72 HOURS RAW IN DUBLIN
PART FOUR
"AN ANNOYING DIGRESSION..."
"AN ANNOYING DIGRESSION..."
Sometime before receiving Sinéad’s text message all
about “Yeah, come on down to the Phil Lynott statue,
we're in dire need of a liver-full a Jägermeister”,
sometime before I had to go stand in the hotel bathroom
for forty-seven minutes deciding what the fuck I could
do to make the posture all the more filthually enticing,
sometime earlier, myself and Sir Fleming in a pub
someplace on Dame Street.
Staring cross at the bar-maid, bad sweats cross my brow,
eyes red as the creases in a donkey’s arsehole, I’m
asking for the usual.
“Pint a Diet Coke an a couple Red Bull’s, please”.
On account of I don’t do the alcohol no more, see.
On account of a couple hours without caffeine results in
all sortsa horrifyin shit. Body starts making kinda
noises you can hear if you play Blue Train backwards at
half the speed. Heart slows to a zombie rasp. Tongue
starts clackin hind the teeth. Freaky voodoo shit, no
good to no-one.
Sir Fleming’s stood over by the video jukebox, scanning
through the reams of techno and trance and skate-punk in
pursuit of maybe some Miles Davis, maybe Bitches Brew,
something gritty and raw and dangerous, something fit
for to compliment the anxiety and paranoia hanging in
the air.
The night before, exhausted from all the lust and
longing and popper-fumes, I had a dream all about I find
Miles Davis sat by the sculpture at the gate of St
Stephen’s Green, he’s playing Will O’ The Wisp on a
turkey carcass, blowin up the hole, stretching the neck
out this way an that.
I ask him if he knows The Cactus Where Your Heart Should
Be by The Magnetic Fields, he just spits, says all about
“Baby fuck you, baby, imma play what imma play, baby,
fuck.”
He does Bite It You Scum by GG Allin instead.
The lass comes back with the drinks, I say all about
thank you, and then, is there anywhere in the bar where
it’s ok to smoke?
“Sorry?”
She’s leaning over, straining to hear, someone’s put
Killing In The Name on the jukebox thing, Tom Morello
carvin chunks out the walls.
“Is there a smoking area? Y’know, for to smoke?”
She still doesn’t know what I’m saying, so I need to
take the packet out my pocket, need to wave it in front
of her and do the two-fingers to the lips thing you do
when you wanna pretend your chuggin on a tar-tube.
“Oh! No, sorry, you’ll have to go outside.”
Setting my drinks on the table, I’m saying to Sir
Fleming, I better go outside, I think I might be needing
a smoke, what with me being a smoker and all.
“Eh?”
I think I might need to go out. For a smoke. I smoke. I
best go smoke.
He sits back and smiles, the way you do when you dunno
what the fuck someone’s just said, but you assume it was
probably something terribly witty nonetheless, specially
if it was The Duke what yacked it.
Fuck’s muck, why can no-one hear what I’m saying?
Only when I’m saying this to myself, and realising that
I dunno what the fuck just fell out my yap neither, only
then do I realise that I ain’t actually been opening my
mouth all this time.
What it has to do with can be illustrated with the
following anecdote;
Few nights ago, a girl I know, she phones me up. “You’ll
never believe what just happened”, she assures me.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Get this. I was masturbating, and for like, five
seconds, I got you in my head.”
I didn’t say anything. The girl is very attractive.
“Isn’t that bizarre?”
“Well, yeah, I guess. Um, and, y’know, I mean. You never
said anything. I mean, we’re both single and so on.”
“Oh, God no”, is what she says. “No, this is better. In
my head you got straight teeth.”
What happened, see, is that a few years ago I was in the
midst of a two-day vodka spree with a mate, crazy
conversation goin on, Hell’s Ditch by The Pogues on the
stereo.
I’d just got off the floor, just been on the phone to
the girl who’d go on to be my fiancée, telling her all
about how I was gonna convert to Catholicism first thing
in the morning, how she didn’t have to worry bout that,
we could be married in her chapel, no problem.
