July 27, 2001

I dreamed last night that someone came in and asked for half a litre of winegums.  I had to try to explain to her that they were not a liquid and the litre is a liquid measure.  She smiled, nodded, and asked again.  I don’t like dreaming about work.  I just sort of realized last night how similar this job is to the government job.  I haven’t any friends to come home to, I am bored to tears at work, and I work seven hours at what seems a dream job for someone like me.  Difference is that I got an hour for lunch at the government job so my day was cut into halves.  I could also REALLY read as I was interrupted much less.  I also got paid OVER TWICE what I do for the newsagents and I did have Dad and I did do it for a MUCH longer time.  And I managed just fine.  Why can’t I learn from the past?

Ah, but what happened after the government job?  Sure, I managed to get through.  But I also went insane.  But, as I’m so hell-bent on seeing patterns in life, that can also mean that life changed profoundly, and it certainly will when I return and move up to New York for whatever that may hold.  Natalie wrote me an enthusiastic and no doubt drug-induced email about going up to visit the apartment and just raving about its location and how excited she is about living up there.

Anyway – yesterday.  Yesterday was one of those beautiful days of hope and promise that are doomed from the beginning.  I planning on doing my tax things and then just going somewhere into the hills and soaking up the sun and unbelievable weather.  Get a bunch of exercise to work out the daily chocolate bars that mitigate my boredom and work out the five or six pints I’d had the night before with Maeve and her hot physio-friends.  Leisurely exercise, leisurely shower, leisurely dressing.  I went to look in my bag and – it was not there.  My notebook – THIS notebook – was not tucked safely away in its usual spot.  I felt sick and panicked – where was it?  Had I lost it?  Had I left it out – no, nothing’s on the dresser.  Oh god – I left it at work.

I needed to have it.  I felt naked and more alone than usual.  This book is all I have – the one I share my life with, my only companion.  I must have it!  I couldn’t wait until the next day – I needed to write!  And what if someone read it?  What if it got lost?

I pretty near ran through my tax errands – getting the letter from USIT then going to the PAYE office on Lower Mount Street.  I figured that then I could run by to get my notebook, pick up my check, and go check email where all my friends would have emailed me and run off to the sunshine green countryside.  It would be nothing more than a little hiccup in my day, and I’d have my journal back.

“It’s very lucky you came by today.  You might be the answer to her prayers.”

Fuck.  I hate it when people say shit like that.  It can only mean trouble.

Madge, the voicebox-less incredibly part-time other employee, was on a waiting list for a hospital bed so she couldn’t come in.  Could I please do her shift for her?

Like a putz I said yes.  Why do I care?  Why do I want to be responsible?  Why?  So on my ONLY day off, the ONE, SINGULAR, SOLE BEAUTIFUL DAY THAT DUBLIN WILL HAVE EVER EVER EVER EVER – I was sucked into work without even a windowpane full of enjoyment in the weather.  I ran and checked my email at a very expensive place – I couldn’t make it to my place and back in time for 2PM – and there was a cursory response from Shannon and not as many emails as I would have hoped from the two days of not checking them.

Sad, dejected, disappointed, I trudged back through the mirthful mocking sunshine and stewed in my own hideous juice of disappointment for seven hours.  Oh, and payday is Friday, not Thursday, so I didn’t even have a check full of consolation.

6 shifts down.  1/5 through.  By Tuesday – the next day off that I will NOT relinquish – I will have 10 down and be 1/3 through!

I have to run now.  Back to the salt mines.

* * *

“Do you sell Johnnies, then?”

“Eh, what?”

“Con – doms.”

“No, sorry.”

“Right.  Cheers.”

* * *

I am quite shaken.  The strangest thing EVER has just happened to me.  I was swapping my boring pound coins for a bonanza of millennium coins – which I plan to give away as gifts on my return – when a woman popped around the corner and said, “Boo!”  Then, all of a sudden, she began to weep and sob inconsolably and mutter about what I gather to be her very young husband with whom she has had four children who is suffering from cancer.  He still has his hair but his size 32 jeans he has to roll the waist over.  It’s lung cancer.

I didn’t know what to do.  She’d screw up her eyes and big heavy tears would erupt from nowhere.  I offered her some tissues.  She kept holding out her hand to me and I really couldn’t understand what she was saying.  It felt callous, but I finally asked, “Is there anything you want?”

“20 Silk Cut Blue, please.”

She paid with a rumpled £5 note, screwed up like the tissues in her hand by grief.  I didn’t want to look at her eyes and make a spectacle of her grief, so I just stared at the inch-long thick straight black hair on her chin, just right to the center of her under lip.  She held out her hand again and what could I do but hold it and say, “It will be all right, I promise,” as her other hand was thrown backwards to cover her face.

She released me.  I gave her the rest of the tissues.  She grasped my hand again, turned, left.

What was I to do?

Grief is very hard to deal with.  And scary.  If you open yourself up to enough to understand then you’ll break down as well.  Also, when you’re not inconsolable it is hard to understand how anyone else could be at that point where they weep their life story out to a foreigner in a newsagents.  But they are not actually telling you anything.  They’re venting the pressure of the grief and the words and tears are the overflows of emotion.

* * *

“Do you have any still water?”

“Yep, in the fridge.”

“How much is it?”

“A pound.”

“Is that a pound?”

“Yep.”

Man takes pills punched out of silver card.

“It’s called being sick on the plane.”

“I never have a problem with that.  I just can’t sleep.  Ever.”

“That’s no problem.  Not with these.  And I fly at LEAST two times a week.”

“Oh, really?”

“But it’s NOT psychological.  It’s an inner ear problem.  Have you got a bin back there?  Cheers.”

* * *

“Boo!”

The weeper returns.

“How are you doin’?”

“Oh, y’know.  Cryin’ all the time.”

“Ah.  Do you work here?”

“Yeah.  Well, I was.  Not here.  I work next door at the Citibank.”

“Ah.”

“How old would you guess I was?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Go on, guess.  Be honest.”

“No, really.  I have no idea.”

“No, be honest.  What’s the first thing that comes into your head?”

“I don’t know.  Forty?”

“Do I look forty?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on.  Be honest.”

“Honestly, I learned long ago that quick judgments are always off – wrong.  So I don’t make them.”

“Fair enough.  I’m 42.  Good man.”

She clasps my hand again and goes.  She poked the relic blueberry muffin atop the register as she left.

* * *

The weeper has returned again.

“Do you have any chocolate covered peanuts?”

“Yes, we do.”

“Where?”

“Behind you.”

“Where?”

“Up there.  Behind you.”

“Where?”

“Behind you.  Up there.  In the green.”

“How much are they?”

“Lemmee see.  £1.09.”

“Do me a favor and say a mass.”

She pulls change out of her pocket and a magician’s endless crumple of toilet paper follows.  She hands me a £1 coin.

“Do me a favor and just take that, would you?”

And she’s gone again.

* * *

What the hell am I supposed to do?  The weeper was just ejected from the hotel.  The tall dark hair who did it waved her out then turned to tall blond hair and went, “Ah.  I’m so upset,” in memorial of her husky tone.  And laughed.  I think she must have been in the pub drinking, building up those garbage bags under her eyes – so severe as to be folded over on her face like envelope flaps – with alcohol as well as her tears.

* * *

Good God I wish that I’d stayed in German.  Then perhaps I could communicate with the guests.

* * *

It was odd – I was brick hit by terrible empty an hour before the offing.  I twitch shake shivered through the take, hands quivered and I was all at the bottom of my hole.  Then, I crouched down and I up sprang to ecstasy.  Full fast and hard.  Wide-eyed innocent joy highwire walk back home, not seeing as I nosed through Dublin with Led Zepplin pounding my burning ears.  Stop lights red lights, green walk men sauntering made no never-mind as I glid out in intersections, not pausing to take in colors except as window dressing.  My head quick flicked like a bird as I oh I’ve lost it.

I’m afraid to be happy because each mountain has its climbers dead on its slopes and the feet are much bigger than the head.  And for every head there’s two feet, one on each side.  And one is always sinister.  How fast will I fall this time?  And to where?  And why now to me at end of fine day with cash in hand ending to £150 tune?  Mayhaps a gift.  A thank you.  A chance to feel like others and not be pin-pricked by life until I am a sea of bleeding unseeable dot holes straight to my heart.  It’s all in me – it’s about time I felt what happiness was like more than a ten second 99 ice cream flake straw.  With one of four chocolate please not lime how disgusting on ice cream?

