The Orange Mocha-Chip Frappuccino Years

by Paul Howard

  After the Jackie Charlton misunderstanding, roysh, Decker tries to smooth things over by chatting in general about the holiday, ‘For once in me bleedin’ life, I’m glad we’re after switching over to the euro, because the last time we was here, me and the wife spent the two weeks trying to get used to the Jaysusing money.’ We all nod.

  Eddie goes, ‘Have yizhad de breakfast yet, lads?’ I tell him I have. He goes, ‘Not de same as at home, is it? De sausages are dem bleedin’ hot dog tings. And de bacon? Jaysus, would ye go on ourra dat!’ Decker goes, ‘Tell dem what happened de furst day we came down but,’ and Eddie goes, ‘Ah Jaysus, yeah, I didn’t know ye had to ask for de fry, so I’m there looking around de buffet – if dat’s de right wurd – and it’s all cheeses and fookin omelettes and potatoes. I says to de waiter fella – Manuel I call him, for de craic – I says to him, ‘Potatoes? Dat’s not breakfast, dat’s a fookin dinner. Get inta dat fookin kitchen and fix us a fry-up dis minute.’ Not de same but. Even de butter’s too salty.’

  Christian notices this book that Decker’s been reading out in the sun. It’s, like, The General. Or the Genoddle, as Decker calls him. ‘Very good buke dat. Tell ye something but, he was a fookin dort burd, dat fella. Same as yer udder fella, Gilligan. A dorty-lookin’ dort burd. Scumbags is all dee are. Now I’ll tell ye sometin for nuttin, meself and Eddie there are very good friends with de Monk. He’s a personal friend of mine. And a nicer fella ye couldn’t meet. Very down to earth …’ Out of the corner of my eye, roysh, I can see Fionn getting ready to say something, and I’m not quick enough to stop him. He goes, ‘He’s a focking taxi driver!’ Decker’s like, ‘Sorry, bud?’ And Fionn goes, ‘The goy drives a focking taxi for a living.’ Eddie turns to me and he’s like, ‘Your mate’s bang out of order, bud.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, Fionn. Kool and the Gang, my man. Kool and the Gang.’ But Fionn goes, ‘Down to earth? He’s hardly focking Stephen’s Green Club material, is he?’ And then it’s like, WHACK! Eddie decks him.

  And even though I help Christian pick him up, roysh, and, like, Sellotape his glasses back together again, I’m basically happy that I’ve got him back. At least I think I have. The next thing I know, Maria and Rosa are in the bor and they’re, like, all over him, hugging him and making sure he’s alroysh and, like, screaming at me in Spanish. I get the gist of it. Bastard is pretty much the same in, like, any language. I’m there, ‘I didn’t hit him.’ They’re there, ‘Bastardo! Bastardo!’ And he leaves with an arm around each of their shoulders.

  Where are they taking him, I wonder. Their room?

  It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, roysh, and I’m chatting up this absolutely cracking German bird – her name’s, like, Mildred – and she’s in the pool, roysh, swimming and whatever, and I’m sitting on the side with my feet in the water, basically listening to her bullshitting on about her plans to go Inter-railing for a year, while at the same time – and this is probably going to sound SO sleazy – trying to look down her bikini top. She’s there, ‘There is much in Europe I like to see. I am thinking I like to see Amsterdam and I like to see the Matterhorn and I like to see Prague …’ and I’m going, ‘Come over here and relax, Mildred. You’ll get, em, cramp if you swim too long,’ and she’s like, ‘I am so sorry, Ross. I am so excited when I start the talking about the Deutsche Bahn, yah?’ She’s actually a bit of a sap, roysh, and the goys have nicknamed her, ‘Please To Help Me With My Rucksack?’ but there’s no denying she’s a ringer for Angelina Jolie.

  Anyway, roysh, there I am, sitting on the edge of the pool, basically splashing her with water and it’s, like, a major turn-on, and I’m just wondering whether she can see my stiffy in these shorts, roysh, when all of a sudden Oisinn comes up behind me and, like, pushes me into the pool, the fat bastard. Now I can’t swim, roysh. I didn’t tell Mildred this. I told her I was a pretty strong swimmer. And Oisinn, roysh, I presume he thought I was as well, at least I hope he did. So he dumps me in the water, roysh, we’re talking the deep end here, and I sort of, like, flap my arms in the air for about a minute, totally freaking the shit, and then I sink straight to the bottom.

