by Paul Howard
‘But I think I might have bitten off more than I can chew with this union business. But don’t you come rushing home, Ross. No charging off to the airport at a hundred miles an hour. No, I’ll fight this battle myself. The gloves are off. I’m not giving in to the unions. Oh, no. Give them back their blasted machine and it’ll be breast-feeding stations and gluten-free bread for the world and his mother next. Better go and think through my next move. Oh, by the way, ring your mother, will you? You know she worries.’
We get shit-faced in Hooters one night, roysh, and me and Christian take a cab, we’re talking forty miles out of town, to go to this, like, lap-dancing club. And what a waste of focking money. The bird takes fifty bucks off you, tells you not to touch her and keeps asking you if you’ve got a credit cord. I turn to Christian and I go, ‘This is a bit too much like having a focking girlfriend.’
Fionn and Oisinn, roysh, they end up quitting the steamhouse, without even telling me and Christian, the sly fockers, and they get jobs at, like, Ocean Pines Golf Club, porking cors and shit. They’re actually amazing jobs as well, the bastards, the tips are supposed to be pretty amazing, though the uniforms are a bit skangery, we’re talking grey Farah slacks, purple jacket and a black pointed cap. One of the Belvo goys told them they looked like two gay usherettes heading out for the night, and Oisinn basically decked the goy.
Anyway, roysh, we’re in the gaff this day, we’re talking me and Christian, both on a day off, both totally broke, and I mean TOTALLY, sitting in watching ‘Judge Judy’, knocking back the last of the cans, when all of a sudden this, like, envelope drops through the door and it’s, like, a letter from Dick-features himself, full of the usual bullshit, roysh. It’s like, ‘Did you manage to see any of the Lions games over there?’ and ‘Hope you’re working hard and putting a bit of money aside for college next year,’ and I’m about to burn the focking thing, roysh, when all of a sudden – OH! MY! GOD! – there’s, like, a cheque in the envelope and I cannot believe how much it’s for, we’re talking five hundred focking bills here, and I’m so happy I could nearly sit down and actually finish reading his stupid letter. I said nearly.
The old man is a dickhead and everything, roysh, but the money comes bang on time because we’ve been basically living on Cheerios (stale) and Raisin Bran (disgusting), we’re talking breakfast, dinner and tea here. So me and Christian, roysh, we sit down and talk over how we should, like, spend the shekels. Should we head down to Foodrite and stock up on provisions, or should we go on the complete lash? Should we pay off the electricity bill before they discover that Oisinn has put, like, a magnet inside the meter, or should we go on the complete lash?
We go and get changed. Christian decides we need something pretty strong to get the ball rolling, roysh, so he disappears under the stairs and comes back out with a bottle of the old Mad Dog 20/20, which he said he was keeping for a special occasion. We knock it back, roysh, do a couple of lines of this new shit that Peasey got from his Detroit connection, hit the bank, cash the chicken’s neck and then mosey on down to Hooters.
The place is fairly packed, I have to say, for four o’clock in the afternoon and we’re already pretty buckled by the time we get there. It’s actually an amazing bor – we’re talking Bap City, Arkansas here – and the waitresses are, like, practically naked and they flirt their orses off with you.
I get chatting to this bird, roysh, this American bird, who I thought looked like Jenny McCarthy, until I got up close and realised she was more like focking Mick McCarthy, but I was actually getting on alroysh with her, I could tell she was seriously interested in me and, of course, I’m there giving her the old chat-up lines – ‘Let’s not do what happened here today an injustice by pretending there’s not an attraction between us’ – basically giving it loads, but then she asks me what I’m doing for the summer, roysh, and I’d usually make something up just to impress her, but I’m too shit-faced to think of anything, so I tell her I’m slaving away in the steamhouse and she immediately loses interest. She goes, ‘I thought you were in IT or something,’ and walks away, giving me this filthy look.
I fock off and look for Christian. It takes me, like, half-an-hour to find him, roysh, and when I do he’s sitting up at the bor with Sophie and Chloë, as in Sophie and Chloë from home. They’re in Montauk for the summer, but I had heard a rumour they were coming down here for a holiday. The last thing we want, though, is a couple of Klingons from home cramping our style for a couple of weeks. We’ve both scored both of them back home, loads of times as well, and there’s, I don’t know, a billion other birds in the States who we haven’t been with. I’m over the other side of the bor, roysh, trying to get Christian’s attention without the birds seeing me, but he’s telling Sophie that the big mistake Grand Moff Tarkin made in the Battle of Yavin was deploying so many TIE fighters, whose surgical strike potential against ground and deep-space targets was rendered irrelevant by their basic lack of speed and poor manoeuvrability and that if Tarkin was half the military strategist that the Emperor thought he was, he’d have used more TIE interceptors, which you girls will, of course, recognise from their distinctive dagger-shaped solar panels. The birds are just looking at him blankly, going, ‘Cool.’
