But Collins yeah? Obviously.
This whole Coprolalia thingamajig would be an ongoing issue for FuckFuck for the rest of that year so, and even though all of the teachers were aware of it and conscious of the problem, their knowledge of his condition didn’t make it any easier for them to handle. Particularly when it came to their endeavours to control their classes if he happened to launch into one of his tirades whilst in attendance. Quite a few of them didn’t believe he had any ‘condition’ at all as it goes, and were convinced that he was just contriving the outbursts for fun. I personally believe that the condition existed alright, but that he might have exaggerated it a little bit as well every now and again; just for the laugh you know? I know I would have if it had been me.
The prevailing mood in the school so after that last episode was quite amusingly revolutionary and mutinous. The problem now, which persisted for quite some time afterwards, was that most of the pupils deemed it perfectly reasonable to bomb around the corridors of the alma mater screaming expletives at the top of their voices and with no specific reason for doing so either. Beyond of course the fact, that if Jason Michie could get away with it then why couldn’t they? It took an emergency staff meeting to eventually diffuse the situation, with a general school decree being passed finally that granted all teachers the authority to administer whatever punishment they felt fit to any offending pupils they encountered as they went about their business. Vicious spates of detention were dispensed in large numbers then and after a relatively short period – a week or two at most – normal service was at last resumed. It didn’t stop further situations coming to a head however, with the ‘Marcus’ episode in Rahilly’s English class before everything calmed down for good, being a particular case in point. The language used on that day was a good deal less gratuitous than a lot of the other kids’ exaggerated rants, but a perfect example nonetheless of why you’d be well advised to steer clear of Marcus if you ever happened to notice him standing on his own at a house party. Seriously folks, you do not want to get lumbered in a corner with Marcus when he launches into some scholarly bolloxology that no-one’s ever heard of before. I’m not joking I’ve seen sloths emulate Carl Lewis mere nanoseconds after they’ve unknowingly sidled up to Marcus at a shindig and innocently struck up a conversation. Which never happened of course, I’m just kidding. But you know yourself, if they had have, they would have. Sloths however, as I’m sure you’re aware, live in the jungle. So don’t usually attend house parties.
So Marcus was inclined to be pompous just about anywhere basically, which as you've probably guessed from my previous comments, was not necessarily excluded to locations beyond the classroom. He believed himself to be an Oracle of everything at all times and would fight his corner to the death like a Spartan with Presbyterian leanings. In the case of the next episode however, he was almost certainly one hundred per cent in the right. Much as it pains me to admit it to you now.
The whole affair kicked off with one of FuckFuck’s outbursts which although still common enough, were no longer that much fun and by now no more than tedious interruptions into whatever else was happening at the time. The outburst on this day however was enough to put in motion a chain of events that would keenly punctuate what was already bearing the hallmarks of an English class that would be as humdrum and tawdry as you might expect for a cold and frosty November morning. It was quite a few months before the fateful events on Dollymount beach (which I'll go into later on) and although still relatively frequent, the outbursts as I’ve alluded to above, were becoming increasingly intolerable as time went on. After Dollymount however, things would finally take a turn for the better, with our lives at last reverting to some degree of normality.
Before all that though was Marcus Quinn. And his implacable ego.
