The Orange Mocha-Chip Frappuccino Years (14 page)

Probably the best craic of the entire holiday, roysh, is seeing Oisinn and JP at the airport on the way home, trying to get away from all the birds they’ve been knobbing for the last, like, fortnight, without giving them their addresses and phone numbers. This bird, roysh, she asks JP for his number and he goes, ‘90210,’ and the bird’s like, ‘That’s very short.’ He’s like, ‘You may need to put a two in front of that now.’ She goes, ‘It’s still a number short,’ and he’s like, ‘Then add an eight as well.’ She goes, ‘At the beginning or the end?’ and he’s like, ‘I’m easy.’

Oisinn tells this fat bird – it has to be the Fred Elliot lookalike – that his address is, like, 1 Main Street, Foxrock, Dublin 18. She’s like, ‘You’re a liar,’ really, like, aggressive and he goes, ‘I’m not, that’s where I live.’ She goes, ‘I bet your real name isn’t really Kevin either.’ Oisinn’s like, ‘It is, I swear.’ And she turns around to JP and she goes, ‘Martin, tell me the truth, is that his real address?’

I get back
from holidays, roysh, and I check my messages. A girl called Debbie has rung, roysh, to ask me – ‘
OH MY! GOD!
you are going to think I am
such
a freak of nature’ – whether I might have accidentally taken her
Chill Out Moods
CD, ‘because it was on the locker beside the bed when you … no, forget it. Oh my God, I am, like,
SO
embarrassed.’ It’s a shit album anyway, can’t imagine her missing it. Oh and Michelle from Ulster Bank has called to say she’s sorry that I didn’t, like, make it to some meeting I don’t even remember agreeing to, to discuss the SSIA, 50-50 funds, projected investment growth and loads of other bollocks I basically don’t understand.

For the last few weeks, roysh, I’ve basically had this, like, verruca on the sole of my foot, and I’m pretty sure I know where it came from as well. These are the things that your travel agent should warn you about before you go off on a knacker holiday, but they don’t. I reckon basically I got it from that goy from Sheriff Street, the one with, like, the tricolour hanging
over the edge of his balcony. I tell this to Fionn, who I make the mistake of, like, confiding in one night, roysh, while we’re in the gaff watching ‘The Villa’. He’s like, ‘A tricolour? Ross, that could be any one of fifty people.’ I’m like, ‘You remember him. “
Did you see our Joanne winning the karaoke last night, what? Sex bomb, sex bomb
…”’

He goes, ‘Got you now. Why him, though?’ I’m like, ‘I just know. Fock, what am I going to do?’ He’s like, ‘Hey, why are you telling me this shit anyway?’ I’m there, ‘
Hello
? You’re the one in college, remember?’ He goes, ‘Ross, I’m doing psychology.’ I’m like, ‘And?’ He goes, ‘
And
you need a doctor. Why not go to see old what’s-his-name?’ I’m like, ‘
Hello? Earth to Fionn
. I’ve spent the last six months trying to get into his daughter’s knickers. I hardly think she’s going to be interested when she finds out I’ve got this big festering sore on my foot.’ And he goes, ‘Ross, she’ll just have to accept you … warts and all.’ Then he storts, like, breaking his shite laughing. Dickhead.

I’m like, ‘Fionn, you better not breathe a
word
about this to anyone.’ He’s like, ‘What do you take me for, Ross?’ And I go out into the kitchen, roysh, and pull out the phone book and stort looking up doctors. I can’t go to the local GP for reasons already explained, and knowing my luck, I’d probably run into the old dear in the waiting room, picking up her focking HRT, and I can very nearly hear her already. ‘Oh the shame of it, Ross! There hasn’t been a verruca in our family for
seventeen
generations.’ You know the way she goes on.

