Conversations- Copyright Robert Fullarton

Taken from Our Lives as Fiction- Copyright Robert Fullarton 2013


Conversations

I frank Murphy in my thirtieth year on earth, find myself lost in the streets of Dublin,

like a fruitless young boy, a pleb who in his gormless state cant find his way round the

supermarket and has become once again a candidate for the biggest blunder since the

Spanish armada.

Well I could say honestly, that I wasn’t lost per se, but in the real sense of things I had

become an ornament or a living and breathing part of Dublin city but yet bordering

inanimate. Like the Ha penny bridge or The GPO or any of the wondrous relics of

Ireland’s momentous historical testimony, there I lay squatting on my bench outside

the General Post office in O’Connell Street. There I lay exhorting some unseen vibe

or signal to the thousand portraits that pass me by, some rich in vibrant colour, some

fancy, some fair and some fierce, like scally wags or gutter rats in packs intent on

mischief and misery to others. The noise people generally make as they crawl up

in down and try and drown their heavy lives and puzzling personas never made me

twitch or move a single muscle, for I stood and stared sitting on my bench thinking

with a brief foresight on what to do next. I sat still pregnant with thought looking

at the faces of the passers some tried to shed a face of sympathy and sorrow others

turned their head and dismissed my sight so quickly.

 It was a day in mid May in Dublin city and

any poor maligned Irishman knows that May is the monthly duration of our so called

summer, it’s a flash in the pan an event worth savouring before the monsoon season

has left the sun blotted out in the densely packed cloudy sky. In the wake of the

incessant rain, on many a moment the rain has left my trouser leggings soaked as I

walk down many of the Dublin canals while standing outside of the shop windows

peering and killing time and painful memories.

 Thank God it’s May and now the sun

will show its face and the beleaguered white skinned people will don hats and turn out

in skimpy tops for the sunshine that has alluded our greatest expectations on many a

day. I wore my sweatshirt and my raincoat, simply because I’m sceptical on whether

the sun will shine at all. However today seems settled....actually slightly breezy and a

tad overcast, but other than that the humidity in the air has made me determined to go

for a stroll over to Henry street.

Walking down O’Connell Street you see the multitude of faces a thousand faces in

the flash of an instance, some release a story of tragedy, and I can see it on their faces,

it’s slapped so clearly on their foreheads, they can’t see but I can with my invisible

genius for reading people. Other people release innocence and ingenuity and general

kindness, this to me deliberates my thoughts and brings a joy out in me and I can

smile inside and laugh out loud while I walk by, these are generally caring mothers

with their undivided attention to their little chiselers and old men greeting old friends

exchanging arms in gratitude and breathing out their warm affection they make me

stop and ponder so deep to the density of my thoughts beneath the blanket of my inner

posterior I say aloud “How great it is for friends as old as these to meet and talk and

disperse their camaraderie on these streets which flow with human water as the hustle

and bustle of the traffic and the screeching growl of many motor bikes go up in down

in motion until the sun goes down and the moon comes out to fraternise with the stars

in comfort.

But then I see other faces which represent fear and the cruelty of the human system,

there life is a climb to the top. From the self absorbed business gurus who run around

hyperactive with one hand they delicately balance their mobile phone and another

hand grips tightly to a cappuccino. They wear Armani suits and quickly shove you

off the pavement as you slowly try to shuffle up the road. I reckon there’s a giant

silver spoon stuck up their backsides and that’s the reason for their behaviour they

represent a mere portion of Ireland’s new snob ascendancy, their the annoying self

made entrepreneurs who the papers rant on about wasting print every day

I see the glamour girls who all congregate the main streets spending half a lifetime

through the clothes shops, giggling in hysteria while picking out a piece of fabric,

probably made in a sweat shop in Bangkok. Basically we’ve all seen Barbie dolls

before and their search to find a Ken while they traipse up to the salon showing off

more than cleavage and some barely covering their arses.

But what I really hate are the monsters of the night, the binge drinkers and the violent

men that roam like wolves in wait, whether for fixes or for booze many a mind is

bent with alcohol confused and crazed with a hazy shadow of reason thinning out like

there thin depraved physique. These men like jackals shower streets in packs wearing

hoodies, almost covering their Scornful faces and burning eyes they intimidate and

aggravate those that they please to their discretion. The inner city can be a perfect

scene for the haves and have not’s of society, whom we se on the sidewalks everyday

while simply just brushing past and hardly thinking on. Some people are a living

irony they start their days chasing off their dreams to try and make it big and brass

in the social order but many transform when time has weathered their hopes and left

them to become the very thing they tried to avoid. Whether they fall prey to the vices

of addiction or the trappings of earthly life and love lost and become homeless or

unemployed they still become a model of the very fear they instil and that which they

tried to avoid so hopelessly.

