The next time I saw Robbie, he had changed. Not full 360-degree change, like Keith. But, there were subtle differences in his appearance. Gone was the ubiquitous leather jacket, replaced by a natty cardigan. Unlike the type my Granddad used to wear, this was more in keeping with what Kurt Cobain wore on MTV unplugged. With him being a Nirvana fan, I suspect that's where he gleaned the inspiration.

He wore the knitted cardy unbuttoned, revealing a black tee bearing the legend Dun Kno in large white lettering. Robbie explained it was Jamaican patios, meaning, I know.

A red, green, and yellow striped crochet beanie hat adorned his head, pulled down over his forehead. Around his neck hung an expensive-looking Japanese camera, the type a professional photographer might own. When I asked him about it, he said, it had a sigma autofocus seventy-millimetre lens. As he ran through its other features, all I could think of was that sigma sounded like the name of the frat house in a teen-comedy I'd seen.

We meandered through the city centre, Robbie stopping to snap off a shot at something that caught his eye. Graffiti on a wall. An overhead train bridge. A decrepit building. I passed these structures every day. But I had never really seen them. I guess you need an artist's vision to appreciate the world around you. I'd always been more interested in its inhabitants and their stories. After a while, I lost interest and patience.

It took us almost an hour to make the fifteen-minute walk to Grafton street. I entered the newly opened designer-fashion shop with one objective in mind; Find what I wanted, and get out. Don't get sucked in by the futuristic décor, the Cardigans CD pumping from the speakers, or the pleasant ambient scent, all designed to connect with the shopper on an emotional level, enticing you to linger longer.

I approached a pretty sales assistant with cherry-red lipstick and a genial smile. I knew what I wanted; a pair of white cotton drawstring pants. Similar to the ones David Beckham wore in a celebrity magazine shoot. She said they had some in stock and led me across the floor. Robbie trudged behind us wearing a face like a hippie trapped in the seventh lair of commercial hell.

Our amiable assistant failed to mention that the stock in question was tailored for her gender. Despite her blushing assurances that the pants were uni-sex, the size/label on the waistband begged to differ. I cocked an eyebrow.

"Trust me, it's not an issue, nobody cares anymore," she said, before adding with a wink, "besides, if you don't tell anyone, who's to know."

I left the store clutching my purchase with slight regret. Eighty euros seemed a scandalous amount of money to squander on one item of clothing.

As we crossed the O'Connell bridge, the store's signature scent implanted in my mind, I spotted a man I saw regularly. Sat on a damp piece of brown cardboard, head and torso rocking back and forth, he rubbed his bare blueberry feet. Had his limbs become that colour as a result of illness? Or prolonged exposure to the elements? On the odd occasion, I had deposited change in the styrofoam cup by his mottled toes; I had never asked.

A sudden sense of shame slithered over me. I reached into my pocket and took out the remaining ten-euro note and handed it to the man as we passed.

His unshaven face creased into a smile, and he thanked me for my kindness. I nodded back, embarrassed. The charitable act wasn't borne from benevolence, so much as to assuage my guilt. As I walked away, I thought to myself, 'we both gained from the deal, so I suppose it's okay.' That failed to ease my conscience. He looked about five years older than me. I wondered what his story was, even though I knew I'd never ask.

A group of girls of a similar age stopped to talk to Robbie. They recognised him from TV and circled him, quizzing him at length, in a manner a Hollywood reporter would have been proud of. Scratching compulsively under his beanie, he answered their barrage of questions in a quiet voice. Behind us, the homeless man continued his oscillations, jabbering to himself. Visible but invisible.

Interview over, we waited near the off-licence for a passing adult to procure our quota of drink for the night. For a humiliating half-an-hour, we begged passers-by, who side-stepped or shot us dagger stares. I wished I'd given all my money to the guy on the bridge. Christ, you couldn't even wear cotton pants in this weather without risking genital cryopreservation. Never mind the fact the material was worth about a tenner. I'd essentially squandered seventy quid on a double-lettered logo the size of a postage stamp. Paid for the privilege of having the designer's initials stamped on my ass. Branded—corralled cattle have more cop-on.

