I’m relying on the bar in Cú Chulainn’s to spite gravity and keep me standing.  It’s closing time on a watery May Saturday night and I’m still in my mucky, grass and blood-stained gear after a slugfest above in Franklin Park against a Canadian team that kinda-sorta passed for rugby. 

In the corner of Cú Chulainn’s, on a low-ceilinged stage, a big-bearded guitarist and a bigger-bearded drummer back up a gaunt, sweat drenched front man as he wallops out his third rendition in a row of “The Men Behind the Wire.”  

The men behind the bar, in black pants and beer-spray stained white shirts, dart from cooler to counter with fistfuls of long-necked Buds feeding the flailing hands of voracious last-callers. 

In the back corner, deep fried food is shoveled out the glaringly bright “FOOD” window in exchange for damp dollars that just a few minutes ago woulda been tips for the barmen had not the smell of fried everything consumed the customer with alcohol induced ravenousness.

By the open front door, a Boston cop sits on a barstool sipping an ice-filled pint of Coke, his blue uniform and angular hat incongruous amongst the throng of GAA and Premiership jerseys. 

A barman walks in from the street, his white shirt splattered down the front with blood.

“Jaysys I wen’ out for a fag an’ that bollix Mahoney took a swing at me,” the barman complains to the cop.

“Mah…honey’s a fag as well as a fucken douche bag!” the cop retorts, furrowing his brow, swirling the ice in his glass.

“Nah, nah, nah, not that, not that, ever’thin’s not that!” the barman shakes his head a lot as he unbuttons his shirt.  “He’s a fucken holy scourge Mahoney is with drink on him.  An’ a nicer fella ya wouldn’t meet the length an’ breadth a Dorchester when he’s sober, but then a course he’s never sober!”

The barman whips off his bloodstained dress shirt revealing a white tee shirt with a graphic of a muscle-rippling Cú Chullain gripping a hurl in one land like he’s there to start, or finish, a fight.

With one hand grasping hard at the bar, I look around for more of Tipperary Tom.

We landed here after a long Saturday evening’s drinking that started on the touchline after seventy minutes of ourselves and the Canadians battering the living shite out of one another in the muck.  From Franklin Park we repaired to Nash’s, another Irish bar further down Dorchester Avenue.  The Canadians, down from Toronto for a thirsty weekend walloped down the soup, sandwiches and pints of piss-water beer we provided them as our sometime combatants but now guests, before the whole pub settled in for a wet-Saturdah evening feed a Guinness.

“Whare iz ye’se from?” one of the Canadians asks in strong Northern Ireland accent as he  sets his pint of Guinness down on the counter,.

“Mayo.”

“Tipperary.”

 “Bangor.”

 We variously answer.

 “Oh aye,” the Canadian-Northerner asks, his eyebrows raising, “Bangor N’orn Irelan’?”

 “Yeah,” Ian answers, looking away.

 “Ah Jaysys, I thought it ‘twas Bangor-Erris up in north Mayo you were from!” I say, my non-confrontational side re-emerging after an hour and a half of unmitigated confrontation.

 “An’ did ye’se play for Bangor?”

 “Oh aye, never fer the fursts, but all thee ways up through thee youth teams.”

 “Oh aye,” the Canadian-Northerner stands upright, raises his shoulders, stares each of us in the eyes. 

“I’ played fer thee Civil Service.”

 He stares from one pair of eyes to the next.

 “Ohhhh aaayyye,” I say, cutting into the rising tension.

 “I’n surprised that a rugby club’d bring us tee a pub,” his lips tighten, eyes harden, “with ‘up thee IRA’ an’ ‘fuck thee queen’ written all over thee jax walls.”

 “Gud pint,” Tipperary Tom says.  “We shoulda got dem to carve sumptin about de UVF in dere too.  Maybe dey can just scribble it in after de queen?”

 The burly former Civil Servant’s brow furrows, his eyes narrowing to slits.

 “Here Johnny,” I raise my pint at the barman.  “Will ya give this man a pint a Guinness, he doesn’t appreciate your shithouse artwork, but sure rugby lads don’t fall out over artistic differences.”

 Johnny, his black barman’s trousers halfway to his nipples, raises one bushy eyebrow while staring out from under his other hedge-brow and breathlessly issues:

 “Well Jaysys he better be gone bafore Chewsdah night when t’Wolfe Tones come in they’re playin’ McAnespies in a, in a … in a boxin’ match below in Flatley’s field ferta warm up bafore t’season starts an’ t’Aer Lingus cavalry flies in from every bleddy GAA clubhouse in Ireland ferta steal their places.”