I can’t get the focker’s attention so I have to go over, roysh, and Sophie and Chloë both go, ‘OH! MY! GOD!’ seven or eight times and air-kiss me and then they go, ‘OH! MY! GOD!’ a few more times. And even though I’m cracking on to be happy to see them as well, I’m pretty pissed off here, roysh, because I’m going to have to get them a drink. I slap a twenty and my fake ID on the bor, roysh, and get them in – two bottles of Ken for me and Christian and vodka and Diet 7-ups for the birds – and Sophie storts bitching about some girl who was on the organising committee for the Foxrock pre-debs with her and used to be SO nice but has such an attitude problem these days and it’s all since she got the jeep.
Chloë takes a Marlboro Light out of the box and she goes, ‘Tell me about it. Her phone went off once in the middle of German. Me and Ultan were both like, duuhhh,’ and Sophie goes, ‘I know, it’s like, ahhhh,’ and Chloë goes, ‘Oh, TOTALLY.’ Of course I’m looking at Christian and eyeing the door, but he doesn’t cop it, he asks Chloë who Ultan is and she goes, ‘Oh my God, he is SUCH a good friend of mine. He’s actually gay,’ and I don’t know why I say this, roysh, probably because she’s bugging the shit out of me at this stage, I go, ‘What the fock has that got to do with anything?’ and Chloë stops, like, fumbling around in her jacket for her lighter and she goes, ‘Sorry, does that make you uncomfortable, Ross, talking about people who are gay?’ and I’m there, ‘No, I just don’t see what him being gay has to do with the story. It’s like if you said, you know, “He’s a really good friend of mine. He’s actually got red hair.” I mean, what does it have to do with the story? That’s all I’m saying.’ Chloë stares at me for ages, roysh, not saying anything, then she goes, ‘Oh my God, you are SO homophobic,’ and she finally finds her lighter in the pocket of her jacket.
Christian gets a round of drinks in then and Sophie asks me whether I’ve heard from Sorcha and she’s basically being a bitch to me. I’m there, ‘Why would I have heard from her?’ and she goes, ‘We all got postcrods from her. She’s having an amazing time. Cillian’s trying to get her to do the bridge climb,’ and Chloë goes, ‘Oh yeah, and they went out for dinner in Dorling Harbour. She said it was SO romantic,’ and I’m there going, ‘Do I look as though I give a shit?’ and the two of them just, like, smile at each other, all delighted with themselves.
Anyway, roysh, four or five pints later, the old beer goggles are on and basically Sophie and Chloë are the best-looking birds we’ve ever seen in our lives, and it’s pretty obvious that Christian’s going to end up being with Sophie and I’m going to end up scoring Chloë, who, I think I mentioned earlier, actually looks a bit like Heidi Klum. Especially after what I’ve drunk.
So ten o’clock, roysh, Christian offers the birds a lift back to their hotel an
d I pull him aside and I’m like, ‘We can’t focking drive in this state and – Hello? – we don’t have a cor.’ He goes, ‘No, but we know where we can get one,’ and he tells the birds we’ll be back in a minute, roysh, and we ended up catching a cab up to Ocean Pines Golf Club, bang on time as it happens because Fionn is about to pork this big, fock-off, eight-litre Viper.
This cor, roysh, is an animal and we’re talking TOTALLY here. I walk up to Fionn and I’m there, ‘We’re taking this beast for a little joyride,’ and Fionn’s like, ‘No focking way, man,’ and I look at him and I go, ‘You either let us take this, or I break every pane of glass in your face.’ He goes, ‘There is no focking way you are driving this cor out of here, Ross,’ but then I offer him a little persuader, roysh – we’re talking a hundred bucks here – and he says alroysh, we can go for a spin, roysh, but only if he’s doing the driving. I’m there, ‘Hey, Kool plus guests.’
So the next thing, roysh, we’ve picked the birds up and after they’ve, like, air-kissed Fionn for, like, twenty minutes – ‘OH! MY! GOD! How oooor you?’ – we’re pegging it down Ocean Highway, burning the orse out of the thing, me and Buddy Holly in the front, Christian and the two birds in the back, heading back to their hotel for a night of passion, knowing we’re guaranteed our bit. We’ll get Fionn to drop us off, then tell him to fock off.
