Moondance

I knew that my relationship with a certain young Mr. Mulvihill wouldn't last for very long because he was too proud of being inbred and ignorant as fuck, in addition to his poor diet, lack of appropriate sleep habits, and near-daily drinking habit to the point of intoxication, not to mention his utter lack of a well-rounded education. Irish-American boys had become my comfort food, best dated between long-term romances like, say, during a summertime spent mostly at the beach, to be dropped once the party turned violent, and in their battered homes, it always did. Someone else always started swinging first.

But, for a time, it was easy enough for me to see someone who lived a half an hour's drive away from me (with no traffic), so I could pursue my work life in the city. He didn't like the patterns of our weekend romance, but I honestly didn't have much more to offer someone who, while financially successful, remained a high school dropout. He was lost without his "homies", even as he hated being stuck in a co-dependent drunkfest with the old gang at Gerritsen Beach. He was a mechanically-inclined millionaire with a depressingly unfinished house in an insular pocket of Brooklyn, with horrible social skills and a peculiarly small worldview.

There wasn't anything I could do for him unless he did it himself, and with the fistfuls of cash he always had on hand, he seemed to think that he called all the shots with me, a world-class art director. It was delusional and arrogant, but money will do that to ya. He could run his yard and his demented crew, and that was about it. I'd never had a life that small, and the tension of our ill-fitted pairing showed early and quick. I broke up with him often, and the stress of being stalked and pursued yet again in my late 30s, after all my life experiences, made me angrier than ever.

I didn't want the whole juvenile "push-and-pull" dating thing; I never had. I wanted a hot love affair that lasts forever. I was the "queen of clean breaks" who bore her former suitors no ill will, but John had inroads with my family that made me worth pursuing in his mind, which also made me incredibly dangerous to someone as small-time as him. I could wreck him and his family forever with a call to the cops because of his past, and he knew it. Ultimately, after one night's big showdown, that was it. He knew better than to push his way into my life and my home, because he begged me afterward not to press charges.

His "ex" wife (not officially divorced though legally separated, as I later found out that he lied to me) had pursued domestic violence charges with a vengeance designed to chain him even tighter to her, and I was more than fine with that. I didn't need their brutal mind games in my life. Besides, the whole weird love triangle between him, his best friend, and his best friend's wife totally freaked me out, as did the strange semi-incestuous attachment his half-sister had to him. It was creepy and weird, and it felt like I was living someone else's life besides mine. I wanted out, and I got it by fighting for it.

That isn't to say we didn't ever get long. Obviously, a handsome Mick with a good job rolls off me the way water does a duck's back. It wasn't exactly unflattering, and cute New York boys have tons of confidence and charm, especially on a Friday night with their pockets full of pay for boozy food-and-drink extravagances. But, I was no ingenue. More than one girl has sat back and watched a parade of savvy boys try to play me like a fiddle. It takes a lot of finesse. Suffice to say, we had enough cultural commonalities that being with him could be as fun as getting drunk at a football game with a tailgate party full of cheeseburgers. You don't do it often, but once in awhile is fine, you know? I just didn't need season tickets to the show.

One of our last dates was one of our best, though with his crew's challenged perceptions about time, it went on for far too long. They tried to squeeze a good time out of me the way show-biz parents overbearingly set up their kids for child molestation: maybe they didn't mean to hurt me at first, but after their tenth beer or ninth hour, I could feel the suppressed rage of their intolerance towards me chafe like an ugly wool sweater that itched a red rash all over you. It was oppressive. The concert we went to see at Jones Beach* was like that.

They were a little too happy about seeing a show by a notoriously temperamental artist who'd walk off the stage in a huff if he felt the "vibe" from the audience wasn't right. I had that to look forward to, as well as the long car ride (with his sister and best friends, again) who still thought drinking and driving was fun, like being trapped in a time machine from the 70s or 80s. It was a bad feeling, especially with their young girl in the car, too. We got there way too early, which meant more boring hours in a parking lot trying to drink and have fun with people who don't know how to talk.

