Objective 1.
…..“Another double gin & tonic mate…..”
…”there you go; that will be €6.50….”
These are just going down too easy. After about five or six doubles and about six or seven beers, you stop worrying about the price…(well until the next morning anyways!!)
“….HEY!!...”
“Ooopps sorry”…Think its time for me to hit the dance floor…I can barley walk in a straight line without bumping into someone.
Almost every Friday and Saturday night I end up heading out with friends to the pub and just getting so smashed that I can sometimes only remember getting to the place! We’d start off drinking a few cans in the house; hop on the 86 heading for town and finishing off the cans we brought for the 25 minute journey.
There are only two objectives for the night.
1.) Get Drunk
2.) Score a bird
Getting drunk always seems to be the most important. Once you hit the point of no return, everything in life seems to disappear and get easier. For those few hours life just seems easy. Drink after drink, laughing with the lads and shaking the booty on the dance floor is just all part of a Friday and Saturday night.
……bang, bang, bang, bang is all I can hear. I suppose that’s where the saying comes from…”the music is banging”!!!! Drink in one hand, fag in the other, singing the words to the songs (well, trying to mime the words, making them up as I go along!) I’m dancing away, shaking my stuff, knocking back my drink, sucking in the smoke from the fag; my head is spinning….
I think objective one has been complete.
Objective 2
I’d better start on the second before I get too wasted and either fall asleep somewhere or get home some how and collapse, wake up in the morning and not remember anything!!
…..I start to scan around the dance floor looking for the woman of my dreams. I can imagine her with her big smile on her face, dancing away. Our eyes would meet and we’d be drawn together. A slow dance would come on and I’d take her in my arms. We’d start kissing. Our bodies would be getting closer and closer. I could almost feel her body heat………
”Hey you, come on, you’ve had enough. GET OUT….”
“Hey relax. I’m fine…” Ooohhh, I think I gotta sit down!!
Shit, that’s another problem about getting past objective one. I only closed my eyes for a second!! Bouncer said I was standing there wobbling from side to side staring at the wall for about five minutes!!!! It just makes objective two that little bit harder.
I’ve got no credit on my phone. The lads didn’t see me get kicked out…I don’t suppose that bouncer will let me back in…ok, I’ll have one more fag, then I’ll try and stand up and walk up to Coppers. I’m always guaranteed to get in there.
Why is it that a five minute walk takes twenty five minutes when you’ve been drinking?
I got to the door and the bouncers were checking to see if I had been drinking!!! My tongue was getting sore from biting it. The bouncers would stare into your eyes and if you shy away they will say “no, you’re not getting in tonight son”. If you look straight back at them with a straight face you’ll get in.
Another twenty euro!! The music is even louder here than it was in the other place. But there was one big difference; this place had more women. Happy daysJ
Straight over to the bar; double G&T please. I can hear the dance floor calling me…Up I get, strutting my stuff again…A girl comes over, putting her arms around my neck, she looks into my eyes…
…she looks alright…but anything would look alright with the state I’m in.
We start to kiss and dance and dance and kiss… things start to get a bit heated.
She grabs my hand and we walk over to a nice cosy couch…
What’s her name? …who cares…?
What does she look like? ….I’m too smashed…I couldn’t tell you.
I sit down and she sits her self on top of me. Face to face, she gazes into my eyes, licks her lips and all of a sudden her hands are all over me, tongue down my throat. She begins to unbutton my shirt and starts to rub her hands around my chest.
I start to kiss her neck. I can hear her breathing getting louder. I can feel her body moving on top of mine.
…Smashed or not, I can’t complain. It’s not everyday I get this…
….but due to the fact that I have drank a brewery tonight things start to go down hill…
We start to dry hump; her breathing gets quicker and louder. I’m getting harder and she whispers in my ear that she can feel it and wants to get out of here…..
EXCELLENT…What can go wrong????
She hops off me and says she’ll grab her jacket and will be back in a few minutes….
“Ouch…” I turn around and my mates are there…”where were you guys? Did you see the bird I’m with…?”
Richie: Bursting with laughter; “ye we saw her. How’s your lap?”
“What do you mean?”
Richie: “She was about 18 stone and has a face like the back of a bus”
“Ah shit, you’re not serious? I can barley see in front of me. Ok, do me a favour, help me up and get me out of here”
Richie: Still laughin:”ye no worries. Look, she’s on her way back”
“Lads, quick, help me up as I can barley stand and let’s get the hell out of here”
Objective two completed (sort of!!)
NEW CHAPTER
Ooohhh… I think I’m going to die.
My head is splitting.
My mouth feels like a swamp.
I’m €200 euro down.
I have work in an hour and I have SUCH a hang over.
What did I do last night? All I can remember is gettin to the bar and the lads laughin at some girl I was with!!
Why do I do this every weekend??
I’m 23 years old today. I live in a dingy flat in the centre of Dublin city. I have a girlfriend who thinks I’m a waste of space but only stays with me because she has a roof over her head. I work in a box factory off Miller Street. I have the responsibility of pressin the stop button on the box labeller machine, twelve hours a day, 5 days a week. I make €350 a week and pay €175 on rent per week. I can’t drive. I can’t swim. I can barley read or write. I have been in locked up twice; but neither were my fault.
The first time was when I happened to be walkin down the road drunk one afternoon when I bumped into an old lady and her purse just leapt into my hand. It was one of those freaky moments. Only problem is that there was a copper across the road havin his coffee and donuts. 3 months in Mount Joy I got for that. The judge just wouldn’t believe that the old lady must have placed her purse in my hand. IT WAS A SET UP!!!
