Face Down at the White Horse

Do you want to know what's fun? Campfires on the beach.

Want to know what's funny? Johnny, a couple dozen beers into beachy-campfire goodness, trying to wander off into the dark to have a quiet pee. He can't get his beach legs, keeps losing his footing and toppling into the sand with every step. With every step. Step left, fall to the left. Much turtley scrambling. Step right, fall to the right. More turtley scrambling. Repeat, ad infinitum.

But you know what's not fun? Trying to help him and getting taken down yourself. Repeat, sand in-Erin's-bum.

And, last but not least, do you know what isn't funny? When -- the above mission somehow finally accomplished -- Johnny discovers that he's lost his matches and decides to light a cigarette directly from the blaze. He's got the damn butt in his mouth and he's bent over with his sand-scraped face inching dangerously towards the flames, when Gerry suddenly notices what he's up to and grabs him by the seat of his pants.*

So the moral of this story is: it pays to practice drinking a lot even after you have kids. You never know when those parental instincts might get called into play.



*Needless to say, this is also more or less how Johnny managed to get back to the beach house that night: with Gerry's help, and by the seat of his pants.

How I Single-Handedly Saved a Girl from Future Fat

We were at Gerry’s house last week sometime (you remember Gerry? Johnny’s old sesiun friend and chicken wrangler?). Johnny had been painting there, and when I’d gone to pick him up, Gerry offered me a beer. Three hours later we were still sitting on his back porch, sweating and stinking in the heat and feeling not one whit shy about it either. Old friends are good that way, what?

It came on time to feed the children and Gerry started preparing turkey burgers, but his daughter, who is something like eight years old (she’ll be in fourth grade next year, however old that is) asked if she could please, please, please have angel hair, and Gerry, being a good daddy, gave right in to her smile. I thought about telling her to remember that trick eight years from now, when she wants to get away with funner things, but then remembered the oath I took to use my powers of persuasion for good and not for evil. Damn.

Gerry went inside to put the water on and Daughter sat down next to me. “I love pasta,” she said. “It’s practically all I eat. My mom says I should eat other things, but it’s just so good.”

“Yeah, you’re just like me,” I said. “I bet you like crackers, too, huh?”

“Mmnmm.”

“And bread.”

“Yum, bread...”

“And cereal?”

“Ooh, I love cereal!”

“Yep, that’s just like me. But your mom is right. You really need to learn to love your vegetables, or else you’re going to end up with thighs like mine.”

She gasped. Gasped!

God bless her, she immediately tried to take it back. “No,” she said, “I mean, they’re not that big...”

“It’s okay, sweetie.” I laughed to show her I was not offended – and I wasn’t. Hell, I know how thundery my thighs are, and if I were shy about it I would not have brought it up. “You’re trying to be nice," I said, "but I know. That’s why I said it. I wish somebody had done the same for me when I was your age!”

At that moment, her little brother stood and hiked the legs of his shorts up to his underpants. “I like my vegetables!” he announced, waggling his skinny, seven-year-old thighs.

“That’s great, boyo!” I told him. “I guess you’re not in any danger!”

And then their older brother – who was playing guitar with Johnny and who I didn’t even realize was listening to our conversation – raised his head and got this faraway look on his face. He’s ten years old, and he’s a thinker. Quiet, smart, and handsome! Hoo, between all of that and the guitar to boot, he is going to be a danger in a couple years. Especially if he perfects his sister’s “please, please please.”

Anyway, he brushed his soft, brown hair out of his eyes (I’m telling you, future ladies, keep your radar out for this one) and took a breath to speak.

“Do you have to learn to love your vegetables?” he asked. “Or do you just have to learn to eat them?”

I wanted to laugh but something told me if I did then I might spook him. “Nah,” I said. “Just eat them. Maybe later you can learn to love.”

“Oh,” he said. “Phew.” And went back to his guitar.

So maybe I single-handedly saved three children that day. Although, come to think of it, if you met their parents… I don’t know what size their mom wears (and if I did I wouldn’t tell you here) but she’s smaller than Gerry, and Gerry happened to mention the other day that he still wears the size he wore when he and Johnny used to sesiun: A 28” waist, he says he has. Which is, I’m sorry for the visual, exactly the circumference of one of my famous thighs. Seriously. I just measured. Yum.

So, yeah. I don’t know how much danger those kids were ever actually in.



We’re supposed to go to the beach with the family on Wednesday. I’ve decided to lose twenty pounds by then, or else go swimming in my Osh Kosh B’Gosh.

Wish me luck!

And You Thought the Day Might Never Come…

Can you tell the difference between these two pictures (I mean besides all the crap that's gathered on the floor)?

Before:

After:

Here’s a hint:

That’s right, ladies and germs: the electrics are finally, completely, 100% done!

Well, not finally-completely. After the sheetrock goes up we’ll still have to attach switches and plugs and all that actual-functionality-inducing jazz. But every necessary wire is in the room and run to its official box – and that, my friends, is saying something!

