Billy O’Hanluain
The Bangles.
Kajagoogoo.
Men Without Hats.
Boys in their sisters’ underwear.
Wait, what?
A frank marriage referendum meditation by Billy O Hanluain
A few thoughts, shocking in a way, about the upcoming referendum. I am 43, back in my secondary school days in the 1980s, alongside the usual fumbling adolescent awkwardness that is a part of the pocket billiards game of sorting out one’s identity, many in my school were criminals. Law breakers, clandestines, sitting cheek to cheek with tax evaders, fraudsters and even murderers on the statute books.
Have you grown so old as to not remember the trepidation and thrill of your first kiss? That trembling moment when you reached beyond yourself and you were met by a smiling welcoming warm other.
Maybe it happened by a Halloween bonfire or on the bus back to Dublin from your first tip to the Gaeltacht or with cola bottle breath outside a school disco. The Bangles, Manic Monday and lights flashing in the black paper stencil cut out of what during the day was the Geography room but was now at night, shaken by hormones and brave decison a new landscape of pleasure.
Your first act as a cartographer, marking your terrain as a young lover, living the dream as sung in all the songs you hummed at the bus stop as you jostled for position in the scrum of the 46A or the 17 to Blackrock. Ah, our genius for forgetting and rationalising, that process of making the unnameable bearable. It was tough, Men Without Hats’ Safety Dance, swirling in my head, sour jelly high, almost reaching out to the one I wanted, the one.
Sneaking around the Moonlight Shadows begging for some kind of affirmation, I am not alone, am I? Kajafuckingoogoo, Big Apple, she almost smiled at me as the 17 careered dowm Merrion Avenue washed in the exam sunshine of May. But my Land Down Under sometimes sang a different song that was criminal.
K C and The Sunshine Band wailed at me in the traffic light strobe of a crap school disco to Give it Up, Malcolm McClaren told me it was Double Dutch, Duran Duran asked me Is there something I should know? My hard compass dragged me in all directions at once, Will Powers sang about Kissing with Confidence. Criminal Cock.
Spare me the hipster retro mania, Le Galaxie disco synth pop, I crashed landed into adolescence in the Ghostbusting Lost Ark era of Hunger and Miner strikes, when the only gay man on television was a bearded Joycean, all camp and erudite. Caught in the middle of a hundred and five, the night was heavy but the air was so light, far away on the other side.
Agonising slow dances, Eternal Flame, the Bangles again. Four AM in the morning, carried away by a Moonlight Shadow. But she couldn’t find how to push through. Some time around seventeen I found myself with all the pieces of my puzzle missing, sitting in Saint Anne’s dayroom, such an awful word for a place so full of night.
John of Gods, that satellite of madness that orbited a mile away from the planet my school. I was a veteran of wards by sixteen, having spent slipped disc months in the Mater, ha, a Zimmer frame, post operation morphine high, Orinocco Flow on a borrowed walkman, that song always reminds me of walking again among the nicotine stained staues of hospital corridors, Woodbine and Major, Mary and Josephs.
Craving the needle prick of pain relief, jabbed by a nurse from Mullingar, then to patrol the wards, saluting the drip wielding patients, late night drifters, wrinkled night gown models.
What’s that exam? The Inter Cert? Morphine fueled Inter-Galactic, that was my exam of preference. Oh! but up the road I saw the love story turned inside out, whip lashed, burnt red with with razor blade self loathing. In the dayroom, plucked out of school, here was my new class. We’d tell our story and journey together. Christ, Journey!
Peter’s family prayed for him, cared for him, encouraged him, all those pathetic breadcrumb words; they just couldn’t accept him. His wrists, a crust of dry blood, burnt pizza veins. How in hell they hoped we’d tell our stories I don’t know.
Our tougues a dead weight ton of Largactil. Words fully formed in the brain would slur into half nothing in the mouth. The facilitators, would nod, “That’s great Billy…” It was far from fucking great. The sound of our words robbed by medication.