Try to picture the scene so. 10am on a cold, autumnal morning. Condensation densely formed on the prefab classroom windows with dark green mildew propagated in the damp and rotting corners of the once white-painted wooden frames. Cracked paint being prised away effortlessly by a multitude of bored teenage finger nails and clouds of CO2 exhaled from languid, teenage mouths. A cutting wind beating hard against the futile, single-paned glass windows and not one individual present with any major inclination to remain. But this was the way it was - you’d be staying until it was over and that was that. No exceptions. The hankering for a hurried exit extended to the teacher in situ also, who was an up-until-recently good-natured and enthusiastic young woman called Rahilly from the town of Westport in County Mayo on the west coast of Ireland. Rahilly had had a reasonably good attitude before she arrived at De La Salle but not so anymore. She’d been worn down gradually and a mere shell of a woman remained. Not long out of UCD and in the job for no more than a year, she'd started out like so many other young teachers before her; possessed of a clear and marked desire to make a difference in the world of education. She’d been convinced that by combining what she’d learnt in college with her own radical and modernistic educational techniques, she'd bring the vocation of teaching to an inspired and profound new level. Her admirable and virtuous aspirations however, were imperceptibly whittled away by the degenerate students of this establishment, to the extent that she'd only just recently made a decision to move on to pastures greener. That is to another ‘better’ school on the south side of the city. She’d been greatly disillusioned and disheartened by her experiences at De La Salle, but had decided even so that she owed it to herself to give it one more shot at an alternative institution. ‘Who knows’ she thought, ‘perhaps this first experience is just bad luck. Perhaps these are the only uncontrollable students in the Greater Dublin area’. It wasn’t bad luck though of course, and Rahilly would soon come to the harsh realisation that teaching was a vocation to be enjoyed and suffered in equal measure. ‘Warts and all’ as they say, with the rough to be endured in equanimity with the smooth. Knowing how to deal with and understand the human condition with all of its foibles and idiosyncrasies was inordinately more relevant than anything she might ever garner from a text book, so if she believed that any kind of solace was to be found from kids who when compared to us were possessed of nothing more than eminently more affluent parents, then she'd be in for a rude and sudden awakening soon enough. She left De La Salle eventually for the posher school on the south side, not long indeed after the following events I’m about to describe to you took place. None of us heard sight nor sound of her again, so I suppose it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility to assume that the following testing episode was the final nail in her metaphorical teaching coffin.
Monotony had enveloped the room anyway, and Rahilly was in the process of distributing completed comprehension assignments to the listless inmates. As was her wont she was taking one or two minutes out also to discuss the essays on a one to one basis with every pupil. She was disillusioned as I said, but that didn’t stop her from attempting to retain some degree of professional integrity before she flew off into her jolly hockey sticks-laden sunset. As she spoke to each student individually about their essays so, the rest of us paid as little attention to her as possible. Girls doodled on copy books and boys ogled girls that were doodling on copy books. A customary and not unusual state of lethargy settled over the scene and sleep for most was not too far away.
Rahilly came to FuckFuck's composition then but before she could commence with her considered but no doubt condescending summation of his work, it all kicked off once again.
“BOLLOCKS! BOLLICKY BOLLOXOLOGY! FUCKFUCK!”
OK so this is one of those occasions when I do actually think that he might very possibly have been taking the piss. And I’m almost certain that Rahilly instinctively knew that this was the case also. FuckFuck's work in English had never been to a particularly high standard so there was a better than reasonable chance that he was endeavouring to avoid an embarrassing public critique for that very reason. Why pick the exact moment she came to his essay to let loose basically? Rahilly hadn’t experienced one of his performances before herself, but had heard of them via the other disgruntled teachers bemoaning the ongoing travesty in the staff room on a regular basis. She was close to breaking point with us anyway, so being in a fairly unsympathetic place already, was not prepared to put up with any more shit from anybody. So before FuckFuck or anyone else had time to explain his condition, she was out of her seat like a light and had frog-marched him to the door by the ear. After which she shoved him out unceremoniously into the cold November air, with a kick in the arse to send him on his way for good measure. She returned to her desk then with an air of gritty resoluteness and sat down. Picking up the next manuscript before her deliberately, she quietly intonated the following words.
“Enough,” she said, in a barely audible whisper. “Enough already,” she continued, slightly louder this time, with her composure returning now, slowly at first and then more steadily, until such time as she’d pretty much returned to normal. She picked an imaginary speck from off her forearm and rubbed the palms of her hands assuredly along her thighs. Lifting her gaze then to meet the sea of expectant teenage faces, she spoke.
“OK,” she said, exhaling slowly as she released her words. “Marcus Quinn?”
