I'm in a nation of alcoholics. If eastern European's can't function without smoke in their systems, the Irish can't function without alcohol. Every night of the week there are herds of raucous drinkers, tripping over their heels, stumbling over the cracks in the pavement, pissing ethanol-rich urine up against the wall and carrying on like louts.
Mostly young teenagers, new to the fascination of "adulthood", young girls cackle and shriek in drunken banter as the lads slur their sentences into one continuous moan. Glazed eyes and drooling mouths aplenty. It reminds me of my ex-girlfriend. She was incapable of having a deep conversation without alcohol in her system. On our first date she got herself so drunk that she was attaining phone numbers from random guys, whilst she clucked like a battery hen and continually fell over herself onto the floor of the pub and bus station and road... unable to walk. She set the benchmark that night, so after that I just used her for sex. haha, just kidding... but seriously :-p
According to the locals, they, the Irish, are simply inhibited. The alcohol is just a social enhancer. They are shy about talking about sex and all taboo matters... a consequence of strict Catholic conditioning over the years. From what I learned, "getting kinky" would be planting a robotic spank on the ass. They need the booze to loosen up.
I had the pleasure of arriving in Cork on Halloween. Lots of looseness... lots of booze. I had trouble distinguishing between the get-up of the red devils, green witches, disorderly criminals and pale ghosts... and the costumes. My favorite was the young lass all dressed in red, as a devil, with a mini-skirt so short the ass loosely covering her child-bearing hips was in complete view. I had full sight of the thin black fabric tranversing the very wide divide between her legs. Elephants simply cannot wear g-strings! As she waddled in front of me a female voice of outrage yelled out from a passing car "Sluuuut," to which she turned and happily waved. Maybe that was her name!
I went up to Galway in the west. Arriving at night, I wondered the streets until the early hours, frequenting pubs and bars and observing the culture. Settling in a rowdy fast-food eatery - the only one still open at 2a.m. on a very early Wednesday morning - a young drinker engaged me in conversation.
"There's a lot of drinking here, isn't there?" There was an undertone of guilt in his rhethorical question. "It's pretty bad."
"Yeah. I guess you're not hurting anyone though. You're all happy drunk. There's a lot more aggression in the UK. But yes... there is a LOT of drinking."
He reached into the paper take-away bag and pulled his fingers out, all covered in red, chunky sauce. "It's pretty bad, like. I'm only seventeen. Everybody in here is pretty much underage. We just get fake ID's, and if we don't get in somewhere we just go somewhere else. The doormen are pretty dumb here."
I couldn't help but agree with him.
He continued, "I guess it's bad that we start early. Our livers probably never mature."
"Yeah, it's not healthy. At least you're having a good time."
"But it's reducing our life expectancy."
I couldn't help but laugh. I casually picked off the chunk of corn he just spat on me and wished him a happy short life.
He turned his attention back to his table of young alcoholic friends, now and again successfully grabbing a potato wedge from within his bag of chunky red sauce.
On my way home I passed a lovely young couple wanking each other off in a recessed doorway on the promenade.
