The Orange Mocha-Chip Frappuccino Years (7 page)

‘What do you want for your birthday?’ That’s all anybody’s been asking me for the last, like, three weeks, roysh, and I told everyone the same thing. I was like, ‘Bianca Luyckx.’ Birthday came and guess what? No Bianca Luyckx, same as focking last year. No cord from Sorcha either. I know she’s in Australia, but it wouldn’t have killed her to send me one. I did have this big, fock-off marquee in the garden and, like, twenty kegs of Ken for my porty. The theme was, like, Rappers and Slappers, roysh. All of the blokes came as either Eminem or P Diddy, and all of the birds came as, like, hookers. Except Erika, roysh, who wouldn’t lower herself. She arrives wearing a pair of Karen Millen beige suedette trousers, roysh, and an Amanda Wakeley mesh top with, like, gold and bronze sequins, both of which she’s apparently borrowed from Claire. None of us could understand why she was borrowing clothes from her. I mean she could basically buy threads like that with her pocket money and still have enough left over to buy half of focking Nine West. Claire goes up to her about, like, ten minutes into the night and she goes, ‘
Hello
? You
were supposed to dress up as a slapper. You’ve just put on my clothes.’ And Erika just, like, smiles at her, roysh, and Claire’s jaw just, like, hits the floor. Erika goes, ‘The penny drops.’ So a few of the birds had to drag Claire off to the jacks to calm her down, which sort of, like, suited me, roysh, because me and the goys had decided that tonight was a night for, like, serious drinking and we didn’t want to be bothered with that whole chatting up birds thing, not until the end of the night anyway.

So there we were knocking back the pints, roysh, and we’d
basically
come to the part of the night, roysh, when the mince pies and the toilet rolls usually come out, when all of a sudden, roysh, who walks in only my old man with a couple of his mates from the golf club, we’re talking Hennessy Coghlan-O’Hara, that asshole of a solicitor of his, and a few others. I’m just like, ‘Sorry, what the
fock
are you doing here?’ The old man’s, like, speechless. He goes, ‘Just, em, wanted to pop in, see how you were, er,
getting
on. See if there’s not too much, em … damage.’ And then he storts, like, laughing, trying to be my best friend again. I’m like, ‘This is
my
focking porty. I don’t remember saying you and your dickhead mates were invited.’ He’s about to answer me, roysh, when all of a sudden I notice the old dear coming in with, like, loads of her mates. I’m like, ‘Oh,
great!
The whole focking world’s invited.’

The old dear goes, ‘Ross, we’re just bringing in some food for you and your friends.’ And all of a sudden, roysh, they stort putting out all these plates of, like, goats cheese and spinach roulade,
crab-meat
wrapped in filo pastry, roast vegetable tartlets and whatever. I’m there, ‘
Hello
? None of this shit, like, goes with beer.’

JP, roysh, he comes over and, like, puts his arm around my old dear and he goes, ‘Mrs O’Carroll-Kelly. Looking pretty fine,
it
has
to be said.’ He looks at me as he says this and, like, raises one eyebrow, the sleazy focker. He looks more like a pimp than a
rapper
in the tux he wore to the debs, his old dear’s fur coat and his old man’s trilby. But he’s focking loving my embarrassment. Then Oisinn decides to get in on the act. He comes over and he’s like, ‘Hey, JP, let’s bring some happiness into the lives of these beautiful young ladies,’ and the lads link arms with the old dear and her friends and head off towards the bor. I think I’m going to basically borf.

I find a quiet corner and stort, like, knocking the beers back, listening to Christian, who’s chatting up this complete focking stunner. We’re talking Dani Behr-gorgeous here. I don’t know who invited her, but I’d like to shake the goy’s hand. Christian’s explaining to her how the Clone Wars turned Boba Fett into a mercenary soldier, an assassin and the best damn bounty hunter in the Galaxy and that if she ever has any doubt about that fact then she should consider the record 500,000 credits he earned for catching the Ffib religious heretic Nivek’Yppiks for the Lorahns. And this bird, roysh, she’s actually totally into it, she goes, ‘They should send that goy after Osama bin Laden.’ And Christian goes, ‘Everybody thinks he’s dead. They think the Sarlaac got him, in the Pit of Carkoon. You think the Sarlaac could bite through Mandalorian armour? Oh sure he was injured, but he survived. Dengar found him, when he went back to look for Jabba the Hutt’s remains.’ The next time I look around, roysh, the two of them are, like, bet into each other.