Eventually, we found a guy willing to take pity on us. "Jaysus lads, I remember trying to get someone to go in the offie when I was your age," he said, accepting our cash. "Pain in the hole, it was."

Robbie fronted the money for the beer and whiskey. When we got back to mine, I raided my savings jar to reimburse him.

My parents had gone to Galway for their bi-annual visit to my mum's mother. My brother was planning on hitting up a party and promised to stay away on the proviso that I didn't trash the house. Johnny laughed after he said that. Dependable Aaron, the safe pair of hands. As predictable as the script of a bad romantic comedy. It was high time I cut loose. Throw caution to the wind.

Bowie blaring on the stereo, we shared the naggin of whiskey between us. Wretched stuff, like liquid lava hitting the back of the throat. Before nestling like a burning lake in the stomach. "I don't know how anybody could drink this shit for pleasure."

"We're not drinking it for pleasure," Robbie said. "We're trying to get pissed."

I thought about my Granddad. He was seventy-five when he died. Mourners remarked that was a grand age. I overheard my dad mutter, eight-five or ninety-five was a better age. "Why do we need to get drunk?"

Robbie shot me a look. The look said, 'you already know the answer.' He gave a theatrical sigh before indulging me. "When you're hammered you're not worrying about who you should be, leaving you free to be who you are." I guess this was a variation on something my mother once said.

A few years ago my brother had arrived home so sloshed he literally fell in the door when my mum opened it. They got in this huge argument that ended with Johnny calling mum 'a controlling bitch.' The next day he apologised and blamed it on the drink talking. And she said, when the liquor talks, the truth comes out.

"Maybe we should get drunk more often."

We looked at one another with faint smiles.

The conversation turned to music. Safe ground.

As the bottle drained, our voices filled with passion. And even though we were talking about one thing, we meant something else.

"You know what I love about Dog Man Star," I said, flicking my fringe to the side, "It takes risks. Takes you places you don't particularly want to go, but are always glad you did."

Robbie nodded in agreement. "That is the definition of art. It's the window to the soul. Shines a light on our latent hopes and fears."

"Is that what's behind the camera?"

He fingered the strap around his neck. "A good photograph is worth a thousand words. It captures the essence of its subject. Some cultures believe a photograph can capture a person's soul." He raised the camera to his eye and trained the lens on me.

I blinked as the bright flash illuminated the room.

Inoculated by the whiskey inflaming my gut, and fortified with a frothy friskiness, I winked and said: "You know what ol' Willy Blake reckons; Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed."

"Ah sure, but the question is, do you dare to bare it all?" My response to his flirtatious invitation caught him off-guard. Cheeky smirk receding, he watched, soundlessly as I shed my clothes with rough, rapid movements.

Liberated of all pretence, I spontaneously fell into a pose. Lay prone on the couch with my head angled to the side facing the camera, recreating Kate Moss' famous poster for Obsession perfume. Demure smile aimed at the man behind the lens. Happy for him to capture my secrets and strengths. To view my soul. To behold the unadorned me.

After snapping off a few carefully chosen shots, Robbie placed the camera on the coffee table. He sat down, legs planted apart.

Operating on instinct and adrenaline, I rose steadily to my feet. Made no attempt to shield my crotch. Stood motionless for a moment, caught in a freeze-frame. Robbie's expressive brown eyes performed a slow sweep over the panorama of flesh. His unflinching gaze lassoed my body, reeling me in.

With panther-like grace, I paraded over to him, poised, assured, shorn of inhibition.

Confidence flooding through me, I climbed on the chair, flung my arms around his neck. Our lips met and meshed, releasing endorphins that rushed to my nerve-centre and flooded my senses.

I dragged his beanie off. "Your hair..."

"Wha'?"

"It's different."

"And?" Irritation in his tone.

"I wasn't expecting..." I reached out to stroke his short frizzly cut, but remembered how the girls on the bus had played with his hair as though he were a doll, and drew back my hand.

"You prefer it the way it was." It wasn't a question.

"I didn't say—"

"You'd swear no one ever seen an afro before. I expected that shite from the showrunners, but I thought you were different."

"It's beautiful."

"You don't have—" I crushed my lips against his. Our kisses stung with ferocity. An unparalleled intensity, elevating our pleasure to unimaginable heights.

