7/7/2010
Once again I’ve fallen woefully behind in updating my never ending quest for shenanigans. Here’s the part where I explain how a guy who works just 3 hours a day can’t find the time to hammer out a few paragraphs about partying once a month. Here’s the straight dope. Its the girlfriend again. Well actually it involves 2 girls, first there was this 22 year old knockout who I met in Dublin (you’ll read about her later). I really digged her and didn’t want to cock block myself by talking about the other chicks I hooked up with while I was in Ireland. I was all set to fly her to meet me in Miami but she went online and read my other columns so it was a moot point. I must’ve really creeped her out, she even un-friended me on facebook! Shoot, long distance never works anyway, but how often do you find a brunette spinner nearly half your age who can match you drink for drink, fucks like a rabbit and loves Formula One? After I got back from Ireland we had the Orange Bowl and Super Bowl and a trip to Vegas for the Mayweather-Mosely fight. Then I got a place in midtown which just happened to be a block from my ex girlfriend’s place…so basically I’m back to being a pussy. But before I turned in my man card and started nightly walks with the girlfriend around the park and trips to the outlet mall…there’s were 5 months of binge drinking and skirt chasing to cover so let’s dive back in…
It’s about one in the afternoon on the first day of my latest trip to Dublin. The Oliver Saint John Gogarty’s pub in the rollicking Temple Bar neighborhood is packed with holiday revelers. I’m in town for my buddy’s wedding. The rehearsal party is later that night at a hotel out in the suburbs. So I’ve got six hours to kill. I’ve been pounding Guinness with two Scottish girls throwing my rap to a cute blonde butterball from Edinburgh. Her accent is thicker than a wool sweater. She’s digging me and her chubby friend is off talking to some other guy at the other side of the bar. The blonde who’s name I was told but can’t pronounce leans over and gives me a peck on the corner of my mouth. It kind of caught me off guard, as I order another Guinness she reaches over with both hands and grabs both ends of my scarf and pulls me towards her. I know at age 41 I’m a little old for this kind of public display of affection. I’m also probably too old for a drunk 20 year old Scottish chick. But there’s an older couple sucking face in a booth across from us and they’ve got to be at least 50. Everybody’s hammered and it’s still lunch time, you gotta love Ireland! And ya gotta love this chick. “One more pint and then we’re taking a shower”. Sounds good to me! I had mentioned earlier in our conversation that I was staying at The Temple Bar Hotel just about two hundred yards away. And after sucking down my Guinness she threw her friend a wave, they said something to each other in that thick accent and both laughed and we were off. My hotel room which was big by European standards had a bed that about as wide as a phone booth. The shower was even smaller. She jumped in with me and proceeded to slobber on my shillelagh. We moved to the tiny bed and she was like the energizer bunny. That was the first time I felt like I was having a heart attack during the vacation. Went to see Dr. Kaufman when I got back to Atlanta. Turned out my cholesterol was higher than Rod Carew’s lifetime batting average. (No worries though, got on the Crestor for a few months and laid off the Popeye’s 8 piece meals). Speaking of juicy thighs, the Scottish chick was killing me. I don’t know about you guys but when I have sex. I like to have it once for about 5minutes and then take a long nap. She was having none of that. It was an afternoon boning session with a dialogue right out of the film Trainspotting. “Yeh went to have another go?” All I could think of was how it would read in the AJC…local radio host found dead in Dublin hotel room, surveillance video showed Mike Bell entering the elevator with an unidentified woman, the autopsy revealed his system was filled with Guinness and Cialis. Finally got the chick out of the room and grabbed a cab to my buddy’s rehearsal dinner at his hotel about a 30 minute drive from Dublin.
My pal Big Al and his fiancé Fran are part of a group of friends who are all regulars at Red Door, one of my favorite Buckhead watering holes. About two dozen of us made the trip to Ireland from Atlanta for the wedding including Steve the owner and Misty one his hotter bartenders (hey now). If the rehearsal dinner and party was any indication, this was going to be the greatest wedding I’ve ever been to. I got to the hotel for cocktails at 7pm and most of the wedding party was still getting plastered in the hotel bar when I split at 3am. I cabbed it back to Dublin. My driver Tommy was a sweet retired guy who talked my ears off about Tiger Woods’ troubles. As we pulled up to my hotel, 4 college age chicks were walking down the sidewalk. The partying in Temple Bar goes on all night apparently. Tommy says, “let’s impress the birds, stay put”, he jumps out of the BMW sedan and walks around to open my door, “alright Mr. Bell, I’ll be around to pick you up at 1 o’clock sharp tomorrow”. Just as I get out of the car the girls are right on top of us. “Well aren’t you Mr. Big Swinging Dick New Yorker” says an adorable brunette who looked a bit like Natalie Portman. I just started laughing and feeling a bit cavalier asked who wants a drink in the hotel bar? The girls all kind of look at each other laugh and shrug and we all file in for a night cap. There’s a few couples and blokes chatting it up in front of the small bar. I order some chick drinks as requested but the brunette says she’ll have what I’m having, so I get us two Jamesons on the rocks. She starts breaking my balls about not drinking my whisky neat. I like this chick. After about ten minutes her friends are getting bored. She brushes them off and tells then she’ll see them back in the hotel. Her name is Danica and she’s a make up artist originally from Northern Ireland who works in London. I was smitten right from the get go. After my best attempt at conversation after 15 hours of straight boozing, we gave each other a junior high type smooch, exchanged e-mails and numbers and agreed to meet up later in the week.
