Although we were out of toilet paper—which also turned out to be my fault.
3
The first time I got drunk I was thirteen years old. I was at my sister’s sweet sixteen party and someone left the bar unattended. I filled a brandy snifter with a mixture of rum, vodka, Jack Daniel’s, Mountain Dew, and Cointreau and went to town. A videotape that my uncle recorded clearly documents the fact that I subsequently stripped naked, punched our neighbor’s dog, and threw up in the swimming pool. While I have no memory of any of these events, the visual evidence is incontrovertible. I was thoroughly punished and totally embarrassed, although, to this day, I remain quite proud that I never actually passed out (and that I dropped a German shepherd with one shot).
After that trial by fire, I pretty much kept a lid on my taste for the grain and the grape. I enjoyed the occasional descent into Dionysus’s lair, but nothing too extreme. A beer here, some tequila there. The only time I ever shot an eighty-two on the golf course, I celebrated by downing a half dozen shots of Jägermeister. I woke up in a sand trap with a five iron twisted around my waist like a belt. Apparently, unlike my thirteen-year-old self, the twenty-two-year-old version of me had developed the ability to pass out.
My wife was not a fan of drinking. Or, to be more specific, she was not a fan of being drunk. She loved to blather on about red wine and its nose, legs, body, bouquet, thighs, thorax, and hints of persimmon. But if you ever actually tried to drink more than one glass of the stuff, she’d glare at you like you just farted in the potato salad.
So for the eight years during which I had been married, I had been operating on a pretty steady diet of fruit juice, sparkling mineral water, and tiny sips of pinot noir hastily expectorated into pewter bowls.
Upon hearing the news that my weepy wife wanted a divorce, however, I was suddenly overcome by a massive thirst for the great taste of rum, vodka, Jack Daniel’s, Mountain Dew, and Cointreau. It’s just as well that I didn’t have an open bar nearby because this time it might not have been the neighbor’s dog who got punched.
But I kept my base urges in check. I was totally sober while my wife enumerated my infinite failings. I was clearheaded while she packed her bags and stormed out of the house. I was even-keeled when the lawyer she had already hired called me the next day to begin divorce proceedings. But on the day after that, when I found out that she had already moved in with some guy named David, I went out and got hammered.
There are lots of different kinds of hammered. There’s happy hammered, wistful hammered, angry hammered, horny hammered—but the worst kind of hammered is heartbroken hammered. I achieved that sorry state at a bar in midtown Manhattan whose name is best left unmentioned due to legal restraints and general good taste.
I was walking to my office around 10:00 am when I received the following text message: “Cming 4 jwlry 2mrw. Dnt B thr. Lvng w David. L8r 4 U.” At first I thought that my cell phone had been hacked by a retard. Then I realized that the message was from my wife and, with the help of a nearby eight-year-old, I was able to break the code. For those of you whose minds haven’t been jellified by modernity, allow me to translate: “Coming for jewelry tomorrow. Don’t be there. Moved in with David. Later for you.”
By 10:03 I was in the only open bar I could find, exhorting the barman to fill a pilsner glass with bourbon. By 10:26 I was on my third glass. By 10:34 I was shattering all three empty pilsner glasses against the wall. By 10:35 I was being punched in the face by said barman.
At around 10:50, as I was applying ice to my cheek and singing “The Gypsy Rover” with Kevin (the barman), I came to the conclusion that heartbroken hammered just wasn’t working out for me. I still realized the utter necessity of getting drunk and staying drunk, but I knew that there had to be a healthier, safer, and more amusing way of going about it.
I needed to shock my heart back to where it used to be. Not where it used to be when I was being picked at and hemmed in by my wife. Not where it used to be when I was sweating over assignments or grinding out exams. I wanted—no, I needed—to get back that feeling I had when I was thirteen just after I punched the dog, and just before I lost my memory. I had to find a way to have some fun again. And that’s when I first hatched the idea of checking out of my life for a whole year and going in search of a better one. And I decided to kick off my year of living stupidly by getting happy hammered in Ireland.