But I never just surf, but stop take core samples to see if the Romans smoked lead.  Rarity causes this.  Unhappy is my life and like duck water off-back flowing it fills my life.  But happiness?  So rare.  We kick dirt rocks of quartz which everywhere are found, but gold deserves a second look a bite between the teeth and I can’t believe I could be lucky enough to find it?!  There must be something wrong with it.  And by the time you’re done biting your suspicions away you’re left down with the feet.

Now my brain is brown sludging mud into itself, smothering the center joy before I’ve bathed in it.

I’ve been having a great time with Maeve lately, especially after that evening of Wednesday at McGavin’s in Phipsboro when drunken stumbling home we trekked.  But, just like Roisin, as I get closer to someone – purely chaste friend feelings – they get lost to me.  To Egypt or the boyfriend.

Joy makes me invincible.  I think no fried delight desire can kick me, stab my side with over-doubling slices of gall.  I smell and I desire.  I think and I do.  There are no consequences!

I suppose it’s good I’m never happy for long.  Who knows what I’d do?  But now I’m slipping out of it.  I read it in my words and feel it in my ink.  The backdoor is rattle-hinged as the fire steps out and only common thoughts are left like the weepers crumbled tissues on the dead empty dance floor.  They’ve all gone to pulse somewhere else.  My muscles knit back together and my head wood blocks again.  Too short, too sweet, too dearly missed.

Why now happen did this to me to my brain muddle cup?  So good I’ve been and calm and wracking sad lonely disappointment in bitter disillusionment tea I’ve drank but before no hang-over.  That was pride one of mine strength though endless sadness a sanity pervades.  But no longer.  A crack for real my egg is out and shell will not glue up.

Please don’t let me go so far away from home.  Aah!  Terror as I shake.

Stop.  Relax.  Please.

Why am I alone?

Please hold me.

Anyone.

My eyes are wide again, but in headlight deer fear.

I had that skin sweat in the shop in the final hour though the fan blew stamps in maelstrom of all-day coolness but only then I suffered as body tears flew from my pores as I got on the rollercoaster.  Maybe it’s a rollercoaster and down you start up fast quick screams hair blown back then again the long climb.

I had hoped to be on the hill longer.

But down up down up finish the sequence and let the answer be up and yes I’ll pull out of the dive and soar again.

Someone’s poured cement behind my eyes and it’s dripping down my spine and fills my forearms with gravity as my head lolls ragdoll to the right and I stare solid but for the live ink feed that barely pulls it out of the quicksand.  The opposite of depression is desire and I have to keep wanting and moving and caring to keep my head straight and that bedtime comes with 3 exercises and a sleep to prepare for the early tomorrow time of newspaper stuffing at Thanksgiving and hung over British needing the cigarette spark to get the engines lubed and they’re off for another day of abuse and wrong-currency using.

I just want to be beautiful and loved and held but my body aches and my clothes don’t fit and alone I go to bed in ugly town to go alone work for hours of my tiny life.

 

July 26, 2001

The lobby lion-tamer is at it again.

A woman bought the Herald – 70 pence – and asked for a receipt.  What on earth for?  It’s not like she paid with a £50 note, but with a £1 coin.  I’ve never given a receipt that made sense.

Only stupid people have stories.  They let dumb shit happen to them.  They don’t plan ahead.  A story is, after all, just something stupid that happened that could have been avoided if you’d thought ahead.  Or not been so dumb as to think that things would just take care of themselves.  Good, smart people don’t have stories.  They have comments.  “That was a nice day,” or, “I’m in love.”  Stupid people have, “So, anyway, you would not BELIEVE what just happened to me!  I was seeing this girl, right, but I wasn’t really in it as much as she was but I just thought it would go away and THEN I met this OTHER girl…”

The right decisions never prompt a nine minute explanation.  Smart people look ahead and have the courage to make the right decisions.  Only stupid people have stories.  Dublin has made me into a stupid person.  And a lot of it comes from my ignorance of what I was getting into and my ignorance of Ireland and her people.  But ignorance is a form of stupidity and ignorance of the law is no defense.

A receipt on £1.60, paid in exact change with small coins, for a pack of cigarette papers and winegums and a newspaper.  Why?

July 25, 2001

I haven’t REALLY written for a while and it’s making me a bit antsy.  I regard that as a rather good sign.

I’ve been having these vivid dreams that I probably should write down because they are really quite fully-developed stories.  I keep getting these strange déjà vu moments when I wake up that the dreams were all novels I will write, or they are gifts of books from my mind that all I need do is transcribe them – it’s only through my own laziness that I’m not published.  The dreams are funny quilts of easily identifiable elements – last night I worked in a store behind a counter but I didn’t really want to be there and there was a girl who worked there who looked like Sheila the one nice hotel person and I walked to France – to Lourdes, actually – but there was nothing there but books which were all ones I read about in the Times this past Sunday.

{I ate toast with a million boots marching in the empty ivory hall of my head.}

What’s odd is that rarely, if EVER, do I remember my dreams.  And not only do I remember these, I seem to be half-aware of the state I’m in while asleep, and I can even wake up enough to go to the bathroom and still fall back into the same dream.  I think it must be caused by the same urge that compels me to write – there is so much inside of me but no one with which to share it.  So I share it with myself.  I also wish that I did more creative writing, but I’m so far behind on recording what has actually happened that I don’t really get the chance.  Except in that sheaf of papers on my dresser.  I still feel like I’d like to write plays, plays with great monologues, but I’m still in need of great work in recording how people talk.  We THINK that we listen but really we just filter in the words and translate what’s said into our own speech patterns.  Like the way that Holly would always convey to me things Rosemary said – I got to the point when I thought Rosemary talked like Holly.  It’s the United Nations and we’re all listening to the simultaneous translations through our headphones that conveniently but everything into our own language, but we’re never ACTUALLY listening to who’s talking and the precise words they’re using.  And look at how effective the members of the UN are at communicating with each other, much less reaching a common ground.

{I don’t like the taste of whole milk.  It is thick and heavy.  Like sand.}

I’ve definitely noticed this about myself.  I’ll listen very closely to someone speak, like Angela or Aiofe or Declan, but when I try to reproduce it in writing or tone I am left high and dry.  They use words that I don’t use so they don’t penetrate my brain.  Their pronunciation is different but it all gets cleaned up by my – for ONCE – too efficient brain.  So TRULY listening, like auditioning, is an art and I need to practice.

{Aren’t words wonderful?!  I am both catholic and discriminating in my tastes, but neither Catholic nor discriminating.}

And I guess that’s a bit of a warning about all of my transcribed conversations.  They fall terribly short.

I need to catch up on a few things, especially Mister USP – the man who made my first solo day at work so unpleasant.

So it was that first Saturday and everything had been going just fine, aside from being terribly bored.  But I had managed to suffer through and had just got to the point where I thought, “Well, maybe this job isn’t so bad after all.”  Then, of course, the rug was pulled out from under me.

At 1:30 – a mere half hour before I can count my first day a success, after making it for 5 ½ lonely hours and getting up at 6:00AM – Dublin does it to me again.  Into the shoebox runs a wildeyed, shaved, white water-rat, pink eyes and all, and when I asked the scrawny young track-suit wearing man if there was anything I could do for him, his reply was:

– I was wondering if you could save my life.

Those are the kind of words that make your heart just sink.  It wouldn’t be anything simple like, “Do you have cough sweets?” or “Can I have change for the telephone?”  No, those were the words with which Dublin would bend me over the teacher’s desk and introduce me to the splintered broomstick.

So Ritchie spins this incredibly complex yarn that I can’t even begin to dissect.  It was all shot out of his mouh in a smooth con-artist wave, never leaving you a second to catch your breath, just sweeping you along for the ride.

He used to work there, he just got his last paycheck the day before, he’d been to every bank, pub, cash-a-check, rich socialite, illegal hoarder of pirate’s gold in all of Dublin in an attempt to cash his check and no one would do it.  Even the bank off of which the check was written wouldn’t cash it.  His credit union said it would take 7 days to clear.  So did the cash-a-check place.  Sound fishy yet?

And it wouldn’t be so much of a problem if it wasn’t the timing, you see.  It was his girlfriend’s birthday the next day and he had to give her a present.

Why such urgency?