So this was pretty cool. We’d never seen this Rahilly before. She’d been ambivalence personified up until now and a bit of a pushover to be honest for most of the time. It was commonly thought throughout the school as a matter of fact, that you could get away with almost anything in Rahilly’s class if you set your mind to it and had the nerve. Some gouger called Git Mooney had smoked a joint at the back of 6C once and instead of admonishing him for his dastardly and frankly expellable action, she’d addressed the girls in the classroom instead, informing them that they’d been told before and would not be told again; that they were to wait until after they’d left the school grounds before they sprayed any kind of scent or perfume about their person. So she was a bit of a gobshite really when all was said and done. Presented before us now however, was a new improved and more forceful Rahilly. So everyone in the class was sitting bolt upright now and taking notice. But all that aside, we would have welcomed anything in fairness to alleviate the banality of the morning’s activities thus far.
Unlike O’Mahony’s class, explanations regarding FuckFuck’s condition were definitely unwarranted. We knew that Rahilly had known about it before, but had thrown him out on his arse anyway. Denoting pretty clearly that it was unlikely she'd be overly keen to hear any additional commentary from any of us.
So as you’ve probably guessed, Rahilly had picked Marcus’s essay up next from the pile of essays in front of her, and was about to communicate to him her educated synopsis of his work. Suffice it to say so that we were all on the edge of our seats at this juncture, especially now that we were aware of the fact that the next customer in line was our very own curmudgeonly legend of the Quinn like variety. Which following on from that indicated to us that there was an extremely strong likelihood that the next instalment would end up as a total and utter farce before we were done.
“OK Marcus,” she said in a measured enough tone. “First of all I must say to you, thank you. Thank very much indeed. A very interesting piece. Not bad at all. One negative only really, which I feel at this point I must draw your attention to - and by the way, it’s not entirely unrelated to the unsavoury events we’ve all been subjected to just now - it’s just that the language you’ve used in some parts of your composition are a little on the shall we say ‘blueish’ side?”
Her delivery was composed and words deliberate. Her recent heroics had clearly attributed to her a new found poise and swagger. We’d no idea what the hell she was referring to of course, so she mercifully illustrated to us in clearer terms what it was exactly that she was trying to say.
“Don’t get me wrong Marcus,” she said, “the story itself runs along very well and for a three page work it has a clearly defined beginning, middle and end. There is without question an arc. When the thief snatches the handbag from the heroine of the piece however, I really do think that the colourful language she shouts after him as he races down the street is not exactly what’s required in this type of scenario, do you? Do you really think that it is Marcus? Is it absolutely necessary? What I’m trying to say here really is that a simple and straightforward ‘Stop, thief’ would I think, have been appreciably more sufficient under the circumstances.”
For the first time in a long time, perhaps ever even, English class had become semi-interesting. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that we actually wanted to hear Marcus’s story in full, but we definitely wanted to hear more about this ‘blueish language’ Rahilly was referring to at the very least. Marcus would oblige in that regard soon enough but for now he was not looking overly appreciative of her remarks. In his own unique way so, he offered up the following barrage as a retort.
“OK well to get to the crux of the story MISS,” he sneered, ”and for you to understand the young lady’s anger and indeed why she said what she said when she said it; there is an absolute and definite necessity for the use of as you say, ‘colourful language’. Anything else in fact would represent a gutless pandering to people like you, who regard words of this nature as offensive before you even attempt to view them in the context they’ve been utiled. In other words your puritanical predisposition has already made a decision for you before you‘ve taken time to assess what would almost certainly have happened in a ‘real life’ situation. I would venture to suggest even further Miss Rahilly, that with the exception of Williamson’s seminal 1901 black and white silent movie of the same name http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54YGhTJ1fqI and perhaps one or two of Enid Blyton’s poorer and lesser known offerings, no-one has actually uttered the expression ‘Stop thief’ since the latter half of the nineteenth century.”
“Ah yes, I see what you mean Marcus,” Rahilly responded, too quickly really to give any indication that she'd heard or even understood anything he’d said. And not noticing the sarcasm either. She continued on in her unflinchingly sanctimonious manner.
