I still don’t even know what ‘fandom’ is. I should look it up, I suppose. Not that it matters. When Dinny Young phoned me last week and asked if I would talk to this girl who was friendly with his daughter about her Master’s, I thought it would be something to do with physiotherapy, my field; or even something relating to pain, which is my speciality. More specifically, the perception of pain and its impact on performance.
Anyway, when Dinny Young asks for a favour, you just do it. I’d have met her anyway, even if I knew the subject beforehand, I suppose. I have a fair idea why she’s studying Darren O’Sullivan, too. I’d better explain.
When Cork won the All-Ireland Hurling Championship for the first time in nine years – five years ago now – I was the physiotherapist for the team. So I knew all the players. And I knew Darren very well, because I’m from Na Piarsaigh, his club, too. We more or less grew up together. For those of you who don’t know, that year Sully (let’s call him Sully, that’s what he’s mostly known as) scored nine goals in five matches in the championship, including two in the final, and the song that was on all Cork hurling supporters’ lips that summer was ‘Sully’s scoring goals, he’s scoring goals’. I think it was taken from some soccer song, but I’m not sure, to be honest. Sully had a bit of a cult following at the time – hence the enquiries from the MA student, I suppose. It was the old story: men wanted to be him, women wanted to be with him. I guess it helps when you’re six foot four and apparently look like ‘a mix of a darker, younger Chris Hemsworth and a taller Adam Driver’ – not my words. But there was more than that to Sully, too. A lot more.
I met her in Café Luna, which is just across the road from my clinic on Prosperity Square. It’s a student haunt, which probably suited her, being near UCC, even if the coffees are a bit on the expensive side. It has a bookish feel, doubles as a second-hand bookshop, with large couches and little nooks and crannies. Nice place, good WiFi, lovely Portuguese tarts. I like to get out of the clinic, anyway, when I don’t have a patient, to get a bit of headspace and look at the latest issue of Sailing Today. I was early and she spotted me straight away. I offered to buy her something but she wouldn’t have any of it.
She was pretty, but not overly so: mid-length dark-brownish hair, medium height. I put her at twenty-three, a bit younger than I expected. Anyway, it looks like I was right: according to her Facebook page (I friended her straight away; it’s still the best marketing tool out there) she is twenty-three. I’m very good on ages; I think it’s a physio thing. She carried herself with a lot of confidence, I’ll give her that. Very good posture, that’s something I noticed immediately – I’m sensitised to posture: it tells a lot. She wore oxblood Doc Marten boots and leggings (thin calves) but with a dress over them, and a small white denim jacket over that. Some part of her hair was tied up strangely in a knot, and she had a piercing under her bottom lip. Blue eyes. Nice eyes.
‘Hi, I’m Emma,’ she said, holding out a narrow hand (no rings) with some bangles at the wrist. I took it. I could see she had torn the extensor tendon of the distal phalanx of her index finger at some point, and it hadn’t really healed. It looked like she had a tattoo going up her wrist, an N, an A and an N in ornate lettering, but I didn’t get a proper look.
‘Paul. Paul O’Neill,’ I said. I stood up to shake hands, I’m old-fashioned that way.
She sat down and took out her phone.
‘Do you mind if I record what we say? I’m crap at taking notes and I’ve a terrible memory.’ She looked a bit embarrassed, her cheeks flushed. It was very attractive, I must say. I was taken with her from the get go, I know that now.
‘Not at all,’ I said.
‘Did mister,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Did Dinny tell you what my thesis is about?’
‘Actually, no. Is it something to do with pain?’
‘What?’ she said, surprised. The scleras of her eyes were extraordinarily white – a sign of good health. They also accentuated the royal blue of her irises.
‘Pain perception and its influence on performance; that’s my main area of research,’ I said.
‘No, no. Oh, this is embarrassing. I’m doing an MA in Sociology. I’m studying the phenomenon of fandom. Have you ever heard of it?’ She turned her head slightly to the right when she asked this question.
‘Eh, no,’ I said. ‘What is it?’
‘Well, it’s the study of fans. You know, music fans, sports fans, gamers and so on? Mainly the extreme kind. Those who group together? Harry Potter, Star Wars, CreatureX, that kind of thing.’
‘Oh, right. So why did you want to talk to me?’
‘Well, I’m looking at fandom in one specific case. In the context of Darren O’Sullivan by Cork hurling fans at the time. Although it wasn’t just hurling fans. Or Cork people, according to my research.’
Now it was my turn to be astonished.
‘Darren?’ I said.
‘Yeah, sorry. I thought you knew.’ She squirmed in her seat. It was a nice squirm. She blushed again; it was a very nice blush.