 The Civil Servant’s eyes dart nervously from Johnny to Ian to me.

 “Relax, relax,” I say, trying to sound older than my twenty-five years.  “Have a few pints, go downtown, no wan down there could find t’fucken border, let alone tell ya who lives on what side of it.”

 “Ach aye,” the Civil Servant stares at me, then glares at Ian.  “Thee boys upove in Tow…ronto said Boston wuz a dodgy town … an’ right they ware, right they ware!”

 Still, he stays for the pint Johnny quickly sets on the counter for him.

“They’re ya are now, mudder’s milk, that’s what that is mudder’s milk,” Johnny says peering out under his hedgerow eyebrows.

The Civil Servant nods, picks up the pint and says with a smirk:
“Cheers, an’ God Bless thee Queen!”

We switch the conversation to safer topics like how many drinks the captain of the Exxon Valdez musta drank before that fierce parking job; who was to blame at Hillsborough; and we all lower half a pint to Fly Mannion’s try in Cardiff Arms Park.

“All dat wuz between us an’ de wooden spoon!” Tom says, holding his foam lined, pint glass up to the rugby gods and the cigarette smoke-stained ceiling. 

After a couple of hours, our new best friends from Canadia slap backs, swallow stray pints with chin soaking gulps as the work their way toward the door, leaving to prepare for a real night out.

 “Aye, aye,” the Civil Servant, his eyes watery now with booze, comes up to say his goodbyes.

He leans forward and whispers in a conspiratorial tone.

“Did ye’se ever hear about the time a wee mon got pulled intee an alley in Bell…fast an’ a gun got put up again he’s forehead, an’ thee gunman askes: ‘Are youse Cath’lic … or Prodestant?”

Out of nowhere he loses his footing and lurches for the bar to save himself.

“‘No, no, no’ says the wee mon,” the Civil Servant leans against the bar, a grin plastered across his face.  “I’n nayther Cath’lic nor Prodestant: I’n a Jew.”

He nods emphatically at this unforeseen plot twist.

“‘Oh aye, that’s all gud ‘n well,’ says the gunman, ‘but are ye’se a Cath’lic Jew or a Prodestant Jew?’”

The Canadians depart, taking with them a heap of Saturday night energy.

We drink on until enough of our teammates with families to go home to drift off.  Each swing of Nash’s back door siphons off more of the Saturday evening energy. 

Still, Tom and I cling to the bar.   A couple of pints later the cavalry bustle in: Some Irish friends, faces razored shiny, out for a nuthin-like-startin’-early Saturday night.  We drink guffaw and drink again with them until an always-up-ta-sumptin Kerryman waves us out to his car.

“Will we git a bit smoke lads?”

“Sure, sure, sure.”

We pile into his enormous, rust eaten Cadillac Fleetwood.

“Jaysys I a’ways taut de rugby lads wuz fierce posh, an’ look at ye, ye don’t evan have showers.  De luvly seats in me oul Caddy’ll be ruined,” he jokes, careening the huge car out onto Dorchester Ave to the blare of horns from both directions.

“We’ll go up now ta Darchester Donnah, he does always have some gud stuff of a Saturdah night.  Mind ya now, ‘tis t’on’y Saturday that I’d go ta him,” the Kerryman expounds sagely as we whip past brightly lit storefronts.  “Ya cudn’t be like dem ‘Mericans smokin’ it all day long on de job, an’ dem like wombies with deir ould dreamy eyes.”

We park on a dark part of a particularly dark street on Ashmont Hill and walk back half a block until the Kerryman suddenly ducks down the side of a three decker and into the cellar door well.   

The Kerryman pushes open the cellar door.  A bare hundred-watt bulb light floods the tiny hallway with white light.  Just a few feet from the cellar door is another door, a solid metal slab with no hardware on the outside except four fisheye peepholes: Two at standing and two at sitting height.

The Kerryman raps on the metal door.

“Howaya now Donnah, ‘tis yer ould pal from Castleisland,” he calls out loudly and turns to Tom and I.  “See, Donnah’s wan a de Farranfore crowd; sure ‘ou know dey go.  Anyways, he does a’ways be givin’ me shite about some lad as wuz a soldier below at de for on Castle Island, in Southie like.  Not de real Cashelisland back in Karry, an’ dis fella, he wuz within in de cashel, a soldier like, way the fucken-fuck back, … ahh!”

He waves his hand in front of his face impatiently.