  And in that moment, roysh, I thought that was it. My whole life, like, flashes in front of my eyes and shit. And weird stuff. I’m ten years old again, roysh, and I’m in the junior school and JP and Simon find out that I live in Sallynoggin – wasn’t even Sallynoggin, it was Glenageary really – and they put it all over the school and JP and this gang of goys from sixth class stuff my head down the toilet next to the stationery stores and, like, flush it.

  Then I’m twelve, roysh, and I’m in Irish college in Galway and it’s half an hour after the céili’s ended and I’m standing with my back to a gatepost and I’m getting my first snog off this bird called Martina from Boyle, County Roscommon, which I think might have been her full name because that’s how she always introduced herself, and I’m there wearing the face off her, half my mind wondering what I’m supposed to do with my tongue, the other half wondering whether Oisinn and the rest of the goys will have horsed all the home-made bread by the time I get back to the house, then her bean an tí opens the front door and gives me daggers and I peg it back to the gaff before the ten o’clock curfew.

  Then I’m fourteen, roysh, and I’m having my first drink, me and Christian skulling a bottle of his old man’s Sandeman port, then feeling dizzy, then puking our rings up in the downstairs jacks, both of us on our knees borfing into the same bowl, then falling asleep on the floor of the study and waking up in the spare room. Christian’s old pair had carried us up to bed and they never said anything to my old man, in fact they never, like, mentioned it again.

  Then I’m sixteen, roysh, and I’m meeting Sorcha for the first time at a porty in Fionn’s gaff – he was basically going out with her cousin – and she was wearing a pink Ralph with the collar up, light blue jeans, which I think were Levi’s, and Dubes, and she looked amazing, roysh, and we spent the whole night talking about everything – how I was hoping to make the Senior Cup team, how I hated my old pair, how I seriously needed grinds if I was going to do Honours economics for the Leaving – and we slept together in Fionn’s sister’s bed, roysh, and she told me she’d never done it before and I never told her that I hadn’t either, and five minutes later, roysh, when it was all over, she storted crying and saying she was such a fool to do what she’d just done because I would never respect her now and I told her she was wrong, I was like, ‘You are SO wrong.’ Then I think of her crying on a few other occasions and me basically not giving a shit.

  And then I’m nineteen and me and Christian’s old dear are on the bathroom floor and … slap … SLAP … SLAPSLAPSLAP … Oisinn’s slapping my face and he’s shouting, ‘WAKE UP! WAKE UP, YOU BASTARD!’ and Fionn’s pressing my chest and Christian’s shouting, ‘DON’T DIE. DON’T YOU FOCKING DIE.’ And I can feel the cold, hard tiles against my back and I can hear Mildred sort of, like, borking orders, really calmly, and I can smell chlorine and I can taste vom in my mouth, and my stomach feels like it’s about to burst, and I open my eyes just as Oisinn’s about to give me mouth-to-mouth and I’m like, ‘Don’t even think about it, lover boy.’ And all the goys break their holes laughing, roysh – relief, I suppose – and I roll onto my side and spend five minutes coughing and puking my ring up.

  Oisinn goes, ‘Fock it, Ross. Thought we’d lost you there.’ And Mildred, roysh, she goes, ‘But Ross, you told me that you are hoping to make it onto the Ireland swimming team for the Olympics.’ And listening to her say it, roysh, I just break my shite laughing in her face and she goes, ‘To tell lies is not so good, I am thinking,’ and she storms off in a snot, and me and the goys basically collapse in laughter again.

  JP and Oisinn are having a row out on the balcony, roysh. Oisinn’s there going, ‘What you did was disgusting. There’s no other word for it. You’re so obsessed with knackers that you’ve become one yourself.’ And JP goes, ‘Cop on, Oisinn. Everyone pisses in the bidet.’

  By the second week of the
holiday, roysh, we’re all basically suffering from, like, malnutrition, so we all decide to head out for a meal in this, like, Indian, we’re talking the Playa Tandoori or something, for the biggest feed you’ve ever seen. So there we are, roysh, lashing into the poppadoms and knocking back pints of Ken, trying to decide what we’re going to have, and eventually, roysh, the goy comes to take our order and I go for the tandoori chicken tikka to stort and the chicken varutha curry for the main course. Fionn goes for the palak patta chat and the konkan seafood masala, obviously because they’re the most difficult to pronounce, the focking show-off. Christian goes for the king prawns til tinka and the lamb korma, JP has no storter and the chicken tikka masala, and Oisinn orders the patrani machhi, the kadak seekh kebab, the masala dosa, two mixed tandoori platters, the beef chilli coconut fry, the chicken jalfreizi and the madras prawn thoku, all of which he will eat.

