Between Dog and Wolf Read online

  * * *

  Oisín tucked a condom into his johnny-pocket, and packed an extra few into the inside zip of his jacket for luck. Then he checked his hair.

  Sharon had been friendly yesterday, asking him to come to her lunchtime show in Players. They began to chat and he’d thought happily, ‘This is a conversation. This is a getting-to-know-you.’ He had a passing sense of belonging. They agreed the Film Studies course was awful this term. They both hated horror movies and were dreading sitting down to Aliens this week. They seemed to get on. He’d heard from the director, a guy in his ‘Gender and Genre’ course, that she would be naked in the play, so he considered the invite might be something of a come-on.

  She was kind of pretty, in a way. Her eyes were an odd shade of grey: pale and wet like an animal’s.

  A lot of student shows had naked girls in them but it didn’t really turn him on; it was never really sexy or anything. Those plays were kind of crazy: lots of blood and nooses and screaming. And lots of talking. Not really Oisín’s pint of plain. He hadn’t been to a real theatre in years though. Maybe all plays were like that now.

  Oisín had heard of one play last term where a girl masturbated on stage. It was something by Heiner Müller, whose collected works were on his ‘Modernism’ course, or his ‘Post-Modernism’ course, or his ‘European Change’ course. But the book was missing from the library. He had an idea that she had the book, the masturbating girl. He knew the girl to see. She was on his ‘Nineteenth-Century Sexuality’ module. She had a long face, very long hair, sharp elbows.

  He’d got Sharon’s number from the director guy (‘Actually I’ve lost Sharon’s number – do you have it?’) and arranged the date by text message, re-writing it four times before he got it right. She’d agreed to watch Aliens with him. She had even suggested doing it in her room, on her laptop. That suited him. Now he didn’t have to clean up or anything.

  He worried how his hair looked. He had little control over his hair. Sometimes it just wouldn’t sit right no matter what he did. This evening it looked sparse and flat. He checked his shoulders. At least there was no dandruff. He ran some gel through it and avoided looking at it again. That was really all he could do. Then he grabbed four beers from the fridge and stuffed them into his strapless army-surplus bag along with the DVD, making a mental note to pick up wine on the way.

  Sharon opened the door with wet hair and a lot of eyeliner on, crescents of black on her lids as though to counter the brown sag beneath. She smelled of shampoo – something fruity – and the half dark of the evening made her eyes look eerie in their pits.

  Oisín should have given her the wine when she opened the door. But he was still holding it when they were inside her bedroom. The air was musty and private, like someone’s sleep. The cheap red wine felt like a silly gesture, presumptuous and pretentious. He didn’t know shit about wine. Sharon set the bottle down on her bedside table. The edges of her mouth turned down, ‘I don’t have a corkscrew.’ She reminded him of one of those sorrowful looking, sloppy-cheeked dogs. That old monstrous feeling of failure clenched Oisín’s throat. He saw himself as she must see him: a bedraggled culchie with bad hair standing by the bed clutching his bag by the flap. The setting was too personal; her room with its cerise duvet cover and all the cushions. Some pink flyers from a humanitarian campaign she’d been canvassing for were piled on the bedside table. The light of her en-suite bathroom was on, fan whirring, cistern trickling. She must have just been to the loo.

  She didn’t want him here. Why had she invited him?

  He kept his eyes on the wine bottle. ‘I have one on my key ring.’

  ‘Oh great. Cool. You want to open it or will I? Sit down. So … have you started your film essay? I haven’t even thought of a topic …’ She spoke loudly, dispersing the intimacy. She didn’t allow the silence to breathe. She talked about the ‘Free Zeng Qiáng’ campaign, a subject Oisín avoided to disguise his ignorance and indifference. He didn’t know what Falun Gong was, but it sounded freaky. Sharon didn’t seem to notice his silence. She talked about her film essay, about her last essay, about that time in first year when her computer crashed.

