Say No to Joint Savings

“You have to be a cynic to be a journalist”. So said George Hook, in his raspy tone, during a talk to a group of journalism and public relations students in Dublin last week.

The reaction was mixed, to the talk itself, and more specifically to his comments. However, as we walked the daily walk down a tree-lined Leinster Road, a haven in an otherwise out of town ghetto, my friend Miriam; a journalist in progress, brought the subject of marriage to the table, for she was on her way to make a wedding purchase, for the requirement of her sister, not herself. And there we found ourselves, cynics in the making, speaking with negative expression as old Hook had insisted was necessary.

“I want to own [property] before marriage”, I announced, matter-of-factly. “Oh my goodness”, shrieked Miriam, usually calm and collected. “That is exactly how I feel. It’s like, no, I do not want a joint account", she added, aware that neither of us owned the desire to trade in our Volvos for Skodas as the divorce papers presented themselves. Of course, neither of us own Volvos now, but we shared the opinion that when we do, it’s til death do us part.

Call me pessimistic, or call me safe, but I would rather sit on that side of the verge. Maybe it’s something to do with working towards an artistic profession, whereby money doesn’t come easy, that I’m particularly fond of the idea of keeping hold of it when it eventually makes its way into my account.

I don’t want to spend many a year slaving at a middle market newspaper to enable me to afford a three-bed-semi to find myself suddenly in a bedsit when we have a severe disagreement over how many television sets should be in the house and suddenly realise it wasn’t meant to be after all.

Because in New Ireland, it comes down to the specifics in a relationship. And when the going gets tough, we’re all too familiar that there are few households on the commuter belt willing to stay together “for the kids”. No, sir, it’s bye-bye, Parochial Ireland.

They say pre-nuptials are unromantic, but as successful businessman and “face” of the music industry Simon Cowell told the Sunday Independent last weekend, “if I go into a relationship with an artist, we have a 100-page contract covering every eventuality, whereas with marriage you go into it with no contract, with laws that date back hundreds of years”.

One might expect, that a person like myself, who is as fond of little luxuries in life as much as the next potential media darling, to be perfectly satisfied to marry into a family that could offer to me the financial security, the kind that is so rarely available to artists of any kind. This is not my story, though. I choose not the easy ride, but that of eventual rewards.

And if there are luxuries in ten years time, at least I will know they are deserved. And if Miriam catches the bouquet at her sister’s eventual wedding, she can only hope and pray (or just hope, religion doesn’t exist in New Ireland) that the gent in question is willing to wait until the war-correspondent-to-be is stable in a Dublin 6 Pile of Bricks, enabling her to say an eventual “I do”. Except, of course, to a joint savings account at the AIB.

Good Conversation With Strangers

Recently, after more than two and a half years in a relationship, the lid was lifted on the box that had safely contained me for the duration.

I was pursued, by a relative stranger, who knew no more of me than my choice of clothing (7 jeans and a tee), and my choice of drink for the evening (vodka-tonic). And yet a distinctive interest existed, even after being informed by my present best friend, of my relationship status being a resounding “involved”.

What does it mean then, when a well-educated, fine-mannered individual, with evidently no malice intended, makes a bid for your heart, I had to wonder. “Let’s go someplace else”. “I can’t”, I whispered, “I have a situation”, I added, in my best ventriloquist’s impression, trying to avoid looking conspicuous to my shared company: my life partner in waiting.

Not “No. I’m in a relationship. A happily-ever-after relationship with bells on”. That would have been the ideal. But I knew there and then that the situation I had found myself in all of a sudden was far from ideal. Making matters worse, I was at the end of my vodka-tonic.

My best friend present did his very best in communicating messages, of a very polite manner I might add, between the two of us that night, in the dim-lit art-deco room, which was proving to be a venue for controversy as well as cocktails in these winter months.

I realised, I wanted to talk with the relative stranger. And in some ways, that was ok, but talking with a view to touching was not, and that needed to be known by the alternate party, I felt. Of course, my judgement was impaired by alcohol, and I decided that the best thing was to reveal my phone number on demand, before disappearing into the frosty air of South William Street. Conversations followed.

