One of the stated purposes (purpoi?) of this blog is that it’s a collection of random-access memories – a purpose that’s been sadly neglected of late. Howerver, I’ve got some doozies that came back to me all in a rush, because they’re topical, today being what it is (or was, by now).
In the bad old pre-David days, when I was still living the carefree, (bored) bachelorette (lonely) (anti-social) life in Seattle, I used to go out occasionally for holidays like St Patrick’s Day. There are a lot of Irish bars in Seattle, and I lived within walking distance of a particularly famous one, Jake O’Schaunnessy’s. Jake’s was famous for having the biggest St Pat’s crowds in a town that was known for the green-beer drinking excess that leads to people painting green stripes down miles of city streets just so the entire St Pat’s Day Parade doesn’t get lost on its route from one Irish bar to another. In fact, the building I worked in was the home of Jake’s, and every year on a weekday St Paddy’s I’d have to work all day and look out the front windows (it was like an arcade) and see all the happy throngs of college-age drinkers having fun (early) and throwing up in corners (later). As I wasn’t so long out of college myself, this seemed like a fun thing to do all day, and I hated having to work. By the time I did get off work, Jake’s would be too packed out to enter, so I’d mostly just go home.
However, one year, I actually made plans to go out with a friend. The previous weekend, we’d mostly had an amazingly good time at another Irish bar downtown, dancing jigs with visiting Irish dignitaries and random faux-Celtic wack-jobs in kilts. We had a guy that played the Uilleann bagpipes with us, too, who played a hell of a tune called “The Clumsy Lover” for us. This was a pointed insult to the aforesaid wack-job, who didn’t get the joke. Now THAT was a fun time had by all.
The actual night of the 17th, we tried to repeat the magic, but it was not to be, and in fact was the beginning of the end of the friendship. Nothing much really earthshattering happened, I just reached the point of terminal fed-upness to a surprising degree. With red warning flags flying, and steam coming out of my ears.
My former friend was a rather striking-looking woman who also had red hair, but unlike me she always went out overdressed, over-madeup, and with tempestuously curly hair and heaving cleavage. Me, I always aimed for a sort of subfusc glam with a hint of danger in those days. Low heeled boots, tight jeans, and a sort of “tomboy on the town” was my late 80’s look – with gelled, permed hair to complete it. However, my lack of boobage and pear shape robbed me of any chance of being a serious threat in the male-female Bar Wars, but I did what I could. With my friend around though, I tended to be overlooked and occasionally trampled in the rush of guys willing to talk to her. I take comfort in the memory that they mostly didn’t continue talking to her for very long, because unless they were way drunk, they’d notice really quickly that she was seriously wacky. Poor thing.
She had an ordinary name, but her background was partly Irish and she was agressively Irish-American in her outlook and social life, so she preferred to be called by the Irish Gaelic version of her name. For instance, her name might have been Jane, but she spelled it with a whole raft of unnecessary sibilants and consonants, not to mention some completely superfluous h’aitches. For the moment, I’ll call her Shebeen. I know that’s not really a name, but it works for now.
So this one year, about a year before the friendship came to a sordid and completely stupid end, Shebeen and I made plans to get together at Jake’s after I got off work. She would work her Irish-lass magic on the guy on the door and we’d be in like Flynn, so to speak, and not languishing in the line for hours. It would be even better than the previous weekend (again, we’d set a pretty high standard).
So we meet, and her magic is not working, so we languished for a while, while she fretted about all the fabulous fun and delicious jars we were missing inside. However, there were other people to chat with in the line, and there were non-alcoholic drinks and things being sold outside, so it was not so bad. However, Shebeen in a fret was a force to be reckoned with, what with all the whining and impatient craning of the neck (all the better to shake her curls at the doorman with, my dear). Finally, at last, we were in.
This was, I believe, the last year that Jake’s was in existence before the building it was in (and my office building) were torn down to make way for a really nice mega-grocery. So it was going to be a big, loud “Last Hurrah.”
