Patrick Brennan Presents "His Tumblr Account"

I tweet for one reason and one reason only: to amuse myself. Anyone who knows me in real life will concur with the sentiment that I am not exactly a social, outgoing or exciting person (though they would of course agree that I am a #cool #teen). I’m boring to other people. It has always been a subconscious goal of mine (something that I now realise) to at the very least not be boring to myself. Twitter is a huge part of this.

There are a lot of people with goals different than mine. Some people make their tweets current and “cool” and about things that everyone knows about like pizza or Republicans or politics or music or that superhero person they made a film about. Others just tweet endless jokes with no observations and without revealing any part of their personality. There is the endless stream of “serious” tweeters who tweet about their break-ups with emojis that express the never-ending turmoil of the human condition perfectly. There are the sports people, the weird Twitterers, the Weird Twitterers, the business, professional types who “MUST BE SERIOUS FOR THE GOOD OF CAPITALISM - AND US ALL”, the poetic tweeters who expect to make us cry or think in 140 characters (noble but usually fruitless), the middle class tweeters who tweet about phoney middle class things and many more.
I won’t say I’ve made a lot of friends on Twitter, because I am usually as terrible with people on it as I am in real life, but I have certainly been in contact with a lot of people who I am glad that I now know exist. And there is nothing like feeling that someone, even on the other side of the world, appreciates me for what I am, even if it’s only with the occasional fav.

That is really the point of Twitter for me. I will be what I am - in my own quiet, hermit-like way - in real life: myself. I literally do not care if a tweet I think is brilliant gets 2 favs. That’s two people that thought it was good. Two whole people! Two people who were glad that I typed a bit of my brain into the Twitter box. Of course I love when a tweet I really like goes crazy, but in the end, they are too few to have much of an impact on how I see Twitter. Even if I got no favs and no RTs, even if I literally had zero followers, I would still tweet because, at the very least, it is better than screaming things into a pillow while crying.

There is no doubt in my mind that I will be a failure. Anyone who follows my tweets knows that I’ve written a novel, and I fully expect it (and this is regardless of the quality, which I am proud of) to fail. Because everything fails. I’ve never heard of a successful 22 year old novelist, and if there was, he would be successful because A) he was born rich and his parents are connected to publishing or the world at large somehow, B) he can bullshit people, “network” and convince them that he is the hottest piece of shit since sliced bread or C) he writes weird porn. I am/have done none of those things and so I will fail. I don’t understand things. I can’t tell you what it’s like to fight in a war or climb Everest or get high on an ecstasy injection or a big ol’ cup of marihuana juice. You may find me boring.

But so what? I write and I tweet for my own amusement. And if you like it, good. And if you don’t, fine. Fuck you, you’re just like everyone else. Enjoy your normality. And I’ll amuse myself in my own weird way by writing yet another brilliant tweet about how I have no hope, no jobs and no cash.

I’m on Tumblr. I Tumbl. I am a #cool teen who girls like. I go to #parties and #clubs cause #YOLO! Okay bye

Hello. My name is Patrick. I can’t help but notice that almost everyone my age has a better life than me so I’ve decided to think long and hard about what I can change to improve things for me. I invite you all to make suggestions to add to this list. I know you all have my best at heart and I don’t have a lot of connections with the real world so I will definitely take them into consideration.

1. Go places. This is a big one. I don’t go places. I can’t help but think that going places would help me be a better person. I could go on a canoe down a small river or join a nightclub.

2. Do things. Doing things is important too. I don’t do things. Perhaps I will learn how to play volleyball or use a quadbike or perform surgery on a frog. This will help me become a normal.

3. Get a friend(s). Getting a friend would help me lots. I am not good at getting friends. Friends could give me money and encouragement and help me add to this list also. I could go places/do things with a friend and they would encourage me.

4. Learn a music. People like music. I do not know any music. I could listen to a song or play a keytar, the possiblities are literally endless except there’s like 72 instruments is all, and like 17 of those are different drums.

5. Get a tattoo. Everyone has a tattoo. This is important. A drawing on my skin would help people to see I am cool. It should be of a normal thing like a character from Rugrats or a cool music band teen idol. Most importantly, getting a tattoo would show the world that I have a tattoo.

6. Dye hair. Important. This also shows the world I am cool and helps with getting friends. People with same hair colours have same personalities. If I dyed my hair a normal colour like brown or blonde (not ginger) people would think I am a normal and they would do a like on me. If I dyed it like blue or pink or green people would say “that guy is so cool he wears his coolness on his head like that he is so cool”. I should do this.