  The food storts coming, roysh, and all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I notice this, like, family arrive in, we’re talking mum, dad, son and cracking daughter, we’re talking Nelly Furtado’s twin sister here, pretty, young, sixteen, seventeen, maybe eighteen, definitely borderline legal. And she cops me, roysh, I know she does, because I give her this, like, long look, roysh, and she looks straight back and when she sits down at the table, roysh, it’s in a seat facing me.

  Oisinn’s lashing through his food, roysh, and he turns around to Fionn and he goes, ‘This madras prawn thing I ordered,’ and Fionn’s like, ‘What about it?’ and Oisinn goes, ‘Isn’t madra the Irish word for dog?’ Fionn’s like, ‘Don’t eat it if it’s bothering you. You’ve ordered pretty much everything else on the menu. I can’t see you starving,’ and Oisinn’s just there, ‘Remind me, who was it that won the UCD Iron Stomach competition three years in a row?’

  And this bird, roysh, she’s still giving me the mince pies and you have to feel sorry for her, being at that difficult age where her old pair can’t accept that she’s not a little girl anymore and she wants to hang out with, like, lads, not her knobhead parents. And they do look like knobs, all serious and everything. The poor girl basically can’t take her eyes off me, roysh, so I give her a little smile and she gets a beamer and looks away.

  JP is knocking back his sixth pint and saying we probably should take it easy tonight what with the final of the water polo competition tomorrow. Our team, The D4s – Dumb, Ditsy and Dependent on Daddy – are supposed to be playing The Mun – or the Shower from the Towers, as Fionn calls them – at midday in the hotel pool, but right now the match is far from our thoughts. The food and the pints are going down well.

  The bird, roysh, she’s looking over again and she smiles back at me and then goes all shy again, roysh, and her old man has copped what’s going on because he turns around in his seat and I just pretend to be really interested in some shite that JP’s spouting now about Paddy and Tony, two friends he’s made from Finglas. He says they’ve invited him to some club or other they go to on the first Tuesday of every month, basically family allowance day, when there are loads of loose single mothers out looking for a man. Mickey Tuesday, the lads call it. JP goes, ‘I told them I’d certainly take the idea off-line. Push it out of an airplane, see if its parachute’s good.’

  The bird, roysh, I can feel her eyes on me again and when I look over at her this time, I blow her a kiss, roysh, but – FOCK – her old dear notices and the next thing she’s looking at the daughter and then back at me and then at the daughter again and then she storts giving out shite to her. The old man, roysh, I watch him take his napkin off his lap and throw it down on the table really, like, angrily. Then he gets up, roysh, and comes over to our table. The goys, roysh, they hadn’t copped what was going on – and I wasn’t going to tell them in case they wanted in on the action – and they’re all, like, totally mystified when the old man storts giving out yords to me. He’s like, ‘Would you mind not staring at my daughter like that. You’re making her uncomfortable,’ and I’m just there, ‘Really? She doesn’t seem uncomfortable to me,’ and he goes, ‘Keep your eyes away from our table or I’m going to call the manager.’

  And when he focks off, roysh, we all break our shites laughing and it’s, like, high-fives all round.

  The D4s were soundly beaten in the final of the water polo competition. We were all too hungover to keep scores, but Andy – our asshole of a tour rep – said it was a record defeat.

  It’s two o’clock in the afternoon and there’s this, like, banging on our door and all this shouting in Spanish outside, and I presume it’s the hotel security guard, wanting to know who focked a box of Frosties off our balcony into the swimming pool a few minutes ago. I don’t even know why I did it. I’ve had a few scoops but I’m not, like, ossified or anything. Probably just boredom. I answer the door, roysh, and the goy’s there, like, screaming his head off and, like, pointing at me. He’s got a sort of, like, truncheon thing hanging from his belt, which he keeps pointing to as well. I’m just like, ‘No focking comprende.’ And then, roysh, I’m pretty proud of this because it came to me, like, out of the blue, I just go, ‘They’re grRREAT!’ and slam the door in his face.