I wasn’t goin out with her or nothin at the time, just
seemed like I should let her know how committed I was to
the idea that eventually we might.
So I’m staggering half-naked into the bathroom, I’m
saying to my mate all about how I figure something might
happen tween me and the lass from down the road, the one
I invited to come see us play a few weeks back, then got
plastered to ease the nerves and ended up shorting the
electricity in the venue.
“But I need to fix something first”, I’m saying.
“What?”
“My yap.”
What had happened was that sometime in my childhood I’d
ran face-first into a brick wall, busted my front teeth,
knocked a couple the fuckers right out my head.
The dentist had done what he could, fixed up bits here
and there, straightened a couple out, but still, I’d
always imagined that they weren’t right, that no,
there's no way in hell I could expect a beautiful lady
such as this for to walk hand in hand with a fella got a
faceful a bone shard stickin out the top gum.
So I’m reaching him a pint glass.
Best we knock the fuckers out, I’m saying. Nothing I can
live with, but a fucked-up something is beyond me.
“There’s fuck-all wrong with your teeth”, he’s saying.
“What you talking about?”
“Fuck my guts, man, the hell are you drinking? Look
here, see”, and I’m pulling my top lip halfway up my
jaw, “Look at the mangled buggers. Best we clear the
board and start anew. I’ll get dentures. Fuck, I’ve
always wanted falsies I could take out and throw at
folks telling me all about how Stiff Little Fingers only
had one good song.”
So he’s studying the glass I gave him. “The hell you
want me to do with this?”
Drive the bastard right off my face. Hard as you can,
right cross the mug.
He’s not up for that.
“No way, what if it smashes?”
“Smash my hole, it’ll smash none, and if it does, well
then we’ll use the bits for to carve the cunts out at
the root!”
Throughout all this, I keep filling his glass with more
vodka, and so soon enough he’s in a state wherein he can
at least consider the possibility.
“What if I just punch you?”, he says, eventually.
“Well alright then, punch! But hurry up, I feel sobriety
ticklin the knees, I’ll be fucked if I’m gonna fall
asleep sober.”
He clenches his fist, there’s a lengthy pause. “I can’t
do it, man.”
“Oh for gods sakes, come on!”
“No way! You’re my best mate! I can’t punch you, fuck!”
You’ll punch, is what I say. It’s that or I’m gonna have
to throw myself gainst the rim of the toilet.
Next thing I remember is the bottom teeth puncturing the
lip. My mate’s all the tortured in the world.
“I can’t believe you made me punch you.”
“I can’t believe that was your punch! My god, I’ve felt
stronger arse-gas.”
“Well maybe I was holding back.”
“Well maybe you fucking suck!”
Second time, he knocks me to the bathroom floor. I’m
looking up, head spinning, that’s better, I’m saying,
far better. Then, showing my teeth. “Are they gone?”
“Nah, man, but the bottom ones are kinda cracked a bit.”
I don’t remember much after that, except a couple
flashes here and there when the pint-glass was
eventually put to use, then the doorstep, then some
loose guitar strings that dug trenches into my gums.
Waking up the next morning, mascara round the eyes and
down the left side of my face, lip swollen, studying the
grotesque reflection.
I didn’t make the teeth any better, that’s for sure, but
certainly the resulting image would’ve been great on the
demo cover, had we been in possession of a camera.
“So that’s what it’s all about”, Sir Fleming says, the
video-jukebox turned off by now, a samurai flick playing
silently on the screen, Regulate by Warren G pouring out
the speakers. “You’re talking ‘thout opening your mouth
cause you don’t want her to see your teeth?”
“Aye. That’s the crux of the matter.”
The very thought.
“But why?”
“But why? Because the reason, Sir Fleming, is that for
sure, we arrived in Dublin with nothing more than couple
bags, some sleep-enhancers and a few bottles a Diet
Coke, but somewhere in there, maybe hidden away amongst
those Bright Eyes EP’s on the iPod, someplace there’s a
niggling notion along the lines of Well, maybe Sinéad’ll
maybe dig a fella. Maybe. The fuck knows?”