Well, you’ve heard of post-natal depression, right?  Well, his girlfriend’s got SERIOUS post-natal depression.  Oh, yes.  An unexpected pregnancy, but now they’re engaged, still each living at home, she’s five months along and he doesn’t have a job.  So she gets really depressed.  Fits of lunacy!  She’ll be all fine one minute and then she’ll start yellin’ and screamin’ at him for no reason.  I wonder if him having no money and no job might contribute to that.

And as it’s her birthday tomorrow if he doesn’t get her something really nice then Lord only knows what she’ll do!

So where do I come in?

He wants me to cash his check out of the daily take.  That’s why he came right at the end of my shift.  Sounds seriously suspect and a little too dramatic to be real.  I tell him I shouldn’t and Angela told me not to cash checks for people that said they worked there – EERIE FORESHADOWING!

He pleads with me – please!  The girlfriend!  The depression!  Birthday gift!  C’mon!  Help a brother out!

I tell him to wait until Angela comes in – she’s supposed to come oversee the transition from myself to Aoife and help us close out our shifts.  I keep telling him to wait.

Aoife comes and Angela still hasn’t shown, nor will she.  Ritchie was right about that.

So what does he want to do with his life, as working in the newsagent’s is not part of the plan?

– I want to be a rapper.  I’ve got a tape and all.  I’ve got about four songs, and that’s not bad for, umm, you know five months of writin’.  Yeah, they’re not great quality studio tapes though.  I talk bits of songs and put them together on a tape, then I put two tape recorders up next to each other and I rap while the one plays and so they both go onto the other tape.  The thing is that everybody needs to have their own USP.  UNIQUE SELLING POINT.  Yeah, Eminem – he’s my hero.  He’s got 2 USP’s.  First, he’s white.  “What is that?  A white rapper?  Who ever heard of a white rapper?!”  Second, his second USP is that he goes around slaggin’ everybody.  “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”  My USP?  You know everybody sings and raps in an American accent.  Why?  So I’m straight out of Dublin, you know, so I’m not gonna hide my accent.  I’m going to be the first Irish rapper.  The first Irish rapper.  My USP is going to be my accent.  The first Irish rapper.

Angela never shows.  It’s a quarter past, he’s pleading with his hands together and his eyes wide open.  He helps us close, as we are quite confused and really could have benefitted from having Angela there, but I certainly watched his quick agile fingers whenever they went near the cash drawer.  He was never gonna leave.  Angela was never gonna show.  I caved.  I cashed the fucking check.  I hated myself for doing it because I could just feel myself getting conned.  I could smell the shit as he spread it over my body.  And I knew I’d get yelled at and probably fired and I didn’t need this and why did I even try to get a job and why am I here when I could be home and why does life SUCK?!  Why am I weak?  Why didn’t I just say, “Sorry, I feel bad for you but I was told not to and I won’t.”  AND ON MY FIRST DAY, NO LESS!

However, things are never as bad as they seem, and no one ever said anything about it to me, even though Aoife kindly told me she’d back me up to Angela that he would not have left otherwise.  She’s pretty cool.

In fact, when I got my first £18.80 paycheck Angela told me to do just what I had done for Ritchie.  So I guess it was all right after all.

So what did I learn?

1) USP – Unique Selling Point
2) It’s never as bad as it seems.
3) Be strong.
4) If you can’t be strong, then don’t sweat it.
5) If I make a mistake, it’s all right.
6) If it’s not all right and I get fired – THEN WHO CARES?!

Off to work –

When you buy two souvenir shirts you’re supposed to get a free cheesy Ireland cap and we’ve run out.

“What do I do if someone asks for a hat?  We’re out.  Are there any more upstairs?”

“No, there’s not.  He hasn’t paid they bill, y’see.  He’ll do that.  He’ll pay them then just stop paying then start up again and do a few more and then stop.”

“So what do I do?”

“Well, a man came in today and bought two shirts and he didn’t ask for them.  So I kept me mouth shut.”

“Well, that’s true.  People usually don’t notice and I remind them that they get them free.  So I just won’t mention it.”

“Yes, that’s what y’do.”

“But if they do ask?”

“Just say, ‘I dunno.’  That’s what we do in Ireland.  ‘Oh, gee.  I dunno.’  You’ll hear that a lot in Ireland.”

Had a great night out at the pub last night – I decided to go out as I will not be reduced to a dehumanizing work/sleep/work schedule.  It was Declan and Maeve and I and we even got Rafal and Kate out with us for Kate’s first Guinness.  We went across the road to McGrath’s.  It was odd as we were in the lounge which was very large and open with sofas and table lamps and televisions on the white walls.  It was like being in someone’s sitting room.  But we had a couple of pints and a really good chat and for the first time I didn’t feel totally third wheel but part of the group with something to say.  Rafal was slow going through his cider – still on his first as we were half through our second – and we wondered where this famous “vodka head” is that he talks about.  “Polish head” – excuse me.

Last call had come and gone, signaled by a very long and severe couple of descents into darkness, not so much a flipping of the lightswitch but a leisurely examination of the difference between lights on and lights off.  I thought it was a blackout!

Two pints in me, I bemoaned the passing of last call and said that I could do with more alcohol.  Just then Rafal spilled his last half a glass all over himself and me.

“When I said I wanted more alcohol, I didn’t mean on my pants!”

The Cigarettes Cheatsheet:

Silk Cut:
Purple = King Size
Blue = Extra Mild
White = Ultra (no one says “White”)

Superkings:
Blue = Lights
Black = Regular

Lambert & Butler
Gold = Lights
Silver = King Size

Back to the significance of color!  Apart from the GAA there’s the differentiation of cigarettes by color, not quality.  Silk Cut Blue, Purple, Superkings Blue and Black.  Gauloises Red and Bleu.  Even Rizla cigarette papers are green or red.

“Do you have the green Pringles?”

The Orangemen.

Color is everywhere and ever important.

Marlboro Reds!

She just pushed forward her hand, heavy with useless silver, and shook her head saying, “Could you, please?”

I wonder if people ever think I’m ripping them off when I pull change from their hands.  I never will, as I have much more respect and patience for them than the ones who pick in their hands for ten minutes, intently clucking their tongues complaining about the “funny money” only to end up handing over a mix of foreign currencies which I haven’t the strength or desire to sort out.

I love it when people with two or three young children ask for condoms.  I want to say, “It’s a bit late for that now, don’t you think?”  They don’t work retroactively.  Too little, too late.

It’s the last fifteen minutes here that kills me, especially when someone is hanging around the postcards.  Shouldn’t you be at a pub?  Or in bed?

And by “last fifteen minutes” I mean the fifteen minutes before the ten minutes I take for closing.  When I say that I work until 9 that means it’s LOCKED at nine!

July 23, 2001

Yesterday was Bray – a little stip of a beach with a Victorian seaside heritage.  Didn’t write this morning as I took a chance and called home and BOTH my mother and sister were there!  When I first got to talk to mom I actually teared up from loneliness and homesickness.  Funny, as for the past two years I haven’t had much contact with home but then I had my very full life in F-town.  Now I guess home is all I have.

I had decided that I wouldn’t withdraw any money until I get paid on Thursday, but my haircut cost five pounds more than it should of out of my mass of hair needing to be shampooed before my mumbling barber would even deign to touch it with his tools.  Something about my hair being impossible to cut dry due to its volume!  I suppose my volume is water soluble.  And as I got my hair cut I decided I should probably shave to complete the hygiene illusion, so I went and took out £60.  I figured if I was buying razors then I needed to buy sandwich elements for work lunches so that I didn’t simply eat candy for two days.  Although that would quite quickly procure for me the 20 Kit Kat wrappers necessary for the free radio I so desire.

I have become a great fan of token promotions off of food packets.  I’ve sort of fallen out of a Weetabix mood, but I bought another box yesterday because that meant that now I can send away for the tin, with a £2.99 postal order.  If I get another pack of Ryvita I can also send those two wrappers along for another air-tight logo-embossed tin.  What a stunning marketing ploy, and how totally have I fallen for it!

There’s that strong, fat-calfed, wide-hipped model of the Irish working woman, whipping her cord around like a tamer in a cage rebuking the vacuum as she absent-mindedly passes her noisy wand over the spotless floor.  Thoroughly uninterested, thoroughly unthorough.

Oh, the caprices of the paying public!  Sunday I couldn’t throw water in the fridge fast enough, and today it’s frozen solid.  But I digress.  Back to money.