Finally, it was time to see the show. John was huffy with me in the seats because he hated one of my more mild college stories that I told to pass the time. His best friend defended me by saying that John had an experience like that, too, and he was more subdued after being caught in another lie. And then, just like that, the magic happened. Van Morrison sang one of his most famous songs about the moon in October skies just as a pair of swans entwined neck-in-neck swam by the stage in the surrounding Long Island Sound, sparkling moonlight and twinkling pianos and all. I wished that could have been our good summertime ending, but it was not. Still, I have one more memory to go along with one heck of a talented Irishman, diva or no. It was much appreciated, lad. Ta!




* http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/66660.html

Sweatin' with the Oldies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_arts

After I dumped yet another fucked up Irish-American kid who clung to me like I was his last drink of the night at closing time, I quit smoking and took up Mixed Martial Arts at the age of 37-going-on-38 shortly, with two pins in my left knee and much damage to the area, the result of a highly invasive knee surgery (with several DVT's afterwards) that I needed after my Giant Mal pulled me over during a too-early morning walk that was at the hectoring behest of the contentious out-of-towners living downstairs from me, put into motion to assuage their madness at life itself, none of which I controlled.

And so, unlike the rest of the typical New York crowd looking to bail out of their banal schedules at the slightest chance, I went without another drunken night at a bar (with people I couldn't stand), to train on the mats of the local McDojo that was close to my Manhattan office building, many months after the bipolar receptionist, her fat friend, and the pretty Puerto Rican kid had bailed for other places more rife with strife. I trained with their Head Instructor at the time, Sensei Jason Lopez, a man who excelled at grappling and wrestling in their style.

It was an odd time for their school, because they used to be a strip mall chain exclusive to the suburbs, now branching out due to the success of MMA as a sport, to keep up with area-wide demand for exercise programs, which was disastrous for the real athletes who paid a lot of money for expert instruction. They used to be a karate school because the Schulmann boys (two Jewish kids from Spring Valley in Rockland County) originally competed in tournaments, though even that was under a cloud of suspicion. They made wild claims with some myth that included an old Chinese man walking their Holocaust-fleeing grandparents over a rough Asian mountain chain to freedom, where they were taught many ancient mystical arts from their beloved Shifu, which made me laugh so hard when I read it online, that I was shocked by the crazies at their school who wanted it so badly to be true.

They had some bad burnouts at the Manhattan school, people dazed by the change from traditional katas to the aerobic exercise that characterizes the mixing of many arts, baffling as that was to their clientele who preferred the comfort of regularity without change. They simply couldn't keep up with the new program, and they knew it, which set up an "old versus new" student dynamic that turned ugly quickly. Of course, I was targeted by pretty much every person there, except the younger kids who wanted to date me, or at least rub up against me, if they could keep up with my schedule designed by Sensei.

Soon enough, the posers dropped away to form a small but dedicated group of training partners for me: some were good, some were bad, and some of them couldn't perform martial arts if their lives depended on it. For me, it didn't really matter. I just needed them to be consistent enough that they could hold the training mitts needed for my combos, or a kicking shield for our practices, and anyone can do that. It was in that spirit I found myself walking into an almost-empty studio one evening after work, because St. Patrick's Day often falls on a weekday here in New York, and I had a demanding art director's job that needed me to stay in business. My reputation had proceeded me, and that's not something you toss away for the same type of pint of beer you've been hoisting since at least your college days, though for my working class native crowd, it was often sooner than that.

