Face Down in Temple Bar:My Second Trip to Ireland: Part One
A few years ago, I impulsively decided to buy an air ticket to Dublin, Ireland and escape my problems–my sadness. I was invited to a friend’s wedding there and I figured why the hell not?
I hadn’t really been alone like that since 1989, back when I was 16 and on my own in Switzerland–back when fear was defined as sitting in my “host” familiy’s house, in my little room of that 500 year-old house throttling that fucking chinchilla that kept me up all night.
I flew from JFK to Dublin, alone. I slept in a hotel room, alone; I walked the streets of Dublin–alone. I ran through Phoenix Park, alone and I drank–alone. Man did I drink alone. I fucking rolled in true Irish style–spilling my salty tears into thick, foamy glasses of Guinness–black pond water, absorbing everything, reflecting nothing. I started drinking the moment I got there. Well, maybe not the moment I got there. I had to buy the latest edition of Irish Runner and get my greasy palms on some sort of buttery pastry and then I started drinking.
I was stuck in Temple Bar the first night. My hotel was some ancient place where pasty white Irish hostesses dialed on antediluvian phones connecting you, two-ring Eurotrash style, to God knows where. This was the Irish flytrap;this was the place where dumb,ugly Americans–blarney stone-buying neanderthals with dopey southern accents and fifth-removed relatives seemingly everywhere–disposed of their disposable income
I pissed the day away. I remember reading some historical markers about Joyce,then wishing I could write like Joyce, then wondering how I could write like Joyce when I never even tried to read the fucker. I heard Joyce is hard to read; I still haven’t tried to summit Ulysses.
I remember reading in my cherished copy of Irish Runner (complete with pictures of legends Alistair Cragg that Marc Carroll) and realizing that people win podunk 5Ks over on the cold, rainy Emerald Isle in 14:XX and then I remember thinking about Jumbo Elliot, Providence College, and how kickass the Irish are at running. Per capita, they have to be at the top.
I did run. Sadly, it was only about 5 miles. I saw some Tinkers underneath campfires and thought about U2 and a feathered-hair Bono walking the grimy streets of Dublin in like 1978 before Dublin and Ireland got all classy and snobby, before that stupid Euro, before tax shelters, before IBM and Dell and dotcom greed–back when dirty men wielded dirty tools and made things like boat anchors out of glowing iron right in the center of that once dirty city.
I contemplated an upstart Morrissey and angry crowds assembling during the Easter Rising of 1916. I passed the statue of “Big Jim” Larkin–that socialist, that trouble maker–with his hands up towards the sky. I related to him for a moment; I wished his idealistic spirit the very best and then I moved on.
I remember the Liffey and Thom Yorke crooning about floating down it. (It was bright green and capable of walking across, at the time. Jesus, what a sick looking body of water.)
The night was nothing but more drinking. David, my dear friend and the groom-to-be (now runner/climber/blogger) met me for dinner and then we walked to the cigar store where we bought a real Cuban Cohiba to be lit up on his big night.
He had to leave–had to do groom things–and then I was alone again.
I remember floating through the Temple Bar–of smoky pubs and wonderful music. I can still hear the melodic drone of the Uilleann pipes and the pit-pat beat of the Bodhran. I’m thinking of the irony–of how the Irish can sing and dance and play such happiness under such depressingly gray skies. I’m a mutt, but I’m at least 53% Irish and so I hold on to these happy, carefree people. I put down my tent next to them. I make fast friends and hide my ‘Merican accent.
I am home.
The night slips fast. It spins into a frenzy. I’ve had too much; I forget where I am.
Here I am!
A football match is on one screen; a hurling match the other. Balding men with cigarettes crowd around the TV with the football match. The roar of the digitized crowd blends with cries of the balding men. Some strange European match has come down to the final seconds. Handsome Eurosoccer players with thick thighs kick balls high. The balls disappear behind those gray-orange shadows found in frenzied football stadiums at dusk.
The match ends;the balding men scream. Beer sloshes and middle fingers appear.
Everyone orders another round. I’m face down in Temple Bar.
I manage get to my room and watch the lights spin. My wood-paneled walls crawl; my pedestal sink overflows. My clothes come off and then the lights dim.
I lay on my bed–alone.
Secure. Safe. Hopelessly drunk.
Fiercly independent. A runner, again.
Happily alone, again.
Free.
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To be continued.