“Course she digs you. You’ve bantered. She insults you.
She wants to meet up. The fuck more do you want?”
“No, no I know that, but what I mean is the kinda
diggery results in an awkward breakfast and plenty talk
of ‘So, yeah. Um. Last night. . .’ and then a slap in
the maw and shut the fuck up, nothing happened.”
“Hmm. I see. Well this anxiety is doing me no good. I’m
getting sympathy anxiety! I’m getting nauseas! Make a
note.”
I make a note – “Sir Fleming riddled with sympathy
anxiety.”
And now the notes here, scattered round the keyboard,
Modest Mouse on iTunes, singin all bout “My thoughts
were so loud I couldn’t hear my mouth”, the narrative
still danglin on the edge of some Grand Majestic
Happening that I ain’t got the distance for to
contemplate just yet, still looking up towards it,
shimmerin away there gainst the night, the focus getting
sharper with every paragraph.
Thoughts Relating To The Wonderful Evenin Spent In The
Company Of Sinéad And Her Cohorts, a clarity creeping
cross it like the dawn light stretching towards the peak
a The Spire Of Dublin, or The Stiffy By The Liffey, and
me sat watching it at 5am from the window of the hotel
bar.
The Spire, what it is, is a gigantic concrete needle,
393 feet tall, occupying the chunk a O’Connell Street
once played host to Nelson Pillar, fore the IRA decided
to blow the fucker senseless.
“The pin in the bin”, the receptionist fella spits when
I get to asking him bout what the hell it’s all in aid
of, anyhow? “Was supposed to be done for the millennium,
2003 they finally finished the bloody thing.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s fuckin shockin, it’s offensive. Look where it is,
right next to the most wretchedly impoverished streets
in Dublin, a slap in the yap if ever was one.”
The Spire, it cost four million euro to build. Cross the
road from it a man can see fifteen-year-old kids
counting the change they bummed for to go grab a
spoonful a numbness later on.
But how pretty it is, nonetheless, The Pointless Point,
The Spire In The Mire.
I popped a couple sleepers into the palm, put the notes
back into my jacket pockets, thanked the fella and bid
him g’night, or g’morning. Either or.
Sir Fleming in the midst a some drunk dream or other, me
sat on the chair by the window watching a group of folks
done up in Playboy Bunny outfits make their way back
from whatever debauched hen party they’d been attending.
It’d been a couple hours since Sinéad an her alarmingly
intoxicated friends had wandered off towards the bus-
stop, hell-bent on partying till at least three of them
ended up fighting over the last dildo in the cupboard.
And I’m thinking all about how yeah, there’s a story to
be told here, but not yet, not now when the sleepers are
kickin in and the room’s fading into the dark behind the
eyes, not when there’s an old fella outside singing
Whiskey In The Jar in a delightful drunken slur.
“Whackfa medaaaeo, there’s whiskey inna jarrrooo”
Someone passes him, he shouting. “You gorra cig’ret?
Lookin fomma sister. You gorra smoke?”
The second set a footsteps get fainter, he strikes up
again.
“Strangeeeeerrrrrss inna niggght,
Exchangin glannnnnnnces”
I hoped he might break into some Dead Kennedy’s for a
time, maybe a touch a Bright Eyes.
“Wheeenna pres’dint talksa God…”
A touch a Bright Eyes. Touching Bright Eyes. No Conor, I
can’t, not now, not with the heart swollen till I can
hardly breathe past the bulbous bastard. Maybe later.
Maybe when I’ve shaken off the opium-smile and the
kerosene whisper in her eyes, maybe then. Maybe when all
that shit like Acceptance and Understanding gets a
firmer grip on the gut, maybe then I’ll let you comb
your fringe suggestively, but right now the chair’s
rising up around me, grabbin hold my elbows, it says no,
there’s to be no filthing, this is my time right now,
best you just sink in till I’m done.
