by Marian Keyes
I felt very depressed. I lay in silence. So, highly unusually, did Helen.
‘All the same,’ she finally said, ‘you’re bound to bump into them at some stage. You know, in the corridors and in the grounds and such places. You might even get to be friends with some of them.’
Suddenly I felt joyous and hopeful. If Helen was convinced, then it had to be true.
4
I’d been on nodding terms with Luke Costello long before the night I ended up in bed with him. He was Irish and I was Irish and, although I didn’t know it at the time, we lived about four blocks away from each other.
I used to see him around because we went to the same bars. Irish bars, but not the type of Irish ghetto bar where you sing ‘A Nation Once Again’ and ‘Spancil Hill’ and cry and collect money for The Cause. These bars were different. They were actually fashionable, in the same way that brasseries were a few years back. They were called tongue-in-cheek, Irishy things like Tadgh’s Boghole and Slawn Che. Apparently an Irish pop star owned one of them, although I’m not sure which bar it was. Or which pop star, either, for that matter.
Being Irish in New York has a perennial cachet, but while I lived there it was actually groovy.
Anyway, Brigit and I used to ‘hang out’ (we emulated the vernacular, but always with a snigger) in these places and see Luke and his friends and have a good laugh at them.
Not because Brigit and I were unkind, but really, you’d want to have seen them. None of them would have looked out of place in any of the rock bands that were fashionable in the early seventies. The type that played huge stadiums and drove Ferraris into swimming pools and were photographed with a string of interchangeable skinny blonde girls.
Luke and the boys were all about the same height, around six foot, and had regulation-issue longish, curlyish hair. At the time long hair on a man was only OK if it was all the same length, middle-parted and lank. Nul points for layered, curly and shiny.
In the time we knew them, not once did any of them appear with this month’s cut. Whether it was short, brushed forward and bleached white. Or the crewcut to end all crewcuts. Or a shaved head with sideburns almost joined under the chin. Or whatever.
And their clothes were as old-fashioned as their hair. Denim, denim and more denim, and an occasional splash of leather. With the emphasis on tight, if you follow me. On a good day, you could tell which of them had been circumcised.
They were completely immune to the fashion of the outside world. Tommy Hilfiger suits, Stussy hats, Phat-pharm jackets, Diesel satchels, Adidas skateboard shoes or Timberlands – I don’t think these boys even knew such things existed. Anyone worth their sartorial salt would. The only thing I can say in their defence is that none of them had a suede fringey jacket. At least I never saw any of them wearing one.
Luke and his pals were too anachronistic-looking for our taste. We called them ‘Real Men’, but with heavy irony.
And as for the aforementioned occasional splash of leather, well… thereby hangs a tale. What happened was that after we had observed and laughed at the lads for many months, Brigit and I slowly became aware of something strange. Whenever they were out en masse only one of them was wearing his leather trousers. How do they organize that, we wondered? Do you think they ring each other up before they go out? And ask each other what they’re wearing, the way girls do ?
Over the months we tried to see if there was a pattern to it. Did they have a rota system going, we puzzled? With Joey being allowed to wear his pair every Wednesday, Gaz every Thursday, something like that? And what would happen if two of them turned up both wearing theirs ?
But one night we noticed something even stranger than their foolproof rota. The back pocket on Gaz’s pair was ripped. Nothing remarkable there. Except that when we had seen Shake the previous weekend, his pair had had a rip in exactly the same place. Interesting, we mused, very interesting.
Two days later when we saw them at the Lively Bullock, Joey’s pair had an identical rip.
Open-mouthed from the wonder of it all, we resolved to withhold judgement until it had happened to a fourth one. (Oh ye, of little faith…) And sure enough, not long after that we saw Johnno in the Cute Hoor. Except he was sitting down for hours and we thought he would never stand up and show us his bum. How we eked out that one beer between the two of us! We didn’t have a bean, but we would have gone demented stuck in the apartment all evening. Eventually, several hours later, when our beer had nearly evaporated, Johnno of the camel like bladder finally got up. As Brigit and I clutched each other and held our breath, he slowly turned around and there it was! The rip! The identical rip on the identical pocket!
