To Make Love With Your Eyes Closed Page 4

  “Wassup motherfucker!” He screams out. I never put it past him to greet me with profanity. I kick him in the shin lightly and copy him.

  “How have you been? I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages!”

  “I know! Me too! I missed you! haha!”

  “Oi, umm the new kid is out the front.”

  “Yeah… Thomas. What do you think?”

  “He’s a bit weird.”

  I feel a bit of a tug internally, finally someone agrees with me! I am almost out of words for a reaction.

  “I know! Thank you!”

  “Why is there three of us on today?” He asks.

  I agree. That’s odd. We don’t need three of us for a quiet, stormy day like today.

  Aaron enters.

  “Hey guys, I need you two out front on the bar right now, Thomas and I are off to a training day today so I’ll need you both to be on top of all the work.”

  Aaron turns to face Rory.

  “Rory I need you to keep an eye on the QEFTA paperwork” (the boring stock and temperature forms).

  He then turns to face me.

  “If you need anything just message me OK.”

  Rory gets up and the three of us exit the back room. You slap Rory across the back but just wave goodbye to me. I don’t like being treated differently. I wouldn’t say I have an ego problem, but I’d like to believe that I am just as cool as Rory. Maybe it’s because I’m gay. Straight men always seem to treat gay men weird. It’s like you people don’t know how to act around us so you act in the most ridiculous ways possible. Like ‘oh no if I’m nice to him maybe he will develop a huge crush on me and threaten my sexuality’ or some such bullshit. If you people were actually secure in your own sexuality you wouldn’t fear the feelings of a gay man because even if you wanted to reciprocate you couldn’t. I get annoyed at you even more. My own fault. Maybe. For overthinking. You piss me off. I shouldn’t care so much, you’re not my type, you’re not hot but your personality sucks. Your taste in music is dreadful and your laugh makes me want to shoot myself in the head with a staple gun. I don’t even want to be friends with you. Go fuck yourself.

  I ask myself why I care so much. I don’t know really. These feelings are so ambiguous. Maybe I just hate not having someone worship me. Maybe I do indeed have an ego problem… nah, that’s just stupid. It’s not me. It’s you, you’re a dick, and you’re homophobic, and I really don’t like you.

  The pair of you leave O’Byrnes and after an hour or so I have forgotten about you completely.

  Rory and I have a pleasant enough rest of the shift. As soon as the boss leaves he seems to turn down his enthusiasm though. He turns to me and sinks his shoulders, sighing loudly.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Me mum’s kicking me out.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I haven’t bloody been payin’ me rent have I?”

  I too sigh. How can one man be so stupid. Rory seems to have a habit of making the most ridiculous decisions in life. He makes the most obvious mistakes. I really wonder sometimes how someone can just land themselves in the most terrible situations all of the time. Last year he broke up a marriage between his Aunty’s best friend and her husband because he really wanted her. The relationship was full of chemistry for a few months, wild sex, talks all night, road trip adventures, whatever, but in the end it just ended the same as all other relationships.

  Monogamy is such a strange thing that we all have a natural hunger for.

  When I was younger I desired to feel the need to belong to one person eternally but then the day I fell in love for the first time, and soon after had my heart broken, I realised that there is no perfect person created for each of us. I saw a psychic/medium one day, not too long ago in fact, who explained to me the concept of each of us having multiple soulmates, people from our past lives we have been engaged with in massive ways, who return to our lives and continue our adventures together. Most of the time only a few of them are destined to work out, the rest are destined to fuck us up and make us become cynical about love and relationships. I’m only 21 but I believe I’ve met one soulmate so far.

  I pat Rory on the shoulder.

  “Where are you gonna stay?”

  “No clue, I’m going to have to jump straight on DAFT as soon as I get home…”

  “You’ll find a room in no time,”

  “Yer but I don’t want to be stuck in a room with a house full of snow sniffers do I?”

  “Not everyone in Dublin is on snow Rory.”

  Rory gives me this odd, one eyebrow raised, look. I remind him I’m not still on the drugs. He returns to serving customers. Dick.

  He pops close the till.

  “So what’s your plans for after work?”

  “Not a lot, you?”

  “Nothing, want to go for a drink?”

  “Yeah sure, where though?”

  “Dicey’s?”

  “Perfect, oh it’s been so long!”

  “Haha, it sure has!”

  “Should we invite Tripp?”

  “Pretty sure he’s on the PM shift today.”

  “Okay, well we can still have a good time.”

  “Yer.”

  I look out the window into the rain. Hoards of people are running in opposite directions. Some cradling their jackets in tight, some trying to stay in control of their rebellious umbrellas whilst others are latched on tight to their children, hurrying them to shelter. I smile. So many people in this wonderful city yet none of them I feel I can connect with in my own special way. My self esteem isn’t at it’s peak today. The more I think about the way Thomas looks at me the more I feel ugly and unworthy. I shouldn’t care what he thinks, or what I think that he thinks about me for that matter, he is no one, his opinion doesn’t matter. But somehow I must feel like it does because the way he looks at me has changed the way I look at myself. Maybe I think this way because I’m a born artist. Artists are a lot more emotionally involved in… well, everything. I believe that there’s only really one bad part about being born with creative talent. Sometimes this creativity can be so powerful that it can overrule our ability to distinguish the difference between reality and fantasy. It’s very important as a creative person to keep a constant wall between man and his work or else he will lose himself to his own creation, and that which, before, offered him life, will now offer him death.