They had a program with local law enforcement at the time of my training period there, though in truth they were looking for anyone who could be lured inside their studio space by some asshole kid with a "fauxhawk" haircut that they made stand outside on the sidewalk, handing out flyers to the passing commuters, because he was a total dick. I wouldn't buy a thing from him, and they knew that, too. So, I changed and waited upstairs with my gear on (like we'd been taught) , waiting for the current class to end so we could hit the mats at the sensei's signal, in a deep sense of order and respect that marks the true martial artist. After all, he was the one with the black belt who'd fought a thousand fights to be leading class, as he reminded us whenever he felt his crowd was drifting away in the wrong direction.

Schools with a lot of beginners need almost-constant encouraging from the staff, because amateurs without any real artistry lose heart without paying cheerleaders to rally them from the sidelines, in a paid show of support. With me it was totally unnecessary, and the staff knew that, too. They were, quite simply, blown away by me, choosing instead to give me a wide berth at the school while their lead guy taught me their classes. That night of St. Pat's was my favorite class, "Bag Training", because it was easier on my bad knee than the training that's typical for grappling classes (even with the padding), plus I depended less on the partner who held the punching bag for me. I had a "rep", as they say, which is typical for me everywhere I go.

The more frightened students who'd been coerced into classes they couldn't get a refund for, without serious injury or moving out of town (the Attorney General for New Jersey from years ago had to sue them as a chain, on behalf of the parents of injured children who never got refunds, as one Eliot Spitzer), made whispered deals in the locker room for training partners, to ensure some sense of control over what happened to them on the mats. I had no such luck, seeing as most of them women there avoided eye contact with me purposefully, to avoid partnering with me or having a conversation, so I just went with whoever didn't have a partner after sensei said "partner up" in class, like selecting kids for a hard game of dodgeball with lots of long-held grudges, except that this was the opposite.

Luck have it, I got a Mick who was enrolled with the cop's discount program, or at least that's what I remember hearing, and he certainly fit the description. During warm-ups, I got a good look at him as I sat on his feet while he did crunches. We'd been given instructions to hem the sleeves and pants of our gi's and baring that, to at least roll up our sleeves, which you wanted to do anyway, just to cool your skin in the hot dojo and get them out of the way. He'd chosen to ignore that rule, preferring instead to do the handy bachelor trick of ripping the bottom of his white gi pants into a ragged edge, giving them the appearance of floods. Further still, he was a receding hairline, salt-and-peppered, middle-aged man looking to keep up with his fitness, and I certainly understood the motivation behind that. Maybe that was part of the deal behind his bright kelly green headband, too.

Not only that, he had on dirty pants stained at the butt, also against dojo rules to always wash your gi before your next class and be freshly washed, so as to not offend your training partner. Ah, fuck that! Most of us developed the easy routine of (at least) washing our gi the night before (they were the lightweight kind), and then hanging them to dry, because packing your gym bag for the day is also part of the routine. He'd also decided to mark himself out even further as a NYPD Mick by sporting that same green sweatband around his constantly-sweating red head, in case we missed his remarkably pale pallor on the exposed skin showing below his ripped pants. Oh! Thanks!

It was with a great sense of irony that I rolled with an Irish-born male still sporting his native brogue that I could discern in the few short words he did speak to me on the night of St. Patrick's Day, while other Celts drank to exhaustion or vomiting, as he sweated with me on the bright blue mats. Could be worse, I though to myself, smelling him ripely for not the first time that night. We could be one of them on the other side of the huge pane of glass in that street-level studio, easily viewable to the drunks making fun of us as they weaved pass. We could be one of them wandering about aimlessly, in a city not of their own. Besides, I never forgot it, have I? Here I am working for all of you today at my local library, instead of some equally desperate office gig in the city, celebrating a weekday night made exceptional only through another rough commute made worse with the drunks who'd smell even riper on the evening bus out of town, if they weren't passed out already. I could be one of them instead. Go raibh maith agat.

 “May you have goodness.”

http://www.bitesize.irish/blog/polite-phrases-in-irish/ 

for R.S.
 

