72 HOURS RAW IN DUBLIN
PART THREE
"BAD HUNGER, HEAVY LUST, AWFUL MUSIC"
"BAD HUNGER, HEAVY LUST, AWFUL MUSIC"
Woke up at noon with fifteen sheets a paper lain cross
the bed, fallin onto the floor, couple shoved underneath
my pillow, one in my trouser pocket, spent the day
wanderin round getting ever more tense on account of a
growing distress, a gnawing in the gut roughly 89%
anxiety, and ain’t nothing could be done about that, but
what’s this other 11% right here, this rogue fraction,
the hell you representin, fool?
Turns out it was nothing any more exotic than hunger, on
account of I hadn’t grabbed a bite a chow since the
previous afternoon, not a single solid past the yap in
25 hours.
We Western types aren’t used to being hungry, choking on
our own plenty like we are, and so yeah, took a while
for The Duke to recognise this sensation. Most likely I
assumed the pangs to be extraterrestrial in origin, or
at least the workings of some kind a tumour of the
kidney.
We Westerners ain’t never supposed to feel the roar in
the ribs from a fortnight’s worth a flat coke and
nothing else, that’s why the pedestrians all wander on
and chatter bout what are we gonna have for dinner
tonight, anyway, I’m fucked if I’m gonna be eating pasta
again, and they never see the folks sat in the doorways
with the shitty blankets cross the shoulders and the
bunches a roses, couple quid a piece, maybe if you buy
one I might get a burger or somethin, or maybe a cheap
bottle gut-rot gin, since I’m gonna be hungry as ever an
hour after I eat, and least if I get blind I’ll fall
asleep and it’ll be Tuesday before I wanna think about
ever eating anything ever again.
The thriving vibrant post-millennial stomp of Dublin
City Centre, and the ghosts of some horrific famine-
riddled past just to the left, just down by the queues
stood at the ATM, they don’t say nothin cause it’s bad
enough having to sleep in full view of every meth-doused
psychopath in the city, I don’t need a mouthful of
“Leave me the fuck alone, you scummy bastard” on top of
it all.
And Willy Mason in the ear-holes for a time;
“Look him in the eyes,
There’s no need to feel scared,
He’s as powerless as you and me”
And on the postcards, there she is, the woman sat
outside the Gaiety Theatre petting a dead Alsatian at
her side. Walk on, is all, just keep a danderin.
And on the brochures, an old fella sat playing an
accordion, he’s got a dignity in the eyes a fella
notices long before he catches the vomit on his
trousers, and the old suitcase open front of him, inside
it says “No Music No Life Thank You”
Just keep walkin. Is this the road to the Natural
History Museum? They got a whale hanging from the fuckin
roof!
And a lad and his girlfriend, doubt if they’re a day
past twenty, with their heads on each others shoulders,
sleeping outside St Stephens Green.
So sat with the KFC in the paw, I’m all sortsa confused.
Should I try not to enjoy it, or should I enjoy it all
the more, on account of I’m lucky to have it?
Chew every bite till I’m grinding the teeth into my
gums, or shove it down the gullet trying not to taste it
for a second?
Most times where KFC’s involved a man don’t need to
worry a damn about anything of the sort, since, usually,
whatever “taste” there might’ve been one time long since
went the way of the chicken’s tangled guts.
This here, though, this KFC right here, purchased in the
food court of the Jervis Street Shopping Centre, this is
as fine an example of fast food as I’ve ever encountered.
I take the top off the burger, exposing the fine
craftsmanship therein, telling Sir Fleming all about how
back home they douse the fucker in mayonnaise till it’s
dribbling to a man’s boots, but not these cats, see,
just a subtle dab here and there.
“This is true”, Sir Fleming nods, “But on the other
hand, the staff are obviously knee-deep in the kinda
self-loathing can only result in an AK top the water
tower.”
I look around me, folks shuffling along in the queues,
greeted at the till by muttering mournful faces rippin
monosyllabic snarls out the throat, eyes burnt black
with some unfathomable hatred.
It’s the tortured artist thing, is what I suggest. Back
home, you could hang around up at the till all day, you
could shoot the arse-spit bout that new Oasis record or
Batman Begins or The 120 Days Of Sodom, crack jokes and
tell em all bout this girl you met makes you bubble in
your shirt. The simple fact of the matter is that the
food tastes like rancid goat-wank.