4
When I floated the idea of an alcohol-fueled Hibernian holiday around town, many of my friends wanted a piece of the action. But they’re all married so one by one they each had to admit that they couldn’t come along for the ride. Not one of them blamed his wife—but it was clear what was going on. They all looked like their moms had just told them they couldn’t go skateboarding in the rain.
But my “mom” was shacking up with some guy named David in Williamsburg. So I could skateboard wherever the hell I wanted to. Besides, I didn’t really want anyone to come along on this trip anyway.
Pretty much my entire life I have had someone tagging along with me. First it was my parents, then it was roommates in college, then it was girlfriends, then it was my wife. The only time I was ever actually alone was in the bathroom—which might explain why my wife was always complaining that I took so damn long in the bathroom.
In one fell swoop I went from never alone to way too alone. Wandering around my house wondering what she was doing and why she was doing it started eating away at my insides. I needed to get out of the rut I was in, because everything reminded me of her. Going to work, buying oranges, filling up the gas tank—it was all part of my life’s routine and my life’s routine was inexorably tied up with her. And trudging through it all without her made being without her hurt even more.
That’s why just taking off seemed to make so much sense to me. It wasn’t going to be just another two-week vacation. This was going to be the start of an entire year of vacation. Actually, it wasn’t even going to be vacation. I was going to hire myself to spend a year entertaining myself. Kind of like when that English couple hired Mary Poppins to take care of their kids, only this time I was Mary Poppins. I was also the kids. And I guess that, technically, I was also the English couple. The point is: I decided to take a year to figure out what the hell had gone wrong with my life. I was going to break the cycle of monotony, self-recrimination, and sorrow—and the first step was to get delightfully wasted on the Emerald Isle.
I gave notice at my office. The fact that no one there really wanted to know why or bothered to try and convince me to stay further reinforced the rightness of what I was doing. It also made me feel much less guilty about stealing all those office supplies.
I bought a one-way ticket to Dublin, double-checked to make sure that my passport was still valid, packed a bag, and vowed not to return until I was convinced that my life didn’t suck anymore. Then I hailed a taxi and headed to JFK. Not surprisingly, the ride took two hours in a smelly cab with an angry driver cursing in Russian the whole time. I swear—I’m not going anywhere ever again until they build a new airport much closer to Manhattan.
5
So now I’m in Ireland and Giovanna is staring at me with her great green eyes and plump Jolie lips and I’m wishing she would kiss me. I’m also wishing that I’d eaten something in the past ten hours—a piece of bread—anything. I’m definitely hammered but it’s a happy hammered with a touch of wistfulness about it and maybe a tinge of heartbreak but nothing I can’t handle.
This sensation of being blissfully blitzed is what my friend Colin refers to as “dancing with molasses.” He equates drinking to excess with entering a time machine. Not one in which you travel to the past or the future, but a time machine that alters our perception of time and makes the present move incredibly slowly.
When you’re the “right” kind of plastered, your mind and body feel like they’re wrapped up in gauze—a nice, happy gauze; not a scary mummy gauze. It’s almost like swimming in a pool filled with melted cheese, or getting a con
cussion without first having to suffer the painful blow to the head.
Reaching toward the bar to pick up your pint can take up to forty-five minutes. The flight time of a dart that you just hurled at the bull’s-eye can be anywhere between one and four hours, depending on the force you applied. Shouting out a boozy hello to a beautiful girl standing underneath the “If you’re lucky enough to be Irish, you’re lucky enough” sign can last for days. According to Colin, if you get drunk enough in the right environment, under the right circumstances you can, in theory, live forever.
To prove Colin’s point, this moment with Giovanna—the one where she’s laughing and I’m laughing and her lips are about an inch away from mine and I can see that she’s wearing a lavender-colored bra and that she has a freckle behind her left ear—this moment has lasted pretty much as long as I can remember. And it’s showing no signs of ending. I think I’m telling her the story about the time I went fishing for stripers and accidentally caught a tiger shark instead.
