irish

even though i work at an Irish bar and spend 6 nights a week at another one, i'm not of the green, not even close. German/French/Scot is the mutt i am. still, when i think about them, these loud, red-faced boy/men who have become my friends, i like what i see. i like how hard they work. i like the juice they give a good story. i like how they laugh from the toes up and that they know how to sing, gifted or otherwise, balls to the stinking wall. i admire their healthy regard for death, the ritual of the wake, of seeing the body, of bidding farewell and drinking ferociously to the memory of. i respect their reluctance to open up, to deliver the dark secret of the self. however, once you earn their trust, the connection is unbreakable. they have your back and you theirs, end of story. loyalty is the Bible and you don't fuck with it. likewise, the pub is their church, a club house of celebration, belonging, wound nursing and absurdity. of course it's the Irish 'disease', the alcohol fixation, that gets called out. booze kills, grows a liquor nose, ruins families, makes liars and lousy fathers - the all-too-familiar list of debilitation. on the other hand one can't help but envy these blokes and broads and their athletic bouts of drinking: a pint in a slobbery mouth, numbing away a shitty day. a clink of the glass to a good joke. forcing an ugly shot down a reluctant throat. jacking up enough courage to make a move on the snotty bitch at the end of the bar and so it goes. here lies an exuberance that has no twin in any culture i can think of. we Wasps have our fussy Martinis and wry smiles. in Paris, the little finger rises like a baby penis, a prissy sniff of fine wine. the Japanese shatter themselves silly in safe houses of repute, but practice daytime decorum with perfect Samurai hair. vodka ripped Russians tend to fight each other as much as the Irish, but are dour, pasty faced and depressive. Hispanics know how to party, but don't, near as i can tell, genuflect at the gate of the corner pub. these Irish own the map. they throw back booze with an abandon that is as childlike as it is insane. i for one can't keep up. 4 or 5 puny Miller Lites and i'm kaput. add a sickening shot and my mouth hangs open like a fuck doll. these guys, these shit-faced Irish hounds achieve that rare rubbery gift of a good sentence, a lacerating point of view, a sudden jerked-open window of insight no matter how many sheets to the wind. the other night is a case in point. 2 bartenders from the Brendan Behan (named after the famous alky/poet himself and hung with portraits of Irish writers and drunkards) share that rarest of rejoicings: a double birthday, same exact. 'he has my brain' says one. the other is jumping up and down on a bar bench, squinty-eyed, spewing beer like piss onto the floor, lost in a parallel universe. back from crowd surfing at a Pogues concert, back to the Behan kite high, out-of-body happy and full of arrgh, they kill the rasta oiling out of the speakers, crank up the Pogues, link arms in a scrum and sing, the loudest lung work i've heard since the fat lady sang in '04 and the Yankees watched hell freeze over. i don't know any of the songs, but they they rope me in nevertheless. i nod like Hillary Clinton as they shout out, nose-to-ceiling, a cluster fuck of bellowing cross-eyed lions. my outsider identity dissipates as they explode these glorious, raging songs. it doesn't matter that i can't join in. fuck that. i love every awkward minute. they eye each other like dogs who'd spent the day chasing a rabbit down a hole. this is not stereotypical male bonding. no sir. it's more like a fist of 21st Century Captain Bloods riding a Kami Kazi rocket into an Irish worm hole. this double birthday beams the rest of us up. i brake away and return to the bar for my weak-assed Miller Lite and my periscope view of the crowd, the boy scan. meanwhile the joint is on it's feet rocking in a frenzy of song or blinking from an uptight distance, missing out entirely. the 'best night of my life, ever' says one. i look him in the eye just to be sure he means it. of course he does. how many of those can you count on one hand? and damned if you don't need to be Irish to know the fookin' difference. CODA: i ran into a Behan rat who'd been off the sauce for a week. 'how's it going?' i ask. 'great! i feel great!' 'really?' i say. 'how come?' i know a guy with pills.' 'pills?' 'yeah.' 'what kind?' 'Xanax.' 'oh...i see. cool.'