Thanks folks
Back To The 72 Hours Raw In Dublin Index
Fling The Duke An Email or Leave A Message
about “Yeah, come on down to the Phil Lynott statue,
we're in dire need of a liver-full a Jägermeister”,
sometime before I had to go stand in the hotel bathroom
for forty-seven minutes deciding what the fuck I could
do to make the posture all the more filthually enticing,
sometime earlier, myself and Sir Fleming in a pub
someplace on Dame Street.
Staring cross at the bar-maid, bad sweats cross my brow,
eyes red as the creases in a donkey’s arsehole, I’m
asking for the usual.
“Pint a Diet Coke an a couple Red Bull’s, please”.
On account of I don’t do the alcohol no more, see.
On account of a couple hours without caffeine results in
all sortsa horrifyin shit. Body starts making kinda
noises you can hear if you play Blue Train backwards at
half the speed. Heart slows to a zombie rasp. Tongue
starts clackin hind the teeth. Freaky voodoo shit, no
good to no-one.
Sir Fleming’s stood over by the video jukebox, scanning
through the reams of techno and trance and skate-punk in
pursuit of maybe some Miles Davis, maybe Bitches Brew,
something gritty and raw and dangerous, something fit
for to compliment the anxiety and paranoia hanging in
the air.
The night before, exhausted from all the lust and
longing and popper-fumes, I had a dream all about I find
Miles Davis sat by the sculpture at the gate of St
Stephen’s Green, he’s playing Will O’ The Wisp on a
turkey carcass, blowin up the hole, stretching the neck
out this way an that.
I ask him if he knows The Cactus Where Your Heart Should
Be by The Magnetic Fields, he just spits, says all about
“Baby fuck you, baby, imma play what imma play, baby,
fuck.”
He does Bite It You Scum by GG Allin instead.
The lass comes back with the drinks, I say all about
thank you, and then, is there anywhere in the bar where
it’s ok to smoke?
“Sorry?”
She’s leaning over, straining to hear, someone’s put
Killing In The Name on the jukebox thing, Tom Morello
carvin chunks out the walls.
“Is there a smoking area? Y’know, for to smoke?”
She still doesn’t know what I’m saying, so I need to
take the packet out my pocket, need to wave it in front
of her and do the two-fingers to the lips thing you do
when you wanna pretend your chuggin on a tar-tube.
“Oh! No, sorry, you’ll have to go outside.”
Setting my drinks on the table, I’m saying to Sir
Fleming, I better go outside, I think I might be needing
a smoke, what with me being a smoker and all.
“Eh?”
I think I might need to go out. For a smoke. I smoke. I
best go smoke.
He sits back and smiles, the way you do when you dunno
what the fuck someone’s just said, but you assume it was
probably something terribly witty nonetheless, specially
if it was The Duke what yacked it.
Fuck’s muck, why can no-one hear what I’m saying?
Only when I’m saying this to myself, and realising that
I dunno what the fuck just fell out my yap neither, only
then do I realise that I ain’t actually been opening my
mouth all this time.
What it has to do with can be illustrated with the
following anecdote;
Few nights ago, a girl I know, she phones me up. “You’ll
never believe what just happened”, she assures me.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Get this. I was masturbating, and for like, five
seconds, I got you in my head.”
I didn’t say anything. The girl is very attractive.
“Isn’t that bizarre?”
“Well, yeah, I guess. Um, and, y’know, I mean. You never
said anything. I mean, we’re both single and so on.”
“Oh, God no”, is what she says. “No, this is better. In
my head you got straight teeth.”
What happened, see, is that a few years ago I was in the
midst of a two-day vodka spree with a mate, crazy
conversation goin on, Hell’s Ditch by The Pogues on the
stereo.
I’d just got off the floor, just been on the phone to
the girl who’d go on to be my fiancée, telling her all
about how I was gonna convert to Catholicism first thing
in the morning, how she didn’t have to worry bout that,
we could be married in her chapel, no problem.
