Here Are the Young Men by Rob Doyle

switched to baseball bat, raised it behind his head, and brought it down in her face with a vicious swing. She was dead on the first smash, but he switched to pistol and shot her repeatedly in the face nonetheless, just for the craic.
    Kearney finished his dinner, left the plate and empty glass on the table, and returned to his converted-attic bedroom.

9 | Rez
    Problems with Reality: Rez and the Postmodern Condition
    Rez watched himself having sex with Julie. Glancing down across their chests and stomachs he saw his erect penis, condom-wrapped, gliding in and out, in and out of her vagina. The erect penis didn’t seem to be a part of him – it was like the baby creature in
Alien
.
    They were in Julie’s bedroom. It was Monday afternoon and Rez hadn’t slept after his night with the lads. Everything was pitilessly visible in the daylight. They’d been having penetrative sex for five minutes. This was a reasonable time for Rez to allow himself to ejaculate and bring it to an end. But Julie hadn’t come. He had to make her come.
    He could hear himself panting and see the winces and grimaces he made – he couldn’t tell whether these reactions were genuine, or just imitations of pornography, echoes of someone else’s long-vanished pleasure. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on pure sensation: the sound of her breathing, the feel of her skin where it pressed against his own. But he couldn’t dam the gush of his thoughts. He wondered whether he was even excited, whether there was any lust in this at all. He had an erection, therefore some excitation must have been taking place. But maybe the erection was a mechanical reaction to the gestures they were making that they’d picked up from films, telly, porno …
    Julie still hadn’t come. Rez wished it was all over. These noises they were making: who were they trying to convince? But he had to keep going. He had to make her come. Julie’s face was bobbing up and down beneath him. She panted and rolled back her eyeballs but Rez couldn’t blot out the sense that they were both alone, imprisoned in their separate minds. He kept seeing flickers in Julie of film-sex, responses downloaded from beautiful actresses. It was the over-eager way she contorted her body, the hyperbole in her whispered incitements and dirty words. He felt like he was having sex with a hologram. But he had to make her come.
    They manoeuvred themselves through various positions. Rez was concentrating hard, trying fiercely to enjoy himself. Eventually Julie seemed to come; at least, she made a loud, prolonged warbling noise and went, ‘Oh fuck!’ Then she formed an O with her lips and began to take noisy breaths, in and out, as if recovering from a near-fatal pleasure. Rez’s orgasm was imminent: it would all be over soon. Determined to enjoy these last few seconds at least – otherwise what was the point? – he urged himself to stop analysing and just be in the moment. But it was hopeless: he registered the mechanism of ejaculation taking place in his penis and testicles without the faintest tremble of pleasure. Miserably frustrated by his inability to stop thinking and just enjoy things like a normal human being, as he ejaculated he let out an anguished, gasping whine. Julie, mistaking it for a sound of pleasure, renewed her moany porno-noises. ‘Yes, Rez! Oh yes, oh yes!’ she cried, not looking into his eyes. Shuddering as the last spit of ejaculate squeezed into the condom, he groaned and slumped down into her shoulder. He buried his face in her neck and hair, and wished he never had to see anything ever again.
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    It wasn’t only when he had sex that Rez saw it, but that was when it was most visible, and most excruciating. Sex, real sex, had a lot to live up to. Real life had a lot to live up to.
    Rez worried. He worried that he was losing it, smoking too much dope and falling out of orbit