We both let out a shriek of laughter and triumph. So it was true!
Through my convulsions I vaguely heard someone complain in an Irish accent, ‘Christ ALMIGHTY! Is there a banshee on the premises?’
As we rolled around the place, tears pouring down our cheeks, we were watched by the rest of the pub which had fallen completely silent.
‘Oh God,’ gasped Brigit. ‘And we thought they all had a… a… a…’ She couldn’t really speak she was laughing so much.
‘Pair!’ she finally snorted at last.
‘We thought… we thought…’ I heaved with shaking shoulders. ‘That only one of them was allowed to wear their pair at… at…’ I had to put my head down on the table and pound with my fist for a while, ‘at any one time.’
‘No wonder only one ever turned up wearing his pair…’ I croaked.
‘Because,’ convulsed Brigit, her face bright red. ‘Because… because… there was only one pair to WEAR!!!’
‘Stop,’ I begged. ‘I’m going to puke.’
‘Come on, girls,’ a man’s voice exhorted. ‘Share the joke.’
We were suddenly very popular. There were thousands of men in the bar who were over from Mayo for a conference on beef. They had thought mistakenly that, because the bar was called the Cute Hoor, they’d have a night of singing ‘Four Green Fields’ and holding forth on Irish politics ahead of them. They hadn’t enjoyed being sniggered at and snubbed by New York’s finest and trendiest. They hadn’t liked it at all. After all, they were very important men in Ballina or Westport or wherever it was they hailed from.
So when Brigit and I had our convulsions they thought it was a breath of fresh air. Every single one of them wanted to buy us a drink and find out what was so funny. But, while we accepted the jars, after all a free drink is a free drink, we couldn’t possibly tell them what we were laughing at.
We managed to calm down slightly. Except now and again, Brigit would grab my arm and almost unable to speak, would manage ‘Imagine owning a… a… a timeshare in a pair of trousers!’ And we’d be gone for the next ten minutes, twitching and convulsing, tears pouring down our red, shiny faces. While the circle of Mayo men watched us in bemusement.
Or I’d say ‘You can only be in their gang if you have the right waist and leg measurements!’ And we’d be off again.
Actually, it was a great night. All the trendy people upped sticks en masse as a protest against the hick Mayo men. So Brigit and I were able to let our hair down and enjoy ourselves without the fear of being thought uncool.
We were there until at least three and, God, we were pissed. So pissed that we even joined in with the mandatory, misty-eyed singsong. Isn’t it funny the way Irish people, whenever they go away from home, even if it’s only a daytrip to Holyhead for the duty-free, end up singing sorrowful, poignant songs about the leaving of the Emerald Isle and how they wished they were back there?
Even though the Mayo men were only in New York for four days, we had ‘From Clare to Here’, ‘The Mountains of Mourne’, ‘The Hills of Donegal’, Ireland’s Eurovision entry and – unusual choice this – Oasis’s ‘Wonderwall’. And we had an ill-advised and very, very drunken attempt at dancing the Walls of Limerick. Which the proprietor put a stop to. (‘Come on lads, settle down, let ye, or ye can all feck off back to Westport for yeerse
lves.’) After two of the men nearly came to blows over the number of times you meet and go back before you cross over. Apparently one of them was confusing the Walls of Limerick with the Siege of Ennis, the way you do…
5
All in all, the idea of sleeping with Luke or any of his pals was laughable. Unimaginable, really. Little did I know…
The night in question was about a month after the Great Mirth with the Mayo men in the Cute Hoor. Brigit and I were going to – well crashing, if I’m honest – a party at the Rickshaw Rooms. We had tried very hard to look sexy because we hoped, as we did wherever we went, that there might be some attractive and, more importantly, available lads there.
New York was a poor hunting ground for boyfriends. You couldn’t get one for love nor money. (Naturally, I was prepared to offer both.) Reports from a friend in Australia and a friend in Dublin indicated that pickings were slim everywhere, but New York just took the biscuit. Not only were there a billion women to every straight man, but every one of the billion women was heart-stoppingly beautiful. I’m talking exquisite. And the explanation of such incredible beauty usually went something like ‘Oh, her mother’s half Swedish, half Australian Aboriginal and her father is half Burmese, quarter Eskimo and quarter Italian.’
