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I liked his laugh, it was dirty. That’s the thing I remember the most. Other than that he was just like the rest, all those other parochial fatalists. I knew what he’d be like, an Irishman, all Éire and no graces. I took him home with me anyway, and I brought him to all the top venues. He refused to be impressed by anything, though. He just kept on biting his nails.
I might have known there was something the matter. It was the way that he used to talk. I liked his laugh, but he laughed all the time, and when I asked him why, he said for revenge. Mad as a March hare and drank like a fish, and I might have known, but I didn’t.
To begin with we used to go out. I’d meet him at the bar so he wouldn’t hang around. I caught him the one time sitting outside the office. He said people were throwing him pennies. He might have been joking, but he dressed like a scruff. I told him not to come by again. I pretended that he was a client.
In the end it was better if he came over to mine. Buying him drinks got expensive, and he’d drink all damned night if I let him. To say he was selfish, though, wouldn’t be fair. He was not selfish, no, just ambivalent. I guess I could have gone with him to his, but he lived over in the Six Acres; that’s a really bad area, and he never was straight enough to walk me home.
So I had him a key cut, a privilege he abused. I used to come back from work and find him there, sleeping. I suppose we became a couple that way. Path of least resistance, easier than saying no. It just crept up on me like old age, like a few extra pounds, like grey hair, like death.
I met him at victim support, you know, for those of us caught in the bombing. He never used to say much, but he listened, and it always looked like it was paining him. I let him see my arm, but he wasn’t freaked out, so I figured why not, he at least looked clean.
That was probably my first big mistake. I mean, he was damaged and I was damaged, and the way emotions work you just can’t rely on two halves making a whole, you just can’t. I know it seems logical, but that’s not the way it works, and emotions aren’t logical anyway, are they?
But he was not freaked out by my arm, and he had all these scars on his body. He told me he could die any day, but I did not believe that for one minute. They’re like that, you know, Irish men, say anything, they’re so melodramatic. It’s not really lying because they believe it when they say it. Drunks even more so, and like I said, he could drink.
It was exciting, though, being with him. It sounds an awful thing to say, but life seemed so boring then, because nothing comes close to the moment when you know you’re involved in a thing so beyond your control. Nothing ever comes close to the life-or-deathness, or the rush that you get from just having survived. I don’t tell them these things at the meetings, all those paranoid ones who can’t walk down a street now. I think I might always have been wrong in the head, or I’m tapped in to something weird and primitive. It’s made me a caveman, I tell him one time, and I really think he understood about that.
Yes, it was exciting, being with him. Because he was a liar, and because he was mad, and because, I suppose, he was dangerous. He took all these pills, had all this head medicine. I think he must’ve been schizoid or something.
…
I liked his laugh, but that wasn’t enough. He used to make me mad, all of the damned time. He’d tell me that he couldn’t get up, that he hated himself, that his heart hurt.
I’m going to die today, I can feel it.
Sure you are, baby.
I mean it. I can’t stand it. I’m going to die.
Uh-hu. Pull the other one, baby, it’s got bells on.
He’d tell me he didn’t know why I bothered, why I went out to work to pretend.
Because, if I didn’t, then who’d pay to keep you?
You don’t keep me here, no one does, God does.
Take a pill, baby, yeah? You’re doing hysterics again.
And he did get hysterical, sometimes, but I did not take it too much to heart. He was pretty self-obsessed is what it was. That’s what all of his I-hate-mes basically boiled down to, a kind of morbid narcissism, a warped sentimental vanity, utterly out of control. But then that’s the male ego for you. Utterly out of control.
…
I might have known there was something the matter. He went on and on how he was going to die, making out that his life was hanging by a thread. It pissed me right off, but I’m not sure why. I used to scream at him that I thought he was making it up, but deep-down I wonder if I was maybe jealous. I mean, if he really believed that, then life must have seemed so vivid to him, so vivid, so bright and so urgent. What must it have felt like to live like that? The adrenaline, the rush, so full of fight or flight.
I might have known there was something the matter. I called him one night and he didn’t pick up. Thought he must’ve passed out, dead-dog drunk again. But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t what happened.
He never came to the meeting that night, and when I got home he was dead.
And he had told the truth, in his own weird way. That little nick of metal really had entered his heart. It was cheating a bit that he put it there, but in principal at least, I’ll concede he did not lie.
You probably can’t live life that way, in a state of emergency, all the damn time. His note said he was sorry about my arm, about ruining my knife and messing up my kitchen.
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The human race, the only race I know where everybody loses.
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we are not amused