7. Get some self esteem. I should be liking myself more. I should ask people for compliments so I can think of the compliments and feel better. I could say “How would you rate my body and face” to a random girl/human and when they say “extremely sexiness” I would do a happy and an esteem.

8. Get money. You can’t do any of these things without money and lots of money. I would like big bags of money to spend on things. And also a big pile of gold bars.

9. Get a job. You can’t get money without a job unless you’re a Communist/drug dealer/politicianainainan. This is important. But wait a minute, who will give me a job if I am not normal first and have no friends and don’t do things? And if I have not a job to get the money to do the rest, how can I become a normal? I shall answer this answer in 10.

10. Be normal. This is the most important of all. To be normal, you must already be normal. You already have lots of friends, do things, go places, have self esteem and tattoos and a job and dyed hair and money. Now look at yourself in a mirror/puddle and say “I AM NORMAL!” Congratulations, you are now normal!

The mountain goes on fire sometimes. We could see it from our garden, through the thick trees on the other side of the road. When it was bad, the clean, grey smoke reached us. At night we could see the lines of flickering orange flames across the side in straight rows, always far smaller than the billowing plumes of smoke we saw earlier in the day. They say the farmers start it, illegally, to burn the heather and the scrubby plants so their sheep can graze easier. Once, it got so bad the fire brigade came out. We could see the blue flashing lights from the garden and the day after, when it had all died down a bit, my father drove my brother Mike and I up to have a look at it all.

When we got close and saw the mountain sloping steeply upwards to our left, everything was burned. We could smell it in the car even with all the windows closed. A smell of wood and sweetness that caught in your throat. We stopped in the car park at the base and walked up the long, grassy path, marked every so often with granite and limestone peeping through the ground. The hills and mountains here are all smooth and undulating, eroding for millions of years, dissolving until they’re barely mountains at all. As we walked, the smoke filled our lungs and was unpleasant. There were still tiny flames and small puffs of smoke all over the flat ground to bothsides of the path. Mike and I stamped on the little flames, trying to put them out before Da made us stop. It was all burned and black and horrible.
When we reached the crest, there was a plateau that continued on until it gently rose to another soft peak. Beyond that, the fire still raged and ate the mountain. We could see no flames, just the thick cloud of soft grey smoke, rising a hundred feet in the air and spilling down the side of the mountain. There were people further on, gawkers like us. Mike and I stopped, but my father angrily urged us on. We watched as he walked on alone to the smoke, scared it would change direction and we would all be swallowed. After a moment, my father’s nerve ran out and he came running back, half jokingly.
  “It’s coming back this way. Let’s go on.”

We got back to the car as the smoke thickened around us, but we were okay and drove along the road that went down the other side. Here there was a sheer drop down to our left. It always frightened me. At the bottom was an old rusty, burned-out car. I used to think it belonged to another family having fallen to their deaths, and I didn’t want to look down because I might see their charred skeletons poking through the rusty wreck. I lost my fear when I realised it was just an old car dumped down there.
The mountain wasn’t burned here. The grey cloud was behind us to the left. Here we saw the short flames, nibbling away down towards the valley.
We rounded a sharp bend at the most dangerously narrow piece of road and my father jammed on the brakes on. My head hit the softback of his seat. We all looked at the road. There was a car stopped, turned the other way. In front of it was a motorbike, lying on its side, scratched and dinged. A middle-aged couple from the other car were standing with a man clad in leather, with a black helmet that they were helping him slide off. My father pulled into the side, far from the slope and got out to help. We could hear their voices but they were too far away to be clear.
The motorcyclist looked scratched and dazed and bruised. The other car was too far away to have hit him, and the other couple too casual in their stance. His bike was faced the other way too, toward the mountain. After a moment, my father, the couple and the dazed man walked towards his bike. They helped him lift it up and put on the kickstand while they talked still. We could hear them now.    “Where were you going?” said my father.
  “Off to Cork.” said the rider, rubbing his elbow.
  “That’s a long journey. You should go get checked out.”
  “No, I’m in a rush.”
  “There’s a doctor near here, in Ballyrea.” said the man from the other car. He wore glasses and looked like a businessman, out for a drive with his wife in his Mercedes, the type of person who’d normally get a sneering snort from my father as he drove past.   “You’ll feel it later.” said my father. “When you wake up tomorrow you won’t be able to move.”
The rider brushed off their concerns, but looked pale as he got back on his bike and slid his helmet back on. The engine spluttered and he shouted thanks to them and then rode on toward the mountain.