These folks here, though, these are obviously your Van
Morrison types, the Dylan’s circa-66, geniuses twisted
rotten by the weight of their own brilliance. They
detest every customer, but ain’t one of those fuckers
leaves unsatisfied.
Mind reels back to December 1999, wandering this self
same city, ending up in a similar KFC, just turned 18
and in the midst of a three-day blackout, just the
occasional glimmer of a Zinger Tower Meal here, or the
cardboard advert for a Socialist Party meeting that I
took down from a lamp-post as a souvenir.
2001, browsing through the record store cross the road
from the hotel, searching for the first Clash record as
a Sorry Present for my then-fiancée, on account of I got
bladdered the night before and ended up ordering 24
hours worth of Cable Porn that I had no intention of
ever watching, just cause why not, it’s what you do in
hotels, you watch other folks screwin.
Shit, what’s this, a guilt pang? Now, four years later,
a slap in the back of the brain says “Yeah, you were a
cunt sometimes”, and this is true, but also, only when I
was drunk. Which I ain’t been in two years, and yet
myself and Sir Fleming sat in a bar by the name of Major
Tom’s, and I’m seventeen times as disorientated and
frenzied as I was back then, back when I was trying to
shut a fella up stood outside the Olympia Theatre, fresh
out a knuckle-bustingly brilliant performance by Shane
MacGowan & The Popes, and here’s this fella stood
shouting loyalist diatribes at a buncha natives cross
the way got a tricolour round the necks.
For fucks sakes, man, you’re not in County Antrim no
more, I’m in no mood for a blade in the fuck on account
of your piss-soaked gnashing.
No need to worry about anything of the sort here and now
in 2005, Sir Fleming gone to grab a pint, me trembling
in the corner with a Red Bull in one fist and a mobile
phone in the other.
“We’ll be there around 11 or so” it says.
What it all concerned was that a friend of The Duke’s, a
lass by the name of Sinéad, happened to live in Dublin,
and since we’d only bantered over phones an net
connections it seemed like the most sensible thing in
the world to meet up, head out someplace throbbin with
industrial grindcore mania, someplace where nobody ever
knows your name because most likely they don’t even know
their own names, most likely they’re in the corner
getting a quick one off the wrist and blinkin
amphetamine dust out the eyes.
The Duke and Sir Fleming, here in town as delegates of
Mondo Irlando on Important Fucking Business, and right
up on top that list of Immediate Concerns it says;
Contact Sinéad. Tell Her My Head’s On Fire. Must Find
Spirit Of Brendan Behan. Owes Me Money. The Fucker.
Earlier in the day the phone had rang. I enjoyed the
vibration in the pocket for a moment, and then yeah, hi,
who is it?
“Hi! So yeah, I’m gonna go do stuff, but we’ll meet up
later, yeah? We’re gonna take you out, I’ll talk to you
later.”
Sinéad and her friends, they’re gonna take us out, is
what I tell Sir Fleming. She’ll talk to me later. A
pause. We may well lose our minds.
“I should fucking hope so!”
So here, in Major Tom’s, with the appointed hour getting
all the closer, Sir Fleming’s detecting that all my
banter bout how no, don’t be insane in the head, I ain’t
got no thoughts of that sort whatsoever, about how no,
all those songs about “And no I won’t embarrass you, by
talkin bout those eyes, the blue that burns from out the
frame, Sinéad” and “Yeah, the music died some time ago
but I just took hold her hand regardless, and I danced
with sweet Sinéad” and “Where once was nothin, less than
nothing hind my smile, now sits Sinéad in Savage Purple,
an I sing to her sometimes”, all that was just metaphor,
see, it’s about Iraq, for gods sakes, he’s coming to a
conclusion along the lines of The Duke’s done been
talking out his arsehole.
“You’ve got thoughts in there! I see the fuckers, clear
as day!”
“No!”, I’m saying. “I got no thoughts! I’m thoughtless!
I couldn’t think a thought if my last fuck depended on
it!”
“Then what’s the big deal? Why all this gods-cursed
anxiety? Why the yammering delirious?”
