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Oh yes, Conor Whelan is so forgetful. Sometimes it's an act. Especially in interviews, when Conor's tongue is quicker than his thoughts and a stern look from his assistant reminds him that he's about to reveal too much. Then he's suddenly struck by a severe case of memory loss.“Ah, you know…the partying,” he winks, followed by one of his infectious, effervescent chuckles. The interviewers usually take the cue and laugh along, because they are — of course — familiar with the stories about him not remembering a good chunk of the naughties due to drugs and alcohol. He never made a secret of it. Always so open and giving in interviews. And he's a hoot, too.Other times it's the truth. He just can't cut through the fog in his brain. Where there should be memories, there's a void. Just empty space. It's like opening cupboard doors and staring at empty shelves.It was his younger self's greatest desire to live “right here, right now”. The thought of letting experiences fade into memories had been unsettling to him. He wanted to keep things floating and malleable and organic. As a result, the void remains with him now, even more enduring than actual memories. The void never fades.His meteoric rise to stardom twenty-five years ago was too much to stomach. The pull of the millions of dollars being thrown at him was too strong to resist. He tried to keep his feet on the ground, and fortunately he never gave up trying, but the drugs were offered to him on a silver platter, how could he abstain? They helped him to escape when he couldn't cope with the impressions of the present.There were key events he attended—award shows, premieres, big poolside get-togethers with studio heads and agents, even film shoots—that he knows about only through second-hand accounts. There are photos, lots of photos, and thanks to his celebrity status, he could reconstruct some of them if he wanted to. But the intimate moments, the rare and inimitable ones, good or bad, no matter, they're all blurred. Whole relationships that he can't bring back from the void. Surely not all of them are worth remembering.In retrospect, Conor calls this period of his life the worst so far. It didn't seem like it when he was living through it.He didn't care that he was playing an Irish stereotype for the press. Everyone was charmed by his sincerity. “I’m having a fecking blast. Best time I’ve ever had”, they quoted him and made it a headline on a big rag back in the day, showing him with a beer-bottle in hand, cigarette in the corner of his mouth and his arm wrapped around the shoulders of Cassie Nolan, the arguably greatest US popstar of 2003. That image never left him. Or when he thought it might be a hot idea to make his own porn movie with Denise who he'd met at the Playboy mansion. She didn't contend with being just a means to an end. He couldn't blame her that she sold it. His intoxicated horny fantasy was now glued to his name forever and a problem for his people to deal with.Conor pictures himself in his early twenties: a lucky devil who'd scored a golden ticket to La-La-Land, fresh-faced and ambitious, frantically happy and high like a kite, he was dancing down the yellow brick road to stardom. He was willfully oblivious to the fact that his world was falling apart left and right and misery was looming on the horizon.The patchy memoryscape of his Twenties saves him from shame in no small part. Which is fortunate because he still grapples with feeling ashamed whenever the emotion pops up. Shame feels like a failing.As a teenager, he'd seen “Dead Poets Society” and it immediately struck a chord with him. He was moved to tears and sat in awe as the credits rolled. When the VCR spit out the tape at the end, Conor had made a decision: he vowed to always live authentically and unapologetically, to seize the day, just like the guys in the movie. It would be Carpe Diem! Live or die!Thirty years later, that seems amusingly naive. A small chuckle escapes him. But no, he does not condemn his 15-year-old self, nor would he ridicule him for his idealism. It's the privilege of youth to take such an uncompromising and romantic stance. There's no need for a teenager to consider all the possible twists and turns of his yet unlived future when he's just carving out a role for himself in this world. The act of living will do the refining — or, rather, trimming — all by itself.That's what happened to him. Conor is humbled and just happy that he's alive and doing pretty well. Still, he can't shake the disapproving look of the boy whenever feelings of shame, regret, or remorse strike him and cause him to reevaluate certain things he's done, or worse, try to correct them. It feels deeply unsettling. Even now, in his mid-forties, the impulse to deny these feelings is strong. He's come a long way from the tendency to stubbornly defend making mistakes as the be-all and end-all of human existence, no matter how much suffering it causes, to acknowledging that all people are capable of correcting their mistakes, and perhaps should at least try to wriggle out of their misery.He thinks it’s a remnant of his striving to unravel the effects of his catholic upbringing. His family hadn’t been overtly religious, but like most children at home, he participated in the sacraments. His whole childhood was defined by church-run institutions and their staff. It did a number on his impressionable mind. Conor imagines himself as a little boy sitting on a bench at mass, praying, singing, and listening eagerly. Taking all in about the proper conduct and moral behavior of people and how to be cleansed from sin. Turning the same thoughts over and over again in his head: Was he good enough for God? Was he doing it right?A sensitive and imaginative boy, he appeared tranquil on the outside, but inside a storm was brewing. He was increasingly aware that the moral code he was being instilled with didn’t resonate with the realities of life. There was abuse and hypocrisy all around. People who professed to be good, who prayed every day, who worshipped every Sunday, were doing evil things. And people he was taught to think of as evil and sinful, were people he loved and couldn’t for the life of him find a fault with. As he grew older the contradictions he perceived wrenched his heart, so much so, that sometimes he felt unable to move, to breathe, to meaningfully connect. His guilt-driven childhood fears became more and more overshadowed by rage.It was the indoctrination of shame that lay at the root of all those conflicts because it belittled people, stiffened their expressions and made them despise themselves. Others then used it as a weapon to wield power over them while being shameless, ruthless even, themselves. But all of them, the abusers and the abused, adopted a façade when they attended mass. They accepted falseness in themselves and others. It was the ritual that mattered, not the truth of it. If he didn’t want to grow up a rotten hypocrite, he needed to overcome shame first and be free of guilty feelings about his increasing disregard of the rigid moral proscriptions of the Catholic Church that had bled into all of society. He sure believed in God, but he was part of a generation that longed for a secular lifestyle. It was the late 1980s in Ireland and cultural change was imminent.
Find a way to cut into your loneliness and isolation, Conor! Learn to seize the day, live life with arms wide open and no longer quell your impulses - Carpe diem!
It became his mantra. It also manifested as a rather large and corny tattoo on his right forearm. Like a magic spell it cleared his actions of second thoughts.Conor lacked the foresight to comprehend that his long-repressed desire for instant gratification and unrestrained expression invited shame in through the backdoor. In truth he was rarely ever sober enough to be able to assess that link properly.He wanted to stay unconscious but with eyes open, unbothered but not alone, unaccountable yet free to do whatever pleasured him. Eventually he found himself in a never-ending race against himself.Over the years his philosophy of life, neatly condensed in those two Latin words carpe diem, became little more than a bunch of bad habits and an imposition on everyone who remotely cared about Conor, including himself.The memories he never made include loved ones. Lovers. One night stands more than he can count. Sometimes he's haunted by the thought he might be talking to someone he fucked a long time ago and doesn't remember. It has happened and it's a tricky thing when people remember you putting your dick into them, but you don't have the slightest clue you ever touched them.
"Yeah, I didn’t call you back… I was a ghost, love, forgive me. I don't remember ever meeting you."