But then all of a sudden, roysh, we hear this, like, siren and the Feds are behind us, telling us through this, like, megaphone to pull over and, of course, Fionn is shitting it because he knows he’s going to end up, like, losing his job over this. For about ten seconds, roysh, he actually considers trying to outrun them, but then Sophie says something about Rodney King, and at first I think she’s asking me to put on a CD, but Fionn goes, ‘Shit, you’re roysh,’ and pulls into the hord shoulder.
Sophie goes, ‘OH! MY! GOD! If I get deported my parents are SO going to go majorly ballistic.’ Two cops get out. We are totally cacking it. One of them walks up to the driver’s window, roysh, while the other one storts looking the cor over. The cop’s like, ‘Do you know what speed you were doing?’ and Fionn goes, ‘I’m going to guess here and say forty.’ The cop goes, ‘Are you Irish?’ and Fionn’s there, ‘Yeeaahhh,’ like this is a good thing, but the cop goes, ‘So was my fawtha, so I know goddamn blarney when I hear it. You were going ninety-frickin’-five miles an hour. In a forty zone.’ He goes, ‘Now, let me see your identification.’
And Christian, roysh, he leans forward and waves his hand in the cop’s face and goes, ‘You don’t need to see his identification.’ I’m thinking, We’re going to end up in focking Sing Sing here. The cop goes, ‘What?’ Christian waves his hand again and goes, ‘These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.’ The cop goes, ‘You, out of the cor. Now!’ but Christian goes, ‘Move along.’ The cop reefs open the door, roysh, and he’s about to drag Christian out. The birds are, like, screaming their heads off, but then the next thing, the cop, he gets this, like, message on the radio, roysh, and it’s like, ‘Armed robbery in progress on Hudson and Atlantic. All units proceed,’ and him and the other cop, they don’t say anything else to us, they just go, ‘Hoooly shit!’ and peg it back to their cor, and they’re gone. Christian’s there, ‘They must have been Tridarians.’
Fionn tells us that that is it, that is SO it, he’s bringing the cor back to the golf club roysh now and he doesn’t give a fock how we get back to the hotel with the birds and, not wanting to piss him off any more than he already is, I tell him it’s alroysh, if he drops us off at his work, we’ll phone a cab from reception.
We turn off into the golf club, roysh, which is up this big long driveway. Sophie’s telling Chloë that dieting and exercise won’t get rid of cellulite on their own and that Kylie – I presume she means Minogue – swears by dry skin-brushing, hot water with lemon in it and salt baths, and Chloë says she knows, but she also SO has to stop drinking water with her meals because it just, like, bloats the food in your stomach and Sophie goes, ‘I know, it’s like, aaahhhh.’
Oisinn is standing in front of the clubhouse, looking pretty focked-off. He’s there, ‘Fock it, goys, the dude who owns the cor, he came back for it, his wife’s gone into focking labour. Kept telling me to fetch his goddamn cor fast. I tried to stall him, but he knew something was up. I told him it was stolen. He’s gone to see the focking manager.’ Fionn goes, ‘We are SO fired.’
But Oisinn, roysh, he goes, ‘Well … maybe not. I’ve an idea,’ and of course Fionn goes, ‘Shoot.’ Oisinn’s like, ‘We’ll just tell the manager that the goy’s a drug trafficker. And we were just trying to buy some time until the Feds arrived.’ Doesn’t sound very convincing to me. Fionn goes, ‘He’s never going to buy that.’
But Oisinn, roysh, fair focks to him, he pulls out this massive bag of, like, green powder, roysh – it looks suspiciously like the stuff that Peasey had stashed in our cistern – and he opens up the dash and throws it in and then goes, ‘OH! MY! GOD! look what I found when I went to look for a cloth to wipe the inside of the windscreen … goys, call 911.’
When we arrived here first, roysh, there were, like, eight goys staying in our gaff, but of course as the summer wears on, roysh, more and more stort arriving, goys who came over after sitting the repeats, friends of friends who were focked out of other gaffs for portying too hord, blah blah blah. Suddenly, roysh, we ended up with, like fifteen goys in the gaff, or sixteen if you count Blair, which we never really do because he’s always so out of it, we’re talking a total pisshead here. Out of the four weeks he’s been here, roysh, I’d say he’s spent, like, three of them lying unconscious on the floor of the kitchen, which is how he got the nickname Lino Blair.