Robbie pulled away and asked, breathlessly, if we should go upstairs. I nodded in an affirmative, with no hesitation.

I led the way out the door, my limbs weightless as I started up the stair. This was happening! The final frontier. The soft threads of the carpet dissolved under my bare feet. Made me think of quicksand. I noticed the trapdoor to the overhead attic. When I was five, I had put my foot between the joist and my left leg crashed through the ceiling in my parents' room. There was a helluva ado over that one.

As I stepped onto the landing, I caught sight of my parents' locked bedroom room to my left. I glanced away and opened my door.

My brother's duvet and clothes lay haphazardly slung across his bed. His powder-blue shirt, that girls commented on, looked poised to slip to the floor at any moment.

The crucifix hanging beneath my bookshelf, hovering like a dark spectre over the bed, invoking a flashback to the church at my Granddad's funeral; My grieving parents, dressed in black, sitting stiff-backed in the pew. Uncomfortably aware of my nakedness. Suddenly, that seemed important.

I slipped under the duvet, the under sheet cold against my flesh, goose-pimples rose like braille on my skin.

I faced the wall, listening to the rustling sounds of clothes being removed. Imagined my Granddad looking down on me. Struck by the familiar gut-punch of confusion. Crazy thoughts careening around my cerebellum.

My heart began pounding.

The duvet lifted, and a cool air wafted over me.

The poetry of the moment had dissolved, leaving me mired in the shit of my scared reality. Ladies and gentlemen, normal service has been resumed.

Robbie's warm hand touched my shoulder. His warm, heavy breath on my neck.

"I can't do this," I said in a strangely disconnected voice.

"What?"

"I'm sorry, I'm just...my head's a mess." A fresh waft of frigid air washed over me.

"I don't get you. You blow hot and cold." His anger heated, his tone cool. I couldn't bring myself to look at him.

I am Pavlov's whimpering bitch.

"I'm off." I turned around, watching Robbie tuck his tee-shirt into his denim jeans.

"It's not—"

"Don't even," he said, stiff hand slicing through the hair as he cut me off. He pointed contemptuously at the array of posters. "If I looked like that..." He shook his head in disgust. "Or Noely."

I glanced up at the collage of white faces, and it clicked. "No, it's not that."

"Isn't it? At least be honest with yourself, if you can."

The bedroom door closed.

I debated running after him.

Procrastinated.

When I heard the hall-door slam shut—I'm sure my neighbours did too—I crept downstairs, collected up my clothes and the beers which Robbie had left behind. I picked his beanie off the floor and buried my face in it. Inhaled his essence and despised my stupid, fucked-up brain.

What the hell was wrong with me?

I returned to my den and flung the bag containing my new trousers into the back of the wardrobe.

As I sat in bed, slugging from a can and feeling sorry for myself, wondering if this misery marathon would ever end, the noise of the hall-door opening interrupted my thought flow. I heard my brother's loud, brash voice, followed by the sound of girlish giggles, then footsteps bounding up the stair.

"Ah, you're here." A wide grin. "Listen, baby bro, I need you to skedaddle,"—he winked to whoever was waiting outside the door—"for a few hours. There's a good lad."

Johnnie's latest amour and I traded embarrassed smiles as we passed.

In the sitting-room with the curtains drawn, Motorcycle Emptiness playing on the stereo volume cranked up high. I retreated into the music. Guitars jarring emotions lose, drums smashing out my pain. Neck veins bulging as I belted out the chorus in a twisted howl. Alone on my stage, wringing sounds from invisible instruments. Swathed in sadness, ripped by confusion. The sad clown, frustrated mime, performing to an audience of none.

I collapsed on the couch, exhausted from the exertions, eyes drawn to the painting hanging over the fireplace, an artefact from the previous tenants' residency. A reproduction of Turner's famous Snow Storm, depicting a solitary steamer caught in the black centre of a storm, sat off-kilter with her mast bent to breaking point, battered relentlessly by whipping wind and water. Exploded flares, lost in the ferocious smoke plumed sky. Stricken ship seized in the swirling maelstrom of overlapping sea and sky, surrounded by surging hills of waves, trapped in a whirling vortex of destructive energy. Bound in battle with the dominant forces of Nature.

I am that ship.