The Orange Mocha-Chip Frappuccino Years

by Paul Howard

  He goes, ‘You’ve still got it bad for the girl?’ and I’m like, ‘I didn’t realise how bad, Christian.’ He goes, ‘What are you going to do?’ I’m like, ‘What can I do? She’s in Australia. It’s practically the other side of the world. And I don’t even know if she’s still with that tool of a boyfriend of hers.’ He goes, ‘You must be totally bummed out.’ I’m like, ‘TOTALLY. By the way, my congratulations.’ He goes, ‘For?’ I’m like, ‘Lauren. You haven’t done the dirt on her.’ He goes, ‘I really like her, Ross.’ I’m like, ‘You must. We’re in focking Playa del Ingles, Christian. It’s, like, Shag City, Arizona. I mean, if you don’t get your Nat King Cole here, customs give you a hug on the way home. And you’ve stayed faithful. You must love her.’

  He goes, ‘There’s only one girl I ever loved.’ I expect him to say Princess focking Leia or someone from Star Wars, Chewbacca the Wookie or something, but this is one of those rare nights when Christian is on planet Earth. He goes, ‘Hazel.’ I’m like, ‘Hazel? From Mount Anville? Holy shit, Christian, you went out with her when you were, like, sixteen.’ He goes, ‘Fifteen.’ I’m like, ‘You were only with her for, like, three months?’ He goes, ‘Two.’ I’m there, ‘Didn’t you break it off with her, though?’ He goes, ‘I caught her looking at another goy one day. No, it wasn’t that she looked at another goy, it was the way she looked at him. See, she’d never looked at me like that before. And I knew she never would. And when you catch your bird looking at somebody the way she looked at him, well, there was no way it was ever going to be the same again.’

  I don’t know why, but I think this bloke he’s talking about might have been me.

  The goys suddenly arrive back, roysh, and JP’s telling Oisinn all about the gaff he ended up in last night, going, ‘It was a low-rise, bungalow-style setting, with ocean frontage and an extensive range of in-house amenities, surrounded by subtropical foliage. Rooms both modern and tasteful, with twenty-four-hour room service available …’

  Oisinn sees me and Christian sitting at the table having a beer. He’s like, ‘What are you two faggots talking about?’

  Spanish beer is basically piss.

  We’re on the lash all afternoon, roysh, down by the pool and after, like, six or seven pints, my focking back teeth are floating, so I hit the jacks, the one in the bor, and there’s basically two urinals, roysh. Decker’s at one, jarred off his head judging by the way he’s holding onto the wall with his free hand. Then there’s the one beside it. There’s also two traps with, like, proper toilets in them, but the floor in trap one is covered in piss and I’m wearing, like, flip-flops, and I happen to know the one in trap two is a knob-chopper and you have to hold the seat up with your hand while you take a slash. So I’ve no choice but to head for the urinal beside Decker. I don’t think he recognises me. He goes, ‘Alright, bud? Enjoyin’ de holiday, are ye?’ He definitely doesn’t recognise me. He goes, ‘Tell ye sometin, for de furst time in me bleedin’ life, I’m glad dee brought dat euro in …’ I try to piss as quickly as I can, roysh, to get away from him, but it’s no good. I’ve got a focking gallon of Ken in me. Decker seems to have stopped going, but he’s, like, kept his position and decides to tell me his focking life story.

  Anyway, I won’t bore you with it. Except the last bit. He’s only really in the Canaries, he says, because his claim has just come through. Eighteen grand, he tells me. He’s there, ‘Says I to the wife, “It’s not gonna be like me redundancy money. We’re gonna spend dis properly. We’re goin on de holiday of a lifetime. Get yisser cases packed.” Dat’s how we ended up comin’. Eddie’s me brudder-in-law, he’s Sandra’s brudder. Says I to herself, “I’m takin’ de four of us off on de holiday of a lifetime.” Sure it’s better dan pissin’ it up again de wall, isn’t it?’