The crowds were bigger than ever. Jake’s in its glory was a large place with plenty of shiny brass, oak trim, and rustic used brick walls. There were several rooms and I think also a second floor. They used to have a singing bartender who was a local celebrity, and they served the usual “Irish” fare in addition to having an impressive lineup of sparkling glassware and beautifully arranged Irish whiskeys and other liquor behind the bar. It was actually a great place, but it was a nightmare of crowds, noise, and horrific waits in line for a drink on St Patrick’s Day. The three main rooms were chock-a-block with sweating, glassy-eyed people, and the waitstaff (women, mostly) tore through the crowds with steely determination. They were old hands at handling drunks and capable of giving as good as they got in a slanging match, though they were young and pretty otherwise.
Through Shebeen’s innumerable Irish connections, she “knew” the guys in one of the bands that was playing, the Suffering Gaels. Actually, I think she was more or less stalking their leader, as he always treated her in a carefully cordial yet offhand manner (remember, she knew a lot of movers and shakers, the sort of people that book Irish bands for gigs year-round). She put the both of us in charge of fetching “jars” and corned beef sandwiches for the band, as frequently and unneccessarily as possible. Which also meant that she constantly had a beer, Guinness, or Harp (ah! Lager and lime, yummy!) in her hand. Which she drank from, continuously. The beer, not the hand.
We spent time in both “live music” rooms – there was Irish dancing downstairs, plain music upstairs, though we were mostly in the room where the Gaels were Suffering through their sets. They’d been playing most of the afternoon and all evening – for them it was a marathon session.
And I was horribly bored. Why? Why, you ask? Well, although I loved the music, there was no place to just “be” and enjoy it – we were constantly on the move (owing to Shebeen’s compulsion to try to improve her vantage and proximity to the band every few minutes and the “need” to make beer runs for them). I stood around and my feet started to hurt – always a funkiller in my book.
If you’re ever out at a bar and you see a woman standing around on her own trying to look like she’s having as much fun as her flashier, drunker friend, for God’s sake offer her a chair and maybe a foot massage. You’ll thank me later, is all I’m saying.
Anyway, the evening’s festivities were taking their usual toll on Shebeen. She never could stop at buying two or three beers when thirteen or fourteen free ones might be available… and then time to do shots of Bushmill’s! Turns out we were both drinking on the band’s “tab,” and they had unlimited free drinks as a part of their deal. Shebeen had passed the point of being able to make ordinary conversation, and had gotten near the end of her vast fund of extraordinary conversational tricks. She was still capable of standing and tacking her way upwind across the room, teetering on her heels (and as I said, hopelessly overdressed in a typically 80’s-style body-hugging electric blue knit dress). The band took a break and I chatted with them about things in general, such as did they think they were dead and in hell and condemned to play Irish music for all eternity? This got a laugh. Actually, one of the guys complained of indigestion, and then the others all nodded glumly. It was all that beer and the bloody corned beef and cabbage. They had another two hours to go, and living up to their name every blessed minute of it.
Poor guys. I took my chance and led them across the arcade to the office and let them in (yikes! security breach, Mr. Worf! Yellow alert!) and let them sit down and closed and locked the door behind them to keep curious drunks out (cancel yellow alert, Mr. Worf!) and got them some plain water, Pepto Bismol, and aspirin. The break seemed to do them good. Soon enough, they girded themselves to re-enter the fray, and thanked me profusely for the Peptos and aspirins. I was just happy to do something honestly useful for them in return for the great music, other than bringing them more (bleaargh) beer.
Heh! that was one in the eye for old Shebeen, I had the whole band to myself for a few minutes, and didn’t make a pest of myself one little bit. Nyaah.
