When Gareth Kavanagh’s forty-something face pops up in my messages today, it’s like nearly thirty years has been sucked into a time vortex and I’m sixteen again, skinny and doe-eyed. I’ve hardly seen him since school but he looks pretty much the same; the plump jowls just slightly more well-fed, the blonde hair with less of a sheen. I wonder what has happened to the time. Life, I suppose.

     And we’re as good as neighbours in Dublin now, it turns out. Isn’t that funny? Neighbours again. A pint somewhere halfway is happening.

     ‘See you then,’ I type, and as I mechanically click the Reply arrow I think about that time in school I didn’t join his metal band, Rancid Abyss. For some reason that’s the thing that sticks out.

     They had a band name. They had an album name. They even had seven songs, or sort-of songs. Riffs and some half-written lyrics about hellfire and people being impaled. All they needed was a bass player. Who might have been me if I played my cards right, Gareth had said.

     ‘Rancid Abyss Will Eat Your Children?’ I said, biting on a smirk.

     ‘I know, I know,’ said Gareth, catching and returning my mirth as he practised what he called his metal stance in the mirror. He cradled his shiny, axe-shaped Jackson Destroyer, the ‘ultimate metal guitar’ according to the Guitar Hero magazines stacked in the corner of his garage beside his sales-rep dad’s crates of beer. ‘What are we gonna do, write love songs? Anyway, come on in. The lads have already started.’

     He did that air-guitar solo thing he always did in greeting, or in saying good-bye, or in any situation really, and as we walked through the back door it really did feel like we were entering the belly of some fire-breathing beast from hell. Our excited chatter was swallowed up by the mix of body odour and frigid garage air and artillery-drill of thrash drums.

     That last thing was Dave. Objectively he was quite good if you liked that kind of playing, that mystifying ability some drummers have of double-tapping the kick pedal so it sounds like there are two bass drums. I suddenly remembered him from before. One time, drunk with Gareth, looking a bit incongruous beside my clean-cut friend in his school uniform. ‘American Dave’ went to the Tech where no uniform was required, gawky and spotty and cheerful in black jeans with curly, black hair, a Slayer t-shirt and only a hint of an American accent that had been fading since his parents moved back to Ballinrobe. He called people ‘dude’. He had called me ‘Morrissey dude’, after the Smiths singer, in reference to my glasses. I guess, who knows; maybe to him I was a type.

     Standing against the only microphone was Ross, the songwriter, older and with proper long hair, skinny jeans, a Paranoid Visions t-shirt and even a sort of beard. He was the riffs man, Gareth had warned me. The man I’d have to impress with my bass playing. Smoke danced from a lit cigarette stuck into the headstock of his V-shaped Kramer guitar and between machine-gun riffs and monster-voice singing he swigged from one of Gareth’s dad’s Budweiser long-necks with the assuredness of an ageing barfly. Cool seeped from his pores. I was yet to drink a full beer, but was planning to, maybe, on my birthday.

     Gareth plugged in and started soloing some lead guitar to a song called Daughter Corrupter, faking it with surprising assurance. He avoided my eye as I nodded along to the music, pretending to like it. I guess we were both faking it.

     ‘They actually think I can play those fast Megadeth-type solos, they think I’m brilliant. It’s gas,’ he had said to me the previous day, as he attempted the fast part from One by Metallica and we both fell about, laughing.

     In truth, it did sort of sound like a metal solo. Ever since his dad had bought him the most expensive axe in the Guitar Centre in Dublin he had been trying out these super-fast, hammer-on techniques. See, you could do that on a guitar with pickups this sensitive, he explained with delight, with almost disbelief. You barely had to touch the fretboard to make a sound. And if you had the right effects pedals, well, that was enough to paper over any mistakes.

     Actually, ‘mistakes’ is giving him — and me — too much credit. That would imply that he knew what he was doing. And he didn’t. I was sure of this because I was the one who had taught him how to play guitar in the first place. And beyond a basic pentatonic scale, neither of us really knew how to do much of a proper solo of any kind. But he could move his fingers very, very fast, I’ll give him that. And who knows, maybe that was all that metal was about.

     Metal.

     He just couldn’t stop listening to it. I’d try to get him into other stuff. Good stuff. The Smiths. The Housemartins. Billy Bragg. He’d listen. He’d even get into it sometimes.

     ‘The Smiths. Love it,’ he’d say to me earnestly to me in that convincing way he had inherited from his dad, and then do the air guitar thing.

     Then I’d go away for a while, off to Wexford with my parents or whatever, and next time I’d see him he’d be back listening to Maiden and Megadeth and all those bands with corpses and dead babies on their album covers and long hair and leather and wiggly solos that were very, very fast. Bands that all the lummoxes at school, it seemed, listened to.

