JOEY
ONCE AGAIN, I found myself up shit’s creek without a paddle – or a parent to show me the way.
My father was gone, my mother was missing, my sister had been beaten to a pulp, my brothers had been abandoned, and my girlfriend had been possessed by some demon bastard called premenstrual syndrome.
And here I was, in the middle of the carnage, trying to stay clean and keep my head on straight.
Im-fucking-possible.
Shannon was at home with Sean, and I was supposed to be in the city, at a minors training session of my own, but I was here, in Ballylaggin GAA Pavilion, with my attention switching between each of my brothers’ underage matches.
Reverting to the life-learned pattern that had led me down the path that Molloy had dragged me out of at Christmas was not an option, so instead of drowning out the noise by self-medicating, I settled for a smoke instead.
Sitting on the grassy slope, away from all of the other parents and supporters flocking the GAA grounds, I rolled a joint, while I waited for the boys to finish competing in their underage hurling blitz.
With my arms hooked loosely around my knees, and my hood up to conceal my face, I took a deep hit, holding it there just long enough to feel the burn in my lungs and the haze in my mind, before exhaling slowly.
Hurling wasn’t Ollie’s cup of tea. He struggled with the concept of the game in the same way Shannon used to struggle with Camogie before she gave it up.
Tadhg, on the other hand, seemed to have the gene that had been passed down from our father in droves.
Hurling came naturally to him and, when you watched him play, you knew you were looking at something special.
At someone special.
I had a feeling that, given the time and space to hone his craft, providing our father didn’t suck all of the joy out of the game for him like he had for me, that Tadhg would become the best one of all of us.
Ols was a trier, but the kid just didn’t have the hand-eye coordination, dexterity, or cut-throat attitude that went hand-in-hand with the sport, which was fine by me. I couldn’t care less if any of my siblings played or not.
To me, it was a game, just a game, but to our father, our ability to hurl was a rite of passage that couldn’t be skipped over or avoided.
From the age of four, a hurley had been thrust into each one of our hands, and we had been marched over to this very pitch, handed over to the underage trainers and coaches, with our father’s full permission to bend, break, and shape us into the best we could be.
It was our own personal baptism of fire.
Smart but not insolent, confident but not arrogant, brave but not audacious; Darren had always fit the mold of golden boy to perfection. All of those characteristics, along with his mild-tempered mannerism and perceptive nature, were the primary reasons why he had always been our mother’s favored son, and up until he learned of his sexual orientation, our father’s favorite, too.
Most importantly of all, Darren had been both a skilled and proficient hurler, but he had never been a phenomenal one. He had never taken the shine off our father, and, because of this, the old man had never felt threatened by him. Because, in our father’s eyes, the better hurler you were, the better son you were, unless you were better than him. Then you were a threat to his legacy, and he loathed that more than if you couldn’t hit a ball straight. He wanted us to be reminded that he had been one of the greats and not the other way around.
While I had never been the son our mother could be proud of, lacking the silver tongue my older brother possessed, I had managed to fit the stereotypical prototype required to be accepted and praised by our father. Until, at the tender age of eleven, when I made the unforgivable error of coming under the radar of the county selectors, something my father hadn’t managed to achieve until he was thirteen, and Darren fourteen. After that, our relationship went downhill fast, shifting from tempestuous to downright intolerable.
The more I played, the more he hated me, and the more he hated me, the harder I played just to piss him off further. It was a vicious, never-ending cycle of toxicity that resulted in me resenting the game almost as much as I resented him.
My father hated me because I played the game better than he ever had, and I hated my father because he had morphed me into his own personal living, breathing clone.
He taught me everything he knew and then resented me for using it, while I loathed him for instilling inside of me a gift that would never be mine. For the rest of my life, whether I was better than him or not, he would forever be credited with my achievements. I still played, though, because, in all honesty, I didn’t have a whole host of other skills.
“I haven’t seen you in a while,” a familiar voice said, as a tall figure sat down on the grass beside me. “How’ve you been doing, kid?”
Immediately tense, I balanced my smoke between my lips, and turned my head to look at him. “What are you doing here?”
“Daddy duties.” Shane inclined his head towards where a minis game was going on. “You see that young fella over there? The big lad with the ball?”
“Yeah?”