When we got back inside, Shebeen was nattering away to some people she knew near the door, and completely ignored me when I coasted to a stop at her side. In a character study, this was Shebeen’s “tell.” She made a career out of knowing lots of people at Irish events, and when we’d go out together she’d drop everything we were planning on doing for an hour-long chat with an acquaintance… and I’d stand there, patiently shifting from one leg to another. Finally I’d just introduce myself so that the other people would stop smiling kindly yet vaguely in my direction, because the world might end before Shebeen got around to introducing me to anyone while she held conversational court. This was a night like many such, but I was fast losing patience with it. My feet still hurt, remember. I left Shebeen and wandered in to listen to the last of the Gael’s set. There were plenty of seats at last, and the Mayor (Hizzonner later went on to be Guv’nor) popped in the back door, took one look at the shambles and maybe one whiff, and popped out again, never to return. Shebeen wandered in and complained that they’d stopped serving drinks at the bar (possibly) or that she’d been cut off (not sure, but more likely). She started going around the empty tables, checking for fairly full drinks that didn’t have any drowned cigarette butts in them…
The full horror of the situation was finally borne in on me. She wouldn’t leave when I first suggested we take off. I offered her a spot on my couch, as I lived only two blocks away, and was expecting her company on the walk home (even living that close, I didn’t particularly want to walk home alone that late at night). Barring that, the original plan was that she’d come up to my place and get a cab from there.
Later still, the evil end to a long evening was at finally at hand The signs were unmistakeable – there was a sudden change in attitude in the waitstaff from stoic, amused patience to downright churlishness. There were fewer people, and it was possible to smell the stale beer and other fluids that puddled the floor, and the cigarette butts ground to bits underfoot. Groups of people hung on to each other and swayed out to the door. Huge trays of unsold, wrapped corned beef sandwiches were brought out and hawked to the departing masses at cut rates. This was partly a humanitarian effort to try to ensure that some of the drunks got some food in their stomachs, and definitely to ensure that said sandwiches would make a sudden and unwelcome reappearance a block or so down the street.
Corned beef. Cabbage. Several hundred drunks. You do the math.
The smell alone was enough to make me regret everything I’d eaten the entire day, but I made it to the door in one piece. I wasn’t horribly drunk, just a bit past “nicely, thank you.” Shebeen, however, had undergone a drastic change in the meantime. Her face looked like there was more gravity acting on it than on the rest of her body, but everything else was sagging, too. She had lost the power of speech, and was also on “Super Slo-Mo.” Finally, I succeeded in getting her headed toward the door – the trick was to use the imperative and speak in one- or two-word sentences. As in “Shebeen! Go! My place! Now! Move it!”
But her eye had fallen on the last tray of sandwiches at the door. She stopped with a jerk, rather like a truck that’s lost its tranny on an uphill curve. She wanted one of those sandwiches, dammit, because it’s Irish and it’s traditional, dammit, and could I buy her one? Yep, that’s right, she didn’t have a dime on her for food nor cab fare, and had been mooching off the band all evening. She then admitted that she’d had not the weensiest thing to eat all day.
I haven’t given the way she talked justice – when out for the evening she liked to let her voice go all stagy and dramatic; it was either deeply fatal or cutely squeeky by turns, with antic turns of phrase and all in a faux-Irish accent. Well, she was nearly mute with drink and about to turn dangerously surly, but she needed food, so I bought her the sandwich and said “Let’s go, you can eat it at my place while you wait for a cab.”
No go – she stood there, endlessly fiddling with the wrapper (wax paper, folded over the ends and tucked under) and appeared to be working it out like a puzzle. We stood there for about 10 minutes while she tried to eat it. She wouldn’t sit down on a nearby bench and eat it properly, she wouldn’t come along home, she just wanted to stand there and focus on the task of getting a bite out of the damn sandwich that didn’t include a cheeky bit of wax paper that kept popping up and getting between her and the sandwich.
She was rapt in befuddlement over this for some time.
Silence. Swaying. Attempts to bite sandwich foiled again by tricky wax paper. Swaying. Biting. At last, success! Munching. Munching. More slow munching.
“Jane!! Do you have cab fare?” I was reaching the end of my rope.
For the first time in a while, she spoke relatively clearly, a sign that the food was beginning to sober her up.
“I just want to eat my wee traditional Irish corned beef sandwich, and then we can go downtown to my beloved Kell’s, or maybe…” and she was off on a tangent, cataloguing all the wee dear Irish pubs we hadn’t been to downtown, the opposite direction from my place, which was all of 2 blocks away. Also, it was after 2, and all the bars were closing. I pointed this out.
