Seeing Beneath the Surface

Dublin has a population of just below three million people, all of different colour, age, background and personality. During the time of our existence, we form a pool of just a few of those people from different aspects of our lives: from school and from college, from the workplace and from sports teams, from the coffee shop on the corner of South William and Wicklow Street, and from the clubs and bars we frequent every fortnight.

Every so often, a person comes into our lives that is more intriguing than the others. In September 2006, I met one of those people. A man who shall become known as John for the sake of his privacy. John and I did not have an immediate connection, it was one that rather grew and continued to grow further over a period of less than two years.

John was an articulate writer and a visionary. He had an interesting and somewhat mysterious background. I once commented that it would make for an interesting novel, but then, hadn’t I said the same of many of my friend’s lives? He was full of infectious ambition that made my temperature rise and was like a kick in the ass every time I was tempted to slack off.

My relationship with John was different than my relationships with all other friends. It was not necessarily better or worse, it was just entirely alternative. John and I could tell each other almost anything, at least that is how I felt. And then there were the things that we didn’t say: the things that were bubbling just beneath the surface of one of us which the other would then refer to.

It was a Sunday afternoon and I was in the process of packing my suitcase for a trip that I would make to Portugal the next day on a visit to a good friend, Laura. My mobile rang…disturbances always pleased me--a visitor, an email, a phone call--anything to make the mundane tasks of everyday life less solitary.

It was John. “Can you talk?”, he queried in his antique Dublin tone. “Yes of course”, I responded. I always found that the activity I was undertaking happened so much faster whilst speaking on the phone, maybe it was the distraction of conversation. I had played a gig the night before to an extremely unsuccessful turnout, more so than normal circumstances even, I was disappointed to admit. “How was the gig?”, John continued, upbeat and genuinely interested as he almost always had been.

I tried to conceal my disappointment, and revealed the facts, such as those who had attended and the songs that had been performed. “You sound very down…”, John remarked, sounding concerned. It was one of those moments. So many people could have heard the facts and moved on to the next topic of conversation, but John was so tuned-in that he became instantly aware that there was something wrong despite the fact that I had not pointed towards the issue.

I was down. It was one slap in the face after another, I had thought. The music industry--I could go on for hours, and I have, much to the listener’s horror--was the kind of industry in which you could spend thousands of euros, hundreds of days and nights, and every drop of energy that your body will allow, all for nothing. It is not guaranteed that you will receive a cent in return, nor a record sale, and you certainly won’t be having that piece of time back.

The gig had been the last straw for me and I was just glad to be getting on a plane the next day. “Maybe this is the break you need”, said John, “to relax and to think about other things and to clear your head”, he added. Part of me agreed, but I had to wonder, were those who succeeded before me and those that would succeed after me in the music business, or in any business for that matter, those that didn’t run scared and disheartened after a poor-charting record or an empty venue gig?

I had my suspicions, but I didn’t know if they were true. I did know, however, that things were made slightly less difficult by those few people in my pool that understood and supported how I was feeling even when I didn’t speak about it. I may not be rich in terms of a career, I thought, but counting my pool of friends, I am a very wealthy man indeed.

Martinis and Monogamy

At exactly 9:05pm on Friday evening, Beloved and I came from our respective homes at opposite parts of Dublin and entered our favourite hotel bar of the moment, The Morrison, from opposite entrances.

I ordered a Martini, Beloved took a beer. It hadn’t been a particularly exciting week for either of us: Significant Other was ticking over at the office, whilst I, remained unpublished. I secretly longed for the moment where I had good news, something along the lines of “I’ve just had a 500-word feature printed in The Dubliner”, but a bigger part of me realised that the moment was no closer than it had been twelve months ago.

It may or may not have been time for a yet another career choice change, I thought, but either way, here I was, right now, in a good hotel with a great person, who was concerned only with the next six hours. I lost my worries and found my next drink at approximately 11:30pm across town at a venue that had caused quite a stir in my relationship on most visits since it’s opening.

As we walked the staircase to the decadent “room of doom” as I had come to call it, I noticed that I had adopted my single persona all of a sudden. Across the room, a stockbroker that I had been friendly with for a few weeks some months ago approached. “You're blonde now”, said the stockbroker, flashing a wide grin that I remembered from our previous encounter.

“Who are you here with?”, the stockbroker enquired. I glanced at Beloved and understood that it was not cool that my partner of three years was being overlooked. “Oh you’ve met each other before, right?”, I joked. “Oh we go way back”, the stockbroker said, more serious than before, and right then, with a beer in one hand, Beloved was punched in the arm. “Your friend here doesn’t like me”, the stockbroker announced. How could anyone know, I wondered, before catching a glimpse of Beloved’s Stare of Death.

The double glass doors opened and Michael, a Castleknock society boy renowned for his partying ways, entered with a new lover in-tow. “You’ve got to be shitting me”, I said under my breath. Michael, and his date. Michael stood for single, and when he was introducing a lover as a life partner, I knew it was time to settle. “How long has it been, Michael?”, I probed. I wasn’t ready for his response. “Three months…and we just had our first fight, I‘m an emotional wreck right now”, he divulged. “Well you look great”, like always I thought. The stockbroker had escaped whilst my attention was on the society boy.

I realised, the reason Beloved wasn’t exactly crazy about this joint was that my attention was on all people except my true partner. What was it, I had to wonder, that prevented me from being the person that I wanted to be for my Significant Other. I wanted to be the strong type who treated my partner like a trophy. Why? Because I had always felt that there was something terribly attractive about that. I knew that I never felt demeaned by such treatment on the occasions that I’d experienced it.

I wanted to tell Beloved, “I’m sorry you love me so absolutely and that I’m a prat to you”, but my single persona, the part of me that is most chauvinist, wouldn’t allow the words, and so instead I said “What do you want to drink, babe?” The stockbroker had returned, and the fact that I was buying all three of us a drink wasn’t going down particularly well with Significant Other. “It’s a suggestion”, my partner suggested. “No. It’s a Vodka”, I said, returning promptly to my obnoxious guise.

Later, on the dance floor in the next room, as the DJ played “4 Minutes To Save The World”, I stomped my feet, which were contained in my don’t-fuck-with-me Gucci loafers, as though I had only the same amount of time to live, flashing that same grin that the stockbroker had greeted me with right back.

“I am 22”, I affirmed silently whilst we walked to Beloved’s contemporary central apartment. I had been beating myself up for my flirtatious ways as we left the club, and I wondered, despite my knowledge that my existing relationship was the one that would be the most rewarding, not to mention the most sensible, why was I always tempted away from being smart and towards being sexually provocative with individuals who were interested mostly in checking off another man about town on their personal “to-do” lists?

I realised it may have been my age, and the fact that I had lived the beginning of my adult life in a particularly close-knit romantic relationship. I considered the prospect that it was the Martinis, that if I had been sober I would have been more sensible.

Most of all though, I was appreciative, that a couple of years my senior, Beloved probably knew that my behaviour, however nonsensical, was down to such trivial reasons. And of course, my Significant Other was nothing if not loyal.