The Softest of Boys
Alasdair was always going on dates. He liked meeting girls in bars, through friends, on Tinder, on Bumble or on Hinge. He’d even asked a girl on his bus home if he could have her number once. She’d said no, but if he lived in London or Berlin or New York, instead of Firhouse, maybe it would have been the beginning of an incredible love story. Maybe it wouldn’t, of course, but Al was a hopeless romantic. He was always willing to expect the best. And then some.
In his head, London girl would follow him to his favourite pub, where a pint of Guinness was only four pounds, and listen to him explain why it tasted so much better “at home”.
New York girl would lead the way, taking him to a gallery like the Whitney, where he’d surprise her with his knowledge of Diego Rivera murals. “Where does an engineer learn so much about art?” she’d ask. “I’m full of surprises,” he’d shoot back, a mischievous smile playing across his lips. After that they’d walk to the West Village and sit in a bar drinking nine dollar pale ales.
“He’d met her in the record shop in the George’s Street arcade, if he is to be believed.”
Berlin girl would grab her bike and then they’d pick up some cans and sit in the sunshine in a park somewhere (he didn’t know Berlin that well) talking about music. He’d tell her how he had no interest in trying to get into Berghain, because he preferred chill places with guitar music where you could talk. Then, he’d introduce her to Soccer Mommy or Pillow Queens and she’d be quietly delighted that he was a feminist.
He hadn’t met Lena on public transport though. He’d met her in the record shop in the George’s Street arcade, if he is to be believed. More than likely they were within fifteen feet of the shop and one or both had been in there at some stage that day. Doesn’t it sound so much more romantic if they reached for the same Sufjan Stevens record at the same time, than if they nearly collided in the narrow tiled walkway of the arcade, while he was stuffing a whole artisanal sausage roll in his mouth?
Perhaps she found his crumb-filled apology endearing and he thought there was something hiding behind her smile, because she gave him her whole number; and he asked for it in the first place.
And here they were now, sitting in a pub in the Liberties. A pub that he—and many a young man of his creed—liked to call his local (despite that it was a forty-five minute bus journey from his house). The one that served good Guinness and woodfire pizzas, had old “regulars” at the bar, and Sharpie scribbles all over the bathroom.
They talked about films and music and books and drugs and travelling and doing-drugs-while-travelling. She loved Wes Anderson as much as he did, and he told her he’d send her a playlist of his favourite chill music (which would probably be a variation of his wanking playlist). They agreed that Rob Doyle was one of the best Irish writers of the moment, and compared mushroom experiences: she had done them on an interrailing stop in Amsterdam, and he was in one of his college friend’s houses in Sligo with Ben Bulben looming in the background the whole day (he liked to paint a picture).
“He made sure to have the phone away before she got back, so she could think that he had spent the whole time thinking about her.”
They sat there from seven until the lights flashed at half twelve, and he couldn’t get over how much more he was enjoying this date than any of the hundreds of others he had been on. She went to the toilet and he flicked through Instagram on his phone, the table in front of him covered in empty Guinness glasses. He made sure to have the phone away before she got back, so she could think that he had spent the whole time thinking about her. She slipped into her seat and knocked the last half of her pint back as if it were a mere mouthful. Catching his look of admiration, she grinned. “What?”
“I just think you’re great,” he said. “I’ve had a really nice night, and we have so much in common.” Six months earlier, he would have been repulsed by the idea of seeming so earnest, but it was very on-trend at that moment in time. This was reflected by her own uninhibited delight. Lena brushed a strand of purple hair behind her ear and said: “Yeah, I wasn’t sure how we’d fare on a date, me being the girl model and us being so similar.”
He wasn’t quite sure what she meant, so he ignored it and forged on. “Okay, another one for you: favourite festival performance?”
“Oh,” she smiled. “That’s easy. Tame Impala, Forbidden Fruit, 2016.”
“Fuck off, that’s mine too—or their set at Electric Picnic the year before.”
“Surely not?! This is crazy. We must have nearly the exact same programming.”
Al had furrowed his brow. “Exact same programming?” he asked. She nodded enthusiastically. “Mhmm. I’m a softgirl. You know? The new concept,” came her explanation. “Like you—the softboi—except, well, a girl.”
“What?” he was beyond confused now, and almost verging on scared. Scared of whatever the fuck she was talking about, and whatever the fuck it meant for him.
“I know what you’re thinking…” she went on, “...Manic Pixie Dream Girls were kind of the female equivalent of the softboi already. But there were so many issues with that approach - the inherent misogyny, the heteronormativity, the lack of diversity, the glorification of mental illness, the terrible haircuts and so on - that they thought it might be best to come up with a whole new concept. And... here I am,” she did jazz-hands to punctuate her arrival.
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” He decided it was time for him to make a swift exit; to get away from Lena and the nonsense she was spouting. It was almost half-disappointing. The prospect of not going home alone had entered his mind. Then again, if the thing between he and Lena had been a thing, probably they would just have kissed before parting ways. They would have sent some longing texts and then they would arranged another meet-up. Allowed the anticipation build until maybe, just maybe, one romantic night a few weeks down the line, surrounded by candles and with Frank Ocean playing in the background, she let him finish on her tits.
“I just assumed when you asked me to meet you here of all places that you’d be open to talking about ‘us’.”
Listening to her now, he didn’t even want that. Lena’s babbling indicated that clearly she was not right in the head. The kindest thing to do would be to bail out before she realised anything had changed. Pretending he needed to wee and bolting occurred to him, but that seemed like an unkind thing to do, especially after bumping into the last girl he had tried that with in the smoking area of Workmans and getting a faceful of vodka-lemonade for his troubles. He opted for a theatrical yawn instead. “I think I might make shapes soon.”
