Here Are the Young Men by Rob Doyle Page A

with the world. For as long as he could remember, he’d had the sense that he wasn’t as fully connected to reality as you were supposed to be. But he had always struggled to express the specifics of this condition, even to himself.
    Recently, so much had fallen away, no longer trusted as being real: emotions, pleasure, music, art, even gestures and expressions. Nothing was simply itself; everything was a reflection of something else. Nothing was to be trusted.
    Take Cocker, leaning against the wall the other day, smoking a cigarette – it was stylized, he had learned that from telly and films. Or Jen, raising an eyebrow and smiling as she walked away from Matthew one night – that was straight off the telly as well, probably from
Sex and the City
, or
Friends
, or something. It was a cheap imitation; there was nothing genuinely enigmatic or seductive about it. Was there? Rez couldn’t tell. He had begun looking around at the people in his life – his ma and da, Michael and Trisha, his friends, Julie – and seeing them more and more as unreal, sinister, holographic entities, hardly human at all. Then, with rising unease, he had begun to look at himself in the same way. He had turned his gaze inward, but found no depth or substance, only froth and fever. There had arisen in him the weird and inchoate sense that he was a centreless chaos, becoming self-aware.
    Whenever the anxiety threatened to engulf him, he would tell himself that surely the best way to deal with this was to try and talk to someone about it, to communicate what he was going through. Maybe even Julie could help him.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    Later that afternoon the two of them took a DART out to Howth, to walk along the cliffs. It had turned into another dull, windy day. Fatigue weighed heavily on Rez. He wanted to sleep and sleep and not wake up for days.
    As they walked away from the town, through the heather and scrub, high above the sea, he told Julie he had been barred from attending the graduation.
    â€˜What, even you?’ Julie said.
    â€˜Yeah. They sent letters out to our parents. I mean, Foley likes me cos I read books, so I thought I’d be alright. But no, I’m barred as well. Me ma and da are goin mad.’
    â€˜But the school will be sorry they barred ye when they see how well ye do in the Leavin Cert …’
    He gave a cheerless laugh. ‘I doubt it, Julie. Honestly, I think I’ve probably failed half the subjects. I know ye don’t believe me, but ye’ll see for yourself soon enough.’
    Her voice was strained with anger. ‘I don’t see how you could fail, Rez. You’re so smart …’
    â€˜But I just … I told ye, I just couldn’t concentrate. All year. I … there’s too much goin on in me head.’
    She pulled away, sick and tired of hearing it. He didn’t blame her. He couldn’t even say what he meant. An older guy with a moustache and a shaved head approached them on the trail. Rez happened to glance up at Julie as they passed him: she caught the guy’s eye and smiled faintly, not realizing Rez was watching. Rez said nothing.
    Julie suggested they stay for the sunset, and watch the darkness drift in over the Irish Sea. They sat on a perch and waited. Rez didn’t want to be there. These days, situations like this always made him miserable. He wished there was a switch he could flick to turn his mind off, and he’d sit there and look at the darkening sky, untroubled by doubt or rumination.
    â€˜ Isn’t it gorgeous?’ Julie murmured, lying back to enjoy the panorama of crashing waves, cliffs, and the dissolving day.
    Rez sniffled. ‘I don’t know, is it?’
    â€˜What do ye mean? Of course it is. Just look at it.’
    â€˜I am lookin at it. It’s just, I don’t know if I can see it properly.’
    â€˜Is there something wrong with your eyes?’
    â€˜There’s nothing wrong