  You wouldn’t be able to tell, roysh, but Oisinn’s been going out with this bird for, like, a month. Hailey’s her name. Not the Mae West lookswise, but a stunner by his standards. She was a real golden goal effort. He pulled her right at the end of the night, roysh, the time of the evening when you’re basically cruising bus stops and focking Abrakebabras to score. Anyway, roysh, he books this holiday with us a couple of months back and, like, didn’t have the balls to tell her he was going. So, like, three or four days before we’re due to leave, roysh, he sort of, like, engineers this row with her over something that is, like, totally trivial. So he tells her he needs some space, some time to himself and suggests a two-week trial separation, roysh, just so he can, like, get his head together and shit. Now, roysh, at the very end of the holiday, his conscience is at him, judging by the way he’s buying up, like, half the focking duty free shop in the shopping centre down by the beach. He’s bought her, like, earrings and a ring, a new Discman, two T-shirts and a new camera, roysh, and then he hits the perfume section and he just stops all of a sudden and goes, ‘Take in those beautiful aromas, goys. We’re talking Lancôme, we’re talking Elizabeth Arden, we’re talking Thierry Mugler, we’re talking Jean-Paul Gaultier. If that’s not enough to get the old olfactory senses going, I don’t know what is.’ What a weirdo. To him, this place is a brothel.

  The last night, roysh, we all end up in The Irish Jockey. I wanted to go to the Hawaiian Tosca again, but I lost the vote. JP’s still on his take-the-piss-out-of-creamers buzz, Oisinn loves watching him in action and Christian basically doesn’t give a shit where we end up. As for Fionn, roysh, his two Spanish honeys went home this morning and he votes for The Irish Jockey basically just to piss me off.

  JP storts, like, straight away. The second he’s in the door, roysh, he shouts, ‘THE POVERTY TRAP!’ and all the skangers stort, like, cheering and shouting it back. ‘THE POVERTY TRAP! THE POVERTY TRAP!’ There’s a band playing, ‘My heart is in Ireland, that’s where I long to be. Her hills and her valleys, are calling to me.’ This bloke, roysh, the kind of goy you wouldn’t make eye contact with if you caught him staring at you on O’Connell Street at ten o’clock on a Friday night, he comes over, roysh, and he’s like, ‘Storee?’ And JP’s, like, really focking hamming it up with the accent again, going, ‘Oh, I say. Hello there, Kellyer.’ Oisinn is, like, breaking his shite laughing in his face, but the goy’s too focking thick to cop it. JP, like, patronises him for a few minutes, then offloads him on me, telling him that I’m a huge Dublin football fan.

  He turns to me and he’s like, ‘Whaddya tink of da way Tommy Carr was treated?’ I’m pretty sure that Tommy Carr used to be, like, the manager of Dublin. I wonder to myself, is Kellyer a fan or not? My life could depend on the answer I give him. I decide to, like, bluff it. I’m there, ‘That’s, like, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. It’s the one we all want answered.’ He seems to be happy with this because he drops the subject. He goes, ‘Furst ting I do when I get off da plane is I’m goin’ straight inta town and gettin’ chips wi’ curry sauce. Have ye had da curry sauce over here? Fookin brutal, man. Brutal. Sure steak and chips is all I’ve eaten since I got here, ask any of da lads.’ Then, roysh, completely out of the blue, for no reason at all, he tells me that his brother is in the IRA, and that if I ever want anyone shot to give him a shout and it’s sorted. ‘Though born here in this land, my heart is in Ireland. The land of the old folk, is calling to me.’ I manage to attract Fionn’s attention, roysh, and I tell him what Kellyer said to me and he just laughs. He goes, ‘Focking hell, you’re white as a ghost. Ross, the IRA is a covert terrorist army, organised around a system of cells to maintain secrecy. If he told you his brother’s in the IRA then the chances are he’s not. Come on, it’s your round.’

  Everyone’s shouting, ‘THE POVERTY TRAP!’ JP’s up at the bor. He’s still wearing the football shirt that he’s had on since the first night we arrived, but he’s drinking large brandies and smoking cigars and shouting, ‘AFFLUENCE! AFFLUENCE!’ really ripping the piss now. Then everyone storts shouting, ‘AFFLUENCE!’ JP storts telling this other skanger – Anto from Ballyfermot – that he’s going to get a tattoo before he goes home tomorrow, roy
sh, and Anto suggests a skull painted in the colours of the Irish flag – ‘green, whoy and yelli’ – with barbed wire on it. And JP goes, ‘And explosions in the background. I simply must have explosions in the background.’ ‘And it’s off to Dubbalin in the green (fuck the Queen), where the bayonets glisten in the sun (fuck the hun) …’ Fionn is chatting up this Spanish barmaid. He’s like, ‘Olá, que tal?’ I hear Christian telling Oisinn that it’s just like the Mos Eiseley cantina and then they both shout, ‘THE POVERTY TRAP!’ and I am SO focking scared.

