Jocko Weyland has published his last issue of ELK and included an excerpt from my journal entries from my long stay in the West of Ireland. 1997. Ballyconneely. Twenty-five years ago.
Yeah, Todd and my stay in Ballyconneely was weird. September was fine ,but October grew grim and November the rains struck with a sodden ferocity.
On my first day in the farming town I went to the village's only pub, expecting penny whistles, singing around a peat fire, and frothy Guinness. Instead a brooding huddle of sullen EU-subsidized cow-farming bachelors greeted my entrance with squinty gazes.
I offered a round. They accepted them with any thanks.I hadn't expected any and settled into getting drunk on Guinness, listening to the brogue and warmly thinking, "This is Ireland, the land of my grandparents".
A shove interrupted my fond memories of my Nana.
"Whatcha lookin' at?" asked a gnome wearing a tam over a Brillo pad of a sweep-over.
I answered the local color honestly, "The wall."
"Well, I'll be troublin' you to not look at that bit of the wall. It's mine."
The bartender told Mikey to shut his hole and the pub sunk into the sullen silence of the West of Ireland.
Over the following weeks the locals avoided Todd and me. Mikey always told me not to look at the wall. It was the only contact I had with the village males.
It didn't matter. I walked through the bogs to the Atlantic. Wellingtons kept my feet dry.Todd had a bad back and stayed close to the haunted schoolhouse, which we had rented from the Guinness family. His girlfriend called the house every day and told him how sunny it was in LA.
He later married Malibu Stacy.
On my next birthday in New York, we drank margaritas at Banditos in the East Village and went swimming in the East River. She wore a tablecloth as a sarong. Todd hated me. They married and had a daughter. They still are married.
The reason for going to Ireland was that my mother's deathbed wish that I marry someone like her, my sisters, or aunts. This sounded fairly incestuous, but the only women in Ballyconneely were fourteen year-old girls pregnant from their pimply boyfriends, women in the forties, and two lesbians from Clifden.
One evening Mikey and I were drinking at the pub.. The village's only attractive female over eighteen was behind the Guinness stick. Mikey noticed my interest and called her over.
"Does my American friend stand a chance with you?"
"Not a chance."
"He punched my arm and said, "Right them, back to your beer and keep your eyes off my wall."
No comments:
Post a Comment