbly at one another. Its mother pulls it away again, irritated.

  ‘Please lady.’

  I am not a lady. She pouts and asks again, and there’s something not right about it. Her hands are cupped with embarrassing servility. I give her a euro and feel worse than if I had ignored her. I’m saving my money for the homeless man. He might be there when I get back.

  I try to recover that happiness, the feeling I had when I first set out for this walk. I should be able to do that, to carry a mood with me. I should not be so easily shaken. I try to love the crowds, the smiles of strangers and the buskers’ music, the crumbling, bitter old man muttering to himself as he skulks along the wall. He growls, jabbing his elbow into me spitefully as he passes, running his other hand against my hip, his flaking grey heart desperate for the bulk and warmth of another life. The impact shocks. It makes me ashamed of my youth and my strength. I do not want to carry the weight of his loneliness. He smells of unwashed clothes, of packed dead skin.

  What should I do to appease him? Too late, he’s gone. He’s crazy. There is nothing I can do for him. When there is nothing you can do, walk away and don’t look back. Leave it in a bundle on someone’s doorstep.

  I sit by a window in Bewley’s and stare down at the busy street, eating a chocolate doughnut made of something I can’t identify. It is not chocolate on the top, that’s for sure. It’s chocolate flavour. I need to calm myself, slow my pulse, take stock.

  Must head back for the lecture.