  Probably the best craic of the entire holiday, roysh, is seeing Oisinn and JP at the airport on the way home, trying to get away from all the birds they’ve been knobbing for the last, like, fortnight, without giving them their addresses and phone numbers. This bird, roysh, she asks JP for his number and he goes, ‘90210,’ and the bird’s like, ‘That’s very short.’ He’s like, ‘You may need to put a two in front of that now.’ She goes, ‘It’s still a number short,’ and he’s like, ‘Then add an eight as well.’ She goes, ‘At the beginning or the end?’ and he’s like, ‘I’m easy.’

  Oisinn tells this fat bird – it has to be the Fred Elliot lookalike – that his address is, like, 1 Main Street, Foxrock, Dublin 18. She’s like, ‘You’re a liar,’ really, like, aggressive and he goes, ‘I’m not, that’s where I live.’ She goes, ‘I bet your real name isn’t really Kevin either.’ Oisinn’s like, ‘It is, I swear.’ And she turns around to JP and she goes, ‘Martin, tell me the truth, is that his real address?’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The One Where Ross Lets The Cat Out Of The Bag

  I get back from holidays, roysh, and I check my messages. A girl called Debbie has rung, roysh, to ask me – ‘OH MY! GOD! you are going to think I am such a freak of nature’ – whether I might have accidentally taken her Chill Out Moods CD, ‘because it was on the locker beside the bed when you … no, forget it. Oh my God, I am, like, SO embarrassed.’ It’s a shit album anyway, can’t imagine her missing it. Oh and Michelle from Ulster Bank has called to say she’s sorry that I didn’t, like, make it to some meeting I don’t even remember agreeing to, to discuss the SSIA, 50-50 funds, projected investment growth and loads of other bollocks I basically don’t understand.

  For the last few weeks, roysh, I’ve basically had this, like, verruca on the sole of my foot, and I’m pretty sure I know where it came from as well. These are the things that your travel agent should warn you about before you go off on a knacker holiday, but they don’t. I reckon basically I got it from that goy from Sheriff Street, the one with, like, the tricolour hanging over the edge of his balcony. I tell this to Fionn, who I make the mistake of, like, confiding in one night, roysh, while we’re in the gaff watching ‘The Villa’. He’s like, ‘A tricolour? Ross, that could be any one of fifty people.’ I’m like, ‘You remember him. “Did you see our Joanne winning the karaoke last night, what? Sex bomb, sex bomb …”’

  He goes, ‘Got you now. Why him, though?’ I’m like, ‘I just know. Fock, what am I going to do?’ He’s like, ‘Hey, why are you telling me this shit anyway?’ I’m there, ‘Hello? You’re the one in college, remember?’ He goes, ‘Ross, I’m doing psychology.’ I’m like, ‘And?’ He goes, ‘And you need a doctor. Why not go to see old what’s-his-name?’ I’m like, ‘Hello? Earth to Fionn. I’ve spent the last six months trying to get into his daughter’s knickers. I hardly think she’s going to be interested when she finds out I’ve got this big festering sore on my foot.’ And he goes, ‘Ross, she’ll just have to accept you … warts and all.’ Then he storts, like, breaking his shite laughing. Dickhead.

  I’m like, ‘Fionn, you better not breathe a word about this to anyone.’ He’s like, ‘What do you take me for, Ross?’ And I go out into the kitchen, roysh, and pull out the phone book and stort looking up doctors. I can’t go to the local GP for reasons already explained, and knowing my luck, I’d probably run into the old dear in the waiting room, picking up her focking HRT, and I can very nearly hear her already. ‘Oh the shame of it, Ross! There hasn’t been a verruca in our family for seventeen generations.’ You know the way she goes on.

  And anyway, roysh, it’s got to be a doctor with experience of treating verrucas. The way I see it, roysh, no GP from up our way is likely to have ever seen one. It has to be a doctor from a Ken Acker area. I eventually find one in Newtownmountkennedy, roysh, and after taking the CD player out of the cor, I hit the dual carriageway, and the next thing I know, I’m sitting in a waiting room with some total focking AJH grilling me about my business, basically a receptionist who thinks she’s a focking doctor. She’s like, ‘And what shall I say your problem is?’ I just, like, whisper, ‘A verruca,’ and she’s like, ‘A VERRUCA?’ at the top of her voice. I’m, like, looking around me. There’s these two women behind me, skangers basically, and they stop talking when they hear the word. I’m like, ‘Why don’t you put an ad in the focking Herald?’ I sit down, roysh, and I stort getting really paranoid. I’ve knobbed quite a few birds from out this direction and I keep thinking someone’s going to, like, come in and recognise me.