 So at night I lay in rest in my bedroom chamber in a flat off temple bar, there I am

staying at the temporary residence of a friend and a carer who has provide me with

money and with the needed treatment from Saint Vincent De Paul, he’s helped wind

down the scale of my twisting addictions, whether they be my childlike passions for

sniffing glue or the tip ex pen in bliss or the chough medicine that made me giggle or

the more serious stuff like the booze, the hash and the heroine, which I only took once

a day to keep me sane while working as a psychologist, unfortunately I began to spiral

into a mental hole with a crazed psychosis and a hectic fever culminating with a daze

of cloudiness churned up with intense drowsy emotions all swept up over my mind

and left me hapless until I was found outside of central bank nearly two years ago in

a suffering state like a dead animal hardly noticeable, almost completely concealed at

the rear of the bank while it was pitch dark that cold and wretched winter night.

But that was then, and now I’m going to walk down Henry Street and pop in for

some food somewhere. I walked down Henry Street and stopped at Mary Street, there

across the road stood an old friend of mine Joey Martin. Standing at the side of the

road like a typical creep almost hiding up the rear of the street, wearing his tracksuit

bottoms on back to front and bearing a badge of his typical shifty and shady character

I stopped to wave at him.

I walked up to him, stopped and in an instance he recognised me and smiled.

“Joey, how are ya keeping? Still looking well, is the good lord looking after ya?”

“Ahh he is. You wouldn’t believe what happened to me Frank?

“No I don’t know what happened to you?”

“That feckin male order bride from Thailand has after taken me to the cleaners and

she’s bloody left me, after only taking all my money, bleedin cow.”

“Yeah but if you remember when we last met I warned you about her, didn’t I warn

you that she was trouble, first she asks for the medical card and then she wants a visa

so she can stay in the country and seek asylumn. That’s the only reason why she was

so persistent to get here and after all she had that funny eye and her voice was a bit

deep, kind of like those half men half women of Bangkok.”

“Aye, sheer you know me after too many drinks the lights go out and then what

happens next is all blur to me. I wake up with many feckin surprises some would

frighten the life out of ye.”

“Go way! I wouldn’t like to even dwell on those words.”

“Frank, are you clean at the moment?”

“Clean now for four months after struggling on and off the drink.”

“Sure everyone has a cross to carry Frank.”

“That’s true life don’t come easy to even the best. Just wondering, what are you doing

up here are you hiding from someone or something?”

“Naa I work up the road in a hardware shop off Capel Street and I just wanted to have

a quick smoke and try conceal these magic mushrooms I bought.”

“Magic mushrooms I wouldn’t touch them there now a class A drug but didn’t have

them in a cup of tea once and I thought I saw the television talk to me. But it turned

out it wasn’t a television at all but a bean Garda who tried to shift off the pavement in

Merrion square.

by the way as soon as I’ve flicked this cigarette I’m going to Mc Donald’s. I’m

having a Mc attack? Do you fancy joining me?

“Sure I might as well.”

I walked back with Joey up Henry street and out onto the wide bustling promenade of

O’Connell street and we chatted briefly, exchanging words and laughter and a spliff.

As we walked down memory lane, trying to fathom out what exactly happened all

those days ago at the methadone clinic off Dublin quay. Were like the blind leading

the blind the pair of us. We resemble change and the good kind anyway, but so far as

what we did we must be sincere to say we can’t remember.

 We strolled casually along

the sidewalk from O’Connell Street up to College green, there we paused and we

briefly tried to exchange more information on how our days were faring. I guess we

both shook the dust off our feet and walked on when we went into rehabilitation.

All the foreign students and high business people like them feckin entrepreneurs come

out of the woodwork around half twelve in the day all hurrying about like rabbits on

steroids, with their briefcases and their mobile phones swinging in their hands as they

run to keep in check with their appointments. Right at this minute as I looked around

briefly ignoring Joe as he jabbered on about Thai brides, I could see the ugly sight of

the human metropolis, there the traffic was congested and tightly knit, men shouted

their feckin heads off in rage trying to push on the flow of vehicles as the sun shone

out our entire summer emptying its rays of light and heat as fast as it could before the

Irish people could get any ideas. I said farewell to Joe and we arranged to see each

other once again some day soon, if I only I could have gotten his address that is.

 Apparently some driver at the top of Dame street tried to break the light and with

malice aforethought knocked down the traffic warden in front of him only to crash

stupidly into some Garda’s car, where he tried to scramble and make a quick an

perilous dash to freedom found himself trapped as his coat had lodged in the seat belt

holder.