As Brigit and I were both a hundred per cent Irish, how could we possibly compete? On a regular basis we despaired of our looks. Especially because we were both tall and big-boned. All we really had going for us was our hair; mine was long and dark and hers was long and blonde. Some of hers was even natural.
What we did have in our favour, however, was that most of the New York girls were completely neurotic. We weren’t.
We were only mildly neurotic. (Pathological fear of goats and an obsession with potatoes cooked in any way wasn’t as bad as begging to be beaten about the face and neck with a broken bottle during sexual intercourse.)
Anyway, despite our lack of ethnic diversity, on the night in question we thought we looked pretty hot. As I remember, Brigit’s exact words when we surveyed each other before the off were ‘Not bad for a pair of heifers.’ I agreed, and all without any self-esteem-enhancing snow in our systems! Of course, we would have loved some but it was two days from Brigit’s payday and we barely had enough money to feed ourselves.
I had a pair of beautiful new shoes on their maiden voyage. With my size feet, it was impossible to get nice shoes to fit me. Even in New York where they’re used to dealing with freaks. But I was befriended by the season. It was summer and the shoes were mules. Lime-green, not-too-high mules. So it didn’t matter that they were two sizes too small for me, because my toes could stick out the front and my heels out the back. Excruciating to walk in, of course, but who cared. Beauty is pain.
So along to the Rickshaw Rooms for ourselves! Where they were holding a launch party for a new television series. Brigit had heard about it through her job and apparently it would have a couple of famous, good-looking men, enough free drink to sink a battleship and, hopefully, countless people with a cocaine habit who might be willing to share their stash.
We didn’t have an invitation but we got in because Brigit offered to not have sex with the bouncer.
That’s what she actually said. ‘My friend and I don’t have invitations but, if you let us in, you needn’t sleep with either of us.’
And, as Brigit had promised me, we certainly had his attention after that.
‘You see,’ Brigit explained to his bemused face, ‘in your line of work, you must have hundreds of gorgeous women saying “If you let me in, I’ll let you in,” if you follow me?’ She gave him a leery wink that involved every muscle in her body, just in case he didn’t.
‘You must be sick of it,’ she told him firmly.
The bouncer, a young, not-unattractive Italian man, nodded, as if in a daze.
‘My friend and I here,’ Brigit went on, ‘our unique selling point is that we’re not gorgeous, so we thought we’d make the most of it. Can we come in?’
‘Of course,’ he mumbled. He looked puzzled and confused.
‘But wait,’ he called after us. ‘You’ll need these.’ And he pressed two invitations upon us, just as we were about to break into a run for the lift.
When we got upstairs we had to run the gauntlet of a second set of bouncers but by then we had invitations.
And in we swept. We tried not to look too overwhelmed. The beautiful art deco room! The fabulous view! The vast quantities of strong drink!
Seconds after we arrived, laughing and buoyed up by our success, Brigit froze and grabbed me.
‘Look,’ she hissed, ‘it’s the Time Warp Boys.’
I looked and sure enough, there, in a proliferation of hair and red Levi’s tabs, were Gaz, Joey, Johnno, Shake and Luke. As usual, they were accessorized by a couple of blonde girls with legs so skinny they looked as if they had rickets.
‘What are the Real Men doing here?’ I demanded. Suddenly our victory over the bouncer became meaningless, all the good went out of it. They were obviously letting any old eejit in.
Luke was earnestly distributing their drinks. ‘Joey, man, JD straight up, there you go.’
‘Thanks, Luke, man.’
‘Johnno, man, JD on the rocks, that’s yours.’
‘Good one, Luke, man.’
‘Gaz, where are you, man? Oh right, here’s your tequila, salt and lemon.’
‘Nice one, Luke, man.’
‘Melinda, babe, no pink champagne, but they had some ordinary stuff and they put some Ribena in it, nice guy that barman.’