I woke up Tuesday morning surprisingly without a hangover. Something about sticking with Guinness and Jameson’s a bartender told me. No preservatives or sulfites in the beer over here. (I noticed the same thing pounding Pilsners in Prague a few years ago). I broke out my new three piece suit for the wedding. Slight problem, I forgot to pack the pants. Idiot! Where am I gonna find black dress slacks that won’t require having a foot taken off the leg to fit my short ass? Plus I got the suit for a steal at Men’s Wearhouse. It was a Sean Combs P-Diddy bad ass black on black pinstripe deal. No way I’m gonna be able to match that up. I threw on some sweats and my coat and walked down O’Connell Street past the post office where the IRA made their stand during the 1916 Easter Uprising. You can still see the bullet holes from their siege with the British troops. I walked into a department store called Penney’s which as best I could tell wasn’t related to JC Penney back in The States. The store was packed with customers making Christmas present exchanges. I found the men’s department and eventually the pants aisle. God Bless The Irish! Where else in the world can a guy with a fire hydrant build find a pair of shiny black pants with a 36” waist and 29” inseam? My guess is I found the rack where waiters and bartenders buy their britches. Either way it was a perfect fit and a decent match. Nobody would know I had a mack daddy suit with $19 pants. The wedding started at 2pm and went for about 12 hours. The hotel was a big conference center and golf course out in the country. Al’s Dad who is quite the character hired a DJ a band and a Riverdance type group. What a blast.
The next day I hopped on the train for the 2 ½ hour trip to Belfast to visit my long lost Northern Irish relatives. My second cousins Antony (no H) and Sean had stayed with me in The Hamptons for a few weeks during my first radio gig back in 1987. The last time I’d seen either one was St. Patrick’s Day in NYC in 88’. Since the peace accords with the UK were signed their native Derry and Belfast had been transformed from a war zone with the Protestants into a burgeoning tourist destination. We got caught up with each other and pub crawled our way around the old town. Sean and Antony were now part of The Police Service of Northern Ireland. As part of The Good Friday Agreement, Catholics were now integrated into the police. We had a blast, I couldn’t believe how everything had changed from the time my Dad and I visited Ireland and then made the trip to Northern Ireland. As Irish-Americans our car was searched at the border, guard dogs, mirrors under the car, 20 minute interrogation, the whole nine yards. I later learned they were searching for hard currency, (donations to the IRA) not weapons. Back then a Catholic wouldn’t dare walk down Shankill Road in the heart of the loyalist protestants neighborhood. Today all the murals of pro and anti British sentiments have all been painted over. Replaced by signs leading to The Titanic Museum and Arts Center.
We were throwing back some pints at The King’s Head just down from the Queen’s Bridge in Belfast, dozens of tourists on holiday and locals were enjoying the Christmas-New Year’s week off. Not that you need a holiday to see these folks getting plastered. An English couple with two kids were in the booth next to us, Above the din of the bar noise their ten year old son asked his mom where they were going next? “To see Harland & Wolff” she said. “Harland & Wolff, who are they?” “They built the Titanic” she answered. The kid makes a funny face and says in a loud voice, “well they didn’t do a very good job mummy” The whole bar went bananas. Two old timers were busting a gut at the bar, they sent a pint over to the father. Great times. After a day in the north I was back on the train to Dublin. I picked up a book on Northern Irish soccer legend George Best to read on the trip back. Best had been a rock star for Manchester in the 60’s and early 70’s. He later played in the US in the North American Soccer League. I saw all these murals of this guy on the walls of pubs and stores in Belfast. I asked my cousins who he was and they filled me in. “Maradona good, Pele better, George Best!” He had died a few years ago at age 59 from complications from kidney problems. From what I could tell in his prime George Best was like the Joe Namath of The English Premier League. A renowned boozer and skirt chaser, he was famous for his quips. His most famous line…“I spent 90% of my money on women, booze and fast cars, the rest I wasted”. You have to raise a pint to the memory of a guy like that!
Coming up: Snowed in and hustled by Gypsies during the great blizzard of
2010
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