To make a long story short, and to ensure that I complete the thought, I withdrew my last bit from my American account – £60.00 – all because of a need/desire for razors that were not so nicked as to induce the feeling of shaving with a  sharpened fork.  Then I thought I should get food as well.  I go to Centra and buy food for the next few days, sit and think if I’ve forgotten anything, remember to get my tin-achieving package of Weetabix, congratulate myself on taking a minute to think before I rushed out, and left.  Sans razors.  So, of course the mission for which the funds were withdrawn in the first place was the ONE objective not achieved.  I luckily found an old razor head that didn’t protest too painfully its call out of retirement, and I shaved anyway.

She was painted black from right under her chin right down to the salmon floor.  Hoped that dressing like a black hole might suck in some of her bulk.  Trying to void it out.  She was a floating alabaster death mask floating over a bell of black sheeting.  But matter can neither be created nor destroyed, and you can’t hide so fleshed out a frame as that.  Though it certainly was more effective than the bright pink so favored by the horribly obese woman.  Still, at the back, her well-intentioned layers of concealment were parted by her sizeable rear end and a strip of bright red underwear bleeding through the cut dashed all that work on the soft wide rocks.

Looking at the schedule for the next four weeks – Angela’s going on vacation so I’m doing six days a week – a daunting task!  However after that I’ll get 3 full days off in a row, which really excites me.  I just don’t want to open weekdays – I must do it five times – because that will mean waking up at 5:30!  And after an evening shift the night before!  THAT’S what I hate – work, sleep, work, with nothing in between.  Expect some bitterness in two weeks!

But I never work more than six days without a break, and if I work ONE week after those three days off then I’ll be at my set number of shifts – NEVER to work in Ireland again!

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – WHY am I doing this?  I just keep remembering what Fabio would say – “I do not work for work.”  I should go out tonight and get a pint or something.  Otherwise I really will be doing nothing but being the victim of this job.

The scary emaciated monkey of a former Spice Girl on the cover of BELLA has been replaced by a woman who looks eerily like Maeve – those broad lips and hair.  And I bet she can’t hold a 5 pence coin in her dimple though!

I am the blind leading the blind – poor tourists with shaky English ask for advice and I give shaky directions.  And you can just see in their eyes that my jumble isn’t making it in at all.

July 22, 2001

Not so much this job, but this hotel will drive me mad.  This is roughly the equivalent of a motel, but the staff runs around like stockbrokers on Wall St. with their heads cut off.  There are literally four songs on their muzak tape – they couldn’t spring for the whole one?  Oh, there it goes again – “Unforgettable” in a sultry sax – what are we in the first scene of a porno?  Then “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues and some godforsaken song by the Carpenters – if she hadn’t committed suicide this song would have been the Twinkie that pushed her over the edge.  “We’ve Only Just Begun” on a flute.  A computer synthesized flute none the less.  Then that song that goes “… between the moon and New York City…”  I don’t know its name, but the tune will be forever burned into my slowly deteriorating brain cells.  And they’re all ultra-extended jazzy club mixes, so they go on far longer than they need to.

Oh, I forgot about “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” picked out on a sensual harp.  Pure magic.  What TV advertisement at 3:23AM can I order this bevy of hits from, none of which are available in stores?

Adding to the madness, the muzak doesn’t actually play all the time.  I think they switch it on when they see people outside the automatic glass doors, and they just let it play out its little 30 minutes of self.  Then they just let it be silent – merciful respites from the drone of smooth easy listening – and then when someone fills the door glass they just press play again.

And if the music doesn’t kill me then the staff will.  There is Igor who haunts me with his insatiable red Lucozade addiction and madly incomprehensible accent.  He wears a New York Police Department sweatshirt EVERY DAY under his off-white canvas jacket.

Sunday means Irish music on the radio.

“Many times you have lingered around my garden door,
Oh hard times come again no more”
Steven Foster, writer – Jerry Lynch, singer

– Do you have any better money?  My husband likes to save them.

These are the customers I while away my life with.

Then there is that bitch manager with her shoulder length brown hair and perky face covered in the worry and stress of self-assumed importance and imagined stress.  Just as I wrote this she came over and paid for a pack of cigarettes.

– I still owe you money for those tights, don’t I?  £2 is it?  I’ll be right back.

That was over an hour ago.  Bitch.

Then there is the prick manager busy-body.  I’ve already vented about him.

Finally the dwarf Spanish woman who always smiles at me as she passes to the luggage room.  I was refilling the water bottle cornucopia that is the half-assed Häagen Dazs fridge when I saw her beaming at me from the register.  I was so pleased – she had come to say hello to me!

No such luck.  Instead she told me that I should have stamps for all the Americans who want to send letters back home.  I told her that as soon as we get them we sell them out.  She said that we should buy more.  Insolent bitch.  She also said it would make more business sense for us to have them – why?  Do we make any profit from them?  Indeed not.  It is purely a convenience for the fat, pampered, impatient guests of the riverside hotel.  And if a person chooses to buy all the stamps at once, robbing the next 50 people who want them of their stamps, then that’s not my problem.  Doing anything nice for anyone is never enough and never worth the hassle.  The thing that REALLY pisses me off is that she took time out of her busy luggage-lackey taxi-calling schedule to rebuke ME for not having enough stamps to coddle the 90 postcard buying guests.  The nerve.

I am also not a fan of the people who pick up a paper and hold it up to you from across the room, expecting the color to spark a Pavlovian response in which you crash your head down on the register immediately using your nose like a chicken at supper to punch out the price on the register, barking as you go.  They look so pissed when you ask them to bring it over so that you can look at the price.  They hate treating the help as people, and the closer they get to me the more human I am.  Much safer to yell across the room like a drive-through speaker at Taco Bell.  I should ask them if they want fries with that.

And THEN there are those people who grunt in horror when you tell them it’s a pound for their water.  I realize it’s a ludicrous sum – about $1.20 after all, and I’d never pay that for something that came out of a tap – but what do they expect?  Where do they think they ARE?  This is a shop in a hotel lobby – immediately you’re not in a place known for value and cut-rate prices.  If you’re too lazy to walk around the block to Spar then consider it a lazy-ass tourist tax being levied in the horrendous horror-snorting 200% markup.  I understand it’s insane, but I’m not sitting here under a sign that says KRAZY KARL’S KUT-RATE KONVENIENCE STORE.  It IS a hotel lobby, and you ARE going to have to get over it.

That’s why it’s CONVENIENCE store and not “CONVENIENT” store.  You buy convenience with every purchase.

Dublin’s playing in the qualifier this afternoon against Sligo in their back-door bid to be in the all-Ireland finals, and I’m back in the dining room with my arm in a magazine to protect me from the tar pit that is the table top.

Walking home was a wonderful and colorful experience with people in their blue Dublin shirts and black and white of Sligo.

Buy, sell, swap tickets!
Headbands, buy your headbands here!
The pigs are out in force.

Every pub is gorged with costumed revelers, spitting out chunks of humanity into the streets with their drinks and loud conversation, yelling across the streets to people I imagine they must know.

There is the t-shirt seller with his tent of uniforms outside our house, moored around the dumpster.  I think I should get one for free for living here, but evidently Michael charges them rent.  Of course he does.

But what team would I choose?  Cork – I SUPPOSEDLY come from there.  Sligo – where the hell is Sligo, anyway?  Not Dublin, after all I swear that I hate it but it’s really the only one I could claim to have any real tie to.  Love-hate makes a strong relationship after all.  Well, TOLERATE-hate.

Children are swaddled in flags – the actual DESIGN of the flag doesn’t matter, simply that it has the colors.  Hence Sligo’s black and white supporters have adopted the black and white checkered racing-pennant.  Due to this design-blind practice Cork with its red and white has run into some controversy for having people bring rebel flags to matches – just for the red and white.  All the flags are sold with bamboo lengths for handles – I’ve never seen bamboo in this country so it must be specially bred simply for the purpose.  Like free-range chickens there are probably organic bamboo farmers, with ranch hands patrolling on horseback to make sure no bamboo desperados make off with their bumper crop of flag components.

In fact, color is all important to the GAA.  Meath’s inspirational fan song is to the tune of “Those Were the Days.”  It goes “Go on you boys in Green, go on you boys in green, dad a dad a, dad a you boys in green.”  The “da da da” part is just a mess where people mumble and repeat “you boys in green” until they get back on track and eventually peter out.  Not a very profound thought-out song.  But they repeat their color as often as possible and that’s what’s important.