“I’ll just finish my wee sannie, and we’ll be off. They’ll let me in after hours at Kells, sure they all know me there; being real Irish and mostly illegals, they’ll be having jars all night yet” (and yes, she really talked that way). Kells was all the way downtown, and within a few blocks of her house. I saw where this was headed, and it was away from my place, where my cat Stuey and my nice soft bed in a quiet, clean room waited.
Finally, feet aching, I snapped. Just snapped. I said “Jane!!! Do you have cab fare?” at the top of my scratchy, smoke and beer-abused voice. “Here’s ten bucks. Get yourself a cab. I’m not waiting for you any longer, I’ve had it and I’m going home RIGHT NOW. You’re on your own.”
And with that I turned and marched away in high dudgeon (which is much more satisfying than low dudgeon, because you get to fly red warning flags on your shoulders and vent the huge head of steam you’ve built up in your head out your ears).
What with the warning flags and steam and all, none of the few lingering drunks still in possession of their sandwiches dared approach me, and I made it home safe in a few minutes. I left a message on Joan’s machine for her to call me when she got in.
She eventually called, late the next afternoon, horribly hungover, and berated me for abandoning her. I pointed out she’d all but abandoned me all evening until she needed my cash for food and fare. It was a typical phone fight – the sound of a couple of cats yowling, then grudging apologies on both sides. And that was the end of it, and the beginning. We sort of made up and went on as friends for a while. I spent a lot of weekend Saturdays idling around the market downtown with her, and going out later and getting ignored when she ran into “better” friends. She also fed me a lot of gourmet dinners, and I felt I couldn’t possibly reciprocate. I couldn’t cook, and she didn’t want to hang around in my neighborhood anyway, as it wasn’t wee and charming enough for her. She liked calling all the shots, I guess.
It ended sometime before the next Christmas – we were out at a place I loved near the Market called the Virginia Inn and she drank too much Merlot, started a fight with some guy, and got us politely shown the door. On our way to her place (she lived above the Public Market, and reveled in the colorful eccentricity of her neighborhood) my feet went out from under me on the pavement (steep hill, recent rain, down I went on both knees and the palms of my hands). The first thing I said (after a moment’s shocked self-assessment) was “I’m all right.” The first thing she said was to harangue me for wearing cheap-ass shoes with artificial soles – she was constantly nagging on fashion faux-pas such as this. It was one of her pet peeves.
That was, finally, it. My knees were bleeding, my hands were torn up, and she was yelling at me for wearing crappy shoes. I took one off and waved it in her face. “Leather!! Those are leather soles, you blithering idiot, and I’m fine, fuck you very much. In fact, fuck it. Fuck this shit! Fuck this shit!1! TAXI!!!” ::sfx taxi:: screeeeeee!!!
When I got home (I had moved to Ballard that year) my roommates greeted me with the news that Shebeen had left 6 or 7 drunken messages on the machine screaming for my blood, and could I make her stop calling? Because it was 1 in the morning.
They’d had experience with Shebeen already – I had previously been out with her one afternoon just after the move, drinking cider at yet another Irish bar (this one on our bus line, more or less between us and the University of Washington). The Gaels were playing there, and we went, ate no food all day, and for once I got as shitfaced as Shebeen did. However, I realized I was in a bad way, got myself on the bus, and went home at 6pm. It was still light out, and I took until midnight to start to sober up. They said at the time I was really amusing, but got in the way during prep time for dinner, so they made me go in my room until after they finished cutting things up. So they were thinking that this Shebeen friend of mine was a bad influence, what with the screaming abuse on the machine and me coming home either drunk or bleeding and whatnot.
The phone rang, and Shebeen’s screechy ranting came out of the speaker.
“Sure, no problem, ” I said to the roommates, and unplugged the phone from the wall. “Done.” And we all went to bed.
That was the last that I spoke to Shebeen. She tried to send a card that Christmas, but like I said, I was done. Since then, I haven’t had much to do with going out and “doing” St Patrick’s Day, even living here in Chicago, where anything Irish is worth overdoing.