“An’ don’t ya see he writ some frightenin’ shite about crows knockin’ on de door an’ all dis stuff, ya know scarin’ de shite outta people.  ‘Mericans do luv scary stuff.  Poh or Poor or sumptin was he’s fucken name.  Donnah does say I’m the ‘Poh from d’udder Cashelisland.’  Ah, he does a lot a talkin’ does Donnah; he’s jawbone don’t git much rest.”

The Kerryman’s ramblings are silenced by the metallic grind of heavy bolts sliding back. The door arcs open to reveal a gaunt thirty-something, with a mane of red hair tied back in a ponytail, in a plain black tee-shirt, sitting in tall-backed office chair.  His long legs push him backwards just enough that we can enter.  He waves us in and points to a small leather sofa, so small that I have to sit on the arm while Tom and the Kerryman flop heavily onto their seats.  As soon as we’re in, Dorchester Donny slams the door shut and drives the bolts home hard.

He tips the chair backwards, flings his hands up behind the ponytail and pivots, bending one gangly leg at a time, eyes dancing across our faces.  The tiny room, lit only by a portable TV screen, is crowded out by the leather sofa, twin four-foot-tall speakers hanging from the wall behind an olive-green metal desk which is itself crowded by a double turntable, a stack of amps, the portable TV, sitting on top a VCR, the tiny TV screen frozen on the bare-chested, cowboyed-hatted helicopter commander scene in Apocalypse Now.  

“Hey my man!” Donny suddenly stops pivot-staring and lurches forward to execute an elaborate handshake, grabbing the Kerryman’s palm, then forearm, then back to palm. 

“I didn’t think you wuz comin’ by, I a’most sol’ all mah cheap shit,” he says in full on urban African American street diction.

“Yerah, wud ‘ou go ‘way outta dat, sure I tol’ ‘ou I wuz goin’ ta siven a’clock mass an’ I’d be by after.”

“Yeah, it’s fucken nine thurty now, that’s what I mean,” Donny’s faint-red eyebrows knit together.  “When I wenta mass, it was over in thurty minutes.  I don’t like people ta show up outside their slot, makes me jumpy, plus the neighbors talk.  You’re gonna haf to stay for a beer now, my nine o’clock just left, this aint no Mc-fucken-Donalds with people pullin’ up for their order.”

“Ah, sure dat’s fine, no bodder atallatallatall, I’ll have a bud.”

“Ya’ll have what I got that’s what you’ll have,” Donny yanks on the desk filing cabinet, which opens to reveal it’s a false front for a dorm fridge full of beer.

“Here,” he hands the Kerryman a Coors Lite.

“Coo…ers Lite!” the Kerryman yelps.  “Sure, dat’s what I drink when I’m off de beer.”

We take our bottles silently. 

As the bottle opener is passed around, I absorb the rest of my surroundings:  Across from me in the low-ceilinged room, a poster of Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell covers the entire wall.  The blue hue from the portable TV screen purples Hell’s red and tints the magical motorcycle’s white-hot exhaust sky blue.  Behind the desk the wall is a collage of metal band concert posters pinned one over the other at odd angles with Molly Hatchet covering Iron Maiden covering Black Sabbath.

“So, these dudes from the old country too?” Donny asks, issuing a confident snort-chuckle as he stares with curiosity at our mucky legs, stained rugby shorts, hair jutting out at every angle. “Or are they Eye-rish rodeo clowns?”

“Yera dese two leibides was off playin’ foreign games,” the Kerryman waves his already half-finished bottle at me perched on the arm of the sofa.  “Dey should git a spark a sense an’ pack in dat ould rugby an’ play a bit a football with de Tones or Shannon Blues.”

“Man, I don’t know about that,” Donny’s brow furrows.  “Football’s too much man, when I was at BC high football players got banged up pretty good.  I think the best way to do sports is watchin’ them on TV … from your sofa … with a beer … an’ a toke.”

“Ya cud be right dere, ya cud be right, or ta have ould bet on dem is not bad nayther,” the Kerryman offers with a mischievous chuckle.

“Let’s get some Eye-rish tracks rollin’ for you laddies,” Donny swivels in his office chair.  “I wuz watchin’ Apocalypse Now but I don’t like that fucken elevator music they got on the soundtrack during the beach battle scene, so I turn down the volume an’ play Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs.’”

He slides open one of the desk’s file cabinet drawers that actually is a drawer, and not a front for a fridge, and flicks through albums until he pulls out Thin Lizzy’s “Live and Dangerous”.

“This is gud music,” he nods, scrunches his lips together.  “So gud ya wonder how it aint Amer…, ya know, how it wuzn’t made here.”