  After the repetitive bus ride home I collapse onto my bedspread, as predictable.

  After about thirteen minutes of attempting to scream but not finding the energy to, I push myself up off the bed and look into the wardrobe. The sun has already started to set. It never really stays up for long these days. I feel like it just sets as soon as I get home. I never have any sunlight to do as I please, even though I’m not quite sure yet exactly what it is that I’d please to do. I light up a cigarette and stare emptily into the dismal rail rack of cheap hammy downs that is my wardrobe. I take one huge puff.

  “I really need new clothes,” I whine to myself.

  I sift through the rail, even though I know exactly what is in there and know that I don’t want to wear any of it. I pull out two blue shirts. One is a real baby blue and has a darker blue tint on the collar whereas the other is almost a shade of navy and has a white dove etched into the pocket on the front. I walk into the bathroom and droop them over my podgy torso. Neither of them feel amazing. I stare into my face in the mirror.

  “Euck.”

  I have ridiculously high cheekbones, they’re awful. They give my face this really round look and quite often I have huge lumps just below my eyes. My eyebrows are uneven, I wouldn’t even know where to begin in attempting to fix them. My beard is growing unevenly and patchy. My hair looks like a block of chocolate it’s that thick and dry. I like my smile though, if I don’t push it too much. If I smile too hard it gives me really bad crows feet. When I’m in moods like this I really should not leave the house. I take a few more long drags of my cigarette, it really helps m
e feel better, fuck what other people say.

  Most people think smokers just smoke cigarettes because they’re addicted, I smoke cigarettes because they make me feel good. I like the feeling of smoking. I storm into the lounge area and flick a new scroll of paper over my easel. I whip out the paintbrush from below and dab it into the black paint. I go for the black paint because, despite how I tend to use it the most, I seem to have an endless supply of it. The other colours are running low, and have been for some time now, I just don’t have the money to top them up right now.

  I create a woodland area. There are tall dark trees, they don’t look threatening, they look welcoming, yet powerful. I layer them back quite a bit, I want this to be a dense and dark forest, a mysterious yet magical place. I paint in a lake, it has a little bit of a glimmer of reflection but not much, probably because it’s night. I always use black paint, it’s always night.

  It only really takes me a good hour and a half and I feel like I’m done. I’m proud of it. I stand back. There’s no feeling in this world like completing an artwork. Even if it’s shit. You just know that you have honestly pasted part of your soul into this piece of work. Your art sort of becomes like an extension of yourself in that way. I am now in a much better mood. My phone vibrates really heavily across the worktop, giving me a fright. I answer it.

  “Hey Gerry,”

  “Hi Rory,”

  “How are you getting to Dicey’s tonight?”

  I look at my watch.

  “If I get ready well enough in the next ten minutes I can catch the bus out and I guess I’ll just get a taxi home.”

  “Hurry your hole,”

  I laugh. “How are you getting there?”

  “I don’t know I’ll figure something out. Okay, umm, hurry up!”

  He hangs up and I head back through to my bedroom. I ditch my dead cigarette into the bin. I grab the shirt with the white dove on the pocket. I shrug to myself. I’ll just make it through tonight and before I know it I’ll be back here, safe again.

  7

  When we walk into Dicey’s the place is packed to the rafters. It’s the nicest garden bar in the county and yeah, it’s always busy, but it’s never DUBLIN busy. I think because it’s one of the lesser known garden bars that the majority of tourists don’t care too much for it, but us locals know where to catch a good pint for half the price of the tourist drink. Suckers.

  Rory and I have our usual table out the back, back where people tend to jog on past. It’s a good place to catch a break from the crowd and to check out the babes who have lost their friends and are wandering around the pub hopelessly.

  “This place is going off already.”

  “Yer, so you probably reckon it’s a good thing I trailed us behind in time then?”

  Rory looks at me with a scowl.

  “Uhhh, nah mate. I don’t know why I didn’t expect this, you’re always the last one, dragging yourself along.”

  “Fuck off,” I say with a laugh.

  I sip away at my Kilkenny. I can’t stand Guinness, it’s fucking awful.

  “So, heard from that guy from Galway lately?”

  “Duncan?”

  “Aye, that’s the one.”

  “Not, really, I haven’t heard from him for months now like.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  I like that Rory takes a healthy interest in my love life. It makes me feel like being gay is just as normal as being straight. Most people will probably agree that it is, but I still carry around a lot of insecurity from my youth that makes me feel different, in a bad way, from everyone else.

  “Yeah, just the usual, not much to the conversation, he’s never really been one of a big talker.”

  “Are you sure that he actually likes you?”

  I pause for a moment. “No, I’m not. I honestly, actually don’t even think that he does, I think I’m just easy for him so…”

  I shrugged. Rory can guess the rest of the direction of the story. He twirls his glass around, making the corners of his beer cast a foggy white around the empty space in his pint.

