But I didn’t know a lot of people here, so when the guy invited me to go and have a drink with him and his friends I didn’t feel like saying no and spending another night at home. He took me to the only unfashionable bar in Temple Bar (and unfortunately now I do know the origin of that name. It’s not as cool as it sounds, an entire area devoted to drinks like a temple, it just used to be a couple of houses owned by the Temple family, but you can’t have it all, and the tourists really do treat like a Temple for Booze. I read in my guide book that the tourists seem dead set on renaming it Temple Barf though, and that is not a misnomer…) and when I met one of his friends who said I looked really nice the Scandinavian guy apparently replied with: “Yes, she’s a great ride.” I guess I should have seen it coming.
And then there was the unfortunate incident of losing my wallet. Whether it was lost or stolen still remains a mystery, but I hardly had enough money to eat, let alone pay the rest of the apparently illegal deposit. I explained the situation to my roommate, yet since he was drunk it didn’t really seem to sink in, and I had to repeat myself a number of times, while he was in varying stages of sobriety. Luckily my father, bless him, transferred some money onto my new Irish account and I was able to at least buy some food and enjoy a drink on Friday night. So that weekend we went out again.
After assuring all of his friends and random acquaintances that we were not, as he had told them, a couple, the guy tried yet again to feel me up. When I made it clear again that any hanky-panky between us was out of the question, he started whining again about the rest of my deposit (I had already paid my rent for that month but was still a couple hundred Euros short on the deposit) and told me he needed it to finance his trip to Tenerife (he didn’t use the rather tricky word ‘finance’ though, it being already 11 at night and three pints after the time I arrived at the bar). I reminded him that my deposit was not his to use for fun or drinking (which was serious business, not fun) to which he didn’t reply, he just kept telling me he needed the money to book his flight. I also reminded him that I had lost my wallet and that there was no way I could eat as well as pay the rest of my deposit at that time, and after repeating this quite a few times either he accepted it, lost interest, or got distracted by some other pair of legs, it was sort of difficult to tell.
After that I wasn’t home often, until the next Tuesday night, when I wasn’t feeling well due to some circumstances that will be explained in a next post, for I feel they deserve their own special little place… Anyway, I had been sleeping all day and had only just woken up when the guy started knocking on my door and asked me if we could talk about the money. It was already 11 PM and I had to get up at 5 Am the next morning, so I was not really pleased about this, and since I could hear the telltale slur of at least two pints in his voice (he couldn’t handle more than two pints, yet never stopped there…) I asked him if we could maybe have a chat about that the next day. He said that was ok, and left. Ten minutes later there was another, much louder knock on my door. Some guy asked me to come out and talk about the money, and I told him the same thing I’d said ten minutes before, and added that I had to get up at 5 the next morning and that I would rather like to get some sleep, though I promised again that we could talk about it the next day. When ten minutes later there was an even louder banging, I replied that I would rather not discuss business with drunk people, since he was likely to forget it all again by next morning. Some other guy started telling me that the Scandinavian had asked him to mediate between us since he feared that his English wasn’t good enough (he’s only been here six years now) to have a decent conversation about this touchy subject. By now I was starting to get quite annoyed, so I yanked open the door and asked the stranger who the hell he thought he was knocking on my door in the middle of the night and sticking his nose into other people’s business like that. Turns out the stranger was a rather handsome, incredibly tall and muscular and exceedingly drunk Irish guy, who told me that I had been trying to rip off the poor Scandinavian guy, who was also standing in the hallway looking like he’d been diagnosed with cancer of the puppy (thank you Buffy). I told the complete stranger that there was quite a bit more to the story than that, and asked him why he felt he could order me around in my own apartment. I tried to explain the lost wallet scenario, but met with little response in the logic department. The two guys started shouting at me, the Scandinavian guy actually told me he was going to call my father at 12 o’clock, and that my father would surely agree with him. I told him he could do whatever he wanted to, I wasn’t going to lose more sleep over it and could he please leave me alone now and let me get some rest since I had to work the next day. I went into my room and locked it, because by now I was pretty freaked out. I called a friend to be on standby, in case they broke down the door or something, and my friend could hear the guys shouting over the phone even through the locked door. He asked me if I wanted him to come over, and advised me to start packing up my stuff. By now it was 12.30 AM, and I hadn’t eaten since lunch. So I packed everything I could find and listened when it would be safe to venture out of my room again. It seemed there was quite a vivid party going on in the living room, the music didn’t stop until three, and in that time the guys came knocking on my door a couple more times, while I was inside trying to ignore them and the pressing urge of my bladder at the same time. Finally I fell asleep despite my empty stomach and full bladder. I was still afraid to leave my room because the hallway lights were still on.
Two hours later I woke up and stole into the bathroom. I took a quick shower, grabbed all my stuff that was in there and put it in my room. I went into the living room cum kitchen, and saw the huge Irish guy sprawled on the couch cushions in the middle of the floor. I had to get past him to get into the kitchen, and was terrified in case he was faking his drunken sleep and would grab my ankle while I stepped over him. I took all my stuff out of the fridge and cupboards and got away safely, with a bulging bag of food that I would just have to take to work with me since it had to be refrigerated. I couldn’t afford to lose any of it, since I was really short on cash.
That day I sent my roommate a text message, telling him what time I’d be home and that we really needed to talk. He sent me a text back, saying: “Sure, what’s on your mind?” What’s on my mind?!? I almost called the Gardai on him, I was scared out of my wits, ready to move out and I had been having nightmares in which these guys actually did break down the door and I had to flee the apartment in my pajamas and couldn’t find a Garda anywhere…
To be continued…
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