“Because why, because I dunno why, is why. I mean, if
truth be told, yeah, probably I fell asleep most nights
the last couple months thinkin bout something she said,
so what? I used to fall asleep thinking bout John
Cusack. Do I got thoughts about John Cusack? Only in Say
Anything, Grosse Point Blank and for maybe a couple
scenes in Con Air, you’ll be aware.”
Lighting a cigarette, forgetting about the No Smoking
thing, putting it out with two fingertips, nodding
apologetically at the barmaid, and oh, furthermore;
“I admit that maybe I think too much about her laughin,
this is true, and maybe it makes me laugh and sometimes
it takes a lot to get such a thing goin, but no, she
manages it with a couple words everytime. Maybe she’s
the only one I don’t mind calling me a useless cunt,
because the artistry she uses with the insults, Sir
Fleming, I dare say I’ve rarely heard the like ever
before in the here or there. And perhaps, aye, I think
I'd probably die of a splosion in the brain-guts if I
touched her hand for the slightest of seconds, but this
is nothing to be analysed nor assessed, and it’s got
absolutely nothing to do with why the hell we’re still
sat in this bar, this place is fucking wretched!”
It was wretched, or at least ill-fitting for the
occasion. A man thirty-nine sheets to the last whisper a
sanity has no use for the thumping techno and the
glamour-yapped cocktail-chewing pseudo-bohemian air of
the likes exhibited by Major Toms on that particular
evening.
Curse the every beat, I hollered. No one paid attention.
Twilight conversations regarding The Simpsons, regarding
poppers, a ghastly chemical beloved of high-school
students on account of it makes your head thump for
fifteen minutes and gives you a nosebleed, regarding
Maniacts starring Jeff Fahey nailed to a cross,
regarding the perfect running time for feature-flicks,
being 90 minutes, anything longer and an application
must made, then subjected to a process the likes of
which might greet a Disability Living Allowance claim
made by a fella with a bad cough and a headache.
Conversation hung like tar, and then the phone.
“Hi! We’re at the Phil Lynott statue!”
“Fantastic! We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Dear God.
Thanks folks
Back To The 72 Hours Raw In Dublin Index
Fling The Duke An Email or Leave A Message
the bed, fallin onto the floor, couple shoved underneath
my pillow, one in my trouser pocket, spent the day
wanderin round getting ever more tense on account of a
growing distress, a gnawing in the gut roughly 89%
anxiety, and ain’t nothing could be done about that, but
what’s this other 11% right here, this rogue fraction,
the hell you representin, fool?
Turns out it was nothing any more exotic than hunger, on
account of I hadn’t grabbed a bite a chow since the
previous afternoon, not a single solid past the yap in
25 hours.
We Western types aren’t used to being hungry, choking on
our own plenty like we are, and so yeah, took a while
for The Duke to recognise this sensation. Most likely I
assumed the pangs to be extraterrestrial in origin, or
at least the workings of some kind a tumour of the
kidney.
We Westerners ain’t never supposed to feel the roar in
the ribs from a fortnight’s worth a flat coke and
nothing else, that’s why the pedestrians all wander on
and chatter bout what are we gonna have for dinner
tonight, anyway, I’m fucked if I’m gonna be eating pasta
again, and they never see the folks sat in the doorways
with the shitty blankets cross the shoulders and the
bunches a roses, couple quid a piece, maybe if you buy
one I might get a burger or somethin, or maybe a cheap
bottle gut-rot gin, since I’m gonna be hungry as ever an
hour after I eat, and least if I get blind I’ll fall
asleep and it’ll be Tuesday before I wanna think about
ever eating anything ever again.
The thriving vibrant post-millennial stomp of Dublin
City Centre, and the ghosts of some horrific famine-
riddled past just to the left, just down by the queues
stood at the ATM, they don’t say nothin cause it’s bad
enough having to sleep in full view of every meth-doused
psychopath in the city, I don’t need a mouthful of
“Leave me the fuck alone, you scummy bastard” on top of
it all.
And Willy Mason in the ear-holes for a time;
“Look him in the eyes,
There’s no need to feel scared,
He’s as powerless as you and me”
And on the postcards, there she is, the woman sat
outside the Gaiety Theatre petting a dead Alsatian at
her side. Walk on, is all, just keep a danderin.
