Eureka Street: A Novel of Ireland Like No Other by Robert Mclaim Wilson Page A
Authors: Robert Mclaim Wilson
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entirely sure that he would or should love her. Love was a little ambitious. Exchange of bodily fluids would do to be going on with.
Chuckie always wanted sex, but on his own terms; terms more lyrical and tremendous than might be imagined. He sought forms of mystic union he considered impossible with the women of Belfast. They were not natural docks for his living liquids. He was very glad that she was American.
Chuckie thought often of his old girlfriends. Recollections without haze, like erotic memoranda. He thought of the year he was seven and he fell in love with a piano teacher, who played Mozart and the blues. He thought of the bad old good old days when he was sixteen and his mother didn't allow girls in the house; when he lost count of the number of nights he spent in phone boxes after the pubs were shut, ringing round everybody he knew trying to find someone who would lend him a bed or even a quiet corner for a shag, quick or slow.
He liked to think of the scores of Belfast girls who bore his invisible graffito on their inner thighs:
Chuckie was here
Briefly but memorably.
Many of Chuckie's thirty wasted years had been devoted to the search for erotic congress. He had spent much time wandering the city, searching Belfast for sex, tramping leprous streets in pursuit of some quality lewdness. He had found it first in the Central Library, with its lemony reference room, with a girl repeating her 0 levels at the College of Business Studies. They had sat by the twenty-volume collected speeches of Winston Churchill and somehow it became the scene of Chuckie's twenty-eighth orgasm, the first by the hand of another.
And thus had started an erotic career much more successful than he had a right to expect. Chuckie was not handsome. His sandy hair had started to recede before his twenty-first birthday, his belly rolled like a full balloon and he had the breasts of a thirteen-year-old girl. Nonetheless, women slept with him with something close to monotonous regularity. He had always been proud of his and pink as a baby's forearm - and he attributed some of his success to this, his best feature.
But no girl, no woman had made a dent in the marsh of his selfhood. And Chuckie lamented this. Chuckie wanted to be lost in someone. Chuckie wanted a girl who would make life burn in his heart like a heavy meal. Chuckie wanted to discover the secret of true love.
`Got a light'
An old woman stood over his seat, her damp coat trailing off her shoulders. She brandished her breasts at him.
'Mmmm?' asked Chuckie.
'A light. Got one?'
Chuckie, who rarely smoked, always carried a lighter. It was meant to grease the wheels of conversation with foxy, darkhaired girls in bars. He fumbled in his pockets and passed the cheap, disposable thing to the old woman. She lit her cigarette and made to hand it back to him.
'No, you keep it,' said Chuckie.'I've given up'
The old woman paused with her hand held out in an exaggerated posture of surprise. `Ach, God love you, son. That's very decent of you.'
She lurched back to her seat. Chuckie could see her sitting four rows forward in the no-smoking section, telling her companion - an equally corpulent, equally decrepit his largesse. The exclamations of surprise were audible through most of the bus and Chuckie had to suffer a complicated series of nods and smiles from the old women, who had both turned round to favour him with their acknowledgements of his beam geste. Some of the other passengers also turned and there were some quiet smiles at his expense. Chuckie blushed and worried.
He tried to stare through the wet windows. The fields and houses drooped in the aquatic exterior. He was glad to be abus in such weather. As he looked around the vehicle, he could not repress a sensation of cosiness, as though this Ulsterbus with its condensation, its body heat and smells was some kind of biosphere that sustained them all. He would almost miss it when he was rich.
When Chuckie got home, his
Chuckie always wanted sex, but on his own terms; terms more lyrical and tremendous than might be imagined. He sought forms of mystic union he considered impossible with the women of Belfast. They were not natural docks for his living liquids. He was very glad that she was American.
Chuckie thought often of his old girlfriends. Recollections without haze, like erotic memoranda. He thought of the year he was seven and he fell in love with a piano teacher, who played Mozart and the blues. He thought of the bad old good old days when he was sixteen and his mother didn't allow girls in the house; when he lost count of the number of nights he spent in phone boxes after the pubs were shut, ringing round everybody he knew trying to find someone who would lend him a bed or even a quiet corner for a shag, quick or slow.
He liked to think of the scores of Belfast girls who bore his invisible graffito on their inner thighs:
Chuckie was here
Briefly but memorably.
Many of Chuckie's thirty wasted years had been devoted to the search for erotic congress. He had spent much time wandering the city, searching Belfast for sex, tramping leprous streets in pursuit of some quality lewdness. He had found it first in the Central Library, with its lemony reference room, with a girl repeating her 0 levels at the College of Business Studies. They had sat by the twenty-volume collected speeches of Winston Churchill and somehow it became the scene of Chuckie's twenty-eighth orgasm, the first by the hand of another.
And thus had started an erotic career much more successful than he had a right to expect. Chuckie was not handsome. His sandy hair had started to recede before his twenty-first birthday, his belly rolled like a full balloon and he had the breasts of a thirteen-year-old girl. Nonetheless, women slept with him with something close to monotonous regularity. He had always been proud of his and pink as a baby's forearm - and he attributed some of his success to this, his best feature.
But no girl, no woman had made a dent in the marsh of his selfhood. And Chuckie lamented this. Chuckie wanted to be lost in someone. Chuckie wanted a girl who would make life burn in his heart like a heavy meal. Chuckie wanted to discover the secret of true love.
`Got a light'
An old woman stood over his seat, her damp coat trailing off her shoulders. She brandished her breasts at him.
'Mmmm?' asked Chuckie.
'A light. Got one?'
Chuckie, who rarely smoked, always carried a lighter. It was meant to grease the wheels of conversation with foxy, darkhaired girls in bars. He fumbled in his pockets and passed the cheap, disposable thing to the old woman. She lit her cigarette and made to hand it back to him.
'No, you keep it,' said Chuckie.'I've given up'
The old woman paused with her hand held out in an exaggerated posture of surprise. `Ach, God love you, son. That's very decent of you.'
She lurched back to her seat. Chuckie could see her sitting four rows forward in the no-smoking section, telling her companion - an equally corpulent, equally decrepit his largesse. The exclamations of surprise were audible through most of the bus and Chuckie had to suffer a complicated series of nods and smiles from the old women, who had both turned round to favour him with their acknowledgements of his beam geste. Some of the other passengers also turned and there were some quiet smiles at his expense. Chuckie blushed and worried.
He tried to stare through the wet windows. The fields and houses drooped in the aquatic exterior. He was glad to be abus in such weather. As he looked around the vehicle, he could not repress a sensation of cosiness, as though this Ulsterbus with its condensation, its body heat and smells was some kind of biosphere that sustained them all. He would almost miss it when he was rich.
When Chuckie got home, his
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