And anyway, roysh, it’s got to be a doctor with experience of treating verrucas. The way I see it, roysh, no GP from up our way is likely to have ever seen one. It has to be a doctor from a Ken Acker area. I eventually find one in Newtownmountkennedy, roysh, and
after taking the CD player out of the cor, I hit the dual
carriageway
, and the next thing I know, I’m sitting in a waiting room with some total focking AJH grilling me about my business, basically a receptionist who thinks she’s a focking doctor. She’s like, ‘And what shall I say your problem is?’ I just, like, whisper, ‘A verruca,’ and she’s like, ‘A VERRUCA?’ at the top of her voice. I’m, like, looking around me. There’s these two women behind me, skangers basically, and they stop talking when they hear the word. I’m like, ‘Why don’t you put an ad in the focking
Herald
?’ I sit down, roysh, and I stort getting really paranoid. I’ve knobbed quite a few birds from out this direction and I keep thinking
someone
’s going to, like, come in and recognise me.

I’m listening to these two birds and it’s all, ‘Oh yeah, I’m a martyr to me back, Mary. Always have been.’ And when the doctor goes, ‘NEXT,’ I just get up and go in ahead of them, even though I’m not next. The two women stort muttering to each other, roysh, and one of them plucks up the courage and goes, ‘Excuse me,’ trying to put on a posh voice, ‘Excuse me, you’re after skipping the queue.’ She’s basically trying to embarrass me. I’m like, ‘Yeah? Tell it to focking Adrian Kennedy, you knacker.’

I go into the doctor, roysh, and it’s, like, pleasantries and shit and then it’s like, ‘What seems to be the problem?’ I’m like, ‘It’s a bit, em … embarrassing.’ He goes, ‘Is it a sexually transmitted disease? HERPES? SCABIES? URETHRITIS? SYPHILIS?’ I’m like, ‘What is it with people in here? Would you mind not
shouting
?’ He’s there, ‘GONORRHOEA? CHLAMYDIA? I KNOW MY STDs.’

I’m like, ‘It sounds like you do. Look, I’ve got a verruca.’ He goes, ‘A verruca?’ looking all, like, disappointed and shit. He’s like, ‘A verr-u-ca.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, what happened was I picked it
up on a knacker holiday.’ He goes, ‘Yes, that and a lot more besides, I’d wager. Well, verrucas are actually quite common …’ I’m there, ‘Not where I come from, they’re not.’ He goes, ‘
Infection
of the skin caused by the human papilloma virus … can be quite painful … often picked up in swimming pools and the like … would disappear itself if you left it, but if it’s troubling you, it’s best to act.

‘Here,’ he goes, handing me this prescription, ‘slop this stuff on it a couple of times a day. It’ll clear up in a week … now, any sexually transmitted diseases to report?’ I’m like, ‘No.’ He goes, ‘CHANCROID? TRICHOMONIASIS?’ I get up and get the fock out of there and I can hear the goy still shouting this stuff after I’ve left the surgery.

The stuff smells focking vile. It’s, like, some kind of acid, roysh, but I lash on the old
Gio Acqua Di
before I go out that night so nobody will smell it. I hit Kiely’s and there I am, roysh, having a few scoops, and I notice that the goys are being really, like, weird around me. It’s all, ‘How are you feeling, Ross?’ and, ‘Everything okay?’ Even the birds are like, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t think you’d be drinking.’ And I’m storting to wonder, roysh, whether Fionn’s actually said something.

So anyway, roysh, about half an hour into the night, I’ve got to go and, like, drain the snake, so I get up from the table and head for the jacks. That’s when I hear this, like, ringing, roysh, and basically everyone in the entire pub stops whatever it is they’re doing and storts, like, staring at me. So I look down, roysh, and it turns out that some focker – probably Oisinn, the fat bastard – has tied a bell onto my ankle when I wasn’t looking. And all the goys are standing up, giving it, ‘UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!’

Basically assholes.

I hate cats. We’re talking
TOTALLY
here, and I wouldn’t use that word lightly. The problem with cats is that you could spend an hour petting one, roysh, and then the thing’ll get bored with you, scratch your arm, fock off out the window and not come back for two weeks. Once someone else is feeding it, that is. I focking
hate
them. But Oreanna, roysh, this bird I was kind of seeing sort of, like, on and off for a few weeks, she
loves
them. Most birds basically do.

Anyway, this one she had, roysh, was called Simba, an evil, orange little thing. The focker could open doors, I’m telling you, and materialise through, like, walls and shit. There we’d be, roysh, me and Oreanna, getting jiggy on her sofa and, like, the cat would be outside on the window ledge, roysh, pawing away at the glass, basically trying to get in. Next thing you’d look down, roysh, and the thing was there at your feet, staring up at you and, like, hissing.

