RÍTHE CHORCAÍ

We were both staring in the window of the jeweller’s, looking at the class feather earring. We tossed for it; I won. I bought the feather earring. My ear wasn’t pierced so Ciarán did it for me with a Stanley knife and a lighter. We both had our savage denim jackets on. Fuck the world, we looked like Rod Stewart. Rory Gallagher was gigging in a week, and we had something big planned. We were going to poison him, skin him and then both of us were going to wear his skin on stage. We’d be legends in Cork. We couldn’t wait to do it boy.

He was playing in the Cork Opera House for the big homecoming gig. Rory is some man. We listened to the albums non-stop, Calling Card, Tattoo, Stage Struck, Top Priority, the lot. We worshipped him. We made our own Rory Gallagher patches out of curtain and sewed them into the back of our denim jackets with wire. I’d one I drew myself onto a bit of beige fabric: I drew him with a marker, he’d a fine grin on his face and he was playing a guitar but instead of strings, it was a few big lovely fannies and he was fingering them and they were making musical notes. It was on my shoulder. It got me kicked out of the English Market.

We had it all planned. Ciarán has an uncle from Ballincollig who’s a vet, so he robbed some ferret poison pellets off him. We’d our seats bought and all, up on the balcony. Like royalty, up on the balcony, letting the hair down and headbanging over the edge. The plan was that we’d use a slingshot and fire the ferret poison into Rory’s drink during the first song. Then he’d take a sip of that and start to get pure poisoned. We were roaring our plan at each other non-stop, out in public and all. We had a drink we made that was a mix of turpentine and cider, we called it cocka walla after white dog-shit. We’d drink cocka walla and shout into each other’s ears down an alley off Panna.

‘I’m skinning Rory Gallagher, Ciarán,’ and then he’d grab me by the cuff of my jacket and scream into my face, ‘I’m poisoning Rory Gallagher with ferret’s poison, Philip.’ Then the two of us, ‘And we’re wearing him and playing his guitar.’ Fucking Philip and Ciarán, boy, the two maddest fuckers in Cork city. As soon as Rory played ‘Sinner Boy’, which was about quarter way through the set, everyone would go to the bar. You’d need a pint after that solo: ‘weeeowww, wah weeeowww wah wah woooo’. Rory would go off stage to tune up his Dobro: he’d always do the first half electric, then the second half acoustic, and then back out with the electric guitar again then at the end. Anyway, after ‘Sinner Boy’, we’d rush past security. He’d be feeling the effects of the ferret poison at that point. Ciarán would have a hammer with him, and he’d bate that off the faces of the security lads. I’d have Rory in a headlock, then I’d take out the Stanley and make long cuts from the side of his head all the way down each side of him. I’d have a pound of salt with me. You rub the salt in under the skin and it pulls away from the flesh. We’d practised it on goats and horses up in Blackpool. One night we both skinned a goat, then drank a load of cocka walla and fucking terrorised everyone up in Patrick Street, dressed as a goat. Running up off a fat woman from Montanotte, shoving our goat horns into her arse and making her scream, up and down Panna. I was at the front of the goat and Ciarán was at the back. We were drinking cocka walla under the goat skin. We fucking destroyed Patrick Street, boy. People were climbing up stop-signs, scared for their lives, thinking that there was a mad goat who smelled like cider and turpentine trying to kill them on Panna. A guard came down to try and bate the goat with a truncheon, but then he looked and saw that the goat was wearing four Doc Martens and not the regular goat shoes that they have – hooves, boy. The guard got pure wide to us when he saw that it was two lads dressed as a goat. So we ran off, jumped into the Lee and we swam for it. And all the blood from the goat skin washed off our denim. Fucking mad langers. We always wore full denim, head to toe, both of us, identical denim.

So anyway, after I’d have Rory skinned, I’d peel off the skin. And then we’d both climb inside it. The whole thing would take ten minutes. No one out in the audience would be wise. So we’d both step out on the stage of the auditorium and start playing the Dobro inside Rory Gallagher. Everyone cheering, clapping and headbanging. I’d control the neck of the guitar and Ciarán would handle the strumming. We did it before with a horse. We skinned a horse in a garage in MacCurtain Street. And then we both climbed inside the skin and marched down to Panna again, inside a horse, and we both playing blues on one guitar. Everyone on Panna had their jaws around the floor. Looking at a horse trotting down the road playing Blind Boy Fuller’s blues on a guitar. Someone spotted that the horse was wearing Doc Martens again though, they got wide, and we were attacked by boys from Togher. We pushed the horse skin off and I fought the boys with the guitar, and Ciarán had a varnished pine cone that he threw at a fella and it stuck in his eye. We ran off, bawling Rory Gallagher songs and went up the side of a house after drinking cocka walla. I climbed on Ciarán’s shoulder and I started banging on the first-storey window of the house. There was a businessman in bed, in the nip. And I banged on his window and shouted, ‘He’s going to poison Rory Gallagher, and I’m going to skin him, and we’re going to wear him.’ The man started crying.

Most nights we’d get mad on cocka walla, and if we hadn’t skinned something, we’d jump on each other’s backs, and joyride around the roads. Taking turns joyriding each other. The guards left us alone, they were scared of us. We were the Kings of Cork, boy. Then we’d find man-holes and jump up and down on them, make loads of noise banging our shoes off of every manhole in Cork city. We’d climb down chimneys as well. We’d climb down chimneys, and get our denim covered in soot. And then we’d go into the living rooms of houses when people were all asleep, and we’d roll around together on the couches and get black soot all over the couches. And we’d whisper, not so much that it would wake anyone up, we’d whisper at each other, ‘We’re going to poison Rory Gallagher, and we’re going to skin him and wear his skin at his gig.’ We’d exit through front windows and leave fingerprints everywhere because the sergeant wouldn’t dare knock on our door about it.