  ‘… so I had to type it all again from memory in like two hours! Literally! I began at two and it had to be in at four! And I got a first! Can you believe it … just shows you …’

  This constant talk made Oisín relax a little. Her pupils danced and pulsed, her gaze moving everywhere. Occasionally though, they rested on his eyes in a promising way. If she kept talking like this they would be hitting it off, they would be getting on. Her chatter loaded those moments when there really was nothing to say, as though creating some connection in the space between words.

  He had trouble reading her. She avoided his touch every time he tried. She kept talking more and more loudly, as though to push him away from her with the sheer volume of her voice, yet when she was quiet she looked at him as though she were horny too. After all, she had asked him to come. Every time, just as he had given up, she pulled him back with a touch of his knee. Her hands were wide and bony.

  ‘This one play I did, the guy used to get hard every night. It was awful. I’d have to lie on my front pretending to be dead and this guy was ramming his package up my ass. Eurgh. It was horrible …’

  Oisín had seen her do this before, with other boys in the class. He knew this was a conversation she often had; a self she often wheeled out for just such encounters. He had the feeling she knew the drill. Well, so did he. Next they would talk about first loves (his was made up), then about their parents. Oisín liked all this. This was a conversation. He wanted a conversation. He wanted some intimacy: some skin on skin or the gentle brush of his mind against someone else’s.

  The mixed message thing irritated him though. If she wanted a ride he’d give it to her, but he wasn’t going to beg for it. She wasn’t even hot.

  They had finished the wine by the time the film ended.

  They talked about college, about that feeling of non-belonging and to Oisín, who had never articulated it before, this seemed like a revelation. He could fancy her. Her sad, manly mouth, her animal eyes. Like a wolf, he thought, like a fox.

  ‘Your eyes are amazing. They’re so grey – like a fox’s.’ He went for it.

  Once he had kissed her he knew it would happen. It was the way her lips softened open. He was glad of the sudden quiet.

  He hadn’t had sex in weeks. She made no sound, no groans or mutters. Just breath, faster and slower. He went down on her and listened to the breath and the silence. She didn’t taste very nice.

  When she came she gave a little whelp, then a quiet, throaty laugh.

  ‘Sorry. I came.’

  * * *

  What’s his name? Brendan? Malcolm? You can’t hear him with all that music playing. You say yours, ‘Helen’, but he points to his ears and shakes his head. The music is too loud. You say your name again and he says ‘Emma?’ and you nod. He says, ‘Let’s get out for some air,’ and you nod again. You should tell Cassandra you’re leaving but where is she? He takes you by the hand before you’ve even finished your drink, and leads you through the bang of bodies, the knives of light, to the cold night outside. Cassandra will wonder where you are.

  Outside the doors of the club there’s a naked bicycle rail, black in the dark. You grasp the cool metal to steady yourself and he comes up behind you, takes your elbow, leads you somewhere and you suddenly realize how drunk you are. It’s not your head – it’s your body that’s drunk, slow, unable to navigate itself.

  This must be the side entrance of the nightclub. The wall is covered in some sort of metal or enamel; black and shiny like a beetle’s back. He’s leaning against it with one knee bent.

  The lights in there are terrible. He’s better looking than you thought, and older, with broad cheekbones and a straight, frank jaw. There is a scar flecked across one eyebrow where he must have had a piercing once.

  He cups your skull in his hand with something like tende
rness. Then it begins: the wetness, the breath, the textures of other people’s insides.

  You are away from this, as though a blister has swelled under your skin, making a big liquid bubble between you and the outside. You think drunk. I’m drunk. You wonder can boys tell when you’re a virgin. Girls at school used to say they could tell by the way you kissed. His hands move to warm places – the small of your back, nape of your neck – searching. What? You want to say, Searching for what? What?

  ‘You’re beautiful.’ The words stick, damp in your ear. The quick image of cleaning them out with a Q-tip: grey slime words on white cotton bud, wriggling like maggots. His hands move to under your skirt and you move them away again. He bites you on the neck but you only feel a pinch.