And on the brochures, an old fella sat playing an
accordion, he’s got a dignity in the eyes a fella
notices long before he catches the vomit on his
trousers, and the old suitcase open front of him, inside
it says “No Music No Life Thank You”
Just keep walkin. Is this the road to the Natural
History Museum? They got a whale hanging from the fuckin
roof!
And a lad and his girlfriend, doubt if they’re a day
past twenty, with their heads on each others shoulders,
sleeping outside St Stephens Green.
So sat with the KFC in the paw, I’m all sortsa confused.
Should I try not to enjoy it, or should I enjoy it all
the more, on account of I’m lucky to have it?
Chew every bite till I’m grinding the teeth into my
gums, or shove it down the gullet trying not to taste it
for a second?
Most times where KFC’s involved a man don’t need to
worry a damn about anything of the sort, since, usually,
whatever “taste” there might’ve been one time long since
went the way of the chicken’s tangled guts.
This here, though, this KFC right here, purchased in the
food court of the Jervis Street Shopping Centre, this is
as fine an example of fast food as I’ve ever encountered.
I take the top off the burger, exposing the fine
craftsmanship therein, telling Sir Fleming all about how
back home they douse the fucker in mayonnaise till it’s
dribbling to a man’s boots, but not these cats, see,
just a subtle dab here and there.
“This is true”, Sir Fleming nods, “But on the other
hand, the staff are obviously knee-deep in the kinda
self-loathing can only result in an AK top the water
tower.”
I look around me, folks shuffling along in the queues,
greeted at the till by muttering mournful faces rippin
monosyllabic snarls out the throat, eyes burnt black
with some unfathomable hatred.
It’s the tortured artist thing, is what I suggest. Back
home, you could hang around up at the till all day, you
could shoot the arse-spit bout that new Oasis record or
Batman Begins or The 120 Days Of Sodom, crack jokes and
tell em all bout this girl you met makes you bubble in
your shirt. The simple fact of the matter is that the
food tastes like rancid goat-wank.
These folks here, though, these are obviously your Van
Morrison types, the Dylan’s circa-66, geniuses twisted
rotten by the weight of their own brilliance. They
detest every customer, but ain’t one of those fuckers
leaves unsatisfied.
Mind reels back to December 1999, wandering this self
same city, ending up in a similar KFC, just turned 18
and in the midst of a three-day blackout, just the
occasional glimmer of a Zinger Tower Meal here, or the
cardboard advert for a Socialist Party meeting that I
took down from a lamp-post as a souvenir.
2001, browsing through the record store cross the road
from the hotel, searching for the first Clash record as
a Sorry Present for my then-fiancée, on account of I got
bladdered the night before and ended up ordering 24
hours worth of Cable Porn that I had no intention of
ever watching, just cause why not, it’s what you do in
hotels, you watch other folks screwin.
Shit, what’s this, a guilt pang? Now, four years later,
a slap in the back of the brain says “Yeah, you were a
cunt sometimes”, and this is true, but also, only when I
was drunk. Which I ain’t been in two years, and yet
myself and Sir Fleming sat in a bar by the name of Major
Tom’s, and I’m seventeen times as disorientated and
frenzied as I was back then, back when I was trying to
shut a fella up stood outside the Olympia Theatre, fresh
out a knuckle-bustingly brilliant performance by Shane
MacGowan & The Popes, and here’s this fella stood
shouting loyalist diatribes at a buncha natives cross
the way got a tricolour round the necks.
For fucks sakes, man, you’re not in County Antrim no
more, I’m in no mood for a blade in the fuck on account
of your piss-soaked gnashing.
No need to worry about anything of the sort here and now
in 2005, Sir Fleming gone to grab a pint, me trembling
in the corner with a Red Bull in one fist and a mobile
phone in the other.
“We’ll be there around 11 or so” it says.
What it all concerned was that a friend of The Duke’s, a
lass by the name of Sinéad, happened to live in Dublin,
and since we’d only bantered over phones an net
connections it seemed like the most sensible thing in
the world to meet up, head out someplace throbbin with
industrial grindcore mania, someplace where nobody ever
knows your name because most likely they don’t even know
their own names, most likely they’re in the corner
getting a quick one off the wrist and blinkin
amphetamine dust out the eyes.
