Friday Night, Out On The Town (Part 2)

Part 2, here we go...

I've left Brogan's & I'm on my way to meet Bryan & a friend of his from school at a pub called Anseo (which means here in Gaelic). I had been wanting to go to Anseo for awhile because I read good things about it online, so needless to say, I was excited. I get there, meet Bryan, but he lost contact with his friend, so he finally gets through to her & goes to get her. He challenges me to make friends with people in the pub while he gets his friend & we'll meet up soon. After about 10 minutes of being the akward guy watching people, sipping my pint, standing against the wall alone, I spot some American girls (they easily stand out) sitting at the bar & decide to go talk to them. I was quite nervous about this situation for a couple reasons: 1) I have a girlfriend, so in the back of my mind I'm thinking "Farah wouldn't like this. Don't get yourself in trouble." 2) Meeting girls in bars has never been my forte; I refuse to use pick-up lines, but even just saying "Hi, my name is..." is more difficult than need be these days and 3) I have girlfriend who I'm very serious about, so my general interest level in talking to them isn't very high (and I promise you, I'm not trying to suck up or cover my ass by saying that, even though I prolly could use the brownie points, lol).

Needless to say, my male ego kicked in & I started up a conversation with the girls (one Asian, one Blonde). As long as I look at it as me being a good wingman & making pretty friends to eventually funnel to Bryan, we're all good. The convo starts akwardly on my part, complete with a totally weak "excuse me", followed by a couple of handshakes & "hi, my name is kevin. what's your name?" intros. Luckily, they let me keep rambling akwardly until I had something decent to say & we started a conversation. It was the typical who-what-when-where-&-why small talk that you always do. The Blonde, Allie, is a loud-mouthed, slightly trashy looking girl with the unfortunate blonde hair with dark roots hair style. The Asian, Dee, was a cute, petite girl, simple & classy. Let me just say that, in this case, birds of a feather do not flock together. I mention that I'm an acting student studying here in Dublin and they inform me that they're studying in Paris & are here for the weekend. Allie, with a smart ass attitude, then tells me to perform a monologue for her to prove that I'm an actor. Note to anyone who meets an actor: unless you're a booking agent or have legit connections that could get some a job, don't ask an actor to perform for you when he/she is out socially, especially in a crowded bar. That alone is a pet peeve of mine, I'm not a puppet or a trained chimp, I don't perform on command. If you're a business student, I don't tell you to do a spreadsheet for me, so don't ask me do a monologue at the drop of a dime. Anyway, I'm a little thrown off & pissed, but in order to save face & by time for Bryan to get back, I give it a fair shot. Unfortunately, I lost focus & failed on delivering my monologue, so I just took the L & was gonna let it ride.

To Allie, that was unacceptable, and she tried to give me the business about it & then started to talk down to me about acting not being a real profession. Y'all know me, I'm an argumenative person, especially when it comes to something I love, so we had to go at it at that point. We're debating her ludicrous claims back and forth, which include such gems as "It doesn't take talent to be a great actor/actress at all, it only takes connections. Take Paris Hilton for example", "I could be a great actress right now if I wanted. I know everything about acting because my mother's best friend was an actress", and "Acting isn't a real major. The only real majors are Poli-Sci & Pre-Med". Now, I know you're probably saying to yourself, "Kevin, why would you waste your breath trying to argue with someone who's obviously stupid? You can't debate ridiculousness with rationality." And to that point, all I can say is that a brotha felt disrespected & I wasn't fittin' to back down to someone beneath my intelligence level. Pride is a hella of a drug, lol. While all this going on, her poor friend Dee has just been sitting on the side tuning in & out. When she finally tuned in, she sided with me (of course), and we proceeded to wreck Allie's argument tag team style. That was like her only opportunity to be in the conversation though, cause Allie wouldn't shut the hell up. Mind you, I can't stand this Allie chick but my fatal flaw is that I can't ignore that chance to tell someone they're stupid once I've started, so poor Dee is getting no attention. It so bad that the bartender made friends with her & was giving her free drinks cause she looked lonely. Somehow I gave up my mission to educate Allie & the three of us had a decent, civil conversation for a lil while & then Bryan showed up. He's boo'd up with his random lady friend though, so he offers me no help in how to get out of this conversation. The girls decide that they wanna go to Temple Bar, so I give them directions in an attempt to get them out of my hair (actually it was just because of Allie, she was demon spawn). They asked me to come with them, I thought "Oh hell to the naw", and politely declined using the "I have to stay with my friend" line (apparently it works for guys too). It was too bad though, because Dee was cute & I'm sure Bryan would of liked her, but whatever, he didn't need me to play wingman that night. Him and the lady friend seemed like they were heading in the same direction at the end of the night.