  It probably isn’t the end of the matter, but then again, roysh, I think the management have pretty much given up on us and are, like, counting the days until we basically leave. Looking around the gaff, you can’t really blame the maids for refusing to clean the place. We’ve basically wrecked the apartment. There’s, like, beer all over the floor, the toilet’s blocked, thanks mainly to the chef at Salmonella City, and the bed sheets look like they’ve been through a focking dirty protest. It’s like being back in Ocean City on a J1er. I’m like, ‘This place looks like a bomb’s hit it.’ And Christian goes, ‘If a bomb hit this place it’d cause thousands of pounds worth of improvements.’He can be a funny bastard, Christian.

  I don’t even know how the place got into this state. Me and Christian are basically the only ones who are ever here. Fionn’s basically moved in with the two Spanish birds. He sleeps there every night and comes back in the morning to get, like, clothes for the day. There’s only his suitcase left here now. When he comes in, roysh, he just, like, looks around the place as though it, like, disgusts him. I’ll say this for the focker, though, he’s looking well. Tanned, well-fed, the whole lot. The two birds are probably cooking for him as well as everything else. No all-you-can-eat-for-seven-euro shit-holes for him. I’d probably have a good tan myself, but I’ve had the serious Leon Trotskys for a week now, and the colour is running out of my face quicker than I can get it in. I’ve storted, like, calling Fionn ‘Jack Duckworth’ because of the sticky tape holding his glasses together, but then he just storts singing, ‘Whenever, wherever, we’re meant to be together …’ I made the mistake of telling him that Rosa looks like Shakira. On his way out, he always goes, ‘Buenos noches,’ which probably means loser or something.

  As for Oisinn and JP, they’ve pretty much moved out as well and are basically sleeping their way around the resort in this, like, competition they’re having. Instead of the usual craic – seeing who can score more birds – the challenge is to get your bit in as many different hotels and apartment blocks as you can. They’ve got this, like, chart on the wall for keeping score. Beside every, like, entry, roysh, there’s the name of a bird, when supplied, and a little comment:

  JP is obviously a bit pickier than Oisinn but, as Oisinn always says, it’s quantity that counts, not quality. Five nights left and there’s everything to play for still. Christian’s, like, reading the chart over my shoulder. He’s like, ‘Holy shit, they move through this place any faster and they’re going to have to start heading down the coast, maybe down to Maspolomas.’ I’m like, ‘They’ll be home soon to fill in last night’s results.’

  Christian picks up on the jealousy in my voice. He goes, ‘So what happened to you? You were in the game for a couple of nights and then you, like, dropped out.’ I’m like, ‘Well, it’s not really me, is it?’ He hands me a beer and goes, ‘Don’t give me
that shit, Ross. It’s TOTALLY you. You’d the Hotel Capri and the Playa del Sol apartments on the scoreboard before the rest of us had the tops off our suntan lotion. You were like a dog out of the traps.’ I’m like, ‘I know.’ He goes, ‘So, what happened?’ I take a long slug out of the can. I’m like, ‘Christian, this is something I don’t want you to tell the goys, roysh?’ He goes, ‘I’m the best friend you’ve got, young Skywalker.’ I’m like, ‘You remember that bird I pulled in the Hawaiian Tosca that night?’ He goes, ‘The one with the dreadlocks?’ I’m like, ‘No, the second night. The one with the big hoopy earrings.’ He goes, ‘What about her?’ I’m like, ‘Well, we went back to her apartment, roysh, in Playa del Sol and … well, this is going to sound weird, roysh, but it felt, I don’t know, wrong or something.’ He goes, ‘Wrong?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. For the first time in my entire life, I couldn’t … well, you know …’ He nods. He’s like, ‘I know alroysh. Been there. I was that Stormtrooper.’ I’m like, ‘Well, she basically threw me out of the apartment.’ He’s like, ‘Just because you couldn’t get a John Stalker?’ I’m there, ‘It wasn’t that. I, em … I let another girl’s name slip.’ He goes, ‘Sorcha?’ I nod. He’s like, ‘While you were …’ I’m like, ‘No, no. It was in my sleep. I was saying her name in my sleep apparently. Don’t know why, she wasn’t even in my focking dream.’