I turn away and stort wondering whether someone’s going to organise the whole twenty-one kisses thing before I’m, like, too off my face to enjoy it. Then this bird comes over, roysh, Danielle’s her name, or Measles as the goys call her, basically
because everyone’s had her once and nobody really wants her a second time. Anyway, she storts, like, boring the ear off me about some goy I’ve never even heard of who apparently has
such
a commitment problem that he’s
never
going to be happy with, like, anyone, and we’re talking
anyone
.

I end up knocking over my pint accidentally on purpose just to get away from the psycho bitch and I head back up to the bor, where the old man is locked and shouting his mouth off about rugby. He’s there going, ‘Doesn’t matter what score we lost by to England and France, we’re heading in the right
direction
.’ And JP and Oisinn are, like, lapping this up, really egging him on, determined to humiliate me tonight. JP’s there going, ‘Eddie’s the man, eh Charles?’ And the old man’s like, ‘Eddie’s the man alright. I’m with Hooky on this one.’ I’m just there, ‘You said last year that Warren was the man,’ which doesn’t throw him one little bit. He goes, ‘Warren
Gatland
, my eye! Eddie was always the brains behind the team. And I can tell you that a certain G Thornley of D’Olier Street, Dublin 2, will be eating his words before too long, thank you very much.’ And Oisinn, roysh, he’s really storting to take the piss now, he goes, ‘Why don’t you give Gerry a ring?’ And for one second, I can see the idea flash across the old man’s face because he turns around to see if the old dear’s listening. Then he thinks better of it. He goes, ‘No, he’s changed his number.’ I’m like, ‘Are you focking surprised?’ He goes, ‘Do you know how many years I’ve been buying
The Irish Times
, Ross? Readers are entitled to their opinions.’ And I’m like, ‘And he was
entitled
to blow that pest whistle down the phone.’ He turns around to Hennessy and he’s like, ‘I couldn’t hear anything for about a week, you know.’

The goys are all lapping this up and I’m pretty much beginning to lose the will to live at this stage. But then suddenly, roysh, it’s time for business. A chair is dragged out into the middle of the floor and I’m told to, like, sit on it and all of a sudden Christian stands up and makes this speech about what an amazing hit I am with the chicks, which is true; what an amazing rugby player I am, which is half-true; and what an amazing friend I am, which is total bullshit. When he finishes, roysh, I just high-five the goy and tell him I don’t deserve him. He tells me to shut the fock up and sit down and then he goes, ‘Okay, ladies, you want to kiss the Corellian, form an orderly queue. If you can control yourselves, that is.’

First up is Danielle. A bit too John B for my liking. She basically tries to have sex with me. Second is Amie, the make-up monster, still mad into me, trying not to show it in front of her boyfriend, but the suit is definitely going to need a dry-clean now. Then it’s, like, Zoey, third year commerce with German in UCD, a bit like Mena Suvari and the first tongue of the night. Number four is Claire, as in Dalkey-wannabe Claire, mascara all over her face after her row with Erika, it’s like being kissed by a focking Saint Bernard. Number five is Oisinn taking the piss. Next up is Georgia, my ex who used to do the weather on RTÉ, puts the ‘boiler’ in the word bunnyboiler. Seven is Frederika, JP’s ex, second year Russian and Byzantine Studies in UCD, a bit like Charlize Theron. JP’s still mad into her, so I pull her onto my knee and make it a big, long one, just to, like, get back at the focker for earlier.

But I don’t really enjoy it, roysh, because I can hear Emer and Sophie, numbers eight and nine, talking about how much weight Sorcha has lost since she went to, like, Australia, that’s if
the photographs are anything to go by. Kissing Emer is like
kissing
a mate, no fun. Sophie puts both hands around the back of my head, roysh, and gives me what we usually call an ‘Ibiza
Uncovered
’ kiss. Then, without batting an eyelid, roysh, she just, like, slips back into her conversation with Emer and she asks her whether there’s any points in, like, toothpaste.

Ten is Erika. Sensual is the only way to describe it. When she’s finished, she stays sitting on my lap and goes, ‘You’ve wanted that for ages, haven’t you?’ and I’m sitting there like a focking nodding dog. She goes, ‘Happy Birthday,’ and I’m so flustered, roysh, that I can’t remember eleven, twelve, thirteen and
fourteen
, but video evidence later confirms them as Melanie, as in Institute Melanie, Ana with one n, Sara with no h and Jessica with no tits. Fifteen is JP ripping the piss. Sixteen is Danielle again. Somebody call security!