Ok, American girls gone. As soon as they left, a couple friends of ours who go to Trinity College in Dublin walk in. Great timing, people I actually enjoy talking to & haven't seen in weeks, now I'm back in an optimistic mood. The pub closes at like midnight, so we're disappointed & decide to find a late pub. We make it to Doyle's, right across the street from Trinity, and we had a good time. Doyle's is a nice pub, filled with college students & has 3 different floors with bars. We talk downstairs for awhile, then decide to go upstairs where the dance floor is. The dance floor is an interesting space full of people making out or akwardly trying to dance (mostly standing there bouncing in an uncoordinated way, with their feet seemingly glued to the ground). If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right? I had to make some fun for myself since my buzz was gone & I didn't have a strong urge to pay for any overpriced pint, so I dropped my Blackness for sec & danced like a lil kids just tossing my limbs around. Everyonce in awhile, they'll play something soulful and/funky, so I would catch my Blackness again for about 2 minutes per every 20 minutes. They love to play "Kiss" by Prince here, it may be their favorite Black song ever, so I rocked heavy to that. Also, "Intergalatic" by the Beastie Boys and "D.A.N.C.E." by Justice allowed me to feel slightly included on the dance floor. But they finished up with a killer finale of "I Want You Back" -Jackson 5, "Hit The Road, Jack" -Ray Charles, & "Shout" -Otis Day & The Knights (the Animal House version we all know, even though i just was reminded that it was originally an Isley Brothers song). When I tell you I tore it up, I'm saying I tore. it. up. That was a lot of fun, just losing it to those songs & I was satisfied with my night at that point. It was 2:45 am & I needed to be in bed. We we're scheduled to catch the 9am bus to Belfast that same saturday morning, and I did't get home until 3:45am, so you can imagine the type of morning I had on the way to Belfast.

***Update (or flashback)***
I forgot to tell y'all what happened on the way back from Doyle's. I leave Doyle's with one of the girls that lives down the hall from me. Its about a 30 minute walk back to the apartments, so we're just chatting away, trying to keep our minds off the cold and our fatigue as well. We're walking up Harcourt St & we can see a crowd start to form near this major venue called Tripod. Being the true Americans that we are, we make sure to get close enough to see the train wreck that was occuring. At first, we just saw some beligerent Irish guy & his girl fighting outside the club, almost spilling out into the street. Literally 10 seconds after we joined the crowd, this police van pulls up with its tires screeching & cops hopping out of the doors as if it was an '08 remake of the A-Team. Three of them go to break up the altercation and one grabs the guy & places the guy's hands behind his back while dragging him over to the van. For whatever stupid reason, the guy (who's not handcuffed at this point) decides that it would be great idea to fight the cop! He pulls his hand free and gets one solid haymaker in before the police struck down upon him with the cruel backhand of the law. When I tell you that they whooped this guy's ass, I mean 5 of them threw him to the ground got a couple hits in for good measure, pinned him to the concrete to cuff him, the picked him up (as if he was a corpse, but belly facing down) & threw him into the back of the van on his face. His girl tried to stand up for him, but she knew she didn't stand a chance & they didn't need more than one officer to subdue her attempt. Now, I've done my fair share of poking fun at the cops over here. They call them Guards (because of the Galiec name of the force), they don't have guns, and their batons look more light them 2lbs freeweights than anything daunting. But that night, they proved their hardbodieness. I now feel 2x more safe here & 2.5x more cautious to make sure that I don't end up as the Black Leprechan Rodney King. Now back to your regularly scheduled blog post:

More on the Northern Ireland trip soon though. To sum it all up, I enjoyed the evening because it gave me a little bit of everything I enjoy. A little dancing, a couple of pints, some really good conversations, some humorous akwardness, a reason to argue/debate, reuniting with good people, finding a new place, enjoying the typicall stomping grounds. It was like a month of friday nights rolled into one friday night. Does that ever happen to y'all?