Kildare is in all white, so their rather ill-chosen nickname is “the Lily Whites.”  To me that’s almost like choosing to be called “Chicken Shit” but I suppose there’s no color name in that.  Maybe their motto should be “We’re so good, we’ll share your shit white.”

On of the teams is known as the All-Blacks, but I can’t remember who.  Maybe it’s Sligo.  It’s the victory over the All-Blacks that forms the basis of the play at the Gaiety – Alone It Stands.  Or whatever it’s called.  My brain is jellied from work, in its own boredom juices.

Even though you can hear the game and the crowd clearly from the kitchen – louder actually than on the television – the crowds are really well-behaved.  Consider that all of the pubs are overflowing with customers for hours before the game and each garbage drum is full of cider bottles and beer tinnies padded out by the grease spotted paper of takeaway joints there is no violence. Everyone is crammed into each other’s faces and slotted like a jigsaw into each other (especially on Hill 16) and emotions run high as people heatedly yell and scream in reponse to the moves of their teams.  Drunk people in each other’s faces would always make a fight in the states, and alcohol is definitely monitored, but here no such lunacy.  Amazing!

Why does this chair smell like rubbing alcohol?

July 21, 2001

She looked at me as if I was deaf.  I looked at her as if I were.

– Can I have two pairs of skin coulotte ays?
– Pardon?
– Can I have two pairs of skin cut lattes?”
– What?

Then her friend translated from the ancient Greek.

– Tights, please.

I still have no idea what she was saying, even working backwards.  Sometimes someone points something out and it all makes sense.  I still hear “silk cut latkes”.

Last night in the Royal Canal in Drumcondra, mere STEPS from my place, a body was fished out of the river, wrapped in twine, stuffed into a black nylon suitcase.  It was retrieved by two locals from the canal at 7:00 last night – two hours before I went home.

This morning on the stone steps leading down into the Liffey and abused woman’s body was found.  It was on the steps leading down from the bank right in front of the Customs House.  Mere STEPS from work.  At 6AM – two hours before I was due at work.  Spooky.

I justify my days, these precious irretrievable moments of my life, in the bondage of boredom by reminding myself that this is the best possible job I could get.  Is that true?  Is this really the best job I could get?  Give me strength.  What a sad place I’ve slipped to.  THIS is the BEST job that I could hope to get.

July 20, 2001

Today is the first of my thirty shifts. I think I’ll put a little card on my dresser so that I can tick them off. I really am here for quite a long time – it’s as long as a semester, really! And I’ll quit work when they start school again – I hope my sister got that writing class. She’s so gifted at writing, it really does put me to shame. Wouldn’t it be great if both of us could do something with it? Mine seems so trifling next to her poetry however. I hope the old adage is true, that you’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

I was exhausted last night after hiking all day – there’s actually sun in my face! – and then walked to TESCO for work food – if I didn’t have it I’d eat chocolate all day and then downtown to the £2 internet shack which had become my favorite. (I still see the fellow from the local internet shack standing outside sometimes and we always smile and greet each other). Then I bought a phonecard because more than anything I wanted to talk to home. However I was never alone in the sitting room but I still ended up pushing myself past my exhaustion to 12:30 just in hopes that Keria and Declan would go to bed. I even thought about staying up until 3 in my room or setting my alarm. And why? Why have I spent £60 on phone cards to date? I never really say anything except to mom because I email everyone all my actual news. I really just want to laugh and chat and close my eyes and pretend it’s a local call I’ve made and we’re just chatting on the phone, about to decide to meet somewhere and see a movie. I want to talk to my friends and while email is nice it is incomplete. The phone is incomplete, but at least there’s the voice and the spontaneity of conversation. Letters and emails are so one-sided, but a conversation really is a meeting and a haring of another person’s present – and all we have is the present. It means something when someone wants nothing more than you in their eyes and their ears and their brains. And it could be just for a minute, but THAT is what I miss the most.

This tabletop here in the kitchen really is so grimy and disgusting with spilt tea and sugar and jam and crumbs and ashes all camouflaged by its bright floral print. It really is so nasty that I’ve put down a magazine on which to lay my elbow so as not to crunch as I move across the page.

As my semi-legible entry from yesterday revealed, I went to Howth. I had planned on going to one place mentioned in my guide as having beautiful scenery, but when I got to Tara St. I realized that it was to the south of the city. As I’d already gone south, I just decided to take the north route as far as it would go. Plus, Aoife is from Howth so I figured I’d give it a go. I’ve never written down Aoife’s story! So let me pause for a minute.

Aoife came to work on Saturday with a backpack because she was going to change in the bathroom to go out with her friends directly after work. She invited me along, but as I had to open the next day I wisely listened to the clever part of my brain and declined. The next day she is a full quarter of an hour late to relieve me. I’m not angry, just curious as she’s always been 15 minutes early before.

– What’s up? You’re usually early!
– I know, I’m sorry. I spent all night in the hospital!

She’s still trying to reconstruct the events of the evening, but the story goes that they were in Temple Bar and the last thing she recalled was an unbroken chain of shots. Next thing she knows she wakes up strapped to a board and the only thing that she can manage to say is, “Where are my shoes?”

The story goes – as it was told to her – that they left a pub and she slipped on the street and hit her head on the curb of the sidewalk. A crowd of 300 semi-sober accident vultures crowded around her and as her breath was so shallow and she was out cold the conclusion was that she was dead. The ambulance came, strapped her in, and off she was for a free night of luxury accommodation in the Mater Hospital. She’s pretty sure someone shoved her playfully, but as the situation turned out as it did then no one is willing to fess up to it. I felt the back of her head – it was as if someone had implanted a raw hamburger in her scalp and sewn it up very badly. Perhaps the nastiest bump ever.

Back to Howth.

I really have no idea what’s at Howth, but it’s to the north and that’s all that matters to me. Through the train windows I see a beach and a cute little island with a Martello tower. Enthused, I run off the train and to the beach. The weather was beautiful with clear bright skies and the feeling of the sun just soaking into your pores like warm olive oil and bread.

The beach was not quite my cup of tea. It was very small, nothing more than a strip by the shipyard and the DART tracks. Second, the instant smell was of the THOUSANDS of decaying jellyfish frying themselves into nothing but little circles in the sand. They were everywhere, some still bloated with life like contact lenses from some Cyclops. Third, the Irish do not provide their children with bathing costumes. Instead they bring them to the beach where they strip down to their underwear and frolic with each other, throwing great cascades of jellied sand up in the air and over the heads of poor bystanders.

Then, of course, there was the ubiquitous dog shit without which, I am sure, Ireland would cease to exist. It’s the flag they lay down to show their territory. Like a flag on top of Mt. Everest but far less pleasant in the sunshine.

Then I meandered along the docks and the heavy wooden fishing boats covered with their nets next to the sleek white yachts and tiny little sailboats. I wandered around the town and wanted to get up to the Martello tower above me surrounded by a fence next to the skeleton abbey. I found a way back up to the tower on a road winding around the edge of the town and brought my lunch there. It was really a lovely lunch, bought from the clerk at Spar who was quite evidently getting frustrated by the back-talking group of children who would buy some candy, count their change and then buy some more. I passed my baguette and smooth Laughing Cow reduced fat cheese over their heads and then marched back up the hill. I sketched the tower, laid back in the sun, watched the harbor, relished the quiet and worshipped the weather.

Someone bought a 30p pack of gum with a £20 and I had NO smaller bills. 19 one-pound coin and a 50p and a 20p. That is a huge handful. A concealed weapon.

Could these people chew more gum?

– Can I get a box of Cadbury Roses?
– Sure.
– Great. Charge it to the hotel.
– Oh, I’m sorry, we don’t do charges.
– Yes you do. I come in here every day.
– Well, I’m sorry, but –
– Listen, I’m the hotel manager. I sign a chit and you charge the hotel.
– Do you know what that would look like?
– Listen, just leave a note for Angela. Say Edward Stevens took some Roses and she is to charge the hotel. Have you any bigger boxes?
– No, I’m afraid not.
– That one there? Is that bigger?
– No, that’s just the side. They’re all the same.

[And then he left. No thanks. Prick.]

