Sliding JayeLs

This whole story runs to seven entries. I’m sorry it’s so long, just that once I started I couldn’t stop. If you’re going to be so kind as to read it, you may want to make a cup of tea or whatever you’re having yourself before sitting down to this….

I sent at least ten copies of the same text message to OD people on Friday night. It’s always a bad sign when I start serial texting at a social affair. There I was, sat in a function room in the Hilton Hotel at what I presumed would be a bangin’, kickin’, slammin’ 21st and I was texting. Not even observing drunken antics, it was much worse than that. Why did I go? Well, it was kinda like y’know the way you get these invitations to things and you say straight away to yourself “Naaah”? Well old college classmate Linn was having her 21st, and without going into specifics her Dad is an RTE exec so on the decks for the night was Rick O’Shea. And it was in the Hilton. And the finger food was just disassembled dinner. It was lavish, and BT2 vouchers were appearing in the middle of cards left right and centre. Y’see, Linn is from a certain area, a certain lifestyle. And experience junkie that I am (within reason), I decided that I’d go see what takes place at a modestly posh 21st. She went to school with the Taoiseach’s daughter, who was there with some guy who I’m sure was genetically engineered to end up in a boyband sooner or later, just like the boyfriend of her older sister. Linn’s mother was givin it loads on the dancefloor. But I knew hardly anyone, and the one person I did know was blanking me cos I didn’t go to her 21st but miraculously found the time to go to Embryo’s…..

So I tried to ring folks and see if a conversation with someone I knew might make me feel better, but phones I rung either rang off or were switched off. I looked in the mirror and realised that yet another costly, yet shit, night had just come to pass. The difference between it and Embryo’s 21st a week previously was that at Embryo’s do you could feel the love, man. Linn’s party was full of awkwardness, cliques and a general “aren’t we having so much fucking fun??!!” vibe. So I picked up my jacket, kissed the birthday girl goodbye and headed towards town.

I walked along the canal and almost instantly I felt nervous. Walking along a canal at 11pm on your own is like doing your own Crimeline reconstruction, especially as I met suspicious-looking blokes and tried not to look anyone in the eyes. Kev (that-guy) had told me he was in the Foggy Dew (Open Diary’s Dublin office), so I decided to go for a pee there and perhaps I might bump into d’Kev and his budz. I was walking down Leeson Street, passing a few lap-dancing clubs at the time and remembering I had a good few notes in my wallet that might look better in a gyrating dancers “underwear”, and yet I decided to go see Kev. I’m dedicated, man.

So in I went, down the steps to the toilets where I once peed beside LuvSpudz and other celebrated diarists of this realm. Draining the spudz? Anyway, I stared at this yungflah on the off-chance that it might be Kev. I rung his mobile while staring at the bloke. He didn’t move, and yet his phone was answered. Conclusion: it’s not Kev. I went outside onto Crow Street and talked to him; he was in Westmoreland Street and his night was going nowhere so he might be heading home. Ah sure feck it. Feck it was the night’s theme. Up until then.

I now faced a choice, just like Gwyneth Paltrow did in that film with the doors that slid. My Friday night was now flatlining as it was being pushed on a stretcher through the corridors and into the operating theatre. Blood everywhere, it was a mess. I was running beside it, holding onto the side and seeing it fade away like this, I had two choices.