  “He’s a dick, forget about him.”

  “I know that, I really do, and I’m trying but it’s hard to let go of someone when you’re scared of being alone.”

  “You’re into all that spiritual shit, don’t you think that you won’t find someone else until you get rid of him?”

  “Yep. There’s a toxic cord connecting me to him that is forbidding me from really having the potential to get to know someone else.”

  Rory didn’t look like he was paying much attention. I’ll give him points for initiating the conversation though.

  “And you?” I ask, “how’s your love life?”

  His eyes follow a skinny blonde girl walking alone past our table.

  “Nah nothing exciting yet.”

  He takes a swallow of his beer.

  “Okay enough of the Sunday session vibe, let’s party.”

  I smile. It’s been so long since I’ve actually let myself loose even a little. We get up from the table and slowly pace our way towards the bar. It’s crowded and we have to wait behind three rows of people. Some of which are probably just hanging out with their mates while they wait for their beers. There’s a few people really off their faces already. I stand back. I usually have quite bad luck with people flicking their drinks up and down me by accident.

  “Two wet pussy’s please.”

  Rory throws his cash over the counter and turns to me and winks.

  “One, two -“

  We shoot back the vodka. My face churns up and I almost vomit at the aftertaste. Rory laughs.

  “Another?”

  I nod, I don’t want to seem boring.

  “Turnt up!” I hear someone yell from behind. I put the shot back down on the desk and turn to see who it is. It’s you. Of course it’s you. Here to ruin a perfectly good night out. I groan internally but smile at the sight of you. You give Rory a slap across the back and a hug and then you reciprocate on me.

  “Hey Tommy!” Yells Rory.

  You laugh and introduce us to your friend Bob. Such a simple and stupid name. Bob is taller and looks a little older. He is completely bald, probably by choice because the shave looks so clean, but has a round goatee-moustache thing going on. It’s dark and thick and stands out against the really light blue of this shirt. Bob seems nice and polite. Nicer than you anyway.

  “Fancy seeing you guys here? how’s your night? how’s work? how’s life!”

  “Good, good, good! And you?”

  “Amazing! well, now that we’re all here together I think that we should all do a shot.”

  “Yeah.” You say with a big grin.

  Bob throws his money down on the bar, he’s offering to pay for this round. We have another countdown before shooting back the wet pussy’s together.

  “So how’s work?” You ask me. Bob and Rory are off in their own little world. I think that they picked up something they have in common, like the same football team, or whatever.

  “Good, thanks, how are you finding it?”

  “I love it, it’s been easy to get into the vibe of it, it’s not really that different to what I’ve done before, so, yeah, I’m fine.” You’re a lot nicer when you’ve had a few drinks, but then again, most people are. “And you? How long have you been working at O’Byrne’s for now?”

  “Three and half years.” I start to wonder if we have already had this conversation before, and that if we haven’t, then why not.

  “Wow, that’s a long time!”

  “Yeah.”

  You turn and hit Bob on the arm disturbing his conversation then simulate a move to the dance floor by rocking your head. You turn to me and ask Rory and I to join you. We agree. I wonder where your girlfriend is, but I don’t say that out loud. I don’t know why. It just feels like an awkward thing to say out loud.

  We dance for maybe three or four songs straight and slowly I start to feel more comfortable around you. I know we are all pretty t
ipsy by this point so that’s probably helping. I’m still not in a position to dance as ludicrously as I usually do in front of you yet though. Bob waves his hand half way through Jason Derulo’s latest song and the four of us walk casually towards the inside bar. We stand in silence at the bar. I feel really weird standing next to you in silence. Probably because I want to tell you the way you’ve been making me feel and I am restricting myself. I just want to vent my frustrations about you. I hate having angst against you for no reason. Tipsy me wants to sort out the differences on my behalf. My inside voice is telling me to keep my mouth shut though. We get to the front, ears starting to really struggle with the voice of the bartender against the sound of the bass outside. I shout this round. We all get a beer each this time. Maybe not the best idea to be mixing alcohol but hey, you only live once right? You thank me, and it kind of makes me feel weird. Then it really happens. The tear in my seams.

  The way you look at me and the gratitude in your voice… that’s probably the first time that it happened, that look, somehow, suddenly I could see it, what all of the fuss was about. I must be out of my mind, but I honestly think that I’ve just found myself attracted to you. I ignore it. It has to have been the alcohol. I was still angry at you for being cold towards me. I remind myself that you don’t really like me and that you’re just being social. We dance a couple more times on the floor before both Bob and Rory decide that they need to use the bathroom. The four of us head on over. You and I obviously wait outside. We stand in silence for what feels like a lifetime. It’s probably only about a minute though. I try and lean on the wall, as do you, but I can’t keep still. I change the leg I lean on and I change my leaning position. I scroll through my phone pretending to be hugely interested in Facebook but secretly I’m just trying to escape this awkward point in time. You cough, loudly, and then turn to me.

  “So. Having a good night?”

  “Yeah, you?”

  “Yeah.”