  I’m listening to these two birds and it’s all, ‘Oh yeah, I’m a martyr to me back, Mary. Always have been.’ And when the doctor goes, ‘NEXT,’ I just get up and go in ahead of them, even though I’m not next. The two women stort muttering to each other, roysh, and one of them plucks up the courage and goes, ‘Excuse me,’ trying to put on a posh voice, ‘Excuse me, you’re after skipping the queue.’ She’s basically trying to embarrass me. I’m like, ‘Yeah? Tell it to focking Adrian Kennedy, you knacker.’

  I go into the doctor, roysh, and it’s, like, pleasantries and shit and then it’s like, ‘What seems to be the problem?’ I’m like, ‘It’s a bit, em … embarrassing.’ He goes, ‘Is it a sexually transmitted disease? HERPES? SCABIES? URETHRITIS? SYPHILIS?’ I’m like, ‘What is it with people in here? Would you mind not shouting?’ He’s there, ‘GONORRHOEA? CHLAMYDIA? I KNOW MY STDs.’

  I’m like, ‘It sounds like you do. Look, I’ve got a verruca.’ He goes, ‘A verruca?’ looking all, like, disappointed and shit. He’s like, ‘A verr-u-ca.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, what happened was I picked it up on a knacker holiday.’ He goes, ‘Yes, that and a lot more besides, I’d wager. Well, verrucas are actually quite common …’ I’m there, ‘Not where I come from, they’re not.’ He goes, ‘Infection of the skin caused by the human papilloma virus … can be quite painful … often picked up in swimming pools and the like … would disappear itself if you left it, but if it’s troubling you, it’s best to act.

  ‘Here,’ he goes, handing me this prescription, ‘slop this stuff on it a couple of times a day. It’ll clear up in a week … now, any sexually transmitted diseases to report?’ I’m like, ‘No.’ He goes, ‘CHANCROID? TRICHOMONIASIS?’ I get up and get the fock out of there and I can hear the goy still shouting this stuff after I’ve left the surgery.

  The stuff smells focking vile. It’s, like, some kind of acid, roysh, but I lash on the old Gio Acqua Di before I go out that night so nobody will smell it. I hit Kiely’s and there I am, roysh, having a few scoops, and I notice that the goys are being really, like, weird around me. It’s all, ‘How are you feeling, Ross?’ and, ‘Everything okay?’ Even the birds are like, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t think you’d be drinking.’ And I’m storting to wonder, roysh, whether Fionn’s actually said something.

  So anyway, roysh, about half an hour into the night, I’ve got to go and, like, drain the snake, so I get up from the table and head for the jacks. That’s when I hear this, like, ringing, roysh, and basically everyone in the entire pub stops whatever it is they’re doing and storts, like, staring at me. So I look down, roysh, and it turns out that some focker – probably Oisinn, the fat bastard – has tied a bell onto my ankle when I wasn’t looking. And all the goys are standing up, giving it, ‘UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!’

  Basically assholes.

  I hate cats. We’re talking TOTALLY here, and I wouldn’t use that word lightly. The probl
em with cats is that you could spend an hour petting one, roysh, and then the thing’ll get bored with you, scratch your arm, fock off out the window and not come back for two weeks. Once someone else is feeding it, that is. I focking hate them. But Oreanna, roysh, this bird I was kind of seeing sort of, like, on and off for a few weeks, she loves them. Most birds basically do.

  Anyway, this one she had, roysh, was called Simba, an evil, orange little thing. The focker could open doors, I’m telling you, and materialise through, like, walls and shit. There we’d be, roysh, me and Oreanna, getting jiggy on her sofa and, like, the cat would be outside on the window ledge, roysh, pawing away at the glass, basically trying to get in. Next thing you’d look down, roysh, and the thing was there at your feet, staring up at you and, like, hissing.

  Simba hated me, roysh, and basically that’s the thing about cats. They get, like, really, really jealous if they think you’re, like, moving in on their patch. They’re big into, like, territory and shit, or so Fionn says, and he spends a lot of time in the gaff watching the Discovery Channel. Me and Oreanna would be sitting there in front of the telly, roysh, getting it on, hands busy with her bra strap, and the focking thing would jump up on the sofa and, like, squeeze in between the two of us, and of course Oreanna, roysh, the total sap, she’d go, ‘OH MY! GOD! isn’t he SO cute. And SO clever.’ She could only ever see good in the little bastard.

  There was this one night, roysh, when we were in her gaff in Greystones, watching ‘Big Brother’, which is, like, her favourite programme, roysh, and all of a sudden Simba storts, like, licking my hand, and at first, roysh, I thought he was actually trying to make friends with me. Turns out he was, like, tenderising my flesh before he sank his teeth into me.