He slides the black disc out of the Phil-Lynott-fucking-the-world album cover, and holding the slim disc gingerly between his fingertips drops it gently over the spindle.

“Aragh, sure it prolly was made in ‘Merica, sure dem leibides back at home couldn’t hardly manu…facture a … a ….”

The spindle hiccups and the black disc glides down onto the turntable.

“… a fart if dey didn’t have de ‘Merican food ferta pervide de wind, sure dem fuckers wudn’t …”

Donny’s faint, red eyebrows knit together as his index finger gently raises the record player arm and moves the needle to the second thick groove line on the black disc.  Ever so slowly he lowers the needle into the groove.  The amp lights spring to life; the speakers crackle.

“… work ta warm demselves, livin’ off that bleddy oul EEC money, dey’d nearly git a fucken grant from de Gurmans for de same fart de ‘Merican food made fer ‘em!”

A muscular guitar riff rips through the speakers!

The riff slows just enough to let a rapid drumbeat add rhythmic energy.

The guitar riff ramps up: Then drums: Guitar: Drums: On and on until Lynott’s earthy voice melodically overtakes the music:
“Guess who just got back ….”

“You know this song?” Donny asks.

“Course we do, every fucken gobeshite in Irelan’ knows that song,” the Kerryman says, swigging his bottle of Coors Lite.  “‘Tish like mudder’s milk ta us.”

“Really!” Donny’s long legs push his chair back, eyebrows rising in genuine confusion.  “Thin Lizzy seem so genuinely un-Eye-rish to me.  Mom don’t even like me to play their music upstairs.  An’ that Shin…aid O’Connor, the bald one, after that big sin she done on live TV, I had ta bring her LPs down here.  Ma tol’ me one time it was a sin ta play them.  See, ta Ma Eye-rish music is all … you know the stuff that crowds out yer ears, like there’s like fucken fifty a them in the band, everyone from little shits to old farts, all beatin’ away on banjos an’ accordions, an’ they got like ten thousand fiddlers, elbows flyin’, eyes closed.  It gets ta be so much you can’t even think.”

“Ah, dat’s different,” Tom speaks up, seeming to come to life with the music.  “See dat’s Irish music, ya know like ceile music.  That’s on’y fer like Thursdah night in de pub.  On de weekend ya need a bit sumptin more …. moderner.”

“Mom don’t agree with that!” Donny laughs and points his finger at the whiteish ceiling tiles above him.  “Every Saturday on the Eye-rish Hour, she’s up there cleanin’ an’ cookin’ an’ clappin’!”

“Yeah, yeah, I mane, dat is Irish music, but not music made in Ireland,” Tom says, sounding drunker than he looks.  “Like, ‘tis made in Ireland … but like no one fucken lishens to it.”

Tom looks from the Kerryman to me, his brow furrowing as he shakes his head.

“What in de fuck do dey make that music for anyway?” he asks, his face contorting in confusion.

“Here,” Donny holds out a baggy for the Kerryman who elaborately withdraws a few notes from his jeans pocket.

“Dere, ‘ou can kape de change,” he says with a laugh as he stands to go.

“SIT DOWN!” Donny snaps.  “Like I said, this aint no McDonalds, you’re gonna need to cool your jets.  Fucken sly Maggie Leary’s been askin’ mom about ‘all my friends stoppin’ by for five minutes’.”

He holds his hands up in air quotes. 

“I jus’ tol’ mom that I don’t like ta go out, which is the truth.  Goin’ outside sucks.  People suck.”

We sit through Donny teeing up and playing Gary Moore’s “Back on the Streets” and then, swirling thirst from our now empty bottles, we slog through the Rats “Joey’s on the Street Again.”

“Jaysys Donny, fer a lad who dushn’t like goin’ out, ya surely do like songs about bein’ out n’ about!” the Kerryman laughs.

“Awright, fuck off so!”

  Donny snatches the record player arm so fast it makes a swooshing sound.

  “Oh Jaysys, ya scratched it,” I say instinctively, my older brother’s fists suddenly appearing in my psyche.  

  “Who gives a fuck!” Donny snaps.  “They’re a bunch a fucken Irish fags singin’ pussy music.”

  We file out, the steel door slamming behind us, the bolts shooting home.

“That lad’d want ta go for a gud walk some day,” the Kerryman says, his hands stuck down deep in his jeans pockets.  “Sittin’ in dere all de time floggin’ dis stuff ishn’t gud for him.  I don’t care if it ‘tis goin’ ta make him a millunaire like he says.  He’s mudder is from Farranfore ya know.  Sure, ‘ou couldn’t trust de Farranfore crowd!”