‘Oh. Well, in that case, I guess you have come to the right man,’ I said in an even tone, though I was a bit miffed. I’d hoped I could impress her with my knowledge of the science (the very young science, in which I have five peer-reviewed papers published) of pain perception.
‘Okay, thanks. I have a few questions I wrote down.’ She pulled a well-thumbed spiral note-pad out of a battered old backpack that might have been white once.
‘Fire away,’ I said. Despite my disappointment I was also intrigued. An MA thesis on Sully. Well, well.
When people bring up Sully to me – and my clients still do (he’s been a rich source of mystery and rumour since his ‘disappearance’; every second year we keep hearing about a comeback – if only they knew), they are thinking of the grown man who got all the goals. That’s who Emma was thinking about in the café. But I mostly think about Sully as a boy and what growing up with him was really like.
Hero worship doesn’t come into it. He was a god, full stop. Whatever he did was the job. He wore brogues; the rest of us wore brogues. He switched to Docs; we all had Docs. He wore those long basketball shorts, so did we, even though they looked ridiculous on most of us – we weren’t tall enough. He grew a ’tash at fourteen, so the whole lot of us made miserable efforts at ’tashes – his was perfect, of course, and the young ones loved it. He played for The Piarsaigh; we all played for The Piarsaigh – or tried to. He started going with a girl from Mount Mercy; we were all sniffing around the place, trying to chat up her friends.
The mystique wore off for me when I went to UL to study physiotherapy. I was a bit of a swot to him in the AG, a nerd, and that hurt, but I persevered – the degree was the best way of getting me out of St John’s Park and I wanted that. Sully wanted to get out too, and maybe he thought the hurling would do it for him. I don’t know, really, but I was glad of the distance by then – heading off to Limerick every September. I was glad when he fucked off to America too, though I wasn’t about to tell Emma that any time soon.
‘So, I’m not sure if you know that Sully had a kind of cult status that summer?’ she asked, settling down to her task. There was a determined set in her mouth, and her forehead wrinkled up a bit, in concentration.
I nodded. If only she knew.
‘Anyway, he generated a lot of online activity: fan fiction, discussion groups, hashtags, memes, blogs, GIFs, Facebook pages, and so on.’
‘Fan fiction?’ I said.
‘Oh, yeah, that’s people writing fiction online with characters from movies, or books, film stars or sports people. It’s very typical fandom behaviour, especially among girls. It’s mostly romantic.’ She coughed. ‘So, I’m wondering what you can tell me about Sully? Why do you think he generated so much attention?’
I stretched my arms behind my head.
‘Jesus, where should I start? The goals? The good looks? The confidence? Not giving a shit?’
‘Oh, oh,’ she said, almost hopping up and down in her seat. ‘Can you tell me about the confidence and not giving a shit?’
‘You never met him?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said, and shook her head with a faraway expression that made me wonder if this was all personal. That made me jealous. Wouldn’t have been the first time, when it came to Sully. Christ, there’s Deirdre for starters. I sipped my coffee and thought about what I would and would not tell her.
Firstly I wasn’t going to tell her the real reason for his cult status, if she hadn’t already figured it out herself. It wasn’t the goals or the looks – it was the disappearing act. Him packing in hurling after the final, not even finishing out the county with the club, heading off to the States just like that, was a shocker. At the very moment he’d reached his peak – All-Star, Player of the Year, nine goals, the All-Ireland – he was gone. That just didn’t happen. Not a sign of him since, not a peep, just the odd newspaper article without a single direct quote. A lot of people think he’s still in Chicago or New York.
When we learned that he was doing a runner on Deirdre because she was pregnant, it wasn’t a big surprise. Not to me, anyway, or anybody who knew him. Me marrying her a couple of years later, when I got my own practice – that was a surprise. Considering I had been going out with her in the first place before she dumped me for Sully, and that I had to watch them together on all those team nights out and GAA functions, she all over him like a rash and me helpless to do anything about it.
I won’t be sharing that information with Emma either.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Sully was one of those people who just didn’t give a shit. But the more he didn’t give a shit, the more things happened to him. For him. He didn’t care about women, he really didn’t – but they flocked to him. He didn’t care about money, but he always had plenty. He didn’t care about hurling either, genuinely he could take it or leave it – but he ended up winning an All-Ireland. He didn’t like training – but he was as fit as a fiddle. He wasn’t as good a hurler as Ray Clarke, he wasn’t as dedicated as Sean Culloty, he wasn’t as tough as Liam Óg O’Callaghan, but he still topped them all that year. He just had it – whatever it is.’