     ‘Gareth, rock music is meant to be going against the crowd, not with it,’ I would say to him, and he’d nod in agreement, but I knew, just knew he’d be back listening to Napalm Death or something that night while doing his maths homework.

     And here he was now, in an actual metal band. And trying to get me to join.

     ‘Fantastic, lads. Just fantastic,’ said Gareth’s dad, passing through the garage with a display box of Guinness. ‘A bit of rock and roll in the west of Ireland. You’ll be famous yet. Very professional.’

     Gareth couldn’t resist smiling over at me. He had just played the seventh fake solo of the day. And gotten away with it.

     Metal.

     There was no way I was going to play bass for these guys. No way. I was a guitarist anyway. Not a bass player. I’d start my own band. Proper music. Any day now.

     Nope. No way.

     Politely, I nodded along to the songs, inasmuch as one can to songs like The Beast In My Ass, which segued into Flay the Nazarene, Barely Legal Bitch and their signature number, Rancid Abyss Will Eat Your Children. My neck was getting sore with nodding. Especially during the eight-minute drum solo in their only ballad, Church Burner.

     ‘Rancid Abyss!’ I found myself howling, holding my fingers up in a standard devil salute as Gareth completed the longest, most delay-drenched solo yet to complete the final song. I had to admit, it was all a bit infectious.

     Maybe I’ll give it a go, I thought. I could do it. How hard could it be?

     I looked through the cigarette smoke for a sign, some recognition from my fellow musicians. But Dave was simply wiping his forehead with a towel as the other two packed up their guitars in silence. Was I to say something? I guessed they were kind of cool guys. Didn’t they want to hear me play bass?

     My unspoken question was answered by Ross who silently picked up his amp and plodded, thin-legged and hairy, out of the garage. It occurred to me that he hadn’t even looked at me the entire time. Maybe I just wasn’t ‘metal’.

     ‘Ross is all about the music,’ said Gareth with his hands in his pockets at the garage door, regarding the infinitely cool Ross packing his amp into a rusty Cortina. ‘And not much else.’

     I had no time to process this, however, as I felt a slap on my back.

     ‘Morrissey dude,’ said Dave from behind me, and he gave me a hippy handshake as I turned. ‘How are you man?’

     ‘Oh great. Good. Love your drumming …man.’

     ‘So you like metal?’

     Gareth saved me.

     ‘Jonathan knows more about music than anyone I know. And um …he plays bass.’

     Dave nodded and lit a smoke. I wondered if Gareth’s dad would mind this; a sixteen-year-old smoking in his garage.

     ‘Death metal, man. It’s the last refuge.’

     ‘Last refuge? From what?’

     ‘Y’know. For rebels. That’s what rock and roll is all about, right?’

     I reared. This was something I had actually read a bit about. Something about which I had an opinion.

     ‘I seriously doubt Gene Vincent was thinking of song titles like Cock Flange when he invented rock and roll,’ I smirked.

     Yes. Score for me. That should impress him. There was no way Dave knew who Gene Vincent was.

     ‘Yeah, I know you indie guys think it’s all just screaming and riffs,’ said Dave, dragging on his cigarette. ‘And that’s cool.’

‘Well, there is a lot of screaming and riffs.’

     ‘Death metal is more than that, Morrissey-dude. People are afraid to offend these days. Think about it. No offence, man, but all that feminine indie music and grunge shit. Seriously. It’s for girls. And it’s mostly been done before. Death metal is the only truly subversive form. Respectfully. You’re not gonna get rebellion from an R.E. fucken’ M. record.’

     Score for Dave. I was floundering. Not just by the fact that this guy in a Slayer t-shirt knew what the word ‘subversive’ meant, but also the fact that he actually thought that this, that any of this was to be taken seriously. Gareth and I, we always sort of laughed at this kind of thing.

     At least, I did. Maybe Gareth was faking that too.

     ‘What about rap music?’ I said weakly, scorching through my memory for articles I’d read on new, happening scenes. ‘You know, hip-hop?’

     Dave looked at me like I had just grown an extra head. Like this was something from another universe. Again, Gareth interjected.

     ‘I guess you’re talking about, you know, music for people like us, Dave?’

     ‘Like us? What do you mean, people like us?’ I said, actually getting annoyed now. ‘Irish people?’

     ‘Well, um … I suppose?’ Gareth looked at Dave for support, who shrugged.

     ‘Death metal, man,’ said Dave, donning a leather jacket. ‘You wanna play music your parents hate. That’s rebellion.’

     ‘Are you finished already? Fantastic stuff, lads,’ said Gareth’s dad as he re-entered the garage. ‘Gareth, Jonathan, can you help me move some display crates to the car? Nice to see you Dave. All the best.’

