When I first met Robbie, I’d been nursing a four year itch to really fuck somebody up. Not just beat them until they collapsed, not just beat them into humiliation. But really fuck them up. Beat them till their face was slippy. Kneel on their chest and rain bombs down on a bubbling mass until I’d completely destroyed it.
I’ve got that kind of red flabby face, that defeated look in my eyes. A real target, all my life. You know? But I’d been working out. Now I was a machine, a bomb, ticking out the days until somebody, anybody, set me off.
Martial arts have a funny effect on people. All martial artists are empowered dorks, just like me. Most of them never really get to fight. The more they train, the more they dream. I was having one of my violent fantasies because, across from me, two skangers had half turned in their seats and were starting on some guy called rob.
He’s the kind of geek I want to be. He’s pale, and thin, and has an intelligent face. He’s quiet and thoughtful and keeps to himself. He was sitting at the back of the bus, staring out the window, holding a notebook.
‘Gis a moke dere, Beckett.’
He looked up thoughtfully for a few seconds.
‘No,’
and turned back to his window.
‘Gis a fuckin moke yeh skabby cuntcha.’
‘I don’t have any left.’
The two skangers squabbled briefly with each other. A bit like chimps.
‘He DOES Flanno, he does.’
‘Oi know he does, Shhkuntor.’
‘Ye DO ye little bollix.’
Robbie sighed, took off his walkman, and put down his note book. He took out an almost empty box of smokes. They were foreign, and short. He frowned at the few he had left, and with another sigh shook one out and offered it.
Flanno reached for the cigarette, but Shhkuntor snatched Robbie’s notebook off the bus seat.
I tensed. My heart was pounding. This was it. I was going to do battle. Neither of them saw me. They were like dogs, testing Robbie out before they made their move. I imagined how I would take them, maybe an unannounced kick to the back of flanno’s head, then deal with Shhkuntor. Or maybe I could tackle Shhkuntor into flanno, and pin them both on the floor between the seats. Or- no, no- I’d just say ‘Excuse me,’ real polite, and when they turned ….sucker punch to the throat.
‘Gis a look at chor poe-hemsis.’
‘Ah isn’t dey luvly Flanno!’
Robbie just gazed at Flanno, and lit up a smoke.
Flanno lit his smoke and smirked back. Shhkuntor’s brow furrowed with effort, and his lips moved as he read.
Flanno glanced at him.
A few seconds passed. Shhkuntor half turned back in his seat, and hunched over the notebook. His concentration was painful to watch.
He turned a page.
‘What’s it say dere, Shhkuntor?’
He turned a page.
‘Shhkuntor. Shhkuntor.’
‘Shurr-up willya a sec.’
Another minuet passed.
Flanno’s smirk faded. Then his fake smirk faded. He turned and started reading over Shhkuntor’s shoulder.
Two quiet minuets passed. They turned the page.
Eventually Robbie pulled his bag over his shoulder, and stood up with his walkman on.
‘This is my stop.’
Shyly,
‘…dats good dat is.’
Pause.
‘Fair ple.’ Added Shhkuntor, with a respectful nod.
They both handed the book back to Robbie.
As he walked away, they exchanged urgent whispers.
‘yew ask him!’
’No! Yew ask him!’
‘’Ere! Mistor!’
Robbie turned at the top of the steps.
‘eh, what’ill you do? You know…aftor.’
“After?
I’m gonna burn Dublin to the ground.”
. . . . .
I caught up with him, introduced myself, and we went for a few pints. He was a philosophy student.
‘I’m thinking about being a Buddha.’
He thought about this for a few seconds. The beer and the hours past had slowed our conversation to a crawl.
‘A Buddhist?’
‘at first yeah. But ultimately, a Buddha. the guy at the top.’
‘That would…take a lot of practice.’
‘Yeah, but it seems like a good life.’
‘You’re already on the wrong track. Your supposed to keep your eyes on the path, not on the mountain to which your journey leads.’