I can’t be sure that’s the story because my brain is fuzzy and my heart is pounding and I’m thinking a million things at once about the bra and the freckle and my wife and David and the fact that alcohol is essentially liquid poison but in a good way. But it’s probably the shark story because it’s a very funny story and Giovanna’s really laughing. See, somehow I managed to drag the fish out of the water and into the boat without realizing that, instead of an adorable striped bass, it was a vicious, multifanged tiger shark. Everybody freaked out—as well they should have—and a good time was had by all.
In real life the story had kind of a sad ending because one of the people on the charter boat had brought a teacup Yorkie along, which the shark bit in two. Then the first mate clubbed the shark to death with a Coke bottle. But when I tell the story I usually cut out right after I land the shark so it always gets big laughs.
So I’m in that weird, bright, silly, happy, confused, thick-tongued, slightly sweaty place, and so is Giovanna. True to Colin’s teachings, time suddenly stops. Or it almost stops. Everything’s moving so slowly that it looks like the entire bar has been stuck in the La Brea tar pits. The neck fat on the guy with the Cork City jersey slowly ripples like a picnic blanket being shaken out in the sun. A thick drop of Beamish quivers at the edge of the tap, but never quite makes the long plummeting plop to the bar. Even the music has slowed down to an incomprehensible, deep-pitched drone. Which is a massive improvement because the song that was playing was “Saturday Night” by the Bay City Rollers. Why a shitty song from the ’70s recorded by a one-hit-wonder band from Scotland was playing on a Thursday in 2008 in the middle of Ireland is anyone’s guess. For the most part, Irish bars have three musical modes: synthetic dance/trance crap, horrible hits from long bygone eras, and ultratraditional Irish folk music.
That first night out drinking in Ireland, folk music is what you clamor for. Getting wrecked while ruddy guys in fishing sweaters sing about Domhnall MacLochlainn and his raid against Conaille Muirthemne is everyone’s idea of the perfect evening on the Emerald Isle. But after around an hour of that shit, you’re so sick of Irish folk music that you’re desperate for the dance/trance crap or some played-out oldies. Surprisingly, I did not hear a single U2 song the entire time I was there.
Anyway, I’m in the bar and everything’s moving as slowly as a stegosaurus caught in melted asphalt. And there’s this moment where Giovanna and I both realize that this is all working out perfectly and kissing each other probably wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. We both realize this at exactly the same time—we can see it in each other’s glassy eyes that are quickly losing the ability to focus. Unfortunately, we also lean in to kiss each other at exactly the same time. And that’s when I accidentally head-butt her and break her nose.
6
Colin knows a great deal about Ireland. Colin knows a great deal about drinking. And Colin knows a great deal about what a middle-aged man should do in order to reconnect with his lost sense of freedom and adventure. Colin knows absolutely nothing about how to stop the flow of blood from an Italian woman’s nose. His initial suggestion was to stuff a cocktail olive in each nostril.
Colin, while enjoying the Irishiest of all Irish names, is not actually Irish. That is to say, he’s not from Ireland. Obviously anyone named Colin has to have some Irish in him. And isn’t everyone in America at least a little bit Irish? I think that Wesley Snipes has a grandmother from Galway. But technically Colin is from Los Angeles, California. I was not aware of this fact when I met him at the Aerfort Bhaile Átha Cliath. (For those of you not in the know, Aerfort Bhaile Átha Cliath is not a breakaway former Soviet republic, nor is it an al Qaeda training center. It’s just how you say Dublin International Airport in Gaeilge—or Gaelic—or whatever the hell they call their language over there. It was all explained to me many times but since I was always drunk during the explanation, and the people doing the explaining were drunk, the lesson never really sunk in.)
I was at the airport waiting for my bags when I thought I’d do some advance reconnoitering. I figured that I’d ask the most Irish-looking person I could find which Dublin pub serves the best pint. That’s when I noticed Colin. To say that he looks like a leprechaun is to do him a disservice. Leprechauns have a slightly creepy, kind of hairy, dwarfish quality that I have never found appealing. In my imagination they look like a cross between Bilbo Baggins and a child molester. Colin looks more like a cross between Bilbo Baggins and Lindsay Lohan. So I guess he looks like either an extremely cute leprechaun or an extremely ugly Hollywood actress/faux lesbian.