     Dave raised a single fist to Gareth’s dad as he loped through the garage door to hop into Ross’s car.

     ‘White power, Mister K,’ he said.

     I stared at Gareth as we lifted the crates from the car.

     ‘Did he just do a ‘white power’ salute?’ I said. ‘Was I seeing things?’

     Gareth shrugged.

     ‘Isn’t that a black power salute? Except he says ‘white power’. I think it’s just a joke he does. You know Dave. He’s actually a total hippy.’

     I was silent. The fact is, I was bowled over by all of this. By Ross’s aloofness. By Dave’s strange conviction.

     But mainly I was pissed off that they didn’t want me to be their bass player.

     Seriously. Fuck those guys.

                                                                              *

     It was a few weeks before I heard from Gareth again. I had exams and then it was Summer, and when my sister told me it was Gareth on the phone I realised I had all but forgotten about Rancid Abyss.

     ‘Hey, so, we were wondering if we could ask you a favour,’ said Gareth.

     ‘Do you still need a bass player?’

     ‘Um, no. Well, see, this band called Beelzebub’s Apprentice from Dublin, they’re playing some gigs down here and we’ve got two supports. An actual tour.’

     I wasn’t sure if two gigs could truly be called a ‘tour’ but I offered my bass playing services once again anyway.

     ‘Yeah, it’s okay, we’re gonna do it as a three-piece. But I was wondering …see, Dave’s drums are up in Dublin. It’s a long story. Anyway your brother, he has drums, right?’

     It was true. My older brother played drums in a band in college sometimes. And they were stored in my room. But why should I give them to these guys? They wouldn’t even let me in their band. Not that I wanted to…

     ‘So we were wondering, would it be cool if we borrowed them? We’ve our first gig in Castlebar tonight.’

     ‘Yeah, okay.’

     ‘Cool. We’ll be by in ten minutes. Life saver.’

     Damn.

                                                                                 *

     I even went along to Castlebar. To the gig. And in truth, Rancid Abyss weren’t completely awful. Even without a bass player, they got by, were competent.

     ‘Great gig guys,’ I said, doing the devil-horn salute as I leaned against the wall outside the school hall that, tonight, was a rock venue, golden light shining from its double doors as it vomited out underage drinkers into the misty evening.

     ‘Thanks man,’ said Dave, chewing on a smoke with his arm around a fantastic-looking girl in dark hair, black make-up and fishnets as he helped Ross, still silent, broody and unacknowledging, to lift amps and drums into the old Cortina.

     Gareth emerged with his guitar on his back, teasing two girls in black who were slagging him back and laughing loudly. Seeing me, Gareth gave me his air-guitar salute.

     ‘Thanks for the drums, Jonathan. Life saver.’

     ‘Yeah no problem.’

     ‘Anyway. We better go. Sligo tomorrow.’

     ‘Sure. Good gig.’

     The girls ignored me and piled into the car.

     ‘Em, Jonathan, I think your mam’s waiting for you,’ said Gareth from the back seat window.

     Lights flashed from a Sierra nearby and I cringed as I saw my mother waving.

     Then there was a smell of burning rubber and the sound of giggling as the Cortina squealed into the darkness.

                                                                                  *

     ‘Jonathan, this is just not on. Not on at all,’ said my brother, back from college and surveying his drums that had just been returned, splayed out in our shared room. ‘Where’s the other rack tom? Actually, where’s the damn rack?’

     ‘I know. Sorry,’ I said. ‘Gareth’s band, they put it on the top of their car on Sunday morning when they left Sligo and then just drove off. They were hungover. So …somewhere in Sligo I guess.’

     ‘And what about the cymbal?’

     ‘That too. They replaced it.’

     ‘Replaced it? This is a pot lid with the holder taken out.’

     He hit it with a drumstick. It clanked in a very pot lid-ish sort of way, quite removed from a ride-cymbal sound. He sighed.

     ‘This is just not on, Jonathan. What were you thinking, lending out my drums? And to a metal band, of all things?’

     I nodded in what I thought might appear an apologetic way. Although I was looking at the pot lid, I was still thinking about the dark-haired girl in fishnets.

     ‘You’re going to have to get Gareth and his friends to buy me a new rack tom and cymbal. I’m sorry, Jonathan, but this is just not on.’

     ‘It’s okay, I can get a job in the supermarket or something,’ I said.

     I worked all summer to buy my brother the new equipment. And, although Gareth mumbled a sort of qualified apology, he didn’t offer to help out. But the truth is at that point I wasn’t seeing that much of him. I was heading to college and, as I said, life happened. And it wasn’t long before my parents moved away. We lost touch.