  ‘You and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel …’

  That’s such an old song, the music is usually quite good in there, why are they playing that song? The mammals on the Discovery Channel are powerful cats with sleek sun-lit coats, they pump hot luxurious blood through their bodies and chew shamelessly on crimson limbs.

  He pushes your face down to his crotch.

  In the jungle when the big cats mount each other it’s with an air of leisurely boredom. None of the urgency of human lovers.

  In the gap between his legs the oily armour of the nightclub reflects your face. That’s you – the melting mascara – that’s your face. For less than a moment you appreciate the strangeness of that; that wonder of eyes and lips and chin and how they all add up to something. The music from the nightclub seems noisier now. Maybe they upped the volume. You and me baby.

  Fingers clumsy with the cold, you open the button on his jeans. They must be new jeans because the buttonhole is very stiff. You look up at him and wonder if he finds this sexy – this stranger with blue eyes kneeling before him in the street, unbuttoning his fly. But it doesn’t seem that way. It seems like this is what you should be doing, both of you, like sexy doesn’t come into it, like it’s all a point of form. And the colour of your eyes, even if he could see it in this light, probably doesn’t interest him. There is something that looks like a big vein bulging along the underside of his penis. You can see it through the fly of his shorts. He pushes his boxers down and the penis pongs out.

  You are not sure what to do now. One of his hands is in your hair, making circular motions in your scalp. He turns, towards the wall, stretching one arm over you, balancing himself and concealing you. The penis is standing up expectantly. You’ll have to do something.

  You should lick it, you think, starting at the base, where it is thickest and the vein bulges hardest. You make little, flickering laps with the tip of your tongue, moving slowly up towards the tip. The taste of his skin is not disgusting. It is textured like a plucked chicken. He makes sounds of approval, moving his hand about your scalp more quickly. You’re enjoying this, the way you enjoy reading strange, tragic poetry that you don’t quite get.

  When you reach the tip you stop. You are worried about the little oval hole. You are frightened of what it might taste like, what might come out of it.

  ‘You and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals …’

  Are they still playing that song? Has so little time passed? No one you can think of is like those creatures: hunting panthers and lionesses lolling in the sun.

  He grabs you by the back of your head and you pull away. You didn’t mean to pull away, to back out.

  ‘Sorry. Fuck.’

  You’re not sure whether your words made a sound. You are too drunk, too much inside yourself. Perhaps you didn’t speak at all. Your throat closes in and there’s a ringing in your ears. He doesn’t respond, cooler now, he tries to coax your mouth back to its task, his thumb prying your lower lip open, only you don’t move. There is someone behind you. You know it. You are being watched.

  ‘Sorry. Fuck.’

  You did make a sound, Helen: a very little sound, but you sent the words out secretly into the deep blue nothing of the morning. You wanted an echo thrown back like an answer. But nothing gobbles these things, it is insatiable.

  ‘Fuck,’ he cries, outraged, looking behind you at the night. There is someone there.

  He pumps it with his hand, ejaculates, still trying to bring your head to his crotch. You can’t move. There is a lot of it. It’s white, pearly white, falling over his fingers and wrist, clumping the sparse, wiry pubis.

  ‘I came. Sorry. I’m sorry, chicken. I – I came. You’re a good girl. Sorry.’

  He is stuttering now, but he doesn’t stop. It doesn’t happen in one go but keeps coming.

  Someone grabs you under the arm from behind, forces you to stand, says something.

  ‘What?’ you say. You close your lips. Your mouth has been open, gaping, this whole time. ‘What?’ but you don’t turn.

  He flumps back against the wall. You want to run but for a moment the impulse is lost in the thick of your drunkenness, move, you think, move, but it doesn’t happen. Then it does. You recoil and it feels like a fall. Then you’re moving.

  You don’t know how you got back to college, or up the stairs, but you’re vomiting into the toilet bowl, grateful to be indoors. There’s something in the toilet. You’re vomiting on something shiny and orange, bobbing under the weight of your puke. You feel bleached. All you can do now is rest, slumped by the toilet with your open lips touching the seat, your breath coming in long, weak drags.

