Sliding JayeLs (2)

I took in the facts. I was -€70 on my credit card. I had all the money for next week in my wallet. I had to be in work at 9am. I had been up since 6.30am, it was now 11pm. I was recording Fraiser at home, I could go watch that. I could just go home and have a nice night and go to bed. There’ll be plenty more nights. Like Phil’s thing in May. Or going to Galway next weekend. Or finally going to Cork some day. I didn’t need this shit.

So I quietly retired. There was nothing I could have done. The night died, but what could I do? Ring Elaine and see if she’s in town? What good if she was? She’d probably want to go to Rí-Rá’s or something, and that’s €10. A JD and white? “That’ll one arm.” “Have you got change of a leg?” No thanks, over-priced hole. I bought a Nitelink ticket home, not leaving til 12.30am, soberest person in the queue. Sat for almost an hour in Abrakebabra, mulling over an Evening Herald and an undercooked chip butty. Sipping Sprite, looking around at the happy couples about to have an early night. And me thinking “what if….”

I got home just after 1am. Switched on Sky News, Colin Powell couldn’t meet Arafat. Wouldn’t Arafat be retired by now if he was in any other job? I switched on the video. Couldn’t find “Fraiser”. Or “Does Doug Know?” Well, that’s pretty crap but then all I do is watch the bits with Daisy Donovan, The Future Mother Of My Children. I rewound the tape to the start, only to realise in horror that I had recorded the RTE Nine O’Clock News. And all of “The Late Late Show”. And no “Fraiser”, no seeing Michael Keaton guest-star. No Daisy. Nothing. I went into the kitchen and read old newspapers. Generally arsed around, went to switch on the computer to write about the shit night I had but instead started reading a old local phone book. Got up to my room at around 2.30am, actually went to sleep at 3. What a crap night. And it cost me too; €5 taxi to the hotel, €4.40 for a pint of Heineken. Linn’s Mam bought me a bottle and then I managed to con the barman enough for him to give me a free bottle and 60 cents for my trouble (he thought I gave him a ten and I didn’t argue). €3.50 for the card (“To Linn, the only sexy blonde I know that I can come within 500 yards of”). I always liked Linn; it’s been an unpopular position for me to be in but she listened to all my Elaine bullshit years ago and she’s nice to folks.

I switched off my light, too disgusted to keep reading a car magazine after seeing the monstrosity that is the new Porsche Cayenne. A four-wheel-drive Porsche. Not as in Audi/Subaru sexy sportscar-type four-wheel-drive. Range Rover-type four-wheel-drive. A Porsche jeep, in layman’s terms, conceived simply to coax P. Diddy and his mates to buy German and name-drop them in their next record. Capitalism in it’s ugliest form. Then I thought about the shit night. This can’t keep happening. You’re not in college anymore, nights out are becoming rarer and rarer. You have to make the most of them, and this one was squandered at a party you knew you’d hate. Why did you bother? Why? Why didn’t go go out with real friends, like Elaine? Spend time with people you know and care about more. You could have done that tonight. You could have texted Elaine and seen if she was in town. Who cares about the cost, she’s a mate. She could’ve gone somewhere besides Rí-Rá’s, somewhere cool. It could be different to most nights out, it could’ve been incredibly cool. But now you’ll never know because you took the easy option. You went home, that’s your kneejerk response when faced with a dilemma. Retreat. Tail-between-legs, on the principle that “I have to be up in the morning”. It’s nearly half-three now, would you really be asleep that much later if you had gone out? I doubt it. But you’ll never know. Somewhere in some alternate universe, you stood there in Crow Street after getting off the phone from Kev. And you decided to get up on the stretcher that was bringing your flatlining night to the operating theatre. You starting giving it mouth-to-mouth, as it was being pushed by the orderlies at high speed under the flourescent lights. Blood everywhere. Tonight’s not going to die, it might feel like you’re flogging a dead horse here but if you just keep it up, you might just…………get a heartbeat. Tonight could have been saved. You could have rung Elaine. She could have been out. You could have had an amazing night. But the “what if?”‘s will drive you mad. You took a path, and now you’ll be sat in work tomorrow, tired and with no night out to show for it. Joe is pathetic. Good night.