|
|||||||
  
 
 |
Careful, you eejit, mind the tight skirts, smoke and beer, and Dublin flatmates from Central Casting • Part Three of a series By
Bryce Petersen Jr.
The perfume is good because it drowns out the smell of booze, sweat, sex, and smoke. I hate the smell of perfume. The air is thick. McGrath's is a small pub in north Dublin that converts itself to a writhing, pulsating mass of flesh each weekend. The dim lighting changes to bright strobes and the hum of the World Cup crowd on the television mingles with the deafening roar of unrestrained hormones. This
is the boys' night out. Jairus loves it. He is tall, dark and handsome, and has a gleaming white smile. Jairus is a black man from the suburbs of Chicago. He often speaks in a bad Irish accent. He says it comes naturally after a lengthy stint on the Isle. This is his third monthlong trip to Ireland. I've only been here for three weeks, so I've never said, "Careful, you eejit, you'll spill me pint." Not even once. Jairus smiles at the girls from above everyone else. His head is in a cloud of smoke that hovers near the ceiling, but out of the armpits and spilled Guinness. He loves it here. A foot shorter, I fight for air. We are with an Irishman, Fergus, and two Frenchmen, Damien and Sebastien. And Erik. He is not French. He's an idealistic, French-speaking, Basque anarchist. He grew up in a world of soccer, muscles, jocks and egos. He can take a punch, he says. "I was a punk," he explains, shaving an imaginary mohawk. This is the boys' night out. The girls have to work in the morning. Damiana, Erik's flatmate who I've been staying with since I was booted from the hostel, works five, 6-hour shifts a week at an Italian restaurant. Assu, whose little flat is usually full of visitors with nowhere else to go, has to work every morning at the City Manor. Many of us have worked there. Fergus was fired for drunkenness, Erik was fired for stealing and I was fired for refusing to work six days a week. Jairus still works there occasionally. He's made friends with the family. Not surprising, since he's stayed at the hostel every night of every trip to Ireland. Assu gets one day off every two weeks, still (after six months) gets paid 20 pounds for each 10-hour day and refuses to quit her job. She is fluent in three languages. Why doesn't she get a job as a translator or at a bank? "I don't want a proper job," Assu always answers. "I don't want to wear a dress and makeup. I cannot fix my hair." Assu's hair is shoulder length, frizzy like a wire brush, nearly dreadlocked and seems to tie itself in knots when she rages about the chains attached to the ankles of bank tellers and assembly line drones. But she's not here telling us about that now. She's sleeping. She's got a big day ahead of her tomorrow. Assu lives for the people she meets at the hostel. She relishes small victories. "Michael said, 'Thank you' today," she said once. "That's the first time. It felt so good." Michael is the despotic older brother in the family who owns the hostel. Recently, he had arrived at the hostel delighted at a new sculpture he had purchased for the lobby. It was a small, gnarled, old witch pointing a crooked staff at the doorway. Delightful. Back in the pub, Sebastien is saying, "I think I have good taste in music." I tell him everyone thinks they have good taste in music, but he likes Sonic Youth and Nirvana, so I let him have his way. He brought a car with him from France. He drives from the left side of the car. On the left side of the road -- if he remembers where he is. He's promised to take us to the country the next day. Assu won't be with us. She has seen Rome, Paris and Dublin, but never a cow. She hasn't had enough days off to visit the country. "I go to see a cow," she told me last week, beaming. But Michael said he needed her the next day and the chance was lost. Fergus is telling me I can't leave Dublin. He says I've bought him too many pints and he's getting the dole tomorrow. He says to just stay for one more weekend. Let him pay me back. I'll think about it. Erik tells us he hates this place. He's disappointed in himself for going to the disco every night. He should be playing the drums, practicing with the band he's in. "This is not the place for me," he says. I agree with him wholeheartedly. I should be hiking through a forest or looking at the ocean. We order another pint. Jairus is on the dance floor. We can see his big white teeth smiling down from the cloud. A few minutes later we're hustling out of the pub. Erik and Sebastien are talking swiftly in French, their faces flushed from equal parts beer and anger. They begin yelling and soon their arms are flailing. Fergus and I, knowing as much French as the statue of Charles Parnell on the corner, stare with equal parts confusion, amusement and apathy. "Erik call him a, eh, wanker, and, eh . . . " Damien translates. Sebastien, who now rents a room from a woman just outside of Dublin, doesn't say goodbye and drives off in his car. On the wrong side of the road for a moment, he corrects himself. We leave Jairus and stumble home. Fergus is singing, "No, nay, never. No, nay, never, no more. I spent all me money on whiskey and beer, but no, nay, never, no, nay, never, no more." Erik is telling us that Sebastien has no respect for others, as evidenced by his horrendous driving that endangered all his passengers. I guess that's why Erik called him a wanker. "I am an anarchist, and to be an anarchist, you must respect others," Erik explains. He was always saying silly things like that. Here's another of my favorites: "Not everything that is simple is beauty, but everything that is beauty is simple." When we arrive at the one-room flat where we all would sleep that night, Damien is talking excitedly about the French team's latest World Cup victory, assuring us they will continue to the end and achieve a glorious victory on the home turf. Damiana, in pajamas, in bed, is rubbing her big brown eyes, saying nothing, looking soft, sleepy and haggard in her now slightly wrinkled satin pajamas. It's 2 a.m. I sit next to her, look at the creases under her eyes and ask when she works tomorrow. "Eight," she says in English. "I need to sleep." Damiana had poor English. She never talked in a group. While we talked, she would often sit and sigh and look at the poster, a very large, roaring tiger she had picked out recently ("you like?"). When an Italian friend would visit, she would laugh and chatter for several minutes without taking a breath. ("My friends tell me, 'Be quiet, Damiana, you talk too much.'") She had to come to Ireland because Italian accountants must know a bit of English. "Damiana needs to sleep," I said for her. She had poor English. The request was eventually heeded. By 3 o'clock, nearly everyone was lying down, though it was difficult to sleep with the Deftones still pounding through Erik's one-last cigarette. Fergus slept in his boots (size 15), snored and talked, quite expansively and coherently, in his sleep. ("Ken y'blem me. No, I don't t'ink so.") His long frame expanded, too, during the night. By the time I watched Damiana drift out of the house, I was wedged tightly between Fergus and the stereo. For three more hours, I tried to sleep, until the pounding in my head weakened. Sebastien didn't take us for a drive in the country, even though he had promised. Wanker. So I got on the bus, alone and free, instead. In 15 minutes, I had left the grayness of Dublin and was immersed in the fields, trees, cottages and stone fences of Ireland. The next day I would see Newgrange, a 4000-year-old structure so sturdy it had never been penetrated by water. I would envy it. It didn't mind when it was being used as a calendar or a religious building back in the day. It was undisturbed by hundreds of years of solitude underneath a layer of vegetation, and now it is unmoved by the throngs of tourists that stomp daily through its tunnels. But for now, I have to go.
|
Archived Months:
January
1999 January
2000 January
2001 |
|||||
