It is only when I’m on the DART that I remember that I don’t drink coffee because it makes me ill. I take the train to Connolly station and then I take the Luas. There’s a heroin addict on his mobile phone moaning loudly to his girlfriend about the weather. He wants to move to Torremolinos and if she doesn’t want to go with him then she can go and fuck off and mind the kids, that he’ll go by himself. But first of all he has to get to James’s Street hospital to get the plaster taken off his fucking arm. I look out the window and I see people waiting. They’re not doing much else while they’re waiting, as if there isn’t enough time to settle down and do anything in case whatever it is that they’re waiting for arrives. My mouth is still bitter from the coffee and the croissant has left a layer of fat on the roof of my mouth which I try to scrape away with my tongue. I think of Jenny, her tongue.

It’s soft at the tip but the back is lumpy. I like to kiss her right back there at the back of her throat. She doesn’t like me doing it, she says that she feels as though I am choking her. I think that’s what makes me want to push my tongue. But it’s not something you could readily admit. I have an image of last night, of how she reluctantly had sex with me on account of the work trip. I feel good that I have ejected the store of sperm that has been wilting in my body of late, it has for the most part nowhere to go. I wonder about sperm. I wonder about it a lot. I wonder about enthusiasm and about the importance of the exhibition of such enthusiasm.