The Duke and Sir Fleming, here in town as delegates of
Mondo Irlando on Important Fucking Business, and right
up on top that list of Immediate Concerns it says;
Contact Sinéad. Tell Her My Head’s On Fire. Must Find
Spirit Of Brendan Behan. Owes Me Money. The Fucker.
Earlier in the day the phone had rang. I enjoyed the
vibration in the pocket for a moment, and then yeah, hi,
who is it?
“Hi! So yeah, I’m gonna go do stuff, but we’ll meet up
later, yeah? We’re gonna take you out, I’ll talk to you
later.”
Sinéad and her friends, they’re gonna take us out, is
what I tell Sir Fleming. She’ll talk to me later. A
pause. We may well lose our minds.
“I should fucking hope so!”
So here, in Major Tom’s, with the appointed hour getting
all the closer, Sir Fleming’s detecting that all my
banter bout how no, don’t be insane in the head, I ain’t
got no thoughts of that sort whatsoever, about how no,
all those songs about “And no I won’t embarrass you, by
talkin bout those eyes, the blue that burns from out the
frame, Sinéad” and “Yeah, the music died some time ago
but I just took hold her hand regardless, and I danced
with sweet Sinéad” and “Where once was nothin, less than
nothing hind my smile, now sits Sinéad in Savage Purple,
an I sing to her sometimes”, all that was just metaphor,
see, it’s about Iraq, for gods sakes, he’s coming to a
conclusion along the lines of The Duke’s done been
talking out his arsehole.
“You’ve got thoughts in there! I see the fuckers, clear
as day!”
“No!”, I’m saying. “I got no thoughts! I’m thoughtless!
I couldn’t think a thought if my last fuck depended on
it!”
“Then what’s the big deal? Why all this gods-cursed
anxiety? Why the yammering delirious?”
“Because why, because I dunno why, is why. I mean, if
truth be told, yeah, probably I fell asleep most nights
the last couple months thinkin bout something she said,
so what? I used to fall asleep thinking bout John
Cusack. Do I got thoughts about John Cusack? Only in Say
Anything, Grosse Point Blank and for maybe a couple
scenes in Con Air, you’ll be aware.”
Lighting a cigarette, forgetting about the No Smoking
thing, putting it out with two fingertips, nodding
apologetically at the barmaid, and oh, furthermore;
“I admit that maybe I think too much about her laughin,
this is true, and maybe it makes me laugh and sometimes
it takes a lot to get such a thing goin, but no, she
manages it with a couple words everytime. Maybe she’s
the only one I don’t mind calling me a useless cunt,
because the artistry she uses with the insults, Sir
Fleming, I dare say I’ve rarely heard the like ever
before in the here or there. And perhaps, aye, I think
I'd probably die of a splosion in the brain-guts if I
touched her hand for the slightest of seconds, but this
is nothing to be analysed nor assessed, and it’s got
absolutely nothing to do with why the hell we’re still
sat in this bar, this place is fucking wretched!”
It was wretched, or at least ill-fitting for the
occasion. A man thirty-nine sheets to the last whisper a
sanity has no use for the thumping techno and the
glamour-yapped cocktail-chewing pseudo-bohemian air of
the likes exhibited by Major Toms on that particular
evening.
Curse the every beat, I hollered. No one paid attention.
Twilight conversations regarding The Simpsons, regarding
poppers, a ghastly chemical beloved of high-school
students on account of it makes your head thump for
fifteen minutes and gives you a nosebleed, regarding
Maniacts starring Jeff Fahey nailed to a cross,
regarding the perfect running time for feature-flicks,
being 90 minutes, anything longer and an application
must made, then subjected to a process the likes of
which might greet a Disability Living Allowance claim
made by a fella with a bad cough and a headache.
Conversation hung like tar, and then the phone.
“Hi! We’re at the Phil Lynott statue!”
“Fantastic! We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Dear God.
Thanks folks
Back To The 72 Hours Raw In Dublin Index
Fling The Duke An Email or Leave A Message
