14. The Light Declines
The top half of Brendan’s body is hanging out of the car door as I emerge from the terminal with my obscenely large travel pack double-strapped to my body, and a Birkenstock tote knocking against my ribs with each eager step in his direction. It’s the hard spine of East of Eden that’s responsible for most of the impact, which I should’ve left behind in Porto. But the pages are lined with grains of sand from Lagos and coffee stained from Lisbon, transforming it into a keepsake – a kilo reminiscent of enough sun-bleached Portuguese memories to secure a spot in the depths of the tote.
Brendan darts around the bonnet, straw-coloured hair catching the muted sunlight. Our embrace is awkward due to the clunkiness of my movements.
“You alright?” he says cheerily in my ear.
I nod against him, still delirious from the mad rush through security and onto the rare flight that left on time, wondering if I smell like sweat or if my stubble is scraggly or if he can tell how many times this jumper has been worn over the past few days. These paranoias are swept beneath a forced expression of ease as I’m ushered into his stalled car.
The last time we saw each other, he was sunburnt and I was drunk. The taste of salt had crusted on the still night air and we were nursing glasses of white wine and commemorating the unexpectedly wonderful week we’d spent in each other’s company. Just two strangers, two visitors, a Melburnian and a Dubliner – from a chance meeting in a Perth nightclub, to roaming Fremantle, drinking and kissing our way through the bars, to skinny dipping in the Indian Ocean as we ushered in the new year. There was something intangible and temporary about it all, and perhaps that was what had made it thrilling.
Now we’re here in Dublin where I’m at the mercy of his generosity, feeling fragile after weeks of sleeping in hostel bunks, and all I can think about is the unlikelihood of recapturing that magic from eight months prior. He seems to be thinking the same thing, because he says, “I can’t remember half the things I told you last time. I hope they weren’t all lies.” It sounds so charming in that Irish drawl, I hardly comprehend the severity of the statement. Because really, who is this person I’ve travelled across the world to stay with for the weekend?
He’s driving effortlessly down the curved roads, past the Georgian buildings made up of grey stone and red-brick, with a pub awning on every block, one hand on the stick shift and the other hanging lazily on the wheel, his finger flexing as he points out the bad neighbourhoods closer to the airport, enthusing over The Liberties where his apartment resides, and summarising the proposed itinerary for the weekend, It sounds like I won’t be sober for the next few days.
I’m squirming in the passenger seat, which, despite the soft beige leather, is an uncomfortable position for me as someone who rarely relinquishes control. Allowing him to decide the outcome of my last few days in Europe is either a testament to the naive trust I’ve placed in him, or a clear example of how solo travelling has rendered me reckless. And again, like he’s reading my mind, or riding an adjacent train of thought, he says, “I didn’t think you’d actually come.”
“All of my favourite writers are Irish,” I say shrewdly. “It’s been on my list for a while. I just needed a good enough reason.”
My lack of an answer affirms the statement, and a mutual smugness unfurls between us. I squint up through the windscreen at the possibility of rain, but the sky is uncharacteristically steel-blue with only a few patches of clouds. I make a joke about bringing the sun up with me from the South. “And when you go, it’ll rain again,” he nods, deifying me. Everything out of his mouth just sounds so appealing and he’s certainly a talker, which aids our natural flow of unbridled conversation, though he’s on the precipice of taking up all the air in the room. It doesn’t matter really. There’s an inherent privilege with certain accents, even if he self-describes his as ‘common’. He could get away with saying and doing the most heinous things when they’re all smoothed out by his vowels and consonants, forgiving everything. He pronounces ‘bars’ like ‘bers’ and refers to his mother as ‘me ma’, and when he’s impressed or in agreement he says, ‘That’s class’. I fight the urge to name which Dublin-based novel I feel as though I’ve stepped into, remembering at once how grimly they often unfold. The country has a complexity to it, a melancholia simmering beneath the humour, sweeping emotions that struggle to be expressed, or at least that’s the feeling present in the pages of Irish-helmed prose I’ve consumed. You begin to wonder if the drinking culture is merely a salve for misery, but then I’m downing my first Guinness just after noon, so who am I to make generalisations?