Articulate, I-could-really-bloody-get-to-know-you conversations. But by no means were they about relationships. They were about the music world, the book world, Irish culture, family, food, sports, the stock market. They were the conversations you can have only on those rare and wonderful first dates, when they are in fact not dates at all.

Now the conversations have ended (my choice), and I have once again closed the lid on my box. I am aware of the fact that no-one has been harmed by my actions, yet there is an underlying sense that I have scratched the paintwork of my relationship. It’s that same feeling I got when I scratched my Italian leather Prada wallet for the first time back in 2005. Perfection, or the illusion of it, has been snatched away.

My friends tell me I’m crazy, and the fact that I stopped at conversations makes me a saint of sorts. I’m no saint, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to hear your innocence proclaimed by your peers. Myself, I tend to believe that it has been a good thing.

I have been allowed to see my market value, I have been able to value my relationship for all that it is--many things that I took for granted, I am able to be thankful for--instead of all that it is not, and I have been able to value myself, which I believe, in some ways, was the true reason behind the sending of the Relative Stranger.

It has been said that we all need in our lives, to be validated by others. Maybe, every once in a while, when our worlds become polluted by negativity, it’s true. Maybe, we all just want good conversation with strangers.

Change of Character

Have you ever taken a long hard look at yourself and realised in one profound moment that you are not at all who you thought that you were?

I enjoyed (and I use the term loosely) this hilarious moment of clarity recently. There I was, not in the mirror, but at a bus stop, deprived of background music in my ears and with only the sound of the morning traffic to accompany my thoughts.

This weekend, and come to think of it, quite a few before it, had been, what I was choosing to refer to as “out of character” to friends of old and new, when speaking of the those 48 hours that had once again become an exciting part of life.

I was without doubt a shy child, but had become not so much rebellious as innovative in my early teenage years. I was sure of what it was that I stood for, but at the same time did not promote what it was that I stood for in the public arena, at that time, school. I just revelled in private at the fact--or rather the personal opinion--that I was my own person and not part of a flock, even if that did mean being shunned by the mainstream. I was laughing on the inside, perhaps prematurely.

My early teens had given way to a sort of tunnel-vision, overly-ambitious creature that understood rules, accepted them, and then decided those that one would follow, and those that one would break. Was I trying to be controversial? No, there was nothing to be gained in this. Was I just a narcissist? It’s possible, but there was definitely more to it than that.

It was at this point that I decided my beliefs and my values. It was at this point also, that I validated my ambitions and decided to simply go about them. It was at this point that I was sure I knew everything there was to know about myself. I realise today that it was just the beginning of life becoming an adult. I had become acutely aware of desire and also of pain. There I sat on my bedroom floor thinking of what might be, in the short and in the long-term, whilst listening to Dido’s No Angel, the “soundtrack to my life”.

Relationships with family and friends, and those that I was surrounded by in life, were passionate on both ends of the scale. This is still the case, at the age of 21, now officially an adult. I have met more people in the real world that I can relate to than was feasible within the constraints of school and a local suburban community. Relationships now too, had become easier and still more difficult than before.

Those that encouraged growth as a person, who made me feel optimistic and who made me think, were easy. They made me realise that I was right a few years ago when I had privately held the belief that there were other similar-minded individuals in the county that I would connect with, and not simply have surface conversations with.

Then there were the relationships that made me feel once again, slightly as if I could privately commentate on life, hold beliefs and thoughts, and yet not truly share them due to the knowledge that they would be met with one of two things: deemed outlandish, somewhat eccentric, or worse again, discarded without feeling.

But it didn’t matter. There would always be double-edged swords in life. And there would always be toxins, that was my belief at least. What really mattered was that here, in November, I was not behaving out of character, I was developing it.

The things that I thought I would never do--positive and negative--I was doing. And I was loving every minute of it.