Come home from work the other night anyway, stinking of fish as per usual, and I go to grab a beer, but the goy’s lying on the floor in front of the fridge and I can’t get the door open without whacking it off his head. So I open the door, roysh, whacking it off his head, and he doesn’t even wake up, no movement out of him at all. But, roysh, the second he hears the ring-pull going, he’s like, ‘Ross, you stole my place on the Leinster Schools team two years ago. You steal one of my cans and I’m beating the shit out of you,’ and I’m basically there, ‘Chill out, Clongowes boy. This is my beer I’m drinking,’ and he’s so lucky he’s lying on the ground because if he wasn’t, I’d deck the focker.
Anyway, roysh, I’m far too busy for his shit because I’ve got this bird, Jenni with an i, coming round, second year B&L in UCD, chambermaiding in some focking hotel or other for the summer, we’re talking pure quality here, a little bit like Jessica Alba except better looking, if that’s possible. She’s also doing waitressing three nights a week in Secrets, roysh, which is where me and the goys first saw her and, of course, they’re all totally bulling that I was the one who actually ended up getting in there.
Went out for a drink with her the night before last, roysh, then made the mistake of inviting her round to the gaff tonight to grab a bite to eat, listen to some sounds, totally forgetting that our gaff is a complete shithole, we’re talking empty beer cans, used johnnies, cigarette butts and squashed mince-pies strewn all over the shop and a big pool of beer, we’re talking an inch thick here, covering the whole floor of the kitchen. But of course by the time I remembered this I’d already asked her round, roysh, and it was far too late to try to clean the gaff up.
I decide to go for the old damage limitation instead, roysh. I end up borrowing a brush from work and I sweep most of the, like, debris, out of the sitting room, my plan being to try to contain her to just the one room while hoping against hope that she doesn’t notice the smell. Of course, the first thing she says when I open the door and show her in is, ‘Oh my God, what is that smell?’ and – quick thinking, roysh – I go, ‘Oh, it’s just something I was cooking,’ and she looks at me sort of, like, searchingly, if that’s the roysh word, probably wondering whether I’m some kind of Jeffrey Dahmer freak.
She storts to relax, though, when I lash on the old Pretty
Woman tape, me slyly fast-forwarding it to the end of ‘Real Wild Child’ and then, halfway through ‘Fallen’, giving her the old, ‘I’ve never felt so close to anyone in my life,’ bullshit as we both try to get comfortable on the futon. She says OH! MY! GOD! that song is, like, SO one of her favourite songs of all time, but progress is slow, roysh, and by the end of ‘Show Me Your Soul’, we’re still far from naked.
Basically, it turns out, roysh, that she has a boyfriend back home, some knob called Ryan, who’s, like, second year Social Science in UCD and who, she tells me, is working in Cape Cod for the summer, as if I actually give a shit. She ends up boring the ear off me for, like, half the night about this dickhead, it’s like, ‘Oooh, he’s such a good sailor, even I feel safe on the water with him and I can’t swim,’ and it’s, ‘Oooh, he’s SO romantic, you should have seen what he did for my eighteenth,’ which is when I cop it, roysh, she’s actually trying to convince herself that she’s not going to do the dirt on him, but at the same time the bird wants me bad. The head’s saying No, but the body’s saying Go.
So there I am, roysh, basically changing my approach all of a sudden, going, ‘What’s he doing in Cape Cod, this Richard tosser?’ and she goes, ‘You mean Ryan? He’s working. His best friend’s uncle owns, like, a country club.’ I raise my eyebrows and I go, ‘And you’re in Ocean City?’ She’s there, ‘We just decided to take a break from each other. For, like, the summer. We’re going to New York afterwards for a holiday. Oh my God, I am SO looking forward to seeing him again.’
I’m like, ‘And do you think he’s being faithful?’ and she goes, ‘Of course he is,’ though she doesn’t sound, like, convinced. She changes the subject, storts asking me about my exes, some of whom she actually knows. Then we stort having this whole discussion about, like, relationships and love and shit. And that’s when I decide to make my move. It’s like rugby. You see a space and you exploit it. I’m like, ‘Do you love Richard?’ and she’s there, ‘Ryan?’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, whatever,’ and she hums and haws for ages, roysh, blabbing on about how you can never really know whether someone is, like, the roysh person for you, and how she SO knows that now, especially after what happened with Andrew – whoever the fock he is – and at the end of all this babbling, roysh, she goes, ‘I suppose I do love him, but I’m not in love with him, if you know what I mean.’