Simba hated me, roysh, and basically that’s the thing about cats. They get, like, really, really jealous if they think you’re, like, moving in on their patch. They’re big into, like, territory and shit, or so Fionn says, and he spends a lot of time in the gaff watching the Discovery Channel. Me and Oreanna would be sitting there in front of the telly, roysh, getting it on, hands busy with her bra strap, and the focking thing would jump up on the sofa and, like, squeeze in between the two of us, and of course Oreanna, roysh, the total sap, she’d go, ‘
OH MY! GOD!
isn’t he
SO
cute. And
SO
clever.’ She could only ever see good in the little bastard.

There was this one night, roysh, when we were in her gaff in Greystones, watching ‘Big Brother’, which is, like, her favourite
programme, roysh, and all of a sudden Simba storts, like, licking my hand, and at first, roysh, I thought he was actually trying to make friends with me. Turns out he was, like, tenderising my flesh before he sank his teeth into me.

So I storted making up all these stories, roysh, which I told Oreanna I’d read in the paper, about old dears who’d, like, died in their gaffs and their bodies had been found a week later and they’d been, like, half eaten by their cats. And Simba would sit there staring at me while I said this, roysh, and, I focking swear to God, that animal understood every word I was saying. I was, like, wasting my breath, though, because basically it did nothing to change Oreanna’s mind. So instead, roysh, now and then I’d try to persuade her to make me a cup of tea and, when she was out in the kitchen, I’d try to hit the thing with the odd sly kick. The bastard was usually too fast for me though. I said usually.

Because basically where all of this is going, roysh, is that this one particular night, the night me and Oreanna finished with each other funnily enough, I was swinging the old Golf GTI into her driveway and I felt this, like, bump under the cor. And I knew straight away, roysh, what I’d done. For once in his life, the focker just wasn’t quick enough for me. I swear to God, it was an accident, though Oreanna was never going to believe that,
especially
after all the threats I’d made against the thing. I got out of the cor and, like, checked the damage. At first I thought there was, like, an actual scratch on the fender, roysh, but it turned out it was only a bit of fur, stuck on with blood.

I’m not being a dickhead, roysh, but the cat didn’t suffer. Had he still been alive, I’d have had to finish him off with the cor jack, which
so
wouldn’t have been a pretty sight. Of course, none of that would have been any consolation to Oreanna, so I decided
not to tell her, one because she’d be too upset, roysh, and two because it would lessen my chances of getting my bit that night. So what I did, roysh, was I slapped the thing into the boot of the cor and decided to drive home later through Bray and fock the thing in the Dargle. She’d be pretty heartbroken when old Simba didn’t come home, roysh, but she’d just presume it’d gone off to live with some old biddy who fed him, I don’t know, cake or chocolate. I’d be sure to suggest it.

So I went into the gaff, roysh, acted natural, the whole lot. Her old pair were in Villamoura, playing golf. And she puts on this video, roysh, and it’s, like,
Cats
, the focking musical. I have to say, roysh, I felt like
such
an asshole at that moment, but there was nothing I could do. Anyway, roysh, we ended up having a really great chat, I was telling her all about this gaff I just sold down the road from her in Delgany for, like, four hundred grand, and she was telling me about how she may have to go back to wearing a brace for six months, depends what the orthodontist says on Monday. I don’t think I need to go into
detail
about what happened next, roysh. Not being, like,
big-headed
or anything, but I basically ended up staying the night. I’ll spare you the details, roysh, but basically we’re talking, TOUCHDOWN!

The next morning, roysh, she brings me a fry in bed, the whole lot, we’re talking sausages, bacon, egg, mushrooms, toast, and I’m there going, Have I struck gold here or what? As she gets out of the shower, roysh, she asks me whether I could drop her off at work. She works in some, like, building society in Bray. I have to say I was a bit pissed off about having to get up so early, roysh, but I play it cool like Huggy Bear and half an hour later, roysh, I’m sitting in the cor, with the engine ticking over, waiting for her
to lock up the house, put the alarm on, blah blah blah.