The Wanderings of American Hero

So the next day… no, I won’t bore you with all the juicy details… I am counting on your imagination to do the job for me, though I know in some cases that could turn out to be quite dirty. Suffice to say that when we finally decided to leave the bedroom we were happy, hungry and quite hung over. So I took a shower and when I went back to my room I ran into my landlord who had sobered up enough to resume his plan of getting me to sleep with him and was actually capable of enough coherent thought to think up a plan. He asked me if I wanted to visit Galway with him, I think it was. I don’t think he knew that the guy he’d introduced me to was lying in my bed at that very moment. So I politely declined his lovely offer to take a train somewhere and told him I’d just hang out in the city that Saturday. A couple of minutes later the Americano walked out of my room (he does have a name, but that will just be disclosed on a need-to-know basis, for propriety’s sake… as if I ever cared for propriety. Anonymity’s sake maybe? For now he will just be Americano to you, his favourite coffee by the way).  My landlord seemed surprised, although he didn’t show any overt animosity toward Americano. After the initial hello’s however, you could see his brain cells starting to work again, and he suddenly asked, with a big grin on his face: “How was she?” I was shocked, mortified even! (I always thought of mortification as a state mostly felt by utter prudes, but in this instant I completely support its usage in characterizing my state of mind at the time. I should have known though, my landlord is the sort of guy that introduced me to his friends and told them I was a great ride. Iieeuuuww… as if he would ever find out!) So I played it cool, raised one eyebrow, and said disdainfully to my landlord: “Seriously?” Then I walked out the door. Americano followed me, glad to be out of this overly tense hallway encounter and probably thoroughly confused. (The day before he had told me that my landlord had implied that I was his girlfriend instead of his roommate… that man is so totally insane, after the entire showdown I went to the website where I had found his ad, and mailed them to say they shouldn’t post his ads anymore. Two days later, they did just that and now he’s got a new tenant. Life is very unfair sometimes.)

After we had escaped the freaky gnome that calls himself human when he can still articulate, we started looking for a nice place to eat breakfast. Since I’d only arrived two weeks before and he had just been in Dublin a couple of days, we didn’t really know where we were going, and it didn’t help that we were constantly distracting each other with talk about Ireland, Dublin, literary references, and so on. I think it took us about an hour or more to find a nice place to break our fast, which by that time was making itself felt. Didn’t really matter, because for a change the incredibly rainy country of Ireland had decided to give the clouds a well-deserved rest, and the weather was uncharacteristically gorgeous. Feeling as though the weathergods were smiling down on us, we decided to go visit Phoenix Park after we had finally finished our breakfast.

Now, Phoenix Park is renowned for being one of the largest parks in the world. So when we had walked through it, had sat down on a bench overlooking the area and had climbed a tiny hill and saw some interesting rock formations, I did wonder why its reputation was so widespread (that evening we told someone where we’d been and he replied with a casual: “Oh, did you get to see the deer?” Deer? In a park that size? Evidently we had not noticed anything of the sort, and we were quite flabbergasted by the way we had completely failed to notice any wildlife whatsoever. Apparently we had also failed to notice the other 5 odd square kilometers of park… guess we were a tiny bit distracted). 

Afterwards we visited an old Irish pub to warm ourselves up a little, because although the sun was still shining lustily Ireland is quite damp and no warmth ever seems to linger longer than 5 minutes. This pub was not the standard tourist’s pub however. Instead of a bunch of drunken Spaniards or muttering Germans, we found there was no one in the bar apart from a few locals, who were all very surprised about seeing a girl walk through the door. Giving them my most winning smile I ordered a cup of tea, and the locals all directed their attention back to the TV-screen which was featuring some sport or other. I guess my most winning smile is not really the way to make new friends… The bartender, an old, quite bald man who was – typically – wiping some glasses with a slightly dirty rag, almost dropped the glass he was cleaning – which would have been a kindness to all future patrons – when he saw two strangers walking in and after some head-shaking served me my tea in a rather grubby glass, luckily not the one he’d been cleaning earlier. I wonder why there are bars like this all over the world. Do they duplicate them or something, landlord and all? The interior may be specific to the country, but apart from that in every town there seems to be a bar only frequented by locals, with a weird bald owner and a grimy rag, reeking of detergent… in Ireland, one of the first countries to introduce the smoking ban in bars and pubs, the smell of stale cigarette smoke still permeates the wooden beams and musty carpets. It rises out of the cushions and wafts from the bar, though that particular fresh breeze has to contend with the smell of stale ale that also oozes from the general drinks serving area.

I won’t bore you either with the details of our conversation. After another couple of hours of busy talking and mostly freakishly agreeing with each other, or disagreeing in a very agreeable manner, we continued our little Ulysses throughout the rest of Dublin, had a bite to eat and made plans with one of my colleagues to go out that night. Now came the tricky part. We’d been walking hand in hand practically all day (it was cold, that’s all, no ulterior motives whatsoever). We’d been kissing and making puppy dog eyes at each other until it would have exasperated Shakespeare himself, and that boy went theatrical in his love descriptions. In a town where no one knows you it doesn’t really present a problem. But now we would be interacting with a known acquaintance, someone I would see again next Monday. Do we hold hands? Are we allowed to kiss? It felt a bit weird, so at first we tried to keep the touching to a minimum. Then we just touched behind my colleague’s back. Then we started kissing behind his back. Before the night had gotten an hour shorter, the colleague asked me how we would deal with our relationship, my “boyfriend” going back to America and all… I suck at undercover.

Then we got to the same point in space, only 24 hours later. Quickly it became clear that this was still not the spot to enjoy a leisurely chat and a sweet kiss. Claiming fatigue from the night before (not completely unfounded in reality) we made our way home, stopping on the way to pick up the world’s worst burgers. We crawled back into bed and wished we never had to leave it again… Told you it would be corny.