Leprechauns

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprechaun:_Origins

Sometimes the line between reality and legend can become a bit blurry, especially if you live in a Celtic kind of town that can seem exactly like the Irish villages overseas from whence we came. Nua Nua*, indeed! Much like family anywhere, we share a lot of the same personality traits, too, which is fun and confusing. Did I meet you already? I'm sure of it. You look so familiar....do you have a "doppelgänger**"? Homelands are fun, as we reconnect through the ages, making new links and strengthening those old tribal bonds that cannot be broken, no matter how thick the mists off the moor, or the fog bank rolling in from the Hudson may be. It's where the heart is.

My family often talks over one another or finishes each other's sentences, to either comic or irritating effect, depending on the context. The new version of the old game show "Family Feud" tells a similar tale told in real time, as first one sibling and then the next answers questions during the lightning round at the end of the show, hence the repeat answers that are acknowledged with more time given for the second round. It's funny and nerve-wracking to watch.

The same is true with my friends, family, neighbors, and acquaintances here in town. We live oddly connected lives, whether it's through shared blood or associations of other kinds. I've made lots of new friends here, who always seem to be joined to me genetically, too, and it makes me feel the comforts of home all over again, so I thank you for that. As we enjoy re-connecting with one another here in real ways that feel right, we also share a symmetry that's aligned through the commonality of our thinking styles, habits, and tastes.

My neighbor is like that. He's Italian and Irish-American like my mom's side of the family, a link that can be easily seen and felt with the ease of our conversation, especially about food and family values, meaning he likes to eat a lot, and so do I. We've talked about diet, healthcare, fitness, nutrition, weight loss (or gain), and his part-time work as a coin collector for vending machines. He's got two jobs actually (the second is at the high school), because he has a college-age son to provide for, and another boy in the Navy. G-d Bless! We crossed paths at the local laundromat early in my new tenancy, owned by his friend who looks like he stepped right off a boat anchored in the harbor to come ashore in this century, lured by the promise of streets that are rumored to be paved with gold, which means he and Mikey are leprechauns.

Seriously. When my brothers were little, they loved the clinking of coins, the way babies like the tinkling of keys. They're the first toys kids play with, because most fathers carry one or the other in their pockets. They had those coin-collecting booklets from the post office, and all of us had piggy banks for our spare change, because in our households every penny counts, and you never know when just one penny will make a difference someday. It's good to be thrifty! Besides home economy, we learned to identity different types of coins by looking at their states and creation dates updated at the U.S. Mint.

My brothers went on to other serious nerd passions like stamps, comic books, baseball cards, and movie memorabilia, which my oldest brother presumed to be the very first fortune he would cash in, as the money he needed for his Ivy League school. Even though we didn't like his arrogance about his IQ level, he wasn't wrong. He really did go to a highly desired Ivy League school for his prestigious MBA. Way to represent New York! I was so proud at his graduation, staying in the old stone, ivy-covered dorms that give our best schools their nickname.

But, my oldest brother was depending on something else besides chance by investing in his skills (which naturally pays off for him), and bad luck was what got his precious collection. Faulty wiring or a rogue squirrel ignited a boiler fire near his basement room at my mother's house in New City, which then traveled upstairs to my middle brother's room, guaranteeing that their collectibles would definitely be lost to either smoke damage or the burning fire. They used to share a room when they were small, before the oldest got a room built downstairs for his teenage years that used to be part of our split ranch's two-car garage, so their joint collections were in both rooms that were hit. Luckily, no one was home at the time.

And that's what my new friends here in town remind me of: sweet hometown boys who still like the cheerful sound of change clinking in machines that indicate there's a profit to be had by their labors. I find it charming, adorable, and sweet that they've made a successful business out of a laundromat and the machines that serve us, and that they get along really well, too, just like family, because real families always look out for one another. Always, my dears. Always.

http://lucky-charms.wikia.com/wiki/Cereals

*   https://www.bible.com/versions/884-oc1970-cuinn-tiomna-nua-1970 
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelg%C3%A4nger