                                                                               *

     Until today, when I get this message. And now I’m sitting, nursing a pint of stout in a Dublin pub and getting elbowed by old men at the bar, the bustling sound of drinking all around. And there’s Gareth, waving. Still enthusiastic, still full of life. Still selling.

     ‘I ended up going into drinks-repping like my dad, after years of selling the bikes,’ he says, showing me pictures of his own motorbikes on his phone. Shiny, new and fast, just like his guitars.

     ‘Expensive, are they?’

     ‘They’re not cheap,’ he says, grinning. ‘But then, neither is the family.’

     He shows me pictures of two blonde boys on holidays somewhere sunny, smiley like him, with a handsome woman in a sleek, pastel bathing suit.

     ‘How about you, any kids?’ he says, half-interestedly.

     ‘Oh, no. No kids. I’m seeing a woman at work. We’ve been together about six years now, I think.’

     ‘Cool. Here, check out this bike. I had to get rid of this one. Jill wanted a new kitchen. So you work in what, computers?’

     ‘Civil service,’ I say. ‘I do use a computer.’

     ‘Mm-hmm,’ he says. ‘Here, actually do you ever play music these days? I’ll never forget your guitar lessons. You taught me everything I knew.’

     ‘Just a bit. I was in a band for a while.’

     ‘What kind of stuff?’

     ‘Oh you now. Indie sort of rock I suppose.’

     ‘I’ve not played in twenty years,’ sighs Gareth. ‘Twenty years! Can you believe that? I got rid of all my guitars.’

     Has it really been that long? I casually quiz him on the band. On Rancid Abyss. He slaps his thigh at the memory.

     ‘Gosh yeah, I haven’t seen those guys in almost as long. Ross, you remember him? The main guy. Last I heard he was still in Ballinrobe. Never left. Works in special needs education and stuff. His wife too.’

     ‘Seriously? And what about Dave?’

     ‘Oh, Dave went back to America. I think he went back to school and is an engineer of some kind now. But listen to this, I saw him on TV just recently! You know that, em, that protest march in America?’

     ‘He was in a protest march?’

     Gareth takes a swig from his bottle of IPA. ‘Yeah, you know that thing in Charlottesville, where they were carrying these Hawai’ian torches and going on about their rights and stuff? Unite the Right.’

     I frown. ‘That wasn’t a protest. That was a white supremacist rally. Neo-nazis. Dave was at that?’

     ‘Yeah. So I was watching it on the news, and next thing Dave is on. The camera stayed on him for ages. He looks pretty buff these days. But it was definitely him.’

     I’m shocked. I’m disgusted. That march was everything that repels me. And I waste no time in telling Gareth.

     ‘Okay, okay. Don’t blame me, like,’ he shrugs. ‘I mean, I’m as much against those KKK idiots as you are. But that’s all they are, just idiots.’

     ‘You really think so?’

     Gareth thinks for a moment. ‘But you know what, like, you can’t deny them a voice. I don’t like Trump any more than you probably do, but I’ll tell you what gets me. All those lefty pussies shouting on Twitter and whatever, thinking they own the place. Well guess what? They don’t. And these guys in Charlottesville deserve to be angry too. Like, white lives matter too. Don’t you think?’

     ‘No. No, actually I don’t.’

     ‘Weren’t the other side who attacked them, the anti-right or whatever. Weren’t they being just as bad?’

     ‘No, they weren’t.’ I’m getting heated now, and the two pints have given me rare confidence. ‘And I’m sorry, but any validation of the white supremacist’s so-called “anger” is just misplaced. That “anger” isn’t protest. It’s just the last twitching of a wriggling monster. The last death-throes of a dying beast.’

     ‘Dying beast? What are you on about?’

     ‘I mean the dying beast that is the “white male”.’ I use my fingers to do the quotation marks in the air. ‘And everything he stands for.’

     Gareth, for the first time ever, is at a loss for words for all of five seconds and it seems like a hush has descended over the pub. Then he sinks into his shoulders again at the bar and resumes his drinking.

     ‘Death throes of a dying beast. Sounds like a metal song,’ he grins. ‘But do I need to point out that you’re a white male yourself? As am I?’

     ‘That’s beside the point,’ I say stubbornly, but in truth I’m not sure what my point is.

     He drains his pint. ‘Okay, well, you always were the brainy one. You’re right. I’m sorry.’

                                                                              *

     At closing time, we hug outside the pub and exchange some final pleasantries. I am walking back to my apartment share; he is getting a taxi to his gated estate.

     ‘Don’t be a stranger,’ he says, but I know it’s the last time we’ll meet.

     As I stroll into the darkness, I hear him shout my name. I turn and see him still standing there under the pub lights, doing his air guitar thing.

     And it’s fine. It’s okay. I do it back.

     Metal.

     Seriously. Fuck those guys.