‘And why do you think he stood out so much from the others?’ she said. Here we go again. In reality he hadn’t stood out so much from the others – except maybe to young women. Until he was gone, that is – then he stood out, all right.
‘I’ll tell you the main thing about Sully that year. He knew he was going to score goals and he knew we were going to win. I don’t know how or why but he just knew. Did you ever see the film Apocalypse Now?’
‘Eh, no.’
‘Well, it’s set in the Vietnam War and there’s a famous character called Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall, and he’s a colonel in the American army. He’s a bit mad, afraid of nothing, wants to go surfing in the middle of a battle. The main character, Willard, played by Martin Sheen, says that the reason he could do crazy things was because he knew he was untouchable, he knew he was going to walk out of that war without so much as a scratch. He wasn’t brave, or patriotic, he just knew.’ I shrugged my shoulders and held her eyes and said, ‘Sully knew too.’
She looked at me a bit funny. I’d given her something – I wasn’t sure what, but she seemed to know.
She said something I wasn’t expecting: ‘Would you say it was destiny? His destiny, I mean?’
I paused.
‘That’s exactly what it was, Emma. Absolutely bang on. Put that in your thesis. And the destiny of the whole team hung on it too – the whole county. We shouldn’t have won that All-Ireland, but we did. We were meant to win it. Sully was meant to win it for us – in the final, especially. So he did.’ I drummed my forefinger on the table for emphasis.
Yes, Sully was meant to score goals and win an All-Ireland for Cork and I was meant to marry the girl with the kid he left behind. I don’t think I’ve ever fully known why I married Deirdre and agreed to rear Sully’s child. Maybe it was just because I could and she was desperate, or maybe I was glad to get his cast-offs. I don’t know. Deirdre’s sound out most of the time, unless she’s in one of her moods. I could have done worse.
Truth is that they broke the mould with Sully. He’s one of those people that leaves his mark on you. There’s only a few people in your life that really, really make a difference in any meaningful way. I guess my father was one of them, and Dinny too. Pat, maybe, in UL. And, yes, the kids. But Sully’s another one, and that’s why Emma’s chasing him down now and she never even met him.
I was a bit embarrassed by my ‘destiny’ speech in the café. It wasn’t me – I was probably trying to show off. But when I looked at her for a reaction I could see I’d hit a nerve. She busied herself writing something down, even though she was recording the whole thing on her phone. She seemed to be writing for a long time and I didn’t mind – I watched her as she did so. I decided to suss her out.
‘Where are you from, Emma? Do you mind me asking?’
‘The northside, just off Blarney Street.’
I nodded. That left a lot of scope, it went from Shandon Street, past Sundays Well, all the way up as far as Holyhill.
‘Ever play camogie? The name is familiar,’ I said – a blatant lie.
‘God, no. I had more of a misspent youth,’ she said. Which, of course, made me want to know about her even more.
‘Oh, really?’ I tried not to sound too eager.
‘Well, in my teens. But I’m a strong believer in destiny. That what’s meant to be will be. Do you know what I mean?’ And she gave me a look I don’t know how to describe, except to say it was charged with a kind of longing – what for, I have no idea.
I think that’s when I fell for her. That’s when I lost my safe mooring and ran adrift. I was caught in some current, and I still am, though I don’t know where it will bring me. The anchor that kept me in place no longer holds any weight, any connection. I’m drifting. I may or may not land on the shore where Emma is. You never know with currents. But what I am sure of is this: it’s taking me away from where I am now. Somewhere downstream – life is always downstream. Somewhere away from my ‘happy’ marriage with Deirdre and our two kids, Gavin and Chloe, my practice, and everything that ties me down. And you know what? I feel free. Frightened too, but free.
Truth is, and I’ve been lying awake thinking about this: I must have been close to upping sticks for a while, if this is all it took. It’s not like I didn’t have opportunities. Beautiful women come in to the practice all the time. Some serious athletes too – Jesus, the conditioning on some of those camogie players. My colleague Niamh made it perfectly clear a while back that she was available for some no-strings-attached extra-curricular fucking on the old therapy beds after-hours too, if I was interested. But I backed off. I’m glad now that I did.
Gavin is probably the reason Sully agreed to meet me last year when I was at that conference in San Diego. He did want to know how the kid was – he’s not a total monster, and he has two of his own now with Kim, living the life.
I asked him if he ever missed hurling and he laughed, displaying perfect teeth – he’d had something done to them. He looked so American in that hotel lobby. With his confident slouch and his tan, his big smile and fine skin; his Tommy Hilfiger polo shirt and his chinos and his tasselled brown shoes. He was meant for America and America was meant for him.