I wasn’t goin out with her or nothin at the time, just
seemed like I should let her know how committed I was to
the idea that eventually we might.
So I’m staggering half-naked into the bathroom, I’m
saying to my mate all about how I figure something might
happen tween me and the lass from down the road, the one
I invited to come see us play a few weeks back, then got
plastered to ease the nerves and ended up shorting the
electricity in the venue.
“But I need to fix something first”, I’m saying.
“What?”
“My yap.”
What had happened was that sometime in my childhood I’d
ran face-first into a brick wall, busted my front teeth,
knocked a couple the fuckers right out my head.
The dentist had done what he could, fixed up bits here
and there, straightened a couple out, but still, I’d
always imagined that they weren’t right, that no,
there's no way in hell I could expect a beautiful lady
such as this for to walk hand in hand with a fella got a
faceful a bone shard stickin out the top gum.
So I’m reaching him a pint glass.
Best we knock the fuckers out, I’m saying. Nothing I can
live with, but a fucked-up something is beyond me.
“There’s fuck-all wrong with your teeth”, he’s saying.
“What you talking about?”
“Fuck my guts, man, the hell are you drinking? Look
here, see”, and I’m pulling my top lip halfway up my
jaw, “Look at the mangled buggers. Best we clear the
board and start anew. I’ll get dentures. Fuck, I’ve
always wanted falsies I could take out and throw at
folks telling me all about how Stiff Little Fingers only
had one good song.”
So he’s studying the glass I gave him. “The hell you
want me to do with this?”
Drive the bastard right off my face. Hard as you can,
right cross the mug.
He’s not up for that.
“No way, what if it smashes?”
“Smash my hole, it’ll smash none, and if it does, well
then we’ll use the bits for to carve the cunts out at
the root!”
Throughout all this, I keep filling his glass with more
vodka, and so soon enough he’s in a state wherein he can
at least consider the possibility.
“What if I just punch you?”, he says, eventually.
“Well alright then, punch! But hurry up, I feel sobriety
ticklin the knees, I’ll be fucked if I’m gonna fall
asleep sober.”
He clenches his fist, there’s a lengthy pause. “I can’t
do it, man.”
“Oh for gods sakes, come on!”
“No way! You’re my best mate! I can’t punch you, fuck!”
You’ll punch, is what I say. It’s that or I’m gonna have
to throw myself gainst the rim of the toilet.
Next thing I remember is the bottom teeth puncturing the
lip. My mate’s all the tortured in the world.
“I can’t believe you made me punch you.”
“I can’t believe that was your punch! My god, I’ve felt
stronger arse-gas.”
“Well maybe I was holding back.”
“Well maybe you fucking suck!”
Second time, he knocks me to the bathroom floor. I’m
looking up, head spinning, that’s better, I’m saying,
far better. Then, showing my teeth. “Are they gone?”
“Nah, man, but the bottom ones are kinda cracked a bit.”
I don’t remember much after that, except a couple
flashes here and there when the pint-glass was
eventually put to use, then the doorstep, then some
loose guitar strings that dug trenches into my gums.
Waking up the next morning, mascara round the eyes and
down the left side of my face, lip swollen, studying the
grotesque reflection.
I didn’t make the teeth any better, that’s for sure, but
certainly the resulting image would’ve been great on the
demo cover, had we been in possession of a camera.
“So that’s what it’s all about”, Sir Fleming says, the
video-jukebox turned off by now, a samurai flick playing
silently on the screen, Regulate by Warren G pouring out
the speakers. “You’re talking ‘thout opening your mouth
cause you don’t want her to see your teeth?”
“Aye. That’s the crux of the matter.”
The very thought.
“But why?”
“But why? Because the reason, Sir Fleming, is that for
sure, we arrived in Dublin with nothing more than couple
bags, some sleep-enhancers and a few bottles a Diet
Coke, but somewhere in there, maybe hidden away amongst
those Bright Eyes EP’s on the iPod, someplace there’s a
niggling notion along the lines of Well, maybe Sinéad’ll
maybe dig a fella. Maybe. The fuck knows?”
