What’s a boy to do when the only nirvana available is on a notice in the window of a shop selling incense?
ME AND THE Dude were in the jeep one evening, when we saw the Invisible Boys slipping into the head-shop and, three minutes later, back out again and off down the street in their Toyota Corolla, with black body-paint and yellow doors.
The Invisible Boys are like the ancient fairies – a tribe of losers who live underground.
They weren’t always invisible. They used to drive around the world in jeeps, like the Taliban, saying “look at me”. But nobody looked, so they went away, renounced suits and worldly success, and devoted themselves to rolling the perfect spliff.
Now they’re back in town, all grown up, feeding off metal music in shady bars, or just feeling lonely and numb all night in desolate flats. And their motorcars don’t say “look at me” anymore.
Their motors don’t say anything because there’s nothing to say anymore. But when someone throws a rock at the schoolteacher’s car, the Invisible Boys laugh, “cos it’s the government’s” fault.
Some Invisible Boys grew up in a land they’d prefer to forget: a world of despair where they were the go-betweens, shuttled from tweedledum to tweedledee; their parents playing an endless game of “gimmie the child”. At least in the head-shops, they get some respect.
But The Dude was looking for more than respect. He wanted Incense and Snow. Nirvana, it said on the shop window, and the sign on the door said “come in”.
I said to The Dude, “This is not nice.” He said, “We’ll just look.” So we crossed the threshold. Inside, he drooled over the water-pipes and bongs and all the lovely crystals beneath the glass.
Every few minutes another car stopped outside in the lashing rain and someone came into the shop, and a hand floated over the counter and dispensed bath salts like some holy communion for vampires.
“How are you surviving all this criticism on the radio?” I asked the red-haired boy behind the counter.
“They’re blowing it way out of proportion,” he said. “What they’re focusing on doesn’t make a difference to us. If the pills were taken away in the morning, we wouldn’t be bothered. Like, it’s only 5 per cent of our business. But sure aren’t they deflecting away from the real problems, by focusing on the head-shops.”
“Ah, this is cool,” said The Dude, when he found the incense. So I watched The Dude, and the red-haired boy watched me, and a man in an office at the back of the shop watched us all like a hawk.
Maybe The Dude will wake up in his 40s and write a novel about how other people screwed him up. But for now, he just drinks vodka and smokes dope.
The police found him in a carpark one night trying to argue with an alien. He resisted arrest and got banned from driving. When his mother came to the police station and chastised him, he just said, “Sorry for living.” When his father arrived, The Dude lifted his eyes to the old man, and said, “You ruined my life.” He is a ghost in a hood, faceless and without personality, caught between nirvana and a hell-realm his parents are too sophisticated to believe in anymore.
There’s a chipper on the same street as the head-shop. The following day, at lunchtime, it was swarming with schoolboys.
“Give us €1,” a little boy said.
The bigger boy said, “F . . . off. I gave you one yesterday and you didn’t pay me back.” The group around him sneered. The little fellow, a gawky spotty boy, asked again.
“I said f . . . off, you little squirt.” the boys walked up the street munching slices of pizza, the little fellow tailed them until someone threw a bag of leftover chips at him, the remnants of which dribbled salt and vinegar all down the back of his neck.
That was the final expulsion from the pack – the completion of shame. I suppose he’s just learning early that there’s no god, life is not nice and nobody is going to save the planet.
And in time, he’ll even learn how to avoid shame, by making himself just a bit more invisible.