There I sat on my bedroom floor thinking about what had been, in the near and distant past, whilst listening to Dido’s No Angel. A friend who I had known the first time I’d heard the record in my teens and still know today recently told me that I had changed. Maybe she was right. Maybe she had seen it before I was able to see it myself.

Textual Assault

Why do we have to live in a society where our every move is broken down, scrutinized, and decided upon as being acceptable or unacceptable?

I’ve chosen to advocate this concept, you might say, like the unacknowledged choice to become popular and endorse popular kids rules and regulations, and so I deserve everything I get, right? We’re not kids anymore though, and really, shouldn’t we have moved on by now?

When is it that we’re allowed to stop playing silly games and start to favor clever adult life? We’re in our twenties. This is our prime. This is our prime and we know it. We have chosen to carry on like Californian Valley kids, despite the fact that this--Dublin--is not the real Orange County. It’s not even close.

There may be faux Valley-girl accents and fake bake, and there may be upper crust surfer dude slurs and slang, but the fact of the matter is, this is as close to resemblance as we’re getting to our buffed-up Aberzombies across the Atlantic.

Dating is complicated, not dating even more so. So is it any wonder we’ve been sent into a frenzy, trying to get things in order by deciding on what can be done in the dating world, and what cannot. The first impression is important, of course, but so too is the second.

Let’s be hypothetical. We’ve exchanged phone numbers. “Digits”, in Valley-speak. There has been text-based communication. “Which college do you go to?” is either a polite--although surely it’s unlikely politeness exists within these circles--“I’m not that interested in you as a potential lover” or maybe, one would hope, it is just another way of determining your status before any further action is taken. They say 30-something's want a HIV-test and an ATM receipt before they agree on a second date, maybe 20’s somethings just need to know the educational institution you attend.

So what happens then, when there is a drop off in text conversation? Is it socially acceptable for he or she at the would-be receiving end to text twice in a row? Is it as Valley guys would say, “liable of landing you in a court room for Textual Assault”?

Surely not! What if, you’ve already opened the deal with a kiss or three? This defines the shared human relationship as “kissing”, Valley-talk for the phase where you are not quite “seeing” someone, nor are you friends.

The nerds--I mean, smart kids--always did say that they would be winners one day. The popular kids laughed in their faces. And maybe they were right. Maybe they’ve paired off, lost the puppy fat, and are today laugh-snorting into their Star Trek lunch boxes at the expense of the petty preppies.

For it is the preppies that established this dating code, and have failed to update the rulebook. Playing by the rules of a school kid in your twenties just isn’t going to fly. At least it isn’t my belief that this can be the foundation of a serious relationship.

So unless there’s a textbook-type out there willing to have you--if only for research purposes--you’re looking at 30-40 years of hardcore game-play.

The Hours of Desire

It was a Sunday morning and I was walking along Grafton Street. The weather was cold. Wet and cold. There was a frost air that I considered confirmation that October had arrived.

There were many matters to be attended to. There was the college assignment, there was the research. There was the fact that I had not been to the gym or played sports of any kind in many months, and was hiding a few inches of winter weight under my three-quarter length black coat, soaked.

There were the credit card bills that would not be paid in full this month. There was the day that lay ahead, nine hours of work that were at best irrelevant. There were the words that had to be told to Significant Other. The dreaded words.

“I can’t see you tonight”.

And that was the worst part. I could deal with the rain and the sodden coat and the irrelevance of the work and the bills that would not be paid. It was the words. As the days go by, I find myself saying “next week will be better”, like an over-booked socialite. What happens in life, I had to wonder, when it is required of you to fulfil a number of different roles which are both demanding and important in some capacities.

Do you focus on being wonderful at work? Paying intricate attention to detail despite the fact that your salary is something even you sneer at? Do you pretend that it will all take care of itself and take in a double vodka Martini with your urban friends? Or do you believe that indeed the meaning of life is love and nestle with Significant Other and forget about the world, as those acknowledging it continue to run with scissors.