“But do you not think that you’re being sensationalist just for the sake of it Marcus?”
Marcus was not happy. He'd put a great deal of time into the assignment and felt that the very least he could expect was a well-rounded and considered critique and not this ‘Tory like’ ticking off from Mary fucking Whitehouse. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5Dt12DjAWE
“Look Miss,” he continued defiantly. “It’s as simple as this, so listen up. She’s walking down the road in the middle of the day and from out of nowhere she gets accosted. It’s a violent attack and her handbag is subsequently stolen by the accoster. After which she goes to the police station to report the incident. What the reader is eventually made aware of at the end of the piece is that a very precious and engraved fountain pen that was given to her by her late grandmother just before her death is part of the contents of the bag that was stolen. So this is the principal reason why instead of shouting ‘Stop thief’ or anything as similarly vapid as that, she utilises instead the harsher invective to which you’ve just referred. And with very good reason also I believe, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered to write it that way, now would I? So to me, the heroine shouting, ‘Stop, you miserable fucking bastard, give me back my bag or I’ll hack your fucking limbs off with a machete and use them as coffee table legs,’ is a statement I think that she’s considerably more likely to have uttered than the colourless prose you’ve suggested yourself.”
“Yes, yes, you have a point I suppose, young Marcus,” answered Rahilly, even more patronisingly than before. She leaned her head to one side even and wrinkled her brow as if to denote a deep-felt consideration and empathy for his point of view. There was a matronly and superior look etched unmistakably across her features though, which indicated to us very clearly that she still regarded him as a mere minion who was not to be taken seriously in any way.
“But I would say also Marcus,” she continued, “that literature is an art form that requires no utilisation of bad language at all. What I really mean by that - and surely you must agree with me on this - is that there are enough beautiful words in the English language to negate their inclusion?”
Marcus had a complete pain in his bollocks at this stage and was coming to a very swift realisation that he was dealing with a bit of a halfwit here. So much so in fact he thought at the time, that if there was ever a shortage of halfwits, for whatever reason, that she’d be two halfwits.
‘How in fuck did she get this job?’ he mused disconsolately to himself.
“With all due respect Miss,” he answered, “that is absolute and total horseshit!”
Yes indeed. This really was becoming the most excellent fun. He carried on uninterrupted.
“Seriously Miss,’ he continued, ‘how on earth can you say those words? Have you lost total control of every single mental faculty you purport to be in possession of? Surely you’ve read Joyce yes? Well OK, consider this then if you will. If given the opportunity, would you be happy to take a trip back in time and request of him to desist from using profanities in most or any of his great works? You know, just so that it won’t offend any of your future sensibilities? Are you aware in any way of how ridiculous your argument actually is?
“Ahh yes, well there you are now young Marcus!” responded Rahilly, very much the child now, with role reversal complete. “That’s the problem with Joyce you see?! Right there and then. You just said it!”
“WHAT?!” Marcus shouted, practically screaming now. “WHAT DID I SAY? MORE APPROPRIATELY IN FACT, WHAT EXACTLY ARE YOU ON?”
“Well you said that he used bad language all the time when he didn’t need to,” Rahilly continued petulantly.
Not used to being confronted in this way perhaps, her brain seemed to be willing whatever she was thinking and whatever he was saying to be one and the same thing. With all notion of reality for what was actually happening lost somewhere else along the way.
“Look Miss,” responded Marcus, calming slightly, and realising now of course that he was wasting his time. “Let’s slow it all down for a bit OK? Alright. Now let me stop and ask you an easier question. OK? Right. Here goes. WHAT - IS - YOUR - NAME?”
“OK well there’s no need to be so smart Marcus,” Rahilly responded curtly, all teacher-like again now that the winner in this battle of wits was a foregone conclusion. “I heard what you said before.”