She is typically beautiful with her long pale face and long blonde curtains. It is tight blue denim head to toe, and she is thoroughly unremarkably beautiful down to her pink glittered manicured toes ever so purposefully peeking out from her high heeled sandals. She is painted in blue denim. But it’s her thick wide white patent leather belt, not even threaded through the loops but perched like a necklace on her hips with its two rows of holes that shines out bright from her pelvis that stirs my chest and tightens my skin.

He is beautiful with soft blue eyes and an inconspicuous halo of blond crewcut as pale as his flawless perfect skin. His eyes are like an iceberg, deep blue frozen clarity that you could see right through but for the intense haunting color. He is broad and strong, but not threatening. His movements are as soft and precise as his broken English, punctuated by a deep look from his impassive inviting eyes. He is defined but not chiseled as there is nothing harsh in him, almost as if someone had drawn him very deliberately but with the soft edge of snow and I was looking at him outside through the steamed glass.

The way that “Manhattan” is written on those popcorn packets looks initially like “man eater” then “man hater” before it ever looks like “manhattan”.

Every day I walk home past the National Association for the Deaf, which of course comes out to be NAD in huge letters which always makes me giggle. But would it be any better if it was renamed Society for Ireland’s Deaf, which would come out to be SID? Sudden Infant Death Syndrome? Or the Allied Irish Deaf Society – AIDS?

– Have you any stamps?
– To where? Where do you want to send them?
– To Scotland.
– How many would you like?
– I’m a bit taken aback, they never have them.
– I have ten left.
– Oh, I won’t need that many. Being a good Scot. That would mean I’d have to buy that many and then buy the postcards to put them on.

July 18, 2001

The man with a buzzcut came in and asked if we sold combs by any chance.

– Yes, black or brown?
– Black will do – there’s always something you forget.
LIKE NOT HAVING HAIR?

Yesterday was one of my weekly revivals – I say, if I keep getting reborn like this then I’ll be in nirvana in no time!  I took the Dart down to Sandycove to see the James Joyce Martello Tower.  Really didn’t know exactly where it was, but figured if it was a coastal defense tower of any scale to be effective then finding the shore would mean finding the tower.  And I was right.

Leaving Dublin, however, I was of course obliged to have the ubiquitous joy-mitigating run-in with the Irish.  I had no idea how much a ticket was, but I’d got it into my head it was £4.00.  I’m not sure where.  I’m pretty sure that I read it somewhere.  I go to the ticket booth and then teenage jack-off behind the counter mumbles a price in that god-forsaken Dublin accent.  It is GARBLE-FIFTEEN.  I ask him again.  He repeats, louder yet no more clearly GARBLE-FIFTEEN.  I know that’s as clear as it’s going to get, so I assume he’s mumbling £4.15.  I hand over £5.  He looks at me as if I’ve just pushed liquid parrot droppings through his window.

– What’s this?  You only wanted one, right?
– Yes.
– So WHY are you giving me five?

Couldn’t just let it go.  Couldn’t realize I couldn’t understand a word he said.  Couldn’t just take what he needed from the pile, push the rest back and smile.  No.  He had to be the big surly Irish man.  I hate that man.  So it actually was quite a bargain and there were lovely signs on the platform that displayed when the next train would come.

It’s an electric train with the wires marionette-style above it like a streetcar.  They are wide, open cars with very little seating and a wide aisle of linoleum covered with the Irish polka dots of gum and cigarette filters.  I happen to be cursed with a magnetism towards the world’s most foul smelling people, and the only open seat was across from a prime Irish sow.  He belched rather regularly over his untucked blue wrinkle of a shirt and his mat of long stringy hair did nothing to improve his image.  His shirt tail had this funny little tag on it that said, “This shirt belongs to ____” with no name filled in.  I wonder if he was having his monthly visit out of the hospital and had eaten his chaperone along the way.  That might account for the awful smell creeping off his body like big black beetles covered in dung.  He’s taking the whole “smell of Dublin” thing a little too far.  He had one of those smells that make you leave your hand in front of your face – which is hard to maintain without looking like you’re holding back vomit – which perhaps I was – so that all you smell is the soap from the morning and the billions of your own skin cells you’re inhaling.

Worse still, a couple of young girls sat down facing each other beside us, and his smell was so thick a cloud around us I just hope they didn’t think it was me.  I’d boil myself if I had that kind of funk rolling off me like boulders in an avalanche.

Visually the trip was pretty.  I looked out the window away from the human compost heap and as the compost heap of Dublin fell away it was replaced by a string of green punctuated by squat Victorian stations and finally beautiful, if not gray, view of the sea.  Went by Booterstown, which I’ll always remember Andy Brown saying in Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me.

Now, Dublin is pretty terrible – I must say that I don’t care for it much at all.  And though everyone has told me not to judge Ireland by Dublin, the moment I stepped off the train at Sandycove I knew that Ireland still held some promise.  I couldn’t have chosen worse weather as it was as cold as it’s ever been – thank God for this sweater!  – and the rain and the wind were a horrible and vicious pair.

Sandycove was what I expected Ireland to look like.  Even with the gray of the sky.  It’s a little picture postcard with a winding shoelace of a road that hugged the shore, packed between two rows of tightly-packed whitewashed houses like a set of teeth on the mouth of the bay.  The wind and weather battered new life into my tired little soul as it constantly shook me and battered me.  It was like a slap to wake someone up.  I always feel so disconnected but weather like that forces you into your surroundings and keeps you grounded and it never lets you forget that even though you are tiny, you are still a part of the world.  It was truly invigorating.

I just sat for a long time on the big brown boulders of the shore and watched the green blue explode into nets of foam like lace thrown high into the air.  Crashing against the stalwart shore.  The battlements of boulders.  And as I sat, as immobile as the rocks, with my pants legs becoming stiff from the weather, the flensing wind rubbed my skin bright red with its sandpaper.  My hands were so abused and so cold that I couldn’t get into my pocket to get my knife to open my orange juice foil seal.  It was heavenly.  I was just getting hammered by the rain, but I had my collar flipped up, my bandana tied around my throat – am I ever glad I found it! – and my hat as tight around my skull as I could manage.  Like the monkey king in mischief.

I walked along the shore to the James Joyce tower, having no clue as to its location besides “Sandymount,” but I figured that if it was a coastal defense tower worth its salt, finding the shore would mean finding it.  And I was right.  I walked past rocks and the gray brown sand and the low-flying gulls cutting into the wind and the little pools of quiet water in rock basins fringed with bright green moss that were calmly protected from the weather by strong guardians on all sides.  Little oases in the sandy desert.

The tower was closed for lunch, it being about 1:45, so I just sat on the shore again but it started to pelt rain so I hid against a wall until 2:00.  £4 bought me admission to the tiny museum.  There was the original door key, mentioned in Ulysses, some death masks (he must have been very slight), his guitar, some first editions, and quite a lot of postcards.  There was a block of stone from Nelson’s pillar and a block of stone from a house that Joyce lived in.  He was at one time in DRUMCONDRA! but his house had been demolished in 1999 and the rubble was all that remained.  Ah, the Irish, in such a rush to destroy themselves.  It’s rather telling that the relics of their lauded past are but bits of stone and mortar rescued from destruction.  Sad.

The next floor was the living floor, and someone put a statue of a panther by the hearth where in Ulysses that chap hallucinates one and lets off some shots in the middle of the night, much to Stephen’s displeasure.  Rather unexpected and humorous addition.

Joyce signed quite a bit of his correspondence as “Stephen Daedalus.” Or was it “Stephen Hero?”  I forget.  “Stephen” anyway.

Then the top of the tower where the gun would have been, where the weather was even more brutal.  As I stood there and looked out over the bay and the infinite distance of the sea mist, I realized that though Dublin is not the place for me, IRELAND definitely had promise.

Wouldn’t you know it, coming back from my trip I saw that the video store right across the street has a help-wanted sign out.  A new one, so it must have some basis in reality and is not simply windowdressing from 1979.  Maeve’s eyes lit up and she told me I must work there so that we can get some movies.  Maybe Declan should – he’d get some cash anyway as he was talking about getting a job for some spending money.  But I’m pretty sure that was a short-lived notion.  That boy’s as bad as I am.

Last night burned through another phone card to FTC.  Nothing of note, actually can’t remember a damned thing we talked about, but I am just so starved for friends just to have mindless chit chat is a treat I’m willing to pay £10 for.  Hell, it’s cheaper than a night drinking and it certainly leaves you in a much better state.