Second time was a total miscarriage of justice. Dave, Paul, Richie and myself were comin out of Landsdowne Road just after Ireland were beating England 1-0 when the English fans started wreckin the stadium and the game was called off. We were headin towards the Landstown hotel when three English soccer fans were walking past when the three Brits stood in front of us and started saying that they were going to kick our heads in....
What did we do? We were just making our way to the pub to finish our day of drinking. Yes we probably did have enough to drink at that stage but sure we might as well finish what we started. Ok so Dave was wearing a T-Shirt with TIOCFAIDH AR LA written on it. Paul had one saying FUCK THE BRITS.
…Dave told them to get the fuck out of the way before they got a good hiding. Ok so it probably wasn’t the best thing to say because ten seconds later there were punches been thrown and blood squirting against the wall. Dave was sitting on one of the guy’s chest just punching and punching. Paul has one of them against the wall by the neck punching him in the stomach; Richie and me were kicking the third Brit on the ground.
Again the coppers pull up and see that we had the English soccer fans beaten up.
The Brits started it and we were the ones who got banged up!
A COMPLETE MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE!!!
I come from a “great” family. Me da left when I was two years old. I was told that me ma sent him out for some milk and never returned. Ma was always fond of an auld drink or two; especially in the morning, afternoon and evening!! Don’t get me wrong she was always there for us; problem was that she was always too drunk to know we were there. Her favourite was always the bottle of Gin. Gin, no tonic but she had to have a slice of lemon. I remember coming home from playing with friends on a Saturday afternoon when I saw her lying on the couch as usual. I presumed she was just drunk and asleep. I made myself something to eat; turned on the tele and even sat beside her while I stuffed my face with a crisp sandwich. It wasn’t until Brian came home that night when he tried to wake her that we realised that she would never wake up again. She died when I was six. Brian was eight years older than me so he looked out for me ever since. When the child support people used to come around to see if we were okay, we always just told her that our da was out workin. Every time they turned up at the door, he just happened to be working at that time. He did the early shift, the night shift and sometimes they use to call twice so da was sometimes doing the early and late shift. I think they knew what we were up to but people like them don’t really care about people like us.
After a few months of trying to get our Da they just stopped checking on us. Brian used to be an excellent cook. He use to make lovely hash cookies, hash yogurts, hash browns (it wasn’t until I was in my early teens that I was told that Hash Browns had no hash in them!!! And here was me waitin outside the chipper gettin loads of hash browns!!) I think the last time I was in school was when I was about eight years old. Brian and me use to just head to the local snooker hall and just hang out. We played the odd game of pool whenever we found money but usually we’d just watch people play. From eight in the morning till seven at night we just hung out together. We begged on the streets for a few hours each day until we made enough money for food and then we’d just hang out at the snooker hall. After a few years of doing the same thing over and over, our faces started to get recognised. We started to hang out with other lads who use to hang out at the snooker hall. Brian eventually became a bit attracted to the odd needle or two. After a while he was as spaced as Ma use to be when she was drinkin. I didn’t touch the stuff until I was about seventeen. I use to just stick to smoking the hash and fags. When I did start injecting the needles in my arm….WOOOOW, what had I been missing??????????????? I just thought there was one world but once you stick that needle in your arms and inject, another world opens up and sucks you in. It’s a world where Elvis is alive. Bambi’s ma is still jumping around the forest. JFK made it through the parade in Texas without any problem. MONEY. WHO NEEDS IT? NOT ME…. LIFE COULDN’T BE BETTER. For those few hours, I understood why my mother drank so much. I understood why Brian loved it so much and now I understand why I loved it so much.
There were weeks and months that went by that we wouldn’t have even returned home to the house and one day when we were sober enough to find the flats there were so many eviction notices on the door cause of course no one had paid any repayments over the past year. We packed up a few things and just left. We did return back a couple of years later again and the block wasn’t even there anymore. Someone had knocked it down, along with the rest of the street and was building posh apartments on it.
Brian died six months after that.
I was twenty; living on the streets; still hanging out around the snooker hall. I was still smoking the hash; still injecting, still hanging out with the same people. I began to take Brian’s place in the area. I ended up sellin some dope on the streets. I started to break into the odd house or two just to get some cash together. Sure wasn’t I creatin employment? I’d break in to someone’s house, probably breakin the door or windows and rob some cash or jewellery. Someone's gotta make the new glass. Jewellers've gotta make new jewellery. Carpenters've gotta fix the doors. I was doing the country a fantastic service.
I eventually got a job working in the snooker hall. Just doin some easy work. Emptyin bins, cleaning the floors, shit like that. I started to use the snooker and pool tables as drop off points for my dealings. My regulars would come in for a game of snooker. I’d give the nod, walk past their table. Drugs go in bottom right hand pocket; the cash would be waiting in the top right hand pocket. Easy; no one saw a thing. After a while I started to lay off the drugs more. I started to realise I sold more drugs when I could see straight. After a few months I was clean. I had a good little business going on. My little crew ( well I call it a crew) would round up the customers and I’d go to my dealer with their requests, pay the man, bring it back to my customers (of course with a price inflation) and do the swap. The management didn’t have a clue anythin was goin on. With the money we were makin we use to pump a bit of it back into the snooker hall on games so they just thought they were usin us for our money; wouldn’t they love to know what went on.
Writing 