Seventeen is this bird Neasa, a Whore on the Shore who gave me, like, a peck on the cheek after we won the Schools Cup and then told all her friends she had been with me. Mind you, I told all mine that I shagged her. Eighteen is this bird, a real BOBFOC job – Body Off ‘Baywatch’, Face Off ‘Crimewatch’ – don’t know her name and don’t want to, she kisses me like she’s kissing a focking corpse. Nineteen is Christian’s new squeeze, whose name is Lauren and who, it turns out, is Hennessy’s daughter, and I wonder how an ugly focker like him could produce
something
as beautiful as her. I’m still thinking about it while I’m
kissing
Chloe, number twenty, who gives me two pecks on the lips and, in between, mentions totally out of the blue that the leather coat she’s wearing tonight is a Prada and cost, like, two grand, and it dawns on me that after twenty-one years on this Earth I know some totally focked-up people.

I’m wondering what the story is with the twenty-first kiss. Who’s it going to be? I see Danielle thinking about it – whoah, horsey! – but Fionn manages to, like, shepherd her into a corner. And then Aoife steps forward, roysh, and I’m thinking, ‘Aoife? Sorcha’s best mate? This is going to be like kissing, I don’t know, my sister, if I had one.’ But all of a sudden, roysh, she pulls out this photograph of, like, Sorcha, and slaps it on my lips and she goes, ‘She’s sorry she couldn’t be here to give it to you in person, Ross. I’ve got a cord for you from her as well.’

And everyone is just, like, clapping, going mental. She probably ripped the idea off one of those stupid American programmes she watches, but basically I couldn’t have been happier, even if they had got me Bianca Luyckx.

In the Stephen’s
Green Shopping Centre, roysh, I’m on the escalator, coming down from the cor pork and this bird is on the next escalator, on her way up. She’s a focking cracker, roysh, a little bit like Uma Thurman up close, and she’s with this complete dickhead, a real focking skateboard geek, long-sleeved Nirvana T-shirt, the whole lot, and as our two escalators are passing, roysh, I catch her eye and she’s, like, looking straight at me for, like, five seconds and she sort of, like, smiles. And the goy, roysh, he cops this because when we’ve passed each other, out of the corner of my eye, I can see him looking back, totally paranoid now.

The old man, roysh, it’s like he’s on focking speed half the time. I go into the kitchen the other morning, hanging from the night before, and we’re pretty much talking
TOTALLY
here, and he’s like, ‘Ross, there you are. Your mother and I bought that CD, the one with the poor people telling stories from the Bible. It’s all dis, dat, dees and dose. Cheered your mother right up, it has.’ I’m just like, ‘When are you two going to focking cop yourselves
on?’ and I go back up to my room,
SO
not in the mood for them after last night.

It storted off bad, roysh, got good around midnight, then went, like, downhill after that. It was the usual crack in the M1, the goys talking about ‘Jackass’ and the birds tearing the back off whoever was stupid enough to go to the toilet on their own. Sophie asks me how my old dear is, roysh, and I say I don’t give a shit, that the bitch deserved what she got, and Aoife asks what happened, roysh, and Sophie tells her that some lunatic threw a tin of red paint over my old dear coming out of that fur shop on Grafton Street. Aoife goes, ‘Oh my God. That is like,
OH! MY! GOD
!’ and Sophie goes, ‘
TOTALLY
. It is, like,
SO
not a cool thing to do. It happened to, like, my mom, too. Except it was, like, blue paint. Mom just looked at them and she was like, “That will achieve nothing. It is not
going
to bring the seal back and my husband will just buy me
another
coat”.’ Aoife goes, ‘
Go
Sophie’s mom! That is, like,
Hello
?’ and Sophie goes, ‘I know. It
SO
is.’

It’s my round, roysh, so I hit the bor and that’s when for one, like, brief moment the evening storts looking up. Which actually happens to be my opening line to this stunner I’m standing next to, a ringer for Tamzin Outhwaite. I’m like, ‘The evening is storting to look up.’ She goes, ‘That is
such
a bad chat-up line. You’re Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, aren’t you?’ I’m like, ‘The one and only.’ She goes, ‘You were with my best friend. Auveen. You were a bastard to her.’ I’m like, ‘Doesn’t sound like me. Is she the bird who gave me the Denis on my neck? Hey, I had to shell out twenty notes for a focking tetanus.’ She goes, ‘I don’t care
actually
that you were a shit to her. She might be my best friend but she’s an asshole.’