  ‘Where does it hurt?’ It’s a voice you recognize. Cassy? Where is Cassy?

  ‘On the TV – ’ you say.

  Once on the TV there were pot-bellied babies begging for two pounds a month. They were black and the skin on their arms hung in folds. That must have been a long time ago because you don’t use pounds any more. It must be euro now. How many euro is two pounds? How many? You try to calculate it but your brain doesn’t know where to start. Suddenly this becomes important: if you can work it out you’re all right, if you can’t you’re fucked. How much is two pounds? You should know that but you don’t ’cause you’re fucked. It wasn’t them who were begging anyway, the babies. They were just pictures; they were just being videoed. It was a lady’s voice.

  ‘I didn’t drink much, there must have been something …’

  You don’t want to move or talk. You want just to rest and not to be, but you can’t breathe, your chest is snagging, the air hurts. You can’t breathe. There’s a scream in your stomach. You can’t breathe. Vomit. You can’t breathe.

  ‘You and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals …’

  Is that song still playing?

  ‘I need you to open your eyes for me Helen. Can you focus your eyes for me Helen? I’ll have to get help if you won’t look at me. What did you take?’

  Everything is pain sent in from the outside through a tangle of nerves. You know that – another secret, protective knowledge – you’ve seen the diagram on the back of a packet of painkillers. The pain is red and the nerves are blue wires like electricity. Vomit again. This time it’s just black that comes out in spatters but you can’t really look at it, your eyes won’t work. You know about eyes too – something about rods and cones flashes in your mind and then it’s gone. Now your breath is out of control like hiccups, and coming faster and faster, pulling in. You have to spit out words between the heaves, ‘I’m okay … It’ll pass … Leave me alone, please.’

  It will pass. Everything passes. You try not to wish to die because this will pass and then you will want to live again and you will be sorry if you can’t. Time is folding like an accordion.

  ‘Breathe,’ the girl says.

  Then someone else’s voice, a boy, ‘Call Front Arch! Get them to call an ambulance! I’ll go. I’ll go and tell them we need an ambulance …’

  ‘No. No, it’s fine. She’ll be fine. It’ll pass. Don’t be stupid. Just a crap pill. It’ll pass.’

  ‘Don’t give her water if her drink was spiked. If it’s that date rape drug water could flood her k
idneys … I did a course.’

  ‘I’ve got it Cahill. Go away. She’ll be alright. It’ll pass.’

  ‘I did a course,’ he says again, ‘I’m getting help!’

  ‘Fuck off Cahill. Go to bed. You’re making it worse.’

  ‘I’m getting help!’

  You can hear him rush out the door, down the stone steps and away.

  ‘Bloody Cahill. Fuck’s sake.’

  It is Cassy. She pulls back your hair. You can feel her fingers brush your face, only the feeling is far away.

  It was a fish – that’s what was in the toilet. The goldfish must have died. ‘You’ll be alright Helen. You’re okay sweetheart.’ She strokes your forehead, smoothing the hair back, stretching the skin on your crown.

  ‘It will pass.’

  She wipes your neck with something wet and warm. This will pass. The taste of him will pass. You are breathing now. You knew something. You are forgetting something. You have a secret but you can’t remember it.

  You feel the shape of your tongue pressing on the domed palate, the scummy teeth. Your breath tastes old, used up. Ashen breath and tongue and teeth all grey and dead and moving like bacteria and ions and protons and all the still but moving things this world is made of with nothing to move them but each other. Stuff of chemistry and miracles.

  ‘You and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals …’

  Sorry. I came.

  three

  I’m walking a corridor. The ceiling gets lower as I walk and I am forced to bend my knees and squash my chin into my shoulders like a turtle. I can feel the threat of something pressing on my head. I come to steps that lead downwards to more, lower corridors and I know there are people sweeping past me, looking at me. I can feel their bodies displace the air.