You have to think about it. But you also have to understand that there will be an end point for thinking and a beginning for deciding.

But it’s decisions that many of us in 20-something Dublin find ourselves incapable of making. We know what it is that we want. We want to be able to fund our social lives. And so we work. We want “guys nights out”, and we don’t want to have to explain it. We want to go on dinner dates, and to the theatre and to wonderful concerts and on mini-breaks to New York and Milan. We want to be educated and to take in the finest books and the broadest quality of music. We so badly want it all, and that is that.

And it was this that made me realise. I had made a decision. I had decided not to decide just yet. I would have a hamper-style life containing a little bit of everything that I loved and liked. And at some point I would decide to endorse one or two or three of the contained items, and to put the others aside. But for now, want was enough. The want alone, the desire. The desire to have it all and to maintain it all so beautifully and with elegance and poise was what made life “just fantastic” on a wet morning on Grafton Street.

There were the hours ahead. Of work. There were the hours ahead. Of explanation. There were the hours ahead. Of saying the words that one did not want at all to say. The were the hours ahead. Of desire. And it was this that allowed me to smile.

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.

Simon Says "Game Over"

It is recommended that you read the previous columns listed below before reading the following column:

The Reason To Rebound
No Pressure Over Cappuccino


Midweek, 12 noon, a rare opportunity arose where the sun stayed out long enough over Dublin city centre for myself and Simon (my highly educated, highly frustrated friend) to eat lunch in the great outdoors of South William Street.

As the tables began to fill and our fiery-haired waitress approached to take our order, I realised that I had not yet glanced at the menu, for there were far more pressing items on the agenda: Simon's love-life, circa the last three months.

The couple, who split in January this year one week after my 21st intimate birthday dinner at the Morrison (coincidentally under that very roof), reconcilliated their love at the beginning of the summer, and while I was apprehensive, I was glad to see Simon glow once again. Not for long, it would seem.

In Simon's eyes, the reunion would mean that the couple could resume couple-oriented activities, you know, kissing, sex...and mini breaks. Mini-breaks, Simon would soon discover, were the only thing on the menu. I sympathised, and yet I wondered what was the underlying problem of the Dark Lord that meant sextra curricular activities must be ruled out. I couldn't help but wonder, had the fact that Simon had made the decision to dump the Dark Lord back in January encouraged growth in the gaping hole that was the Dark Lord's self-esteem?

That lack of self-esteem was endearing at first, though with self-esteem, come side-effects. He possessing the low esteem requires the feeling of control, and when that control is given, well, everything is hunky dory. However, when control is taken away, out comes the self esteem monster...revenge.

The well disguised revenge included a "no labels" rule. Simon was in hell. Well, he was in Aldi when he really wanted to be in Superquinn, and let's face it, that's pretty much the same thing. "This is not a relationship, it's a trial", said the Dark Lord. Simon couldn't help but feel like a lab rat. Pessimism, naturally, was order of the day, and sprinkled on the relationship, apologies, "not relationship" at any given opportunity.

Suffice to say, after his fun, the Dark Lord decided that the flight home from said mini break was the ideal moment to terminate the relationship. As I had suggested weeks prior, this would happen at a time when it was least expected by Simon, just to allow the Dark Lord have added kicks.

Simon, once again, had been booted, full force, out of the driver seat. "I just feel, had I not gone back into it the first time I would be totally over the entire issue now", he told me, toying with his fish cakes, which at this point were as cold as his love life. "And now, I'm here, basically hijacked", he said despairingly.

"Well there's only one thing you can do now", I interrupted. "And that is to viciously cut the toxic Dark Lord out of your life, if not for good, for an extended period".

"You know what", my anxiety-ridden friend announced, sounding more powerful than before, "Simon Says Game Over".

And just like that, I realised, I had hardly touched my Tandoori Chicken, which was still mid air on fork, for I was far too busy devouring the contents of Simon's non-labelled mess. It re-enforces the thought that, we are far more interested in stories of doom and gloom that those of hope and happiness.