The garage door stays standing, the house doesn’t topple on to your car. Unfortunate really. Nothing happens for a while. ‘Paradise City’ is still playing, blaring. I can see you, unmoving in the driver’s seat. I wonder if you’re okay, if the airbag has exploded and knocked you out. I think of calling an ambulance for you, but I don’t know if it’s needed and it could be seen as wasting emergency services’ time. Though I very much do not want to leave the safe haven of my home, I know I can’t just leave you there.
You slept in the car last night, not even bothering with your usual routine of banging at the doors and windows of the house, but somewhere between me falling asleep and waking up, you’d managed to get inside the house. I wonder if your son let you in. I wonder if it had become too much for him and he’d disobeyed his mum’s orders to ignore you and instead answered the door and confronted you. Already fired up from the video he’d made, he told you what he thought of you. I’d like to have seen that. I know that’s weird.
Tonight you are worse than usual. I suspected this would be the case. I’m sure you know about the YouTube posting. I listened to the radio to see if was true about your suspension and there was another DJ filling in for you and the team. You and the team have all been suspended for your naughty New Year’s Eve antics and I see you have used your time not to spend a rare midweek evening at home with your family or to ponder your actions, but by drinking the night away. It was odd not to hear your voice on air; you’ve become synonymous with that time of night in most people’s homes, cars, workplaces, vans and lorries on long overnight drives. Learning of your suspension makes me surprisingly not as happy as I’d imagined, but then I come to the conclusion that it might be a good thing. It might make you think about all the lowly things you have said and discussed on your show, and how that has affected people and how you can improve yourself and thereby improve the lives of so many that you have such influence over. It makes me think of the one that makes me hate you, the entire reason for this anger I feel towards you.
Sixteen years ago, on another station at another hour, you hosted a discussion about Down syndrome. It was about many aspects of Down syndrome, and some of it was informative, thanks to the angry but firm woman who called in from Down Syndrome Ireland to explain the realities. Unfortunately she was deemed too calm and patient for your show and you quickly hung up on her. The others were uneducated, obnoxious ignoramuses who were given far too much airtime. Much of the discussion was about CVS, Chorionic Villus Sampling, and amniocentesis, also referred to as amniotic fluid test or AFT, which is a medical procedure used in prenatal diagnosis of chromosomal abnormalities and foetal infections. The most common reason to carry out such a test is to determine whether a baby has certain genetic disorders or a chromosomal abnormality such as Down syndrome. Women who choose to have this test are primarily those at increased risk for genetic and chromosomal problems, in part because the test is invasive and carries a small risk of miscarriage. I can see why you wanted to have this conversation; it is worth having the conversation, it could help women make the decision, if dealt with in a mature and honest way – but not in your way, not in the way your show handles things, trying to stir up controversy and drama. Instead of handling it in a mature, honest way you invited lunatics on to show the worst side and voice their uninformed opinions of Down syndrome. For example, an eejit anonymous man who had just discovered his girlfriend was having a baby with Down syndrome and what rights did he have about stopping this?
I was seventeen years old, at a party with a guy I had fancied for ages. Everyone was drunk, someone’s parents had gone away, and instead of listening to music it had been cool to listen to Matt Marshall. I didn’t mind you then; in fact I thought you were cool, because it was cool to hear the kinds of things you were discussing back when we were still trying to find our own voice. But the conversation made me feel ill, the conversation drifted from the speakers and continued into our room at the party and I had to listen to my friends, who should have known better, and to people I didn’t know, and the guy that I fancied, giving their opinions on the matter. Nobody wanted a child with Down syndrome. One person said they’d prefer one to a baby with AIDS. I was sickened by what I heard. I had a beautiful sister asleep at home, with a mother who was undergoing treatment for cancer who was more distraught about leaving my sister than leaving anything else in her life, and I couldn’t quite take what I was hearing.
I just got up and walked out. The guards picked me up along the coast road. I wasn’t falling around the place, but I was quite emotional and the alcohol only made me worse so they brought me to the station for my own safety, and a warning.
Mum was sick, she needed her rest. I couldn’t call my aunt after what had happened over the past few weeks in her house between me and her son Kevin, nor could I go back to stay in her house after the event, so they called Dad. He’d been out on a date with a new girlfriend, and they collected me in a taxi, him in his tuxedo and her in her ballgown, and they brought me back to his apartment. They’d both been throwing eyes at each other and giggling in the cab; I could tell they were finding the entire thing so much fun. As soon as we got to the apartment they went straight out again, which was a blessing.
So I stand at the window now and watch your unmoving body in your jeep, not caring whether you see me watching or not because I’m worried. Just as I’m thinking about going outside to assist you, the jeep door opens and you fall out. Head first, your back facing out as if you’ve been leaning it against the door. You slide down slowly and your head hits the ground. Your foot is tangled in the seat belt on the leather seat. You don’t move. I look around for my coat and then I hear you laughing. You struggle to untangle your foot from the seat belt, your laugh dying down as you become irritated and need to concentrate on freeing yourself as the blood rushes to your head.
You finally free yourself to begin your shouting/doorbell-ringing/banging act, but there is no response from the house. You honk the horn a few times. I’m surprised none of the neighbours tell you to be quiet; perhaps they’re asleep and they can’t hear. Perhaps they’re afraid, perhaps they watch you as I do, though I don’t think so. The Murphys go to bed early, the Malones never seem to be disturbed by you and the Lennons beside me are so timid I think they would be afraid to confront you. It is only Dr Jameson and I who seem to be disturbed by you. Your house is completely still and I only notice now that your wife’s car is not parked on the street as it usually is. The curtains are not drawn on any of the windows. The house appears empty.
You disappear around the back of the house and then I hear you before I see you. You reappear pulling a six-seater wooden table across the grass. The legs of the table destroy the grass, digging up the soil, leaving deep tracks as though you’ve been ploughing. You heave the table from the grass and on to the concrete. The wood drags across the ground, across the driveway behind the car, making an awful screeching sound which goes on for almost a minute. Sixty seconds of screeching and I see the Murphys’ lights go on down the street. Once you have dragged the wooden table on to the grass in the front garden, you disappear into the back garden again and take three trips to carry the six matching chairs. On the last trip you return with the sun umbrella and struggle to position it in the centre hole. You fire it across the garden with frustration and as it flies through the air, it opens like a parachute, takes flight and then lands, open, in a tree. Out of breath, you retrieve a carrier bag from the jeep. I recognise it as being from the local off-licence. You empty the bag, line up the cans on the table and then you sit down. You put your boots up on the wooden table, making yourself at home, and settle down as though you couldn’t be more comfortable and you couldn’t be more at home. You invade my head with your voice and now you are an eyesore, right in front of my house.
I watch you for a while but I eventually lose interest because you’re not doing anything other than drinking and blowing smoke rings into the still night sky.
I watch you watching the stars, which are so clear tonight that Jupiter can be seen next to the moon, and I wonder what you’re thinking about. What to do about Fionn. What to do about your job. Are we not so different after all?
It is 8.30 a.m. and I am standing in the garden with