“Alright then, Miss Rahilly,” said Marcus, furious again. “Here’s the news. THIS is what you said. What you actually said. You said that the art form of literature has no requirement for the utilisation of bad language. And that the reason for this is that there are enough beautiful words in the English language already to negate their inclusion. I responded to that ridiculous pronouncement by opining that that was horseshit and asked you furthermore if you’d ever read Joyce. You studiously dodged that curve ball of course, because being a Barbara Cartland stalwart you almost certainly haven’t. What you in your position should know however, even if you did only get it from a text book, is that yes, Joyce did use bad language from time to time, of course he did. I’ll give you that. But that on many other occasions he forewent a myriad of opportunities to use words of a profane nature. Why you ask? Because they didn’t fit the requirement at the time, that’s why. Such words HAD to fit the requirement at the time Miss, that's the whole point. Context. You’re familiar with the concept of context? OK well, to stay with Joyce for the purposes of exploring this further, it’s commonly thought throughout a number of eminent literary circles that Molly’s ‘Yes’ at the end of Ulysses is perhaps one of the greatest expletives ever utilised in contemporary literature http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1DDndY0FLI. So do you get it now? Context! YOU SEE? Not profane in any way. But an expletive all the same. If considered in context. Are you getting me? So if you want over-zealous use of superfluous expletives Miss Rahilly, lambast DH Lawrence, not James Joyce.”
Rahilly didn’t respond. Either she’d given up the ghost as he was just too ferocious or she was just out of her depth. There comes a time as we all well know when the best thing to do under certain circumstances is to just shut the fuck up. We’ve all been there. It was humiliating enough for her to be less aware of the facts than she should have been of course, but when a 17-year-old upstart totally wipes the floor with you, well it's probably a good time to dispense with the vocabulary for now. Marcus was only an armchair boffin on this kind of stuff anyway and in no way any kind of a Joycean scholar. His arguments seemed plausible enough to me though I suppose, but then again what the fuck do I know? Rahilly looked genuinely sorry that she’d locked horns with him either way, and was scowling down on the lot of us now from the top of class. ‘The supercilious little bastard,’ I’m sure she was thinking. ‘I bet they’re not like this in fucking Killiney?’ Little did she know! In the end she nodded resignedly and put his paper to one side before moving on to the next one. After which Marcus shrugged to everyone in attendance as if to say ‘I did my best lads, but what more can I do?’
If I’m honest with you though, none of us really cared that much now that the confrontation was over.
Not long after that FuckFuck re-entered the classroom and walked directly to Rahilly’s desk at the top of the class. He went to open his mouth with the intention of explaining to her what had happened before, but didn’t get very far. Rahilly, ready to explode now, stood up sharply and picked up the pile of essays that were lying on the desk in front of her. After which she threw them back down again violently and proceeded to ready herself for speech.
And then she basically lost it.
“STOP, STOP, STOP!” she screamed. “Marcus ENOUGH, Jason ENOUGH! I’ve had quite enough of your expletives for one day thank you very much. And quite frankly, if you really want to know the truth of it, I’ve had enough ‘fucks’ today to last me a fucking lifetime!”
That last edict kind of hung in the air for a while before the inevitable chorus of cackles and titters commenced. We were all aware of the fact you see that Rahilly had got married just the previous month, so the inference was there for all to consider. That is that she and the new hubby had been at it like rabbits since they’d got up that morning, and could barely walk for all the banging that had been going on since the autumnal sun had winked its first appearance through the crack in their bedroom curtain earlier on. The noise in the classroom reached cacophonous levels soon enough, with a steady barrage of whoops and wehays raining down squarely and unrelentingly on the overall proceedings. These very neatly accompanied the plethora of claps, cheers and ‘ye good things’ flying about the room also, and if I’ve not mistaken also I think that there might even have been a ‘Go on, ye mad bitch ye!’ thrown out there by one of the girls!
Rahilly eventually calmed everything down again however and ushered FuckFuck, much to his eternal chagrin, back to his seat by the ear. And with that decisive act the fun abruptly ended with our existences reverting once more t