“Course she digs you. You’ve bantered. She insults you.
She wants to meet up. The fuck more do you want?”
“No, no I know that, but what I mean is the kinda
diggery results in an awkward breakfast and plenty talk
of ‘So, yeah. Um. Last night. . .’ and then a slap in
the maw and shut the fuck up, nothing happened.”
“Hmm. I see. Well this anxiety is doing me no good. I’m
getting sympathy anxiety! I’m getting nauseas! Make a
note.”
I make a note – “Sir Fleming riddled with sympathy
anxiety.”
And now the notes here, scattered round the keyboard,
Modest Mouse on iTunes, singin all bout “My thoughts
were so loud I couldn’t hear my mouth”, the narrative
still danglin on the edge of some Grand Majestic
Happening that I ain’t got the distance for to
contemplate just yet, still looking up towards it,
shimmerin away there gainst the night, the focus getting
sharper with every paragraph.
Thoughts Relating To The Wonderful Evenin Spent In The
Company Of Sinéad And Her Cohorts, a clarity creeping
cross it like the dawn light stretching towards the peak
a The Spire Of Dublin, or The Stiffy By The Liffey, and
me sat watching it at 5am from the window of the hotel
bar.
The Spire, what it is, is a gigantic concrete needle,
393 feet tall, occupying the chunk a O’Connell Street
once played host to Nelson Pillar, fore the IRA decided
to blow the fucker senseless.
“The pin in the bin”, the receptionist fella spits when
I get to asking him bout what the hell it’s all in aid
of, anyhow? “Was supposed to be done for the millennium,
2003 they finally finished the bloody thing.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s fuckin shockin, it’s offensive. Look where it is,
right next to the most wretchedly impoverished streets
in Dublin, a slap in the yap if ever was one.”
The Spire, it cost four million euro to build. Cross the
road from it a man can see fifteen-year-old kids
counting the change they bummed for to go grab a
spoonful a numbness later on.
But how pretty it is, nonetheless, The Pointless Point,
The Spire In The Mire.
I popped a couple sleepers into the palm, put the notes
back into my jacket pockets, thanked the fella and bid
him g’night, or g’morning. Either or.
Sir Fleming in the midst a some drunk dream or other, me
sat on the chair by the window watching a group of folks
done up in Playboy Bunny outfits make their way back
from whatever debauched hen party they’d been attending.
It’d been a couple hours since Sinéad an her alarmingly
intoxicated friends had wandered off towards the bus-
stop, hell-bent on partying till at least three of them
ended up fighting over the last dildo in the cupboard.
And I’m thinking all about how yeah, there’s a story to
be told here, but not yet, not now when the sleepers are
kickin in and the room’s fading into the dark behind the
eyes, not when there’s an old fella outside singing
Whiskey In The Jar in a delightful drunken slur.
“Whackfa medaaaeo, there’s whiskey inna jarrrooo”
Someone passes him, he shouting. “You gorra cig’ret?
Lookin fomma sister. You gorra smoke?”
The second set a footsteps get fainter, he strikes up
again.
“Strangeeeeerrrrrss inna niggght,
Exchangin glannnnnnnces”
I hoped he might break into some Dead Kennedy’s for a
time, maybe a touch a Bright Eyes.
“Wheeenna pres’dint talksa God…”
A touch a Bright Eyes. Touching Bright Eyes. No Conor, I
can’t, not now, not with the heart swollen till I can
hardly breathe past the bulbous bastard. Maybe later.
Maybe when I’ve shaken off the opium-smile and the
kerosene whisper in her eyes, maybe then. Maybe when all
that shit like Acceptance and Understanding gets a
firmer grip on the gut, maybe then I’ll let you comb
your fringe suggestively, but right now the chair’s
rising up around me, grabbin hold my elbows, it says no,
there’s to be no filthing, this is my time right now,
best you just sink in till I’m done.
Thanks folks
Back To The 72 Hours Raw In Dublin Index
Fling The Duke An Email or Leave A Message