I asked for drinking advice from this adorable wee man and I screwed up my face in concentration, prepared to sift through his impenetrable brogue in an attempt to decipher his meaning. It turned out not to be so hard to decipher.
“Dude, you gotta go to Grogan’s Castle Lounge,” he said with a SoCal accent that would have put Jeff Spicoli to shame.
Colin first came to visit Ireland when he was ten. His mother brought him there so that he could meet her father. Her father, who was originally from Ireland, used to live with her and her mother in New York. But one night he got drunk at his job as a switcher in the subway tunnels and forgot to reroute an A train. There was a small but unpleasant crash and he was fired. After that he faced a difficult choice: either stop drinking or lose his family. Without a moment’s hesitation, he hopped on the next flight back to Ireland where he spent the next forty-five years getting blitzed. I wish I could tell you that this is all a fabrication and that I’m just co-opting a cheesy Irish stereotype, but it’s true. And it gets worse: his name was Paddy.
Colin remembers that first meeting with the old Mick. His mom walked her boy into her father’s favorite pub and introduced the two. Colin’s grandfather looked him over from head to toe and said (in his impenetrable Irish brogue), “I thought he’d be a little more masculine.”
I’d be happy to report that Colin won the old man’s heart that day and they spent every summer together from then on fishing and telling tall tales full of bluster and blarney. But the truth is, the guy was a prick and he died a few months later.
But that one trip to Ireland got under Colin’s skin. He went back every chance he got, each time for longer and longer stays. When I bumped into him at the airport, he had just made the official move from LA to Dublin for good. So even though he wasn’t a card-carrying—or at least Irish-passport-carrying—Irishman, he was an invaluable font of first-rate Irish information.
Colin was right about Grogan’s. He was right about just about everything he told me. And if he had been Irish, I’m sure that he would have told me that I was wasting my time and my money by repeatedly dialing 911 on my cell phone in an attempt to get someone to help out with Giovanna’s busted nose. But, while he knew all about drinking and saving my life, there were some significant gaps in his store of knowledge.
It was the waitress who brought us some of those paper towels that everyone outside of America uses that never actually a
bsorb anything who told me that the emergency number in Ireland is 112. As I dialed 112, however, she reminded me that in Ireland an emergency is, like, an IRA firebombing. Getting a broken nose while drinking isn’t an emergency there—it’s an average Thursday night. Properly chastised, I tilted Giovanna’s head back, bunched up a wad of “paper” “towels” under her schnozz, and led her out into the night.
7
As predicted, we must have passed a half dozen other people with bloody and/or broken noses on our way to Mater Misericordiae Hospital.
A side note about religion in Ireland: it’s very Catholic. This may sound like a foolish truism, but it’s really noticeable when you’re there. In America we think we’re used to the omnipresence of religion, but it’s really more of a ubiquitous but generalized spirituality that surrounds us. Drive through any medium-sized city and you’ll see a variety of churches and temples and mosques. Keep driving and you’ll probably find some yoga studios, a Buddhist retreat, and a self-help center or two. But in Ireland you find Catholic churches. And you see Catholic priests. And you see Catholic schoolkids. Everywhere. (Obviously, this is in the Republic of Ireland. I’m not sure how it breaks down up north. I know that they have their fair share of Protestants, but I bet the Buddhist/mosque quotient is still on the low side.) Pretty much everything in Ireland is named after either something old and Gaelic or something old and Catholic (a lot of times they’re both).
So now I’m in the waiting area of the emergency room of Mater Misericordiae Hospital and I experience my first pang of longing for America. Because, while Mater Misericordiae Hospital has an impressive stone facade, massive arched windows, and a raking cornice, its interior reminds me of the men’s room at Fenway. Strike that—Fenway smells better. And it attracts a better class of Irishmen.
Drink, Play, F@#k Page 2