The Guinness tastes like someone spilled black coffee into their lager, though otherwise it’s surprisingly pleasant. The rest of the day is measured in various pints, and when we switch to cocktails Brendan is sceptical I’ll be able to keep up. He forgets the Australian proclivities for binge-drinking are nearly as persistent as the Irish. In childhood memories, my father is red-faced, his shirt buttons strained against his belly, and there’s a beer in his hand, which I was allowed to sip from as early as ten years old.
“You’ll meet the lads later. They love to read me,” Brendan says around his menthol, puffing on it, exhaling ritualistically. “They say I give people exactly what they want and then I go in the opposite direction.” I’m having one as well, though more in an attempt to relate to him, the smoke contained to my cheeks, and because the act is chic when in Europe. “I don’t think that’s accurate,’ he continues. ‘But everyone I sleep with falls in love with me.”
I roll my eyes. His humour reminds me of my own in some ways – playful, cocky – though whether it’s genuine or performative is difficult to discern. I thought the Irish were known to be self-deprecating, so comments like this suggest overcompensation, but he pulls it off in the way good-looking people can. And his attractiveness isn’t about the objective lines and shapes of his face, but in the way his lips and eyes gently curl when he smiles, and in the loose way he holds himself – boyish, spritely. In comparison, I find myself sitting there, spine stiff, conscious of him and how he perceives me and whether my hair is sticking up in places I can’t see reflected in the dirty windows across from us.
“I managed to avoid it, didn’t I?” I say eventually, though my being here seems to negate that, and we both know it.
I wonder if he’s going to tease me about this, but then he touches the back of his neck in an uncharacteristic display of humility. “Were you nervous to come?” he asks.
“Yeah, a little,” I admit. “I wasn’t sure what it would be like.”
And this is another thing we understand immediately. We let it linger like cigarette smoke before it dissipates.
After several hours of walking and drinking and talking without pause, slipping into different bars and pubs, we’re perfectly drunk for the comedy show around the corner from The Temple Bar, laughing genuinely for the first two performers and politely for the last.
He kisses me on the stairs outside the bathroom where the faint smells of beer and urine punctuate the air. The kiss is ravenous and familiar, the way our lips and tongues wrap around each other, making new shapes and revisiting old ones. My breaths are ones of relief – yes, it’s like old times, it’s like we’ve picked up where we left. There was nothing to be nervous about.
We break apart and his eyes are crisp blue lake water, and as he regards me, beaming like he’s missed me as much as I’ve missed him, I find myself completely swept up all over again.
* * *
“So, you’re the writer?” one of Brendan’s friends asks after I’ve returned from the bathroom, my right nostril burning from the cocaine.
I pass back Brendan’s bum bag under the table, thanking him for the drugs with a sideways smirk, and then I respond pleasantly to the friend, “I’m not making nearly enough to quit my day job, but hopefully one day.”
The cocaine is potent in its purity, not like the watered-down, meth-riddled stuff that makes its way to Australia. I feel like a coiled spring, or a projectile.
“He’s also a finalist for a short story competition,” Brendan says loudly to the rest of the table, made up of his inner circle, and this receives murmurs of approval and earns a blush in my cheeks.
His friends are as lovely as he is, and already, in these first ten hours of landing in Dublin, I catch glimmers of what living here could be like – a constant state of inebriation, laughter and live music, the thud of pints being set down on wooden tables, venue patrons spilling out onto the street like a burst waterway.
We have another cigarette, and then Brendan kisses me in front of them all. It feels as though he’s showing me off, now that I’ve passed the test with flying colours. Or he’s rubbing salt in an unseen wound. But to who, and for what?
A different friend remarks later, “He must really love you,” and it’s said as an aside, so only I can catch it. I blink at him with the certainty I’ve misheard. Or it was a joke, that dry Irish humour.
* * *
“Oh my days,” Brendan mumbles as I go down on him.
The months might have diluted my memories, but there’s a forcefulness that was absent back in Perth. He doesn’t feel the need to be careful with me. When his hands make fists in my hair, I respond with nails in his thighs, and the harder we cling to each other, the more it feels like a provocation to make up for lost time. I arch and bend around him and his slurring of my name shoots pinpricks down my spine.
When I lift my head from between his legs a softness proliferates in his eyes, slow-blinking in the darkness. His hands slip from my hair to cradle my face before pulling me into another kiss that spins the room on an axis.
