Ex and the Liffey

That’s the thing about Dublin city. Once you’ve known someone, it’s difficult to not know them. It’s a small, intimate county, sometimes so intimate that it’s possible to meet your ex-boss at lunch and your ex-lover at cocktail hour, all in a day.

The social scene of Dublin is undoubtedly divided in a similar way to most other cosmopolitan cities in the world. There’s the “it” places, and there’s the “not it” places. It’s pretty much black and white, but it’s by no means simple. Soon enough, at say 19 or 20, you find the scene that fits you best, and make friends, not to mention dates, with those who fill the bars, coffee shops and restaurants you frequent.

What happens though, when the friendships turn sour and the dates become just that - a string of dinners, drinks, mueseum openings and movies with stranger after stranger? What happens, I have noticed, is that you never can say “I am never seeing that person again”, because most likely you will.

In a few short days last week I managed to take what I considered to be an unnecessary trip down Memory Lane. On yet another Summer morning disguised by rain, wind and general dreariness, I huddled into my usual coffee haunt. There she was, on front of me in the line of impatient workers waiting for their caffeine fix: the dreaded ex-boss.

There she was, with her unmistakable ash brown hair, black twin-set and pearl necklace. She looked around, as though she had sensed being looked at. I looked at her, a moment passed as we both decided whether or not to bother being falsely nice to each other. The “Hi how are you?” that came from both our formerly pursed lips indicated that we both cared far too much about the circles we moved in to ignore each other merely because an actual disliking existed.

Two cappuccinos and ten hours later, the last thing on my mind was that another, much more painful type of ex would be drinking another, much stronger drink mere inches away from me. As I stood beside the bar of a popular city centre dancing haunt, sipping a vodka-soda which was far too light for my liking, Beloved moved backward on sighting of a former lover. It was then that I realised, it happens to everyone, ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends living on the island were bumping into each other left, right and centre, and they were even engaging in flowery conversation.

And there it was, the first lover. It wasn’t love, or was it? Maybe lust. It didn’t even matter. After all, it had only been a couple of months, almost three years ago. What mattered was that I was here now, standing on front of an ex and wondering what the appropriate level of engagement would be. A perfunctory hello allowed me to stop wondering and set the bar for my response. It seemed so odd that two people could share a bed, each others bodies, thoughts and lives for a time, only to avoid any sort of real communication upon their next encounter.

Did it signify something, I questioned. Why did I even care? I cared because it felt like opening the Sunday newspapers to find no comment columns on the week’s news - it wasn’t something that was required, but it was a nice touch.

Later that night, I realised, it’s difficult to not know someone you had once known, but maybe it was possible to acknowledge someone you had known a lot of, very little.