We were best friends. We’d go to a café and get a pot of tea, and pour boiling hot tea into our mouths, and spit it at each other too. Boiling hot pots of tea, boy. And no one would touch us, because they knew well that we were the Kings of Cork, and any night we could come back to the café as a horse with a guitar and it would stay with them forever in their dreams, haunting them. When you’re drinking cocka walla, you’ve to keep it down, enough for the cider and the turpentine to hop off each other so you get a mad buzz. But if you keep it down too long, the turpentine would kill you, so we’d drink warm grease, boy. We’d turn up at the chipper and the queue would part. They’d see the two of us in our denim and everyone in the chipper would back away out of respect. Gorgeous chipper, fine fluorescent lights and marble draped on the floors. Posh-looking. Then we’d slam our fists on the counter and do out a drum beat, and Enzo Schillaci who runs the chipper would give us a tin punnet of warm fat with a ladle. And we’d drink from it. The grease would make you puke out the turpentine. So we’d run out into the road, and we’d both bend over a bin, enough distance so we didn’t get any grease-sick on our denim. And then we’d puke our rings up. We’d roar, boy. We’d howl and roar like bulls when the puke flew out. It would rise up from our bellies and we’d roar as loud as we could as it came out, and then go jump on man-holes with our Doc Martens. Mad off the cocka walla, Kings of Cork.

A girl tried to break Ciarán’s heart once, so he shaved his head and buried the hair on Clonakilty Beach. And we fucking hugged each other and said we’d never let a woman in between the middle of us again.

The night we headed to Rory’s gig, we were fierce excited, the type of excitement where you’d want to spill all the blood out of your body just to drain it into a pail and look at it. Swirl it around and get hypnotised staring into a bucket of your own blood and shove it back into your body before you faint. Fucking queues, boy, up Lavvitt’s Quay and down Emmett Place. Rockers in their leather and patches and their plaid shirts and denims with the long curls falling off their skulls. Crowds parting when they saw us. A crisp night, the type of night you’d drink out of a pint glass. Cool and dry, where’d you’d see your breath getting lit up by the lamp lights.

I’d to tie the laces on the Docs, so Ciarán went ahead. As I was looking up, I could see him getting hassle off the bouncers. I fucking pounded up, slamming my Docs down on the tarmac, screaming, making as much noise as possible.

‘Do you know who he is, you fool? He’s one of the Kings of Cork,’ I said to the bouncer.

‘Do you know who I am?’ said Ciarán. ‘I’m one of the Kings of Cork.’

The bouncer replied in a jackeen Dublin accent. ‘I don’t give a fuck who yiz are, he’s trying to get in here with a hammer. Ye’re barred.’

We started howling, beating our feet on the ground, spitting up at the sky. ‘We’ll come up to Dublin as a horse, boy. We’ll run to Dublin wearing a horse and you’ll regret the day you turned us away.’ That line would usually put any bouncer in his place, but Rory was obviously bringing his own security with him, foreign lads, and they’d never heard of us.

It didn’t matter anyway, because there’s a cellar at the back of the opera house and we could go in through there. So we walked away like cool fuckers and went around the side to Half Moon Street and kicked in the window of the cellar. We both crawled in. Pitch dark, boy, with a tangy smell of sour porter. Ciarán found the light-switch, it didn’t work though. Sure we’d feel our way around the walls with our hands until we get a door, no harm.

I noticed something on my foot and went quiet. I reached down and grabbed a mouse or a rat or something. It was squirming in my fist, so I let go. Jaysus, there was fucking loads of them running around the floor, I could hear them scuttling.

‘There’s mice in here, Ciarán. Pull your socks up over your denims.’

Ciarán started panicking, he’s terrified of mice.

‘Calm down and pull up your socks,’ I said.

‘I’ve ’em pulled up … Oh Christ, oh Christ, oh Christ,’ he started. ‘I can’t handle this, boy. I’m not right with this, Philip.’

‘Give it another few minutes until we find the door,’ I said. ‘Calm down.’

‘I can’t,’ he said.

I heard little patters on the ground. Ciarán was throwing the ferret poison pellets on the floor to try kill the mice.

‘You stupid fucker, how are we supposed to shoot them into Rory Gallagher’s drink? You’ve given them all to the mice.’

‘I’m sorry, Philip, I can’t handle this.’

I was fucking furious with the cunt. The bouncer had already confiscated the hammer and now this meant I’d have to skin Rory while he was able-bodied, and he’s a big fucker. I hadn’t planned for a struggle. I was pure annoyed. I reached down with my hand, I searched for Ciarán’s ankle and gave it a pinch so he’d think it was a mouse. He let out a mighty yelp. In the meantime, I’d found the door and let light in. Ciarán was on the floor with blood pouring out of his gob and his snozz. He’d gotten such a fright from the pinch that his knee came up and met his face, and he busted his own nose wide open. I started laughing like a lunatic, I couldn’t stop, I’d never seen anything funnier in my life. If there’s one thing that Ciarán hates more than mice, it’s being laughed at, so he rose up and grabbed my denim collar. He launched his teeth into my nose, started biting down and pulling as hard as he could boy.

That’s the reason I have the hole in my face sure, I knew you’d be wondering. Myself and Ciarán haven’t spoken in over thirty years since that night. Tell me about yourself anyway. How are you finding Cork? Have ye heard of Rory Gallagher in the Philippines? You’re a fine-looking woman for your age. Is this your first night at speed-dating?