Yesterday, after I missed the bus, I went into a small pub near the station and had my first pint of Guinness on this adventure. Then I walk Limerick with pack on my back. This is a dead city.
On the bus, finally, to Galway, I played a small game of pass the ashtray with this crazy Irish kid and slept. It was raining, but not hard, as we pulled into the Galway station and I immediately found the B&B Terry and I stayed in two years ago. This place is getting run down. The woman is very unsocial and was unimpressed when I told her that I had stayed here before.
Off into the night. Pizza at Super Mac’s is still really good, and the place was full of beautiful Irish girls, one in particular. There was a shrew-faced male, young, eating alone, like me, wearing a crazy looking suit and tie. I was going to talk to him, but he seemed distraught about something.
Off to the bar. This is a nice place, classy like, in a hotel. There was the shrew, with friends, hundreds of them! Graduation at some university. I figured it would be cool to hang out and meet people, but they weren’t into it. There was some old, 45ish, drunk next to me and he would talk and told me about how nice “hippies” are and about two hostels. He had a small bag of writing paper that he claimed the contents were 145 pounds. It was a gift from the missus. But he soon left. Pint of Guinness and a pint of Bud and I hit the street. I actually got lost. Wrong turn out of Mickey Dee’s or something and I was on the fringes of town. Nice place. Rivers and some crazy big cathedral.
I went back into the same pub and was received even less than before. Single pint of Guinness poured to say “Get out fast”. 100’s of these kids all over the place.
By 8PM, I was asleep at the B&B.
I woke once in the night, at 5 to midnight, from a dream about Megen and Matt McLaughlin.
Woke this morning and 8:45. No shower, because it didn’t work. I haven’t bathe since America! Now, after a pork breakfast, I must find a hostel.
There was no real challenge, but I am spending money much too fast. 10 pounds for the B&B, 4 for the hostel, my headphones broke so there is another 4 and change, food. I’m spending way too much money. I had to even buy a towel for 4 pounds on sale, but this I needed because I just had a lame shower but still feel great. The Post Warrior still is a spoiled American, but not for much longer. If I can learn not to spend so much cash, I’ll make it.
The bar (pub) I frequent, I just learned is a yuppie bar. Oh well. It is nice, but the people suck. After a long walk down to the fucking Oasis disco, which was closed when I finally got there After pissing in a combination Texaco/funeral parlor, it was closed! I couldn’t believe it.
(Letter to Terry)
Oasis is a hike.
I went back to the hostel, where everyone was making dinner. Sorry, I like being out. And I couldn’t eat even if I tried…no microwave or nukeable food! I met one of the two guys that I started out with in JFK, in some travel agency, as I walked the streets of Galway. Digging the people and sights. Holy shit, I’m in Ireland. So far from family and friends and Mystic. I’m in a pub now, which came highly recommended by one of the few people in that other pub. Yup, this is better. Called “Quays” (“Keys” as I looked for it). This is probably the nicest pub I will ever be in! It is beautiful and old with brick arch doorways and two bars. If anyone ever reads this and gets to Galway, Ireland, come here!
(Letter to Dawn)
Any Irish in you? I’ve seen you coming up the street several times now.
By the way, it is only about 7PM and clocks are hard to find in this really old country with walls older than God being just now knocked down to put up more pubs and butcher shops. Ireland, in any pissant little town, blows the Mystic Mile away. I saw those two young punk girls, that I saw yesterday in the center of town, daring all in the yup pub. Yesterday I felt actually threatened by the two probably 17 year old girls, but tonight, as they walked by, I wanted to talk to them but could not get my coward’s nerves up to say “Excuse me, please let me hang out with you.”
Loneliness hits hard. I am so lonely I am answering my own questions, but this is where Truth is found.
(Letter to Michael)
“Yah, Boy!” Listened to your tape in Limerick and Galway. “How low can you go?” That’s correct. Big into J. B. I’ve got names and addresses. Let’s go international, man!
On the walk down to Oasis, I gave a very drunken bum a Camel. I lit it at his request and asked him if he wanted me to smoke it for him, too (a line I learned as a janitor). He tasted it, expecting a Major, and said “What is this?!!?”
The busboy/barback wears a Talking Heads shirt. Very cool place, this Ireland. Tomorrow I think I’ll get on with it and get my ass planted on a bar stool in Castletownroche. Ireland, no matter how hard you fight, is a pub crawl. Soon, I’ll visit New Order’s disco in Manchester, and then on to see Maura in London.
Ireland is like a strange state in America. US news, music, cars, etc are here. But Bud is an import and you pay import prices for it!
The trip is worth whatever and whoever. I’ve hooked up with the potheads. Yeah, too cool. Drunk and kicked out of one pub and into another and into another. Take-away beers and smoking spliffs all the way back. Expensive and weak, but cool to sit around the circle; an artist with everyone’s voice ever, two English majors, and a worker. One of the English majors is by God too funny. Drinking beers by a canal by a river and people passing by and pot and Bud and drugs and all kinds we keep going and it isn’t even 10 o’clock and one wears a Jimi H. shirt. And they know Public Enemy and I Am happy smoking, now listening to a sound painting by the artist whose name I cannot remember, but god they are cool.
(Letter to Tarbox)
Get out of your house, boy! Your sounds have a way to go, as I listen to “just some tape.”
(Letter to Rich F)
Pixies are BIG in Ireland.
My beret has gone missing. These guys smoke resin, dance to Hip-Hop and Funk from the ‘70s. I gave them my address.
(PS to Michael)
Use wooden matches to pack jibbers!
{A separate page tucked into my notebook}
Quays 111789
Lovers sit quiet talking hand holding.
Please, please someone talk to me!
I’ll sit and smile and laugh and talk.
Just please talk with me, to me, but not about me.
Megen look-a-like sits ten feet away.
Much older, like old when the ring is around her finger
and I am long long long forgotten.
Hunger and loneliness and Guinness and Murphy’s
envelope me with fear and Death.
Help me, please.