‘Thanks, Luke.’
‘Tamara, babe, JD straight up, sorry, babe, no umbrellas.’
‘Thanks, Luke.’
Am I painting a clear enough picture here? Yes, that’s right, they did call each other ‘man’, they did call women ‘babe’, they did drink Jack Daniels almost incessantly, and naturally, of course, they abbreviated ‘Jack Daniels’ to ‘JD’. I won’t malign the boys by saying that whenever they met, they highfived each other, but at times, I’d say it was touch and go.
‘Who’s wearing the timeshare trousers tonight?’ asked Brigit. Which put paid to the next five minutes as we held each other and laughed.
Finally, I managed to look at them.
‘It’s Luke,’ I said. I must have said it louder than I had intended because Luke looked up. He stared at us both, and then, while we watched in disbelief, he winked at us. Brigit and I looked blankly at each other for a moment, before exploding again. ‘The state of him,’ I whimpered, through tears of mirth.
‘Who does he think he is?’ Brigit guffawed.
Then, to my horror, I saw Luke detach himself from the others and, with the same loose-limbed insouciance with which he usually perambulated himself, made his way in our direction.
‘Oh God,’ I snorted, ‘he’s coming over.’
Before Brigit could answer Luke was standing in front of us. He was all smiles and eager, puppy-like friendliness.
‘It’s Rachel, right?’
I nodded because if I opened my mouth I would have laughed all over him. Vaguely I registered that I had to tilt my head back to see him. Something tickled inside me.
‘And Brigit?’
Brigit nodded mutely.
‘I’m Luke,’ he said and stuck out his hand. Dumbly, Brigit and I shook it.
‘I’ve seen the pair of you around a lot,’ he said. ‘You’re always laughing, it’s great!’
I searched his face for a trace of irony, but there didn’t seem to be any. Then again, I hadn’t taken any of them to be Einstein.
‘Come on over and meet the rest of the lads,’ he invited.
And although we didn’t want to, because we were wasting valuable time when we could have been trying to get off with some of the lovely men there, we traipsed over behind him.
Where we had to do the Irish person meets other Irish person abroad thing. Which involved first of all pretending that we hadn’t realized the other was Irish. Then we had to dis
cover that we had been brought up two minutes’ walk from each other, or that we’d gone to the same school, or that we’d met on our summer holidays in Tramore when we were eleven, or that our mothers were each other’s bridesmaids, or that his older brother had gone out with my older sister, or that when our dog got lost his family found it and brought it back, or that my father once drove into the back of his father’s car and they had a row on the Stillorgan dual carriageway and they were both due up in court for causing a public affray, or whatever. But our paths would have already crossed in some way, of this there would be no doubt.
Sure enough, within seconds, we found out that Joey and Brigit had met at Butlin’s nineteen years before, when they had come first and second respectively in the fancy-dress competition. Apparently the nine-year-old Joey had gone as Johnny Rotten and was so good that even Brigit agreed he had deserved first prize. (Brigit had wanted to go as Princess Leia, but she didn’t have a gold bikini or long hair. But in keeping with the Star Wars theme her mother made her go as Luke Skywalker instead. She wore one of her father’s white shirts and the bottom of her pyjamas and held a long white stick and when the judges came round she had to mumble ‘Can you feel the force.’ And they didn’t hear her the first time so she had to say it again. And one of the judges said, ‘The what, lovie? The fort?’ To this day, she says she hasn’t recovered from it. But at least she wasn’t as bad as Oisin, her older brother, who had to wear a black bucket on his head and breathe heavily and go as Darth Vader.)
A few seconds later, Gaz and I established a link. He said ‘You look familiar,’ and then proceeded to interrogate me. ‘What’s your second name? Walsh? Where do you live? Have you an older sister? Did she ever go to Wesley? Long hair? Huge pair of… er… eyes? Very friendly girl? What’s her name? Roisin? Imelda, something like that? Claire! That’s right! Yeah, I rode her one night at a party in Rathfarnham about ten years ago.’
A chorus of outrage erupted.
‘You can’t say that!’ we all exclaimed. ‘The cheek of him.’