‘I play golf down at the country club most days,’ he said. ‘Have a swim and a couple of drinks afterwards. Then Carlos drives me home.’ He shrugged in an ‘it’s a tough life but somebody’s got to do it’ kind of way. ‘It’s usually seventy-five, maybe pushing eighty. Sunny. What do you think?’
I asked him why he never came home or visited Cork. Stupid question.
‘Mam comes over a couple of times a year, we’re working on a green card for her.’
Fact is, he doesn’t need Cork; he never did. He knows he could rock on up outside the house in Grange in a big fuck-off jeep any time he wanted and give Deirdre another one. I wouldn’t put it past him. And don’t tell me she wouldn’t drop her drawers at the very first opportunity with him too, or run off herself to California if he said the word. We both know it – I’m not totally fucking stupid.
I’ll miss Gav – he’s a great kid. Looks more like his mother than his father, thank God, but he worships the ground I walk on. I’ll miss putting him to bed, and reading to Chloe, my one and only. Deirdre will go ballistic when she finds out what I’m up to – or when I tell her; I don’t have a plan. She’ll use Gav and Chloe to get back at me and squeeze me dry. I’m under no illusions about that and I can’t say I won’t deserve it. I hope I can still bring him out on the boat, Gav loves that, and I’ll surely get some custody rights. But I know the way the courts treat fathers, too.
So, why am I even doing this? I’m not quite sure. It’s not as if Emma’s drop-dead gorgeous or anything. Or even that sexy, although I have been fantasising about those lips and that tongue.
She asked me a few more questions in the café, before leaving. Mainly about sociological issues to do with fame, reputation, group behaviour and leadership; I didn’t even attempt to answer them – what do I know about that stuff? I told her she should talk to Dinny. Part of me wanted to drag out the conversation and keep her there, part of me wanted to process it, to take five and think about what was happening; so I let her go.
She never asked me about Sully leaving and I did wonder if she knew more than she was letting on. Dinny wouldn’t have told her, but his daughter might have. I’ve met that girl, I can’t remember her name – I guess she’s not a girl any more, she’s a woman too – and she’s a bright spark.
After Emma left the café, I rang Niamh and told her to cancel my next client, that I didn’t feel great. I ordered another coffee and tried to make sense of what had just happened. I rang Niamh again and told her I was taking the rest of the day off, and I headed up Barrack Street. As I was walking around The Lough fifteen or so minutes later, I had an idea. I stopped and just stared into the water. It was one of those light-bulb moments.
Maybe in the same way that I was glad of Sully’s cast-offs, Emma would be too. Maybe I’m as close to Sully as she can get – in a way I’m another cast-off, we all are. Maybe that’s really what she wants, so I could be in with a chance.
Yes, I had a lot more to tell her, but I held it all back. Even before she left the café, I already knew why. I wanted to meet her again, I wanted to look at those eyes, I wanted to hear her story, and I needed an excuse. Or maybe I didn’t need an excuse – this is all a bit new to me.
And that’s why I’m sitting here now in front of this laptop, looking at this email. Trying to click SEND. She gave me her email address – two addresses, in fact: one for UCC and one gmail. The gmail address is emmac14@gmail.com – I’m not sure what the ‘14’ stands for. It doesn’t matter; nothing does, really, except meeting her again, getting out of this drifting current and moving in the direction I want.
So.
Here we go:
Hi Emma,
Nice to meet you the other day and to hear about your very interesting thesis. Brought me right back, I can tell you. Actually I have a few other things about Sully you might like to hear about, if you’re interested. Especially the whole destiny thing – I’ve been thinking about that. I forgot to tell you where he is now, and what he’s up to.
I’m busy during the day this week and next – how about we meet in Tom Barry’s some evening, after 6? Let me know what day suits. All are good for me except Thursday. You can get me on my mobile, which I already gave you, or you can message me on Facebook.
All the best,
Paul O’Neill
It’ll have to do. I want to reel her in and I hope she’ll take the bait to get as close as she can to Sully boy. But I don’t want to sound desperate, either. She probably has a boyfriend, though it doesn’t say so on Facebook. She accepted the friend request straight away. And she gave me those email addresses. I wonder, too, if I’m the one doing the fishing or if it’s her. Only one way to find out, I guess.
Click the SEND button, you coward. Click it. Do it.
Why am I hesitating? Like I said, I’m frightened. Well, nervous, maybe. I’m giving up a lot. I know, I just know, that by moving the cursor over the button and by clicking that mouse, I’ll be setting in motion a series of events over which I won’t have much control. A lazy, drifting current can turn into a raging torrent pretty damn quick.
Fuck it.
Click.