The Road to McCarthy (16 page)

“At home everything closes for two weeks,” she says. “It’s brilliant. Jesus, you can drink yourself to a standstill. Here, though, one bloody day and that’s it.”

“Aye, I know.”

“Do you know what I had?”

“What’s that?”

“Beans. feckin’ baked beans on Christmas Day.”

“Are you not happy here then?”

“Ah, no, not really. I’d as soon go home, but I’m going to try and stick it out for the year like. Otherwise people will just say, ‘Oh, you’ve come home early.’”

“Which you will have.”

“Aye, and I won’t give ’em the satisfaction of taking the piss. I couldn’t stand that. I’d rather stay here and be miserable.”

She instinctively understands that the purpose of travel is to be able to
tell your friends about it and make them feel that staying at home was a poorer option, even if it wasn’t.

There’s a heap of magazines and papers and leaflets on the table in the corner. On top of the pile is a flyer for an Irish play called
Howie the Rookie
that is playing off-off-Broadway. “A mind-blowing slice of Dublin street life,” claims the blurb. “Cooler than NYC in Winter.” There’s also a three-month-old copy of an Irish-American newspaper in which Gerry Adams has his own column. “I love Christmas,” writes Gerry. “Not the mad commercialism which threatens to replace the magic of that wonderful story of the birth of the baby Jesus in a stable at Bethlehem ….” I double-check in case this is a satirical magazine and it’s a spoof, but it doesn’t appear to be. There’s no sign of a balancing article by Ian Paisley entitled “The Lord Gave Us Many Words and the Greatest of These Is No,” so I can only presume it’s a republican publication.

The barmaid’s moaning about American TV now, even though she’s got eight of them on, so I drink up and decide to adjourn to the next bar I see, which is Paddy Maguire’s Pub. In the men’s room is a handwritten sign saying one arm urinal push-ups.

I try it and discover that it immediately induces a sense of inner calm and well-being. I may have stumbled on a form of t’ai chi for the drinking classes. As I’m drying my hands two construction workers come in. “Twenty-five?” asks one. “Twenty-five!” confirms the other. They high-five, then start undoing their flies. In the mirror I can see them rocking back and forth at the urinal chanting, “I am special,” in unison. If you hadn’t read the sign, this could be very alarming.

I ought to go back to the apartment and unpack and start winding down
for bed, but then I’d have to admit that’s what I did on my first day in New York. Like the barmaid from Dublin, I don’t want to admit defeat. Instead I get a taxi and ask the Sikh driver to take me to a bar called Rocky Sullivan’s, which is where I’m due to do the reading. I figure it might be reassuring to spend some time there and make it feel like home before the tartan army arrives next week.

It’s tucked away among a line of Indian and Pakistani cafés near the police precinct on Lexington Avenue. From outside it’s nothing special, but as soon as you go in it’s clear that you may have stumbled upon a world-class bar. There are steps that go down from the street into the room, a symbol of moral descent that sets a promising tone. It’s long and narrow, with an aging wooden bar on the right and a tiny stage at the far end, which has no visible means of escape. There’s grime on the floorboards and nicotine on the ceiling. I’d been expecting another Irish theme bar, but there’s no sign of production-line Celtic bric-à-brac. Instead there’s a set of Virgin Mary fairy lights around the top of the mirror, and a black T-shirt hanging in front of it proclaiming in bold letters: unrepentant fenian bastard.

I take a seat on a stool at the bar and ease myself into the situation. There’s a handful of customers and a murmur of conversation above the jukebox. Christy Moore has just finished, and now the Undertones are singing “My Perfect Cousin.” There’s a single window onto the street that’s a perfect frame for the telegenic yellow cabs that cruise constantly by like an ambient video installation. A note written on a scrap of paper is taped to the mirror next to the till. STRAIGHT OUT THE FUCKIN WINDOW, it says. Perhaps it’s intended as a conversation piece. I ask the dark-haired young American woman behind the bar about it.

“Well,” she says, “that’s from the last time Shane MacGowan was in here—you know? The singer from the Pogues, the Popes, whatever he calls the band now? It was three in the morning and the manager said we’re closed and Shane said he wasn’t going anywhere. Oh, no? says the manager. No, says Shane, and I’d like to see how you think you’ll get me out. Well, says the manager, I was thinking you could go straight out the fuckin’ window. Fair enough, says Shane, and drinks up and goes home.”