* * *
He’s more sombre at Trinity College, though it could be the hangover. We spent the morning tangled up, draining our already-depleted energy on each other with strokes and scratches and love nips.
Towering above us the bell tower is phallic and austere, and my hands are innocently deep in my jean pockets. The tour guide leads us across the cobblestones embedded with so much history my English literature brain is buzzing. Oscar Wilde lived in that building, and Bram Stoker ran that society, and Samuel Beckett played on that field. You can feel the weight of all that has transpired over the 400 years since its establishment, the Protestant propriety, the blood spilled on the streets beyond the walls, the social elite who turned a blind eye, and the upheaval that followed. I feel overwhelmed by the smallness of my existence and by the briefness of the time we have left. That’s when I look over at Brendan, impressed he’s entertaining this level of tourism, and he immediately catches my gaze. His arms are crossed, hoodie zipped up to his chin, and the smile he returns doesn’t match his eyes.
Over lunch I recount my favourite anecdotes, skewering a spicy prawn and depositing it into my open mouth. The flesh is tender and so is the moment.
“You really take note of details,” he says, impressed or wary.
I swallow and dab my lips with the paper napkin. “Good practice for when I write about you,” I joke, and this renders him sheepish. Perhaps it’s dawning on him – the pressures that come with being a muse.
* * *
Blinking awake from an afternoon nap, the soft click of paws on wooden floors has me lifting my head from the pillow as a white ball of fluff launches itself onto the bed and curls up against my torso. Brendan stands in the open doorway, blinking in surprise. “He never does that,” he says. “He hates men. And I think he’s homophobic.”
I laugh and scratch the dog behind the ears, who receives the contact gratefully. “He must be a good judge of character.”
The clock reads 5 p.m., an extra hour and a half than he’d promised. How long does it take to pick up a dog from me ma’s? Though I don’t think to question this until I’m under the firm pressure of the shower head, I’m suddenly considering the possibility he wasn’t with his mother. The thought passes. It’s too baseless to loiter.
Once I’m dry and pacing through the apartment in my briefs, I see he’s poured two glasses of wine and opened a bar of chocolate, and as I approach, I decide the gesture is indisputably romantic. He dodges my kiss but grabs my ass, and my lips brush the corner of his mouth. I make a face, puzzled but amused, and then he hands me the wine. “Shall we leave soon?”
* * *
I bite into the blue-pressed pill shaped like a heart. Just a third like one of the Australians had warned me. “See how you go after that.”
We’re in a club called Mother. Brendan has brought his wine onto the dance floor, and there’s comedy in the image, like a prop with the wrong backdrop. When we face each other, his eyes can’t seem to meet mine. They’re darting constantly through the crowd, somewhere behind my head, almost reptilian in speed, and I can feel my gut tightening. Something feels wrong. It’s obvious he’s uncomfortable, all but recoiling from my hands on his hips as I attempt to dance with him. He’s changed – but from what to what? How can I say he’s changed when I don’t even know him? A sense of dread proliferates, while remaining so subtle, so microscopic, it’s almost unexplainable. And to bring attention to this would make me sound insecure or paranoid. But you know. You always know.
Is there someone else? Is it the guy with the bleached blonde hair that lingers on the periphery of the dance floor, watching us? Or was it a comment one of his friends made, teasing us about kissing in the taxi, some inside joke I’m not a part of, made at my expense? Or was it something I’d said earlier that day, or at any point since the morning we spent moaning each other’s names? And when he leans in and says, “I’ll be back in a moment”, part of me wants to cling to him and say, Please don’t leave me with your friends. Where are you going? But too desperate to be cool, too desperate to be easy, I smile and say, “No worries.”
He’s gone for some time – it might be thirty minutes, it might be an hour, it’s hard to tell while I’m peaking. I’m bouncing on the balls of my feet with my heart clanging in my chest, fighting the urge to seek him out, knowing that I won’t like what I find. Easier to remain ignorant. Easier to dance away from the childish sense of abandonment and coax myself back to the belief that there is nothing wrong. It’s just the drugs, I tell myself. It’s just the drugs.
The LEDs bleed in pale blue. The crowd throbs. Bare chests glisten with perspiration. When I close my eyes, I feel like I’m being buried alive.
Mother closes at three and the guy with the bleached blonde hair is hanging on Brendan’s arm on our way out, making comments I receive only in snippets, something about an open relationship, and I feel voyeuristic trailing behind them. Like I’ve overstayed my welcome.
