CC14: Rotten

As Paidi and the new arrivals shared a reunion with the others, John Carroll and I stood looking completely ostracised, and of course, that was the man's cue to begin informing me of what was happening in his mad head these days.

'Nothing worse,' he said. 'Nothing worse.'
'Eh, what's that, John?' I enquired.
'Eh?'
'I didn't hear you too well. You said nothing worse?'
'Oh. Yeah, nothing worse. Nothing. Nothing worse than finding out your mother's really a man.'
'What?'
'Nothing worse, I'd say. I feel sorry for those poor fuckers who've had to deal with that shit.'

I allowed John Carroll's brain to leak, my eyes feigning attention as they strained for observation of Paidi and Emer. I knew at this point that I was kidding myself if I thought I could hold off jealousy. Jealousy was one of those things in my nature that enabled me to agree somewhat with Emer when she called me a rotten bastard. Jealousy's unhealthy, that's for sure, and an unattractive and poor quality in folk it is. But I'm not about to sit back in my pyjamas and paint you a distorted picture of endearing masculinity unscarred by such transgressive brushstrokes. I was well aware of my capabilities in the area of jealousy. I seemed to welcome it frankly. I let it in the door with frequency and made it a cup of tea with some digestive biscuits to dunk. Jealousy and I would sit for hours in my living room violently dunking soggy biscuits in tea and giving each other high-fives in our miserable alliance.

Knowledge of Emer and Paidi's long acquaintance did it. The exclusive banter and shared chronicles in their dialoguing was what made me sizzle. Emer was essentially a Seatown Peripatetic and there was no stopping that. They had her forever. I was just never part of their crowd. Not even marrying the girl seemed to give me a leg up in that circle.

Jealousy wasn't my only flaw. There's a long list of them; my mother probably has that list saved somewhere in an envelope amongst other important documents like my birth certificate. I can't remember everything on that list. You tick them off when you discover you're a perpetrator. I can't see how bad I'm being when it's happening. Self-defense and personal justice overpower everything else so that you're sitting there alone in a room eventually huffing and puffing to yourself about the fucks outside. When someone knocks on your door, you amplify the sulk in thrall to the attention, set a lonely candelabra glowing in the corner as a hundred thousand revenge scenarios play out in thrilling detail until a horrible guilt and acceptance of individual fault takes over and it's finally just you and the candlelight flickering and failing.

'Stop overthinking everything,' Emer used to say. 'You get paranoid too easily.'

She said this many times, but I couldn't stop. I kept getting paranoid and turning into a prick and making a big scene. Though I remained confident that I was only responding naturally to the rancid scene of pricks around me. Put that in your pipe and do what you will.

'I've been thinking a lot about this lately,' John Carroll continued. 'I think she's a man. I really do.'