My father stood and talked to the other man still, barely let him get a word in edgeways as his wife went back to their car.
  “Couldn’t force him to go to the doctor. Young lad like that, think they know best. Sure I was like that meself. Still am, the wife’d say. I fell off a bike meself, few years ago. I’d bruises and bumps for weeks. I didn’t go to the doctor, no. But I wasn’t going down to Cork. That’s a long trip. I wouldn’t like to make it after falling off like that. That fella was lucky. See the drop down there? The wife does be frightened when we’re up here. Would yous be? Oh, well we do be up here a bit. Imagine falling down there. I’d rather not either. Bad enough falling on the road. Lucky we were here though to help him, not that we were much use.”
He laughed. The man wasn’t amused, but pale and dazed. He said goodbye politely and my father waved them off. Da came back and drove us home, talking to us all the way about the time he fell off the motorbike in our yard.

First the clatter of the kettle, then the child’s wailing. His mother sitting turned instinctively. He held his little hand in his other, the skin on top red. Quickly, over to the tap. The cold water on the tiny fingers. The loud crying still. The face contorted and wet with tears. His brother, a little older, came in from the other room. His face anguished when he sees.
  “He scalded himself. Get your father.”
  “But he’ll give out to him.”
  “Go on Peter, quick.”
His brother ran outside, down the concrete steps to the shed where his father worked. His mother looked at him through the window. The little boy’s wails relaxing, downgraded to sobbing. You’ll be alright, Mike. She turned off the tap and told him to sit on the sofa beside the stove. He walked through the pool of water on the floor, cooler now. His mother picked the kettle up and mopped the water.

The little footsteps of his brother up the steps outside. The back door flung open, the cold wind. Then the heavy boots on the concrete. His father, tall and dark and covered in oil. Looking first at the young victim, the brother having already told.
  “Scalded himself, did he? Jaysus.”
His mother nodded solemnly. The boy still held his hand. His father walked to him.
  “I told you before to keep an eye on the lads around the stove. Lucky he didn’t scald his face. Scar him for life.”
  “I know. I was…”
He tutted. She didn’t continue. She finished mopping and sat at the kitchen table and looked at him leaning over the boy, taking his son’s little white hand in his huge, tanned, oil-stained fingers.
  “Did you run it under the tap?” said his father.
  “Yeah. I have been scalded before meself sure.” she said.
  “You should keep it under the tap. It’s still sore.”
The sobs lessened to sniffling. His father lifted him in his strong arms and carried him to the sink and pushed his little hand back under the cold water. His mother sat still, looking and feeling inadequate, like she was to blame. His brother standing out of the way, sadly, silently.
His mother said “Should we take him to the doctor?”
  “No, those fellas’d charge you a fucking fortune. And they’d start asking questions, make up some story to suit themselves anyway, like always. He’ll be fine.”

After a minute, he turned the tap off and left his son standing on the floor. His mother came over and washed the boy’s hands again.
  “What are you doing?” said his father.
  “You got oil on him.”
  “Oh sure don’t mind that.”
Going to pat the boy on the head, but remembering his blackened hand, touching his back gently.
  “He’ll be alright, won’t you? Sure I’ve had worse than that meself. Remember when the battery acid spilled on me leg? Big red patches for months. Couldn’t sit down. Not even to shite.”
They laughed a little. The boy smiled too.
  “What time will tea be?”
  “Six, sure. Like always.” she said.
  “Right.”
He went to leave and saw his other son in the corner, still nervous and sad.
  “It’s alright now, Peter.” he said. “Go on and play with him. Mind his hand for him, won’t you?”
  “Okay Daddy.”
His father nodded and went back outside and down the steps and out to his shed. The soft towel as his mother dried his hands.
  “I think it’s best if Mike has a lie down for a while, Peter.” said his mother. “You can play later. I shouldn’t have had you tell him at all. I should’ve known what he’d be like.”
Mike, wiping away his tears on the back of his good hand. His mother searching the drawer beside the sink for a bandage. Peter went to the other room and played with his Legos, still sad, and now alone and quietly thinking of his brother.

I lie in the French dirt, trying not to look. Been here a long time. A long time. I think. It feels so long. The pain. It comes in long waves. Try and stay still.

Someone will see me. Where did they go? Johnson was beside me. Where did he go? I hear nothing. See nothing except the mud and the burnt trees and the houses with holes blown in their roofs. Where did they go?

The sun’s going down. Won’t be here all night. I can’t lie in the dark like this. Please God, let someone see me. Even a German. Let them end my pain. Pain. Oh God. Stop myself my screaming, for a moment. Then I let it all go. It echoes. Nothing changes. Nothing. Still lying in French dirt. My eyes close and won’t open.

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