Paidi’s father sometimes came into Murphy’s. He wouldn’t sit at the bar like everyone else. He’d sit on the lounge seats by himself looking bloody fucking miserable beyond belief. I bought him a whiskey once as he was the only other drinker there with me at the time. Not a thanks to be heard from him. He just stared at me with that sulky mug of his. Ungrateful old bastard. I have to say, I laughed the day Staunton’s wolfhound pissed into his hot brandy. Staunton’s wolfhound was huge, as I’m sure you know from the picture in your head right now, so the old fucker’s brandy, being placed on those lower lounge tables, was positioned nicely under the great beast’s hammerhead. And wolfhounds have powerful engines in there, as I’m sure you can guess from the picture you’re building right now. The force of the spray that came out of it lifted the glass off the table and into the air, splashing spicy liquids everywhere.
‘Get that big fucking bollocks out of here!’ roared Paidi’s father, the first and only words I ever heard uttered from him.
‘Haha,’ laughed McDaid. ‘Now you know why we all sit up here at the bar, well away from that big pair of fucking bollocks.’
‘So what’s the story with this party tonight, Paidi?’ Emer asked. ‘Will you be playing some tunes?’
‘Ah, we’ll see. How are you getting on yourself, Emer?’
‘Not too bad.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Yourself?’
‘Ah, as well as can be, you know.’
‘Good stuff.’
I knew this conversation wouldn’t offer a doorway to me. I was about as visible as John Carroll was to Paidi and his group of fucking clowns. I realised that being Emer’s husband didn’t matter one bit to these folks. She was still a friend of theirs from back in the day, and I was still the loud-mouthed gobshite they couldn’t stand from that same day. Our marriage wasn’t graspable for this crowd. That concept was merely a cloud of smoke from a nearby joint floating anonymously over their gluey heads. Paidi would talk to Emer as though I wasn’t even there, never mind play his part in the dialogue with due consideration of her husband being present. I shut out their exchange and looked up at horrible slabs of grime posing as clouds against the shitty black evening.
I should say that I hated Paidi’s band as I’m giving you the lowdown on all of this. Underbelly Dogs, they were called. These days they just fashioned their local stardom out of covering grunge favourites to soothe the cocaine-riddled remains of our generation. But they started off doing originals when they thought they had it in them to be magazine covers. The magazine covers never came, but they must have spent a shitload preparing for those photo-shoots that never happened.
‘Have you heard the new Underbelly Dogs’ hairstyle?’ you would hear fuckers in this very pub say.
‘Yeah, it’s brilliant, isn’t it? Classic!’