This is how it follows him. Unmade memories force his regret whenever they find him. Mostly in the form of people who remind him. Conor has learnt to live with the dilemma that he personally happened in their lives, for better or worse, but he didn't care for them to leave a trace in his. He can't defend himself because he can't recall. Nor does the simple existentialism of his youth provide argumentative back-up anymore. He has outgrown it but not yet figured out a way to deal with confrontation that would not make him feel - shameful.It's gotten better, naturally, as he got sober. He looks back now on almost two decades of a life full of memories, joyful and painful.His meandering mind has a will of its own and let loose it circles back to an uncertainty that bothers him from time. Conor wonders about the void in his head that obscures the time he spent with Jason. Especially the circumstances that set their relationship on a course of dissolution. He vaguely remembers them, if only because Jason has rehashed it all again and again as accusations and laments that were put in song-form on albums, replayed in music videos, on the radio and performed at live shows on tour. Almost twenty years of artistically sublimated anger and frustration directed - at him.Their under the radar affair provided the perfect fodder for songs. At least it was good for something. This is how his past with Jason Remy haunts him. Or rather a version of it. The real events are so far removed in time now that even the parts he does recall are somewhat blurred.Of those Conor most clearly remembers the gaze of Jason's baby-blue eyes turning steely and intimidating, his speech being peppered with expletives, the tone of his voice growing louder and harsher and the muscles of his slim body tensing as if he was a wild animal preparing to attack. Conor’s own voice could never hold against the strength of Jason's in a state of unleashed anger nor match his ferocity. Time has smoothed out the sting of trepidation he'd felt in those moments. Conor looks back now admiring it. He remembers the urge to reach out to Jason even then when he was about to be eaten alive by him.Mental breakdown had been imminent whenever they crashed, and it became exhausting. So exhausting.After Conor got sober, he felt it even more acutely. Every so often he pushed back against Jason, screaming in his face, it was no wonder his drug use had spiraled out of control given what he had to put up with him. Unjust and infuriating as those words were to Jason, truth was, in those moments, when Jason and he blew up, and afterwards, the urge to numb himself silly with whatever was available was strongest. Conor did relapse several times. It wasn't always related to Jason, but occasionally it was. Jason knew it, and he hated it and yet couldn't find it in him to avoid confrontation.From day one of their friendship, Jason hadn't been able to rein in his emotions when he was with him. His well-guarded barriers crumbled in Conor's presence and Jason was overwhelmed with incredible love, or just as intense rage. He'd straight out told him he'd never felt both so real and alienated from himself at the same time, as when he was with him, and that it frightened him.
"I don't know what's happening to me. I feel so alive in your presence. It's like, when you leave, I drop to zero. I can't stay away."
Neither of them could, but they were helplessly watching the natural ease of their relationship deteriorate until most of their brief trysts were spent either bickering or consumed by the conscious effort to express goodwill toward each other instead of resentment.Goodwill towards the spending of several thousand dollars on private jet flights every time they decided for a hotel rendezvous somewhere; goodwill for those encounters rarely ever extending two days and nights in a row; the goodwill to not treat this like a booty call.They’d been taking a risk almost twenty years ago, because it had felt right and exciting and frankly irresistible. They reassured each other they’d get into this affair with no defense and no reserve. That damn movie set had put them in a state of mind that appeared to be outside of space and time. It raised a delirious urge to cross the line, to make a tangible connection with the characters they played. Mythical lovers in a relationship abundant with love, lust, faith and imagination. But they were just Conor and Jason in the end. And it should’ve been a one-time thing. But it wasn’t. They continued.Once they’d opened the gates, they didn’t know how to navigate their desire. The floods sent them drifting. Soon, both were struggling to get out of the current. Fear took over, and rage and shame and remorse – all of it. They eventually reached shallow waters, but they were standing on opposite banks, blankly gaping at each other. Out of breath. Out of words.It stopped when Jason drew the line one day, called it quits and turned his back on him. Once more besting him in something.Conor had been blindsided by his move. Yes, he had expected it at some point, even begun to embrace the thought of ending their volatile affair for the sanity and wellbeing of all involved. But damn, he really got to him.It’s all water under the bridge now. They have even crossed ways again, mostly at the peripheries of industry events, where they indulge in polite and sterile small talk. But it never takes more than thirty seconds to feel the sting and for words starting to stumble. The familiar intimacy wells up and then they silently agree to part.It's bothering Conor when he thinks about it. Jason was the first, and the last…He mustn’t think about it too much.Conor tilts his head and makes eye-contact with the interviewer.
"Excuse me, love. What was the question?"
"Ahem... did you - has someone ever ended a friendship with you like Brendan's character does with yours in the film?"
"Oh no, no. I've had friendships that have kind of petered out but I’ve never had someone draw a line in the sand the way it's happening in the film, no."
He begs the 15-year-old inside to shut the fuck up.