I’m contemplating my exit strategy when Brendan looks back at me, and his expression softens, and then his arms are around my neck as if to claim me. It’s the most public display of affection he’s mustered all evening. The bleached blonde looks humiliated and disappears into the crowd. My mouth is dry and I feel as though I should be grateful, but what for? Being high does that sometimes. Perhaps it was the same for Brendan. Perhaps he forgot himself. Or forgot me.
“I’m sorry for disappearing,” he murmurs. “The gay scene here… it’s very small. And very complicated.”
“I don’t mind,” I say, my tongue darting out to wet my lips, “as long as I’m the one you’re taking home.”
* * *
We’re too hungover to drive to Galway, so instead we watch his mate’s hurling match with sunnies over our bloodshot eyes. The dog sits on his hind legs on the grass by our feet, tongue lolling out of its mouth as the players race past in blurs of black and blue jersey.
“My ex is with a woman now,” Brendan says. “Two kids. Fucking mental, aye?”
The sky is greying – no rain as of yet, but the gathering clouds are starting to feel like a bad omen.
I clear my throat. “Do you feel like you lost a lot of time?” The question becomes obtuse when the answer is so obvious.
“Yeah,” he says simply. “All of my twenties. Gone.”
“And now you feel like you have to make up for it.” I wait for his answer before realising I haven’t phrased it as a question. “It’s good to be single,” I add.
“It’s class,” he agrees. “You start seeing someone and then they want more, but… I just can’t do it. Or maybe someone will have to keep coming back again and again. He’ll have to convince me.”
When I look at him, I can see every boy I’ve ever loved. I can see the chase and the game and the goalposts that move to fit his desire. I can see the things I’ve cut away or left behind, the things I told myself I no longer wanted. But here they are. Here he is. And he’s inserted himself like a splinter with the exit wound healed over, trapping the debris. It hurts to leave it alone and it hurts to try and take it out.
I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.
* * *
The singer in the bar has a broken finger. He holds his injured hand behind his back and closes his eyes as the notes get higher. An older man with a polished bald head accompanies him on guitar with defiant strums. These Irish folk songs all have the same despondency embedded in their melodies, lyrics like a rallying cry against the English. It’s a glimpse into a bygone era. The world stops and turns backward so you can almost smell the death in the air and taste the grief in the beer. The guitar plays and the singer croons and life feels fleeting and breakable.
This particular ballad courses with a powerful sense of nostalgia. It’s a lament on The Liberties, the changing neighbourhoods, the new apartments that went up, like the one that Brendan lives in. He’s angled to the side, watching the singer, his hair flat and falling over his eyes, the bubbles in his pint slowly subsiding. The dog is gathered up in his arms and it’s looking at me with what appears to be pity.
* * *
I’m alone in the bed on my last night, the rain keeping me awake. Brendan passed out on the couch while watching TV and I’ve convinced myself it was deliberate – an avoidance tactic, some way of creating distance, managing expectations, letting me down gently. It’s in direct opposition to the finale I manufactured in my head, of bunched sheets and flexed limbs and urgent breaths cementing memories. What happened to the fervour of the first night and the morning that followed? Somewhere, somehow, those crisp blue eyes became polluted and the light declined.
Or is it all in my head? Perhaps everything was good and right and we simply took too much ecstasy the night before and drank too much this evening. Perhaps he felt as much as I did and saying a proper goodbye would’ve been a form of self-flagellation. It’s a nicer framing of events. I could ask him for clarity but I’m afraid of the answer. And when I replay the supercut, I’m smiling through most of it. Isn’t that enough?
It was never going to be like the first time.
My alarm goes off. The sky is the same colour as when we left the bar and the absence of Brendan’s warmth is simply a reminder of the impermanence of comfort derived from another’s body.
I dress, slip my arms into the backpack, and as I pass his spot on the couch, I bend over and kiss him on the forehead, which is just enough to rouse him. “Mind yourself”, is all he mumbles in goodbye, and the cruel sparsity of the phrase oxidises in my abdomen.
Oscar Revelins is an emerging writer based in Melbourne. His short story ‘Bishops’ won Third Prize at the My Brother Jack literary awards in September of 2025 and his debut novel Delicate Friends is available now.