Must get ready for work.  Then tomorrow is off!  I packed a lunch – or actually a dinner – so I wont get so munchy and I’ll have a sort of break.  I’m bringing Ulysses – I want to get through 100 pages a day at work.  Let’s see how that works out.  Then tomorrow is off again!  But it will probably be a tax day so I’m not too terribly enthused.

– Have you got something really nice?
– Well, that would be the whole table here.  Do you know what you’re in the mood for?  Something soft, something hard?  Something with nuts or caramel?
– I don’t know!
– Well, you’re gonna have to narrow it down a little.
– I’ll take this – no.  Wait.  I’ll be safe and go with this.
– Ah, my favorite.  Good choice.  That’s 50 pence.
– Thanks.  I’m looking at rum and butter – that looks quite disgusting, doesn’t it?
– Yes, I don’t know why it’s supposed to be an appealing flavor.
– How much is that?  Is that 50 pence also?
– Yes.
– I’ll take one of those then.
– You just said it sounded disgusting!
– I know!

My next book: “Gosh, You Don’t Sound Irish!”  My Time in the Newsagents

“I need a pen where the head is very big.”  Ah, the Japanese.

July 16, 2001

I would be writing outside, perhaps in the relative tranquility of the Garden of Remembrance which I only ever see anymore in the rush to get home.  However, it is raining.  Of course.  It has been sunny and bright all morning and right as I am about to go out to collect my laundry off the line it begins to rain.  Frankly I consider the lack of dryers to be the ultimate sign of the barbarity of this cursed rock.  It’s not like this is the Sahara where a dryer would be a useless extravagance.  I think history has shown that it will rain every twelve seconds here, if not more frequently.  And alas, it takes more than 12 seconds in absence of precipitation for clothes to dry.  It’s a Russian Roulette waiting for your clothes to dry, knowing that there is probably a rain drop in the next chamber but pulling the trigger anyway.  I swear my clothes spend more time outside OFF my body than they do ON my body.  I’m going to go outside this evening after work and find they have created some sort of Lord of the Flies scenario and I will be fighting a tribal war with Declan’s clothes which have been outside for a week.

The beautiful Irish women are ravens – harsh faces with black marble eyes, their hair like feathers down their neck, their heads proud and their movements quickly flicked out from their fit bodies.

But the men are hideous.  Like the fucking prick hotel employee who haunts me like the murder of an Asian prostitute.  He shows up several times a day to support his gangly grotesque body with Lucozade.  His head is like a giant jack o’ lantern that has been bleached and has been sitting out in the sun for a couple of months.  It is round and misshapen, entirely too large for his bony body, with his eyebrows collapsing over his eyes and his mouth nothing more than a mushy slit that makes it even more impossible to understand his deep indecipherable Dublin growling.  He is perhaps the most disheveled bastard I have yet to meet, and his grimy mangled collar is always unbuttoned behind his skewered bowtie which at one time must have been black but which has now been rendered gray by lack of washing and total disgust for his owner.  He perpetually squints through the day in that affected “I am very tired and perpetually overworked” fashion, which only serves to piss me off even more.  He never fails to deliver a disparaging comment about the ease of my job and always remembers to call me a “lazy bastard.”

Yesterday was my most pleasant exchange with him, my little ray of sunshine.

– So what the fuck are you supposed to be then?
– The fuck Paul.
– What, did your parents name you that?  The moment you came out they said, “The Fuck?!”
– No.  MY parents were married for several years before they had me.
– Well, you know what they say – first child is always a mistake.  Thank God I was the second.
– Uh huh.

Then Igor tuned in to the classical music coming from the radio.

– What the fuck are you listening to?
– Classical music.

Then Igor mustered all of the sarcasm and mock horror he held in that grotesque little frame of his and demanded:

– Why?
– Because I like it.  It’s complex.  There’s a reason it’s been around so long.
– Have you ever heard of clubs?

At this point several very good retorts presented themselves.  Unfortunately they were all revealed through the magic of the afterthought.

– Clubs suck.

At which point Igor turned and left in disgust.

I really think he’s trying to be funny and employ that sacred and lauded Irish wit which rides exclusively on the back of sarcasm.  He probably tries very hard to be so brash and rude, finding it very clever and ultimately a sign of how cool he is.  Being as hideous as he is he must feel pressure – terrible pressure – to do something – anything – to ameliorate his shitty lot.  Maybe he can just move to a blind leper colony and finally have the courage to be himself.  However, though I see how hard he is trying to be this monster he has become, and though I do feel a bit of pity for him, it still craps up my day in true Dublin fashion.  I think I’ll just be rude to him from now on and hide all the red Lucozade.  What can he do – get me fired?  And do I care?  He’s just one of those jack-offs from high school who throw in the first punch so that they can laugh at everyone else before everyone else laughs at them.

I think I’m getting depressed again.  Not “bummed out” but depressed.  I haven’t been reading and I haven’t written much.  Just stared at the TV or the wall.  Haven’t bought an Evening Herald in a week.  Less desire to do any of the happy things I do for myself.  I remember what Mrs. Gifford in AP English said about the great geniuses being manic depressive.  That explained why they were essentially life long alcoholics who would periodically churn out a masterpiece in a few days unbroken by sleep and then descend again into their bottles.  Mania fueled the muse.

Maybe if I can keep writing I can escape the depression swing.  Force myself to stay up enough so that the rest has no choice but to pull itself back to the top.  Everyone falls from the trapeze at some point, and that’s why there is a net.  Depression doesn’t necessarily mean melancholia.  I still see beautiful fun things in my life – like seeing the prime minister Bertie Ahern outside across from Fagan’s yesterday – but there is less motivation.  Less desire.  No need to pick up the pen, just a blank stare at the wall.  Thoughts in my head fly buzz the bulb but no tap turn to let them out.  No desire.  I need to keep desire and keep writing and lusting and walking and calling and doing.  I need to keep moving or the cement will harden round my feet and then they can safely dump me in the water.  But at that point I won’t care and my only sound will be a long last resigned sigh that only ends to take the water into my lungs.

And I am NOT going out like that.

Time to go to work!  Let’s see how I hold up.  Only 8 WEEKS.  Remember that.  It’ll be easy.  Most everyone does this all their LIVES.  Angela’s done it at this store alone for 5 years, before that 22 years in a restaurant.  I can make 8 weeks.

“How long have you been open?” asks the German in his spotless dark blue jeans belted over a well-pressed white checked shirt.  A very intentional and tidy casualness, studied almost, down to the well-polished boat shoes of well-polished leather.

“12 days I’ve been here.  How do I know where I’ve been?  I’m 72 years old.  I hardly remember 12 hours ago, much less 12 days.  I got on the plane in Huston at 8 in the morning then had to fly – fly to Newark New Jersey so I didn’t get here until 8 in the morning the next day.  And then they said they didn’t have a room for us.  And all the seats were taken because Robbie was here.  Robbie Williams.  I hate Robbie.  And the bartender didn’t even know how to make lemonade because we none of us drink.  And NO ONE is watching the bags!  Except me, of course, because no one else is.  So our bags are just sitting there in the lobby.  Then at 2 they open up the luggage room down the hall and put our bags in.  Finally we get our rooms and they say they’ll bring the luggage right up.  45 MINUTES LATER [as she narrows her eyes] I call down and say WHERE IS MY LUGGAGE?  And poor little Mary Robinson from the desk over there, she brings the bags up by herself, poor thing.  Now is that any way to treat a person?  I get off the plane at 9 in the morning and not get any help until 6 in the evening?  I’m going to write a letter.  But the guide, John Hood, he made up for it.  All the men on the bus.  I need protection, you see.  I have to fight the men off, you know?”

Michael’s brother came around for the rent.

Rafal: “Some guy came and took money.  I don’t know if we can trust him.”
Me: “We’ll find out soon enough.”

July 14, 2001

My diary has suffered from constant interruption.  I try not to totally seclude myself, so when I get the chance to be out with the roommates or whatever.  Even if it’s just watching TV.  And I really don’t like watching TV.  You feel your stomach sort of expand and your muscles atrophy and I believe you actually de-evolve.  Slid backwards down the DNA ladder to one-celled organism.