And the T-shirt?

“It’s a quote from a song by a band call Seanchai. They gig here on Fridays.”

“What kind of music do they play?”

“Irish republican hip-hop. Will you have another?”

There’s a sweetly optimistic note to her voice and it might seem callous to say
No
, so I say
Yes
instead. While she’s pouring it she points to a painting hanging over the bar. A man’s face peers out at me through the gloom. “James Cagney,” she says. “A self-portrait, in oils. The genuine article.”

A wild-looking guy on the stool next to me suddenly bursts into action, reaching into a bag on the floor. He produces a painting and passes it to me. It’s a watercolor portrait of the hunger-striker Bobby Sands. This is such a parody of the kind of thing you expect to happen in Irish-American bars that I’m not sure how to react. Maybe it’s an initiation rite. “Color is my strength,” he mutters, in a half-distracted voice. “I’m a great colorist, just something natural I seem to have.” My pint is served, and he puts the picture in his bag and goes back to his drink. On the screen at the end of the room the cabs are still streaming by.

I’m just thinking that, as well as framing the street action for a drinker looking out, the window also frames the drinker for, say, a drive-by assassin looking in—no one ever said traveling alone would be cheerful—when the guy drinking Jim Beam on the stool on the other side of me says it’s getting cold outside. He’s a big fella in his late thirties, with a mustache, an unkempt all-purpose rock-and-roll haircut and a T-shirt with a picture of some mental-looking frizzy-haired guitar player. He points to it.

“Ted Nugent,” he says. “Remember Ted?”

I nod, meaning not really, but that’s not going to stop the anecdote.

“Ted was the spirit of rock-and-roll, but he was never drunk, never stoned. All that drug paraphernalia on his album covers—Ted says he didn’t know what it was even for. Never did drugs, never got drunk.”

He takes a mouthful of Beam.

“Guess he just had a vivid imagination.”

“Same again?” says the barmaid.

I nod.

“Ted’s a serious hunter now. And a main man of the NRA. You English?
You have the NRA over there? National Rifle Association? Hey! England! Arright!”

The Bobby Sands artist has looked up at the mention of the word
England
. He stares as the Mustache clinks his glass against mine.

“Rock-and-roll, man! Went to see Ozzy Osbourne at the Garden. Had a seat behind the stage. Could see Ozzy reading his lyrics, all that satanic stuff and weird shit off of the screen on the speaker box, with a little bouncing ball on the words to keep him on the pace. And Motorhead? Lemmie? Shit. Saw them at the Garden too. Summer. I was wearing shorts. This heavy-metal high-school kid in back of me puked on my leg and in my sneaker.

“He’s like, ‘Oh, gee, dude! Sorry, dude!’

“So I waited twenty minutes cos I didn’t want to miss ‘Killed by Death’ cos it’s an awesome song, then I went to the bathroom to wash the puke off. Place was full of black-magic heavy-metal kids in there like, twenty years younger than me?

“‘Oh, dude, man, someone barfed on your leg.’

“‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘thanks for that.’ Waited twenty minutes to get the puke out of my sneaker though. Love that song, man.”

He drains his glass and says goodbye. I’m flagging now, so just one for the road and that’ll be it. As I offer the ten-dollar bill, she knocks on the counter and turns away, leaving me confused. Have I been barred? The Bobby Sands man comes to my rescue. “The knock means it’s on the house,” he says. “It means you are a valued customer who has bought several drinks and tipped appropriately though not over-generously. They like you here.” This lulls me into an exaggerated sense of belonging, so I casually mention my forthcoming event, in the hope that the barmaid will reassure me and say how good it’s going to be.

“Oh, yeah,” she says. “We get a nice crowd for the readings. You know, people who like to listen. They’ll even ‘shh’ if someone’s talking in back.” This is exactly what I need to hear. Then she says, “Oh, no!”

She’s raised her hands to her mouth.

“You’re the guy who’s here in Paddy’s Week?”

Unless I run away to Montserrat.

“Has no one told you about….”

“The Celtic boys?”

She nods.

“Is it true?”

She nods again and winces in sympathy. She is looking for straws at which to clutch and bright sides on which to look. Hang on, it’s worked. She’s smiling. Everything really will be okay!