“Are you tired of hearing about this?” she asked. “I just assumed when you asked me to meet you here of all places that you’d be open to talking about ‘us’.”
“Us?” he asked. “We’re hardly an ‘us’, this is only our first da-”
“Not like that,” she looked irritated. “The larger ‘us’: our people. Our origins.”
“Here, you’ve completely lost me now. I’m just gonna run to the bathroom and then we’ll grab the bill, yeah?”
The men’s toilets were at the end of a long red corridor, down a set of narrow, sticky stairs. He slipped into a cubicle and slid the lock across before sitting down to wee, because he needed to think. Why does this always happen? he wondered. The girls who start off the soundest end up being the most tapped. Her stream-of-consciousness bullshit had given him the beginnings of a headache, so Al zoned in on the graffiti on the back of the stall door. Mindfulness was the best way to manage your stress, he believed.
We are all cogs in a machine
On, this conveyor belt trundles, and I wonder again, where is it going?
Rob sucks dick... And that’s cool, I guess. Maybe I should try sucking dick too?
The mess of signatures, memorials and words of wisdom, written by lads who’d just snorted their nostrils numb, soothed Alasdair. He calmly pulled up his trousers, calmly buckled his belt, calmly opened the door, calmly checked himself out in the grubby mirror, calmly ignored the sinks and soap-dispensers and left the bathroom, only to be pounced upon by Lena in the hall. She must have followed him down and lain in wait. The red from the walls reflecting off her face lent her a renewed air of madness.
“But to be totally oblivious? No one should have to live like that.”
“Look,” she said, “I’m only doing this because you seem to have no idea what I’m talking about, and I don’t think that’s fair. Not just because I don’t want you to go around to your softboi friends after this telling them what a psycho I am. It’s one thing to be walking around like this every day with some degree of self-awareness. You can make it a joke, a satire, a parody, bathe in the irony; whatever you need to get by. But to be totally oblivious? No one should have to live like that.”
Alasdair was tugging, pulling, trying to get her off him, but she clung on and, in a phenomenal display of strength, dragged him to another door, pulled it open and pushed him through.
It was a lot darker on the other side. The first thing he was aware of was a rhythmic mechanical clicking, followed by a whirring noise.
“Why are you closing your eyes, you idiot?” Lena asked. “This isn’t a haunted house ride.”
“Oh… I get nervous in enclosed spaces,” he said, opening his eyes to see that they weren’t in a broom cupboard or store-room, but at one end of a long sterile-looking room with unexpectedly high ceilings. The room was filled with sophisticated looking factory equipment and a conveyor belt like the one at baggage claim at the airport, coming from an unseen area to their right. It snaked around in a u-shape and disappeared out of view on the far side. She nudged him and nodded towards the opening to the right.
As he watched, a young man who he would have described as “well-dressed”, if he ever got the chance to explain this to anyone, appeared. He had on beige trousers that stopped a good bit short of his ankle, Nike skater shoes, an oversized shirt striped in pastel greens and pinks and a navy turtle-neck underneath. He saw them as he reached a turn in the conveyor belt and said “I’ve to show you this brilliant tune; it’s from one of The Killers’ earlier albums, not sure if you would’ve heard of it… ‘Mr Brightside’ it’s called”, before disappearing into the next room. “That’s the Trinity model,” she whispered.
“Wha-”
“Shhh,” she motioned to the opening again. This time, a slightly older-looking guy glided into the room. He was white, with a few days’ worth of stubble, and scruffy chin-length hair, covered by a khaki bucket hat. His jumper was drug-rug adjacent, but a little more stylish, Al thought, and his trousers were what could only be called parachute pants. When he spotted them he said “I have some lovely ket back at the campsite. Wanna grab some food, wander to my tent and we can explore oblivion together?”
“Festival model,” Lena mouthed. “Next…”
“How come you can’t just meet a girl on a bus anymore? Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned romance?”
This time, it was a female. She was wearing an exceptionally scruffy pair of Doc Martens and had a ring in her left nostril. “One of my kind… A particularly basic model, I have to say,” she snorted. “Look, look! This next one.” It was another lad, in a pair of scuffed Vans, faded jeans with keys hanging off a belt-loop and a flannel shirt over a band t-shirt. His face was strikingly familiar, but the faint moustache and thin hoop in one ear threw Alasdair off for a second.
“That... that’s me?”
“An updated version of you,” she said. “You were one of the earlier prototypes, but you’re still so popular they had to keep you on. With a few tweaks.” He was panicking now. Hyperventilating. Alasdair 2.0 looked at them as he took the turn and said “How come you can’t just meet a girl on a bus anymore? Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned romance?”
He turned to run. Out the door and up the stairs and out the door and he was in the room again and 2.0 was saying “even though they’re industry plants, there’s something so organic about the Strokes’ music. I can stroke you later if you’d like?” and he turned and fled out the door again.
Up the stairs he went, and into the room and out the door and up the stairs and Lena was laughing at him. He was right back there watching himself roll out on the conveyor belt again and again, and she was doubled over cackling and cackling at his futile attempts to get out, out, o u t...
❦ ❦ ❦
Alasdair woke up. When he opened his eyes, he found that he was in his own bed, in his own room. Safe. A violent shiver travelled down his spine and he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, repeating an affirmation over and over again to try and make it all go away:
“I’m not like other boys.
I’m not like other boys.
I’m not like other boys.”
Laoise Slattery currently lives in Dublin, after spending a year in New York (if she hasn’t mentioned that already). She is a graduate of the M. Phil. in Creative Writing at TCD and was chosen to be a Young Writer Delegate for the 2018 Dublin Book Festival. Working slowly but surely towards the completion of her first novel, with short stories published in Sonder and Strange Times magazines.
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