Of course I found this out later as I chatted with an innocent bystander who had

witnessed the entire affair. I quietly commented on the wreck of a car and the

policeman furiously shouting at the driver whom he took into custody down at the

station. I found the whole incident hilarious, and secretly as I lay in solitude on a

bench on bachelors wharf I smiled extracting the deepest roots and estuaries of the

human mind, I began to try and memorise the past once again.

The lone wolf that I became spent many days restless wandering through the city

centre but I tried to remember my wife, the woman I once held in holy matrimony.

Who was she? I wondered. Where has she gone to and why has she not given me my

dole money. Dole money! that was the last memory I had of a woman like her. If you

asked outright what her name was I would have to say I don’t know it could be Linda

or Carol or Edith or Mary or feckin Za Za for all I remember.

But the fact remains that once upon a time for the briefest of periods I lived a happy

life in a fancy house somewhere or other married to some woman and now I share a

room that homes not only a homeless man but homeless pigeons too and their feckin

noisy buggers that fly off and home in again every time I chase them off and they

keep fouling the windowsill and the curtains.

Then as I looked forward and I spotted blotto walking across the boardwalks carrying

an umbrella in his right hand and still crowned with his Dublin cap on top. (He was

aptly titled blotto because he was always blotto when I and others met him. He was

always fond of the jar as long as I had known him. He’d make bets, in ridiculous

situations where the odds were so farcical and so obviously going against him and

then lose and whine for days on end about it.

I remember when his family came round for Christmas dinner one year he lost his

front door key down in the pub and then as the whole family came around for dinner

waiting at the door he turned up completely blotto not even aware of what was going

on. He was always adamant about driving after having over eight drinks and that

finally cost him his licence after a futile punch up with the police outside the Auld

Triangle).

Anyway I gazed constantly at him to wait and see if he recognised me from our Rat

pack days with me and the boys. (Oh by the way we were called the Rat pack because

we smelt like vermin, we hung around in groups and we were unhygienic and had the

manners and the habits of rodents always sneaking around unwanted).

Then he looked straight at me and I smiled and waited for his smile in return. Like a

rocket he ran over to me and sat next to me on my left.

“Frank it’s you haven’t seen you for months are you keeping well?”

“Still living, Blotto still living.”

“Hey you don’t have to call me that any more I quit the booze a couple of months

ago.

“Really?”

“Yes, it cost me my marriage and my front door keys once as well as the stupid

gambling that I partook in at the bookies. Right now I’m in a relationship with a

Nigerian woman and she’s always asking me to get certain things for her.”

“Like a job? Maybe she needs more commitment or more romance could that be it?”

“No Frank she wants the medical card.”

“Oh!

Well it seems to me that you should end the relationship before it’s too late, do it over

the phone and make sure you don’t have to see her again.”

“It’s not that simple!

She’s living with me and she’s now trying to have her two young boys come over

from Lagos and stay in my poky flat.”

“Blotto, you must evict her and take action if you have to, okay, just stand up for

you’re self for once. By the way I congratulate you on you’re new found sobriety and

I have to say I new there was something different about you, something suave and

sophisticated in an eccentric sort of way. You’ve lost the slur in you’re speech.”

“Ah yes sober Frank, sweet and sober, oh shit is that the time I have to be going I

have some chores to do and as well as that I’m working in Aldi over past Moore

street, and I’m back in an hour’s time. I’ll see you around Frank.”

“Goodbye Blotto.”

I began the long march back to temple bar to rummage through the desolate presses

to try and find some edible solids for lunch in a horrid flat and hope my friend had

arrived home from work early. Luckily I had my own key and was entrusted to not

leave the front door open again like I had before by accident.

I walked through the crowds which shifted like fog before my disbelieving eyes and I

could see a boy squatting on the sidewalk, unconscious almost on the cider, begging

but hardly being seen and then I could see the droves and herds of tourists queuing

outside college Green waiting to climb aboard a Dublin city sightseeing bus to see

the sights of Dublin’s great reputation but in truth I’m not running down Dublin

city I am trying to say that many cities across the world whether New York or New

Delhi, whether Amsterdam or Los Angeles or whether London or Dublin there are the

accepted and the rejected, with those who appeal to the world’s system which grinds

and crushes people down and raises up idols for the world to worship. What’s it all

for? It’s for more money.

 Now I went back to the flat to find my flatmate with hope to

have some lunch and hopefully get some sleep in my bed, but as well as that I longed

to find the address of my long lost wife who probably abandoned me.

As in my thirtieth year I found myself lost in Dublin city, on my thirty first year I find

myself writing this diary account with all hope to try and reimburse my memory and

try find my wife.

“Ah what the hell I think I’ll go for a pint.”