“Look at it this way. They’ll probably be so drunk they won’t even notice you.”

I’m doing my best to fan the dying embers of optimism, but the glow is fading to black.

A wonderful thing happens
next morning at dawn. There are no blinds or curtains on my eighth-floor window, so the first light wakes me, a low and amber-glowing winter sun hitting the apartment blocks across the street and making them glow orange and pink. It’s a luminous Arizona-canyon color that is quite unexpected in the heart of the city. I get up to take a better look and see that despite the deceptively clear sky it’s been snowing in the night. It looks like there’s a couple of inches on the street far below, where some early risers are already shoveling the sidewalks clear.

Another wonderful thing is the plumbing. I get in the shower after everyone has left for school and work and I’m immediately flattened against the tiling by a violent torrent that would do credit to the South Korean riot police. Why do American showers knock you over, while British plumbing has all the oomph of Barbie’s watering can? Is it something to do with the Hoover Dam? In the apartment upstairs a man is doing early-morning singing exercises in a powerful tenor. That’s American service for you. Singing in the shower is actually provided, though city and state taxes won’t be included, and terms and conditions may apply.

As I head out into the street the doorman holds the door open for me, but on balance I’d rather have the $1,000. All along the street people are clearing snow with plastic shovels. A woman in a ski jacket and moon boots is pulling a little girl on a toboggan. As I search for somewhere to have breakfast I pass a woman wearing a full-length mink coat over blue jeans.
She has an expensively hairy dog on a diamanté leash. The creature is squatting in the snow. When it’s finished she bends down and fills a plastic bag with her pooper scooper, then tries to wipe the snow from the smug mutt’s nether regions with what looks like a chamois-lined pine-scented Doggie-Do Disposer from the Pet Hygiene Emporium on Fifth Avenue. It’s probably been made to measure to fit his nooks and crannies. After all, they have gymnasiums for dogs in this town. And cigar clubs, for all I know.

Once she’s satisfied that the dog’s bum is free of unpleasantness she folds up the cloth and the evil little parcel, pops them into a paper bag and puts the lot in the pocket of her coat. A visitor from another planet might presume that people picking up dog shit on the streets had been sentenced to it by the courts rather than freely choosing it as a 365-day-a-year activity. I’m just hoping there’s a warm spell and she forgets about it until November.

I find an old-style diner but the counter seats are all taken, so I take a booth instead. A 110-year-old Romanian waiter brings me the menu. All breakfasts, it says—and there are dozens of them—come with three eggs. If you asked for three eggs in Britain, they’d call the vice squad. I order and start to pick through a pile of newspapers and listings magazines. A thin, severe-looking woman, wearing the kind of coat you’d see at a bad-taste party, comes and sits at the next table. The Aged Romanian comes across, forces a smile from beneath the decades of oppression and says, “Are you ready to order?”

“Hey!” snarls the Coat. “Gimme a break! I didn’t even look at the menu yet. Jesus Christ!”

This is her way of saying, “No, thank you,” or “I just need a few more minutes.” I heard a radio program a little while ago about street rage and shopping rage in New York. They reckoned it happens because they all live in apartments that aren’t quite big enough. Maybe this woman lives in a closet and sleeps standing up in the coat.

Time Out New York
carries a five-star review of the play I saw advertised yesterday,
Howie the Rookie
. “Writer Mark O’Rowe,” it says, “does more with a few words than most playwrights accomplish in an entire scene. His profane unsentimental prose adds yet another distinctive voice to the latest
Irish playwriting renaissance. This is a seventy-five-minute dramatic torpedo.” I make a note of the number, even though going to the theater on your own is even sadder than sitting in a bar on your own. Only a bit, mind.

Breakfast arrives, and it is massive. There’s so much other stuff that you hardly notice the three eggs, yet it costs about the same as a croissant would in London. Speaking of London, there’s a photo of Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, in the
New York Times
. He’s been in town to pick up a few tips on how a big city works, so that he can try and make it happen in London. His visit is reported with an amused detachment. When someone asked him how he liked to spend his time when he wasn’t doing politics, Ken replied, “Drinking excessively.” The paper was impressed. No American politician, it said, would have dared make such a reply. That’ll be because they’re not sufficiently relaxed or at ease with themselves, because they don’t drink excessively enough.