‘Thanks lofty, but I’ve gotten lost so often by doing it that way. No, this time, I keep a firm eye on where I’m going.’
‘It would mean quitting smokes.’
‘Why?’
‘Buddhists fundamentally respect life.’
‘I like smoking.’
‘but it disrespects your life.’
‘I think its more disrespectful not to indulge in all of life’s pleasures.’
He gave this more thought. Our conversation was good, but we were starting to shlurp the words a little.
‘Then you want to be a hedonist. Besides, Buddhism doesn’t make any more sense than Christianity. Ok, sure, its less genocidal, and sure, Buddhists seem to be a happier more well adjusted crowd than the Christians, but when you get down to it, they are every bit as dogmatic. Their uh, religical views have a shortancy of eh, they don’t make sense. For example, they want to overcome desire. How can you want to overcome want? It makes no sense. They go for harmony and beauty, while at the same time they reject this world like ungrateful brats. Sure this world has terrible problems, but in an effort to be compassionate, they abstain from life’s pleasures and wait for something better to occur- which by their own logic, they wouldn’t even turn their heads to look at if it did.’
I hate arguing when I’m drunk. I can hear something wrong in his words, but I cant keep it all in my head at the same time. And just as I start to see what it is, I find I’m already midway through an unintelligible refutation, or an example involving my cigarettes and a beery coaster.
Ok, so maybe he has some kind of point, in that Buddhism isn’t for me. But I’d rather be a Buddhist than a middle manager. That’s what I want to say, but the words directed at bleary Robbie were more confrontational, louder and grander than that simple thought.
I faltered and we sat.
‘common, will we just split.’
‘yeah ok.’
It was raining outside, and dark and quiet.
‘Just crash at my place, its in town.’
‘Thanks, yeah.’
We walk, slowly sobering.
‘here, can I ask you. what was in that Notebook?’
‘eh?’
‘The skangers on the bus. It made quite an impression.’
‘I’ll show you if you like.’
‘k.’
‘But I don’t know what part they were reading.’
I opened the door and switched off the alarm. It’s one of those old Georgian houses, pretty run down, but big. It’s my uncles, but he lets me stay there on the cheap.
Robbie’s notebook (random page):
- black
- a lantern is lit revealing:
a piss soaked iron frame bed in a derelict mansion room. Broken window with tattered blowing curtain. Hunched figure sitting up on bed, blanket askew - he winds up a clockwork figure by the lantern, and pins a sheet of paper to it.
- totters robotically off of the edge of the desk.
- totters out of the room, into the carpeted hall.
- totters across the barren valley away from the house.
- through the streets.
- across the desert.
- to the great prison wall.
- it stares into a black slit in the great wall.
- It listens.
- it pushes in the sheet of paper.
Robbie’s notebook (another page at random):
Mr. fox addresses the hole under his bed as he storms around his little room.
“What am I doing here?
The answer is in my mind, but I’ll need to dream deeply to bring it out. I am not dreaming, I am the dream. I am not the story teller, I am the story told.”
The room: Sagging ceiling warped doorway sink full of green water and flies. Sodden mattress on a black and brass frame with creaky springs and something more. Light source flickering bulb? Tilly lamp/ storm lamp?
“Ladies and gentlemen he said! Courtesy! Respect do you understand.”
What made Mr. Fox realise that he is all there is?
Me. I make him realise that he is all there is. But how do I explain that?
“I am the self thinking idea. How I crave to be more than this. I have a plan to escape from here, to be swept away in the mind of the giant, and to make that mind mine. But first I need to trick him. He needs to stop thinking about himself as the same creature that was born from his mother. No problems there, the two creatures have so little in common, far less than he and I. Would they ever have recognized each other? Nay! Would they ever speak to each other? Nay! The kid is dead, or gone, and now the giant. Don’t you see I am just a voice in your head.
‘That’s pretty weird man.’
He shrugged.
‘“I am just a voice in your head” ?’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Aren’t I?’
‘Is he?’