“Now, Peter, you need to work towards making that promise to your family that you’ll change. It’s not wrong that you like boys but dressing like a girl in your sister’s clothes is so upsetting for all your family”
I slurred, a snail on my lips, like a drunk. “Ok, if he can get the knickers elsewhere would that be ok?”
“Billy, you are always so funny and that’s a great thing but Peter needs to change, he needs to learn that his behaviour has hurt his family”
“Family…” The meds deny the sentence completion, like not being able to come, so close, yes but no. No form. Then those killer facilitator smiles.
“Well that’s it for today, now there’s lots on downstairs, aerobics, arts and crafts, Peter, your drawings were lovely last week, get busy, getting well!”
Two days later Peter got ECT, arrived back amongst us, a jet lagged alien.
Bulimic Shauna was a panic, she’d flash her knickers for you just to get an out of bounds Twix bar. Her father was an arichtect and had beaten her most of her life. And down the road, they were worrying about the Leaving Cert. Ireland Since the Famine. Me Hole! The points race. We were just scavenging for any point at all.Come up here lads! Take the roll call of heroic failure, right here,right now!
One morning as like all mornings, hard core cotton wool brained on the post breakfast meds, daytime tv, australian soaps, I turned to to Shauna.
“D’ye fancy a Twix?”
“D’ye want a flash?”
“No, I want a pair of your knickers.”
Wha’?”
“Yeah, your nicest pair, I’ll get you two Twix and Mars”
“You’re on!”
Tuck shop excursion, I knew what I was at. Paying for the bars. I knew I could make Peter feel like a star. All of that cotton glamour wrapped round my hard morning glory. It only cost 80 pence but made so much sense.
I handed her the bars and she passed me the palm wrapped polka dotted cotton.
Go, Billy! there is no other Troy for you to burn! Do it! Flight the word numbing meds! Act don’t speak, gesture, action! Marceau your way through it all. Words are fucked up, useless little things. Dance, rage,wave your hands! Safety Dance!
I step inside a Dettol stench bathroom and undress. I slip on Shauna’s secret and feel hot like a warm gun. I pull up my toursers, conceal the deal.
Such a new shape hugging my body, I am everybody, Adam and Even all The Bangles. Adam Ant, Eve stunning sexy spider. Ha! And down the road you worry about the points race. You wonder whether you’ll make it into UCD, swotting on your parents paid Lesson street Insitute extra classes so you can cough up the prescribed usual shite. Peter, In Nominae Patris, fuck your family, you are a star!
It’s after lunch, the quiet hour, no basket weaving or art classes where we all paint the same drug fuelled painting, a landscape of some place that never was. Not to touch the earth, not to see the sun!
I open the door to your room. Witnessing the wild breeze.You are there Peter, the last ricochet of electricty reeling through your pizza crust veins. Your dyed black matted Cure-Head hair, way cooler than I could ever hope to be.
Largactil stripper slur, “Peter, there is nothing wrong with knickers”
I unzip and show him Shauna’s bounty. A Twix bar for my Kingdom!
“Fuck ’em Peter, we gotta get out this place!”
You smile, those lips defying ECT!
Persian Night Babe, See the light Babe. Danger on the edge of town!
A rustle in my mussel. Next day, the pair of us winking at each other during aerobics, Eternal Flame, stretching towards something, again with The Bangles.
Let them worry about their Leaving Cert, we’ve seen a lot more than they will ever know, we’ve licked the stolen trophies of the contest that never was. We are!
Legislation not Hospitalisation!
That raw Sallynoggin punch colliding with East Pier air, still hurts. When it found me with cruel knuckles, just as I told a lad from Barcelona how handsome he was.
Tight, hated filled, thundering knuckles, waves lapping, poweless, the Kish blinking for the duration of the beating. I was sixteen, finding my way, it was July, pleasure turned to terror. The 80’s were crap. I was a criminal just for exploring the possibility of a Catalan Kiss.
On May 22 you have a chance to normalise all of this.
Viva Plurality!
Viva the Loud Minority!
Make mine a Change!
Billy O’Hanluain (Facebook)