We’re getting on really well, roysh, so I drop the drinks over to the lads and I’m like, ‘See you goys later,’ and Aoife goes, ‘Don’t tell me you’re actually going to
be
with that girl?’ I’m there, ‘If she plays her cards right … maybe.’ Aoife goes, ‘Ross, she’s been going out with Brad for the last, like, five years. Brad as in Terenure Brad. Brad as in used to be on the Senior Cup team Brad?’ Fionn, roysh, the focking crawler, he goes, ‘Aoife’s right, Ross,’ and he pushes his glasses up on his nose. He’s there, ‘Brad and her are always splitting up. She probably caught him with one of her friends. She wants to get back with him and she’s using you as a chip to renegotiate terms.’ I’m just like, ‘Don’t wait up,’ which I have to say, roysh, I was pretty pleased with.

To tell you the truth I wasn’t actually that Terry Keane on this bird, roysh, but the fact that her boyfriend was Gick made it a challenge I couldn’t resist. I go back to the bor, roysh, buy her a Bacardi Breezer, fill her head with a whole load of bullshit about how I’ve been into her for ages, get a six-pack from the machine in the jacks and the next thing I know, Bob’s your auntie’s husband, we’re in a Jo Maxi on the way to her pad in
Leopardstown
. I have to say, roysh, I’m really in the mood at this stage, but she turns out to be one of those birds – you know the kind – who wants to watch
Ghost
and
The Piano
and every focking chick flick she owns on video before doing anything, to make the evening, like, romantic or memorable or some shit. But halfway through
You’ve Got Mail
, I make my move, roysh, and the next thing you know, we’re in her bedroom, blah blah blah.

But she keeps saying to me, roysh, ‘Say my name, Ross. Say my name,’ and that’s when I realise, roysh, that I don’t know it. So I jump up and I’m like, ‘I have to go to the jacks,’ and she’s like, ‘What?’ I’m there, ‘Sorry, I have to go to the toilet. Back in a
second.’ She goes, ‘Hurry back.’ I go into the sitting room, roysh, and stort turning the place over looking for an ESB bill, a TV licence, a framed diploma from, I don’t know, LSB, anything with her focking name on it, but I can’t find anything. If I go back in there and tell her I don’t know it, roysh, I am so out of here it’s not funny. So I’ve, like, no other choice, roysh. I have to go to her handbag, which is on the table in the kitchen. But as I go to pick it up, roysh, I accidentally knock over this load of washing that’s hung on the back of one of the chairs. I’ve got to be quick at this stage, so I stort picking it up with one hand and going through her bag with the other, looking for a student ID, or a driving licence, or anything.

And suddenly, roysh, I can, like, sense that I’m being watched and I sort of, like, stop and I hear her going, ‘What the
fock
are you doing?’ I turn around and I’m like, ‘This isn’t … em …’ She goes, ‘Are you stealing money from me?’ I’m like, ‘No, I was–’ She goes, ‘
What
were you looking for in my bag?’ And I don’t know why, roysh, I just said, like, the first thing that came into my head. I was like, ‘Lipstick.’

She looks at me, roysh, as though she’s, like, weighing this up in her mind, and then she looks down at my hand and, like, her expression suddenly changes. And then I look down and I realise that I’m holding a pair of her tights, and she’s staring at me like I’m some kind of weirdo and she goes, ‘Lipstick?
OH! MY! GOD!
You are one sick boy,’ I’m like, ‘I swear, I’m not one of those trans-whatever you call them.’ She opens the door and goes, ‘Get out of my apartment! NOW!’ I’m like, ‘Please don’t tell any of the Nure goys about this.’ She goes, ‘Oh my God, I am
SO
going to tell
everyone
what a weirdo you are.’

I walk back to my gaff, knowing that by next weekend this’ll be
all over town. And they’ll come up with a focking nickname for me. It’ll be Cross O’Carroll-Kelly, how much do you bet?

Michelle from Ulster Bank has left another message. She says it’s urgent.