See, here’s what happened: when the electrician was here (in, um, April), I wasn’t home, and Johnny was under the mistaken impression that we had not yet decided where to put the fridge. So Electrician did the whole room except the refrigerator-wire, which she connected at the box and ran across the basement to the floor beneath the kitchen, where she left it for us to finish pulling through. She’d only charged us $100 for the job, and it wasn’t her fault we had not made up our minds (even though we really had), so Johnny promised that we wouldn’t call her back for that one tiny thing. Said we were perfectly capable of pulling one wire ourselves. And we were. Are. It’s an easy enough job. Hell, to hear him tell it, Johnny can pull wire with one hand tied behind his back! (Although, to hear him tell it, I think he might be talking about something else.)

Unfortunately, though, she left the wire live. And we both have this thing about electrocution.

Plan C was Andy. Andy knows how to do things like take lethality out of sparking wires, and he also happens to own the proper tools. But we don’t see that much of Andy anymore since he went and joined the Elks, and it took six weeks of trying to arrange for him to come before we – defeatedly and reluctantly – put plan C on the makeshift kitchen shelf the exposed crossbeams have become.

There was no plan D. We’d started this project in January in hopes of having it finished before the family came over for St. Pat’s, and here we were having them over again for Independence Day with no progress to show. They’re nice folks. They didn’t mention. But they have to have been wondering what sorts of diseased debris might’ve dropped down from the open rafters into their macaroni salad (none! I swear! I picked the big chunks out!).

And then along came Gerry.

Remember Gerry? Johnny’s old friend from his Dublin Days? Well, I just met him, so I can’t say for sure, but I'm getting the impression that he’s something of an Irish Godfather. By which I mean he’s always doing favors for people and putting their karmic debt in his back pocket, then finding some oddball way to call it in. Yoga lessons from this guy, gourmet food from another, wholesale fish from someone else entirely. It may not be Cosa Nostra-type shenanigans, but at least it ain't Sinn Fein.

Anyway, for the past few weekends Johnny has been painting Gerry’s house. Gerry offered to pay him but Johnny said no, they were forever-friends, friends do things for each other, and if Gerry didn’t drop it right now he would pack up and go home. Gerry did drop it, but I guess he felt like he owed us a favor, and there just so happened to be this licensed electrician out there who owed him. So on Tuesday night, at 6:00, Gerry showed up at the AssVac's door with Mr. Sparks.

Sparks (not his real name, of course – come to think of it, I never did learn his real name because I was on the phone with One Friend the whole time he was here) is a Corkman. I heard the accent and figured that much out myself. What I didn’t learn until he left was that he and Johnny’d met some years before. Here’s how Johnny told it:

In a bar called the Blackthorn, on West Broadway in South Boston, a Corkman and a Dubliner are sitting side by side. They’re not friends, they’ve only met, and they’ve both had a few. Big Corkman starts getting loud, saying bad things about Dublin, and little Dubliner starts getting mad. Soon enough, Corkman's calling Dubliner an arrogant motherf’er, and Dubliner's telling him he probably doesn’t want to say that shit again. Corkman does. Louder. And with a few more choice bad words. So Dubliner, without so much as getting off his stool, lays Corkman with an upper cut.

Corkman falls off his stool, lands on his back on the floor. His friends help stand him up, and he asks Dubliner if he wants to go outside. Dubliner says “Not so much, thanks,” and remains seated. Corkman retakes his stool, buys Dubliner a beer, and fifteen or so years later – on the say-so of Gerry the Irish Godfather (which I guess makes him Athair Baistí) – shows up to pull a refrigerator wire in Dubliner's kitchen.

They recognized each other right away. Like I said, I was on the phone the whole time, but even I knew something was up. It was as if all the electricity from that live wire had come shooting out the end and filled the house. In fact, that is sort of why I stayed on the phone. Whatever was going on, I didn’t want to end up in the middle of it. (That, and I really didn’t want to have to help.)

The loud voices and banging only lasted a few minutes, and it was all related to the job at hand. Soon enough, the house went quiet. Also the phone went dead, but -- still not wanting to get involved in the kerfuffle -- I called One Friend back from my cell phone and carried on. When he was done, Sparks stuck his head in my office to ask where the other boys had got to. I didn't know, so I put One Friend on hold to help him look, and we found them in the yard. Apparently, Gerry herded Johnny out there after the third time Sparks zapped himself on that live wire and was starting to get pissed.

The whole job took less than 30 minutes. Well, two months, two weeks, two days and thirty minutes, if you want to be precise. But at least it’s done. We’re having Gerry and his lovely wife over on Saturday, and we’re determined to get at least enough sheetrock up by then to make us look appropriately grateful for the strings that Gerry pulled on our behalf.

It’s hot this week, though, and that kitchen’s awfully small. I can't say I foresee the hanging happening without one or the other of us resorting to a few more choice bad words. Nobody better call anybody else an arrogant motherf’er, though.

Because the precedent (Cork v. Dublin) says that’s legal grounds for getting knocked right off your stool.