Here I am – my first solo day of work!  Listening to Lyric FM and the mournful wail of opera.  I just get so sick at work – so afraid and apprehensive and stressed – I feel my skin almost leaping off my bones, like someone has hooked my skin in hundreds of places and someone is trying to pull me out of the ocean.  Into the boat.  Out of the frying pan into the fire.  But why am I afraid?  And of what am I afraid?  Of not serving fast enough and getting yelled at and proving to myself that I am useless.  I have a crippling fear of failure in A CONVENIENCE STORE.

Breifene just called to check up on me – he reassured me and just said, “Take your time.  You’ll make some mistakes.  Just take your time.  Charge £1 for small things and £5 for large things if you don’t know.”

I’m just so afraid of failure.  And making mistakes.  I take them so to heart.  I just can’t convince myself that I’m worth being here.  Taking up space and people’s thought and mom’s money and the time of the people around me.  I feel like I walk on a razor blade’s invisible edge.  Walking bites the blade into my feet, so I wonder if I should go – there must be an end, after all.  But instead I stay in the same spot, where my own weight and the mass of my inactivity pulls me down and will eventually cleave me in two.  But so what?  I work in a NEWSAGENT’S.  Even the boss is telling me to chill out.  That it will be fine and I should just take my time.  I’m making £4.95 and I think the most important thing here is that I show up and stay to the end.  Everything else is icing on the cake.  I just always feel like such a failure.  I just don’t need any proof.

Getting in this morning was a bit of a scare – the key has two separate and wholly different sides, of which I was not aware, so for a full five minutes I fruitlessly went from lock to lock pushing and tugging with all my might – maybe the key’s in too far?  Maybe it’s not in enough!  Maybe I need to turn it harder.  Maybe softer.  Of course my blood pressure rose into the air in a geyser of stress and I just knew that somehow it was fucked up and I’d never get in and I had no contact number or anything for Angela or Breifene and I would just sit outside the locked gates all day, weeping until Aoife came at 2 to relieve my tear swollen red wrinkled shuddering body.  And of course now I have mournful music on the radio.  Clarinets weeping out of the speaker.

God, I just want to go back to the States and be with my friends.  New York is a whole new set of problems, but at least I would be with my friends and I’d know that someone cared and thought I was funny and interesting.  And I knew there’d be a home to which I could look forward to returning.  And now all they’re playing is mournful oratorio and requiem.  I also think I’ve just rubbed newsprint ink all over my face.

Enough.  I’m getting myself into a mood.  No need to waste paper and ink and time on crap I know I feel.  And exploring it would be one thing, but I’m wallowing.

Work is fine.  Trained 10-2 the past two days with Angela.  She’s quite fun – I’m rather sad to be without her today.  I wish I could remember exactly what she said and how she delivered it yesterday, but the following will have to do.

“Ireland will never mix.  You know.  Now, I’m not a racist.  I think that everyone should be allowed to do whatever they want to.  But the coloreds.  The coloreds.  They intimidate you.  You know?  They know they have a power over you.  If you don’t give them a job or whatever they report you to the commission or whatever.  Yeah.  They do.  They intimidate you.  That’s why you never make eye contact.  That’s what I do.  I never make eye contact with them because then they know they have you.  And all they have to do is sue you and it’s your fault.  It happened to a bus driver.  He provoked him and he got a bit flustered and you know he said something and he sued him for £10,000 and he won.  Now this was a fellah in a suit, you know what I mean, he knew what he was doing.  So he provoked him and the driver lost his temper and said, you know, ‘you black bastard’ or something.  They have a power over you.  They intimidate you, they do.  Now they say that there’s 10,000 of ‘em comin’ in each month.  Legally or illegally.  Whatever you like.  And that’s just the ones that come in and get checked.  Who knows how many are slipping across the border without anyone knowing?  And they all come here pregnant on top of that.

And the travelers.  They’re the scum of the earth.  The law is that if they’re on your land then you are responsible for making them leave.  It is your responsibility.  You can take them to court but that takes months and months.  So what they do, the travelers, they come to you and say, ‘For £10,000 I’ll get off your land.  I’ll leave.’  So you have to pay them to get off your land.  The scum of the earth.  And then they’ll ring you up.  If you have a pub or a restaurant or a hotel.  And they’ll ring and say they’d like to book for 50 people and you think, well, maybe business is a little bit slow, so you say okay.  Then they arrive and it’s a traveller’s wedding.  And they want to have the reception there.  And there’s the bride and the groom and the traveler families.  And pretty soon they’ve been drinking and get to fighting and your place is trashed.  And what can you do?  If you throw them out they’ll sue.  They’re from England and Ireland.  From Romania – Bulgaria –  them’s the gypsies.  I saw on television they interview them and they say, ‘2 pounds!  2 pounds I earn all month!  2 pounds!  And it cost me £10,000 to get here!’  But no one ever asks where they got that £10,000 from.  Where’s that from?  And if you ask – eh?  What?  I don’t understand.  But where’s that £10,000 from?  They must have done something illegal to get that money.  Big crime those are into.  Drugs and what have you.  But also big time crime.  And what are we going to do about them?  What are we going to do with all them.  All of them coming here pregnant and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

I have failed to capture her manner of expression.  Words are punctuated by clenching her face into a vinegar kiss or growling out words from the corner of her mouth.  She spoke facing profile to me, slipping her face slyly around to ooze out a derisive phrase.  Really very enjoyable to watch.

Cutest Italian couple – man with brown mustache and combover with a burgundy camera strapped across his shoulder next to his gray-streaked wife with silver teeth.

This rules!  Irish music on the classical station!  THAT perks me up!

I can’t cross my legs back here!  Smaller than a hallway!

I would love for Declan to go home tonight as Rafal and Kate hide in his room whenever they’re not eating so I’d be alone to write and telephone!

Only an hour and a half to go!

I really hope I have reams of fun, personal email.  That would make my day.  I also feel like I will want to buy another phone card and just chat them away.  If I can get in touch with anyone, that is.

The Northern Ireland peace process seems a doomed venture.  On the July 12th demonstrations to mark the Battle of the Boyne.  112 officers injured, two in hospital.

I CANNOT BELIEVE IT!  THE QUEEN OF THE NIGHT ARIA IS ON THE RADIO!  WHAT have I been whistling for days?  And for hours already today?!  And all I wanted was to hear this song and her birdlike staccato!  Aah!  And here I am a great believer in signs!  This station is so funny – the radio commentators are quite critical, saying of one recording, “Rather nice, but with some rather dark and boring bits.”  And NOW the beautiful Blue Danube!

I had my first bizarre customers – a woman short fat English looking for a “property paper” that she knows comes out accompanied by her ethnically distinct daughter who looks Italian olive complexioned or Spanish sun baked.  She was a grown woman in her own right but called the pale fat one “Ma” and had her buy her a chocolate to “drown her sorrows.”

I want to go to the movies and smell all that popcorn butter grease deep in the seats and rugs and walls and huddle with my friends and watch some horrible B movie which was the only thing we could agree upon between Chris’ teenage fantasies, Nick’s arthouse crap and Chad’s mindless murder films.  The movie would suck but we would all like it except for Nick but that’s part of the experience, and then we’d all cram into Nick’s tan leather-interior Taurus – because the Ford WORKS! – or Josh’s Van of God with new age, pink stone crucifix handing from the rearview and striking loudly and valiantly to Tastee or Denny’s or Amphora to eat a bacon philly cheese steak and blare STP at the top of our lungs.

All right, I’m starting to get tired.  It’s probably mostly from fatigue that comes when the end is near and your body begins to relax out its adrenaline.  Just 8 weeks of this grind – then off to travel!  See Europe – actual Europe.  Not its farthest flung outpost.

“20 Silk Cut Ultra” when barked by a Japanese in a black and white check blazer is absolutely incomprehensible.  He was very patient with my misunderstanding however, and I’ve learned there’s no problem that pointing and laughing can’t overcome.

I wondered why we sold tights here – it’s for the staff.  They must be very strict about runs, the management.  I’ve sold 2 pairs already.  The number was very blurred, so from the general shape of the ink smudge and my growing understanding of what things cost, I guessed the big black smear was £1.99.  Luckily, I guessed correctly.  It is, after all, the little things.

Handel’s rousing Zadok the Priest.  Please, radio, spare me the dirges and keep feeding me bits of bright music to get me through this last and most difficult hour… now a half hour.  Ah, the relativity of time.  Walking here makes thirty minutes pretty much fly by.  Sitting here with my ass paralyzing will extend it, I’m sure.