Asked the old man for two hundred lids. Wanted to get, like, a pair of trousers and a shirt, roysh, and he goes, ‘Don’t have that kind of money on me, Ross. But your mother and I are going into the city this afternoon. You can get whatever you want on my card.’ I’m like, ‘Which means I’m going to have to go into town with you two?’ He goes, ‘Yes, what’s the problem, Kicker? Lovely summer’s day …’ And I go, ‘Do you
honestly
think I want to spend my day hanging out with you knobs.’

Basically I’d no other choice, though. I was going to Annabel’s that night, pretty much guaranteed my bit off Ali, this bird who’s, like, first year morkeshing in Mountjoy Square, and I needed new threads. So I lash on the old fleece, collar up, and my baseball cap – pulled down over my eyes obviously – and get into the back of the old man’s cor, bricking it in case anyone, like, recognises me. We pork the cor in the Arnott’s cor pork, focking northside, and head towards Grafton Street. The old man looks a total dickhead as per usual in his camel-hair coat and that stupid focking hat he wears. The old dear has the usual fifty baby seals on her back and I’m just there, ‘Oh my God, I
SO
have to get away from these two.’ The old man’s like, ‘Slow down, Kicker,’ but I’m walking, like, fifty metres ahead of them and the one time I do look back, roysh, is when I’m halfway up Grafton Street and the two of them are looking in the window of Weirs, her hanging off his
arm, obviously trying to get another piece of Lladro out of the focker.

So I head on into BT2, roysh – they know where to find me – and I hit the old Hugo Boss section first and stort thinking about getting a new pair of loafers. My old ones are, like, a bit scuffed. The next thing, roysh, who do I bump into only Jill, this mate of Ali’s, roysh, who does a bit of modelling and she goes, ‘Oh my God,
hi
,’ and sort of, like, air-kisses me. I’m like, ‘Hey, babes, how goes it?’ flirting my orse off with her. She’s there, ‘Oh my God, Ali’s just, like, texted me this second. Are you going to, like, Annabel’s tonight?’ I’m like, ‘I could find myself in that vicinity,’ playing it totally Kool and the Gang.

Anyway, roysh, all of this is sort of, like, by the by, because what happened next was I suddenly heard all this, like, shouting and shit over by the escalators, and I recognise the old man’s voice and I turn around, roysh, and there he is, arguing with these two coppers who, like, have a hold of him. He’s there going, ‘You are not arresting us. We have
rights
.’ And the old dear’s going, ‘Do you even
know
who we are?’ I presumed it had something to do with the tribunal. Of course, they stort trying to drag me into it then. The old man spots me and he’s straight over, going, ‘Ross, phone Hennessy. Tell him what’s happened,’ making a total show of me in front of Jill and half of focking Grafton Street. I just look at him, roysh, and I’m like, ‘Sorry, have we met before?’ He goes, ‘Ross, phone Hennessy. Tell him–’ and the next thing the cops drag him and the old dear off and Jill’s there going, ‘
OH! MY! GOD!
that is, like,
SO
embarrassing. Who
were
those people?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know.’ Jill goes, ‘They seemed to know you. The man called you Ross.’ I’m like, ‘Probably recognised me from the papers. I get that all the time.’ She goes, ‘Oh my God, yeah, you
play rugby,’ and then she’s like, ‘My dad went to that game against England when we lost? They must have been
SO
down
afterwards
. I said it to Ali. I was like, “Oh my God, I would
SO
love to give them all a hug”,’ which is when I realised, roysh, what a total sap Jill was and I decided to push on.

The only downside of the old pair being arrested, roysh, was that I couldn’t get my new threads and also that I had to get, like, the bus home. I thought my public transport days were well and truly behind me, but there I am, roysh, upstairs on the 46a, texting JP and Christian to find out what the Jackanory is about tonight, when all of a sudden my mobile rings and it’s, like, the old man. He’s like, ‘Ross, do
not
panic. We’re being held in Harcourt Terrace. Now, have you phoned Hennessy?’ I’m like, ‘Phone him yourself.’ He goes, ‘Okay, let’s stay calm. We’ve got to think carefully. That’s mandatory. Now, I’m only allowed one phone call and I’ve called you.’ I’m like, ‘Bad call then.’ He’s there, ‘Hennessy’s in Jersey, Ross. He’s staying at that new golf resort I told him about. The number’s in my Filofax. In the study. Hurry, Ross. Before your mother’s coat gets infested.’