We stepped out on the street after breakfast, our dilated pupils stabbed by the sudden glare. Scag looked up and down the quiet street. ‘Sleep is for paedophiles,’ he said softly.
‘Where to?’ I asked, energized by the cool morning air.
‘Fancy another schniffle?’ he said, clapping his hands together vigorously, as if he’d just stepped out after a rejuvenating night’s sleep.
‘I’m okay for now,’ I said. ‘I’m still high as fuck.’ But as soon as I said this, I felt not quite as high as I had been. Coming down, I remembered Jen, the scene in her bed, the humiliation of it. Kissing Lorna had helped, but the pain was still there. ‘Actually, now that ye say it, I wouldn’t mind another whack.’
‘Come on over to the boardwalk.’
We crossed the Ha’penny Bridge and sat on a bench on the wooden river walkway. A junkie staggered along and was about to pester us for smokes or money, but Scag shot him a look and he kept going. Then Scag took out the coke he’d siphoned off the girls’ purchase. He produced a key, put a little heap on the end and held it up to his nose to snort.
‘Puntitos, they call them in South America. That’s how they do it in Bolivia,’ he said after he’d taken the hit.
He sorted one out for me and I sniffed it up. He looked at me and laughed. ‘We are all in the gutter, Matthew, but some of us are smoking crack.’
Watching a pigeon on the handrail a while later he said, ‘So tell us about this bird ye were seein.’
‘Ah, there’s not much to it,’ I said. But I told him about Jen, how I’d liked her for years but already it was wrecked.
‘Yeah. I used to get like that about women,’ he said. ‘Not any more. There’s no point. Listen, the whole aim of a woman’s existence is to be impregnated, when it comes down to it. Seriously. I like them for their bodies, but that’s about it. Psychologically I’m pure faggot.’
‘I suppose,’ I said. ‘Some of them can be nice, though.’
‘I remember a girlfriend I had once, we were together for a couple of years and she started gettin hysterical for me to inseminate her. She said it was the next logical step in our relationship. Jesus Christ. The next logical step. I had to laugh at that. We were arguin about it one night and she goes to me, “But that’s what we’re here for!” And I says, “Yeah, maybe it is. But if bacteria could speak, they’d say the same thing.” And that was the end of us.’ He chuckled at the memory, untroubled by remorse.
We sat and watched the oily drift of the river for a spell. ‘Early house?’ he said.
‘Okay.’
We got a few pints into us in a dim grime-pit of a pub called The Bald Goat, drinking amidst the usual haggard old bastards, surly alcos and darts players.
Scag had gotten an Irish Times from the bar and after four pints or so he said, ‘Look Matteo, the Festival of World Cultures is on in Dún Laoghaire this weekend. Will we head out, just for the craic?’
I said I was up for it. I texted Cocker to see if he would come too. The reply came seconds later: he had a day off so he’d meet me there in an hour.
We finished our pints of Guinness. Then Scag rolled a spliff and we headed into the fully awakened city.
Along the coast to Dún Laoghaire, the train was crammed full of young people heading to the festival. Within minutes of boarding the train, Scag had effortlessly commanded the attention and allegiance of the entire carriage. He held court for the whole journey, throwing out observational one-liners about fellow passengers, randomers outside the train windows, and the parts of Dublin we chugged past on our way.
‘SCAG!’
The roar came from the back of the carriage. I jerked my head around, expecting confrontation. But it was a friend, one of Scag’s punk and junk companions from the eighties — the decade when, as he had told me earlier, ‘Everyone was poor as fuck and on the dole, but we all had a great time. The city wasn’t stuck up its own arse back then.’
The wrinkled, leathery punk shoved his way from the back of the carriage to step into Scag’s court, where some Italian lads with dreadlocks had gathered to skin up and be entertained by his banter.
‘Howaya, Dowdall. Jaysus, it’s been a while, I thought you were dead.’
‘I am dead. I’m dead inside.’ Dowdall cackled at his own slurred wit and cracked open a can of Devil’s Bit. He had a nose ring and his dirty, grey-blond hair was spiked up with grease. There were metal studs on his leather jacket and Damned, Clash and Paranoid Visions badges sewn in drunken swerves along his arms. He looked ridiculous, a farce of all that punk once was.
‘This is me mate Matthew,’ said Scag, slapping me on the shoulder.
‘Howaya,’ grunted Dowdall with a complete lack of interest.
‘Dowdall here used to play bass with Mickey and the Master Race,’ Scag informed me.
‘Oh right yeah,’ I said, acting impressed though I’d never heard of them.
‘Here now, not to mention three years and two albums with Footnotes to Plato, and a tour of Slovenia with Abject Phallus,’ said Dowdall, wagging his finger like a schoolteacher. ‘The Footnotes were a serious punk act, not like these gobshite posers ye get nowadays. Am I right, Scag?’
‘Yis had yer moments,’ said Scag coolly.
‘C’mere, Scag. I hear ye think yer a writer now,’ said Dowdall.
‘Sometimes I catch meself thinkin that, yeah,’ replied Scag. ‘I put out a buke there a while back.’
‘That’s what I heard,’ said Dowdall. ‘Don’t go expectin me to read it, now. Scag the poet, wha? Merciful Jaysus. I can imagine what they wrote in the biography yoke at the back. “Scag was awarded a C Plus in English for his Junior Cert. His ma considers him one of the top five writers to have slithered out from between her legs. He divides his time between Dolphin’s Barn and the Walkinstown roundabout.”’
Scag granted him a wry chuckle. ‘That’s it, more or less. I don’t really think of meself as an author, though. I’m more of a conduit. There’s a force deep down inside me. He speaks and I just write it down. I call him The Fat Controller.’
I laughed, though I wasn’t sure I was meant to.
‘I’ve got two more bukes almost finished,’ said Scag. ‘Sincerely L. Cohen and Fine Day for a Holocaust Denial.’ He paused to observe a passing arse, then added, ‘I’m thinkin of puttin them out under me pseudonym.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Seamus Heaney.’
‘Tsss. Good night and good luck. So are yis on yisser way out to the festival?’
‘Yeah. Sure we thought we may as well. Young Matthew here has had some lady trouble. His tender young heart is in danger of bein broken so I’m takin him under me wing for a bit of a blowout to cheer him up. Yerself?’
‘Yeah, I’m goin out. I couldn’t give a fuck about the festival but there’s a bird out there I have to see. Little Spanish thing. Mad for me mickey, she is. Blank Frank has some yips for me as well.’
‘Oh yeah?’ said Scag. ‘Haven’t seen oul Frankincense in a while. How many are ye gettin?’
‘Ten. Do ye want some?’
Scag hissed, all indignant. ‘Does a bear shit on the pope? When have you ever known me not to want some fuckin yokes?’