“His ma is an old doll of mine from back in the day,” he explained, holding his hand out. “Resurfaced lately, with a habit and her hands hanging. Apparently, he’s meant to be mine, or at least she says.”
Inhaling one more drag, I passed him the joint and exhaled a cloudy breath. “So she says?”
“When it comes to women like her,” he paused for a moment to take a hit before continuing, “labeling that kid as mine holds as much merit as her falling into a bunch of nettles, and being able to pick out the one that stung her.”
I winced. “A stab in the dark.”
“A very fucking wild stab in the dark,” he agreed with a chuckle, exhaling a cloud of smoke.
“Well, shit,” I muttered, not knowing what else to say.
“So, how’ve you been, lad?” he asked, taking another hit. “Haven’t seen you around in a while.”
“Keeping busy,” I replied, disappointed with how his appearance had killed the mellow buzz I had been enjoying.
Now, I was on edge again.
On edge and overthinking.
The old saying out of sight, out of mind clearly held some level of merit, because, over time, the more space I had managed to put between myself and my old life, the easier it had become to stay away.
But now that old life was sitting beside me, I realized just how quickly old longings could resurface.
“You still knocking around with that barmaid?”
“She’s a waitress.”
“Waitress,” he corrected, exhaling another cloud of smoke. “I saw your old man in town the other day.”
“Like I give a fuck.”
“Fucking some barmaid at the side of The Dinniman.”
I stiffened.
“Looked an awful lot like that waitress of yours.”
I turned to glare at him. “What’s your angle here, Shane?”
“No angle,” he replied, holding his hands up. “Just doing a good deed for a friend.”
“It wasn’t her.”
He shrugged. “I could be wrong.”
“You are.”
“Still, though,” he mused. “You know what those barmaids are like—”
“Waitress. She’s a waitress, and I’m not listening to this.” Rising to my feet, I turned to look at him. “I told you before that she’s a hard limit for me.”
He shrugged. “I’m only looking out for a friend.”
“Except that I’m not your friend, Shane,” I told him. “I’m just the fool that halved his wages with you since he was old enough to earn it.”
“Sit down, Lynchy.”
“No, I’m not interested.“
“Sit the fuck down,” he warned, tone low and menacing. “Now, kid. I’m not finished with you.”
Wishing more than anything that I was still blissfully ignorant of what he was capable of, I reluctantly sat back down, knowing there was no level he wouldn’t stoop to in order to prove a point.
My baby brothers were a stone throw away from where he was sitting.
I couldn’t afford to be reckless.
Because as dangerous of a friend as he was for me, making an enemy of him would be infinitely worse.
“Your doll is a hard limit for you,” he said calmly, nudging my shoulder with his. “I didn’t hear you before, but I hear you now.”
Body rigid with unease, I nodded stiffly.
“She’s off the table,” he offered. “How’s that?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I remove her from my mind,” he replied breezily. “Meaning that I forget all about her. Where she lives. What she looks like. Where she works. Her old man’s garage. All of it. Erased.”
Bullshit.
The very fact that he was saying this meant that he was using her against me.
He was letting me know, in no uncertain terms, that he could and would go after my girlfriend if I didn’t play by his rules.
The only problem I had was that I didn’t know what game he was playing. “What do you want?”
“Nothing.”
More bullshit.
I arched a disbelieving brow.
“Fine,” he conceded with a chuckle. “I want you to come and see me again.”
In other words, pick back up where I left off.
“No.” Struggling to contain my emotions, I shook my head. “I’m done with that shit.”
“Are you?” he asked, tone coaxing. “Or is your doll doing the thinking for you?”
Shoulders slumping, I let my head fall forward, desperately trying to keep my head and not fuck this up.
The maze I had managed to lose myself in was virtually impossible to navigate my way out of.
Every time I tried to escape, I got dragged back down another dead-end path.
“That supply issue I was having is all cleared up now.” Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew a baggie, and thrust it into my hands. “Your usual.”
“Shane.” With my chest heaving, I stared down at the bag of oxy in my hand. “I can’t.”
“Tell you what,” he said, rising to his feet. “This one’s on me. If I don’t hear from you again, then no hard feelings.”
He walked away before I could say another word, leaving me alone with my self-control hanging by a tether.
