The Irish Incident

I re-decorated my space here. I hope that you find it to your liking.

This summer my friend from high school, Maddie, her roommate Katie and I have been playing trivia every Sunday at a local bar. Our usual competition is comprised of the team that sort of works there (ugh, complete with the most annoying man alive), some random team, and the Irish. The Irish are four guys spending the summer over here.

We drink with them and learned how to play darts last week. Since it's their last week in town, we decided to cook them an officially American meal: sloppy joes. Apparently "manwhich" has a very different connotation in Ireland. So late last night, we made them dinner, complete with potato salad and fruit salad. They were in charge of bringing beer.

An interesting detail: they are the proud parents of a hamster. I forget his name, but he will be journeying with them to California. I hope they decide to leave him here with me.

We were given the roof of their $400 minivan "Sally" to spray paint. The rest of the van says quite interesting things. We added "O'Bama" (get it? Irish?) and "Free OJ" as well as a bullseye and some polka dots.

Then we went to the neighboring house to attend a party. We were probably there all of ten minutes when something happened and we were asked to leave. We assume that one of the girls with a boyfriend got upset about them talking to her (oh no!) and asked the boys there to kick us out.

So we got in the minivan (an experience, I must assure you) and drove downtown, blasting loud music and dancing wildly. (At this point I must interject that there was a designated driver.) The Irish opened the sliding door at times, quite effective air conditiong, I must say. We all got downtown to this bar called "Joes" which apparently has $2 pitchers on Tuesdays. The line outside of it was over an hour long and it was already getting late, so we attempted to talk our way in with the bouncers.

My favorite of the Irish so far is a guy named David, who looks remarkably like Jason Segal (star of the tv show "How I Met Your Mother" and the movie "Forgetting Sarah Marshall). Him and I were standing by the bouncer when David told him that he was in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and he'd give him an autograph if he let us in. Ha. The bouncer's reply: "Get away."

There was a poor girl throwing up next to a lamppost, so I went over to her and gave her the bottle of water that I had brought with me. She murmured thanks, never lifting her head, but grabbed the water.
The Irish boys were taking pictures with a motorcycle gang at that point.


So we went across the street.

And that's where the fun began. Dancing! I've been wanting to go dancing for so long. I can't dance, that is a known fact, but after a certain point, you must throw all dignity away and wave your limbs around. It's fun. We all danced and drank and chatted (yelled over the music) until our attention was captured by a happening on the other side of the bar.

That's how I came to ride the mechanical bull. David and another one known affectionately as The-One-With-No-Nickname who is Paul rode the bull and then it was my turn. I stayed on for so long. I was terrified, thrilled, overwhelmed with utter joy. I finally fell off to applause.

The night wound on, dancing, a girl from my Shakespeare class was there, we wrote "303" and "Denver" and "KtBarry" and "MadD House" on the walls of the bathroom, Irish boys, Irish boys, Irish boys. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent.

The adventure didn't stop when we left the bar, however. The train ride home was immense as well. I ran into another girl I had class with once. And then we got on the train which was late and delayed, so we chatted with the guys sitting next to us on the train. They had quite enjoyed my mechanical bull riding performance. Maddie could hardly get up on it, but rode valiantly. They told us that someone had gotten knocked out right as we left after falling off of the bull and then being hit in the head. Sad that we missed that.

In Chicago, the trains sometimes run express, which means they skip a bunch of stops and then let you off at a random one. Last night, the train we were on ran express from Belmont to Jarvis. A sweet gay guy asked us for cigarettes, which we obviously didn't have, and then struck up a conversation with us. We ended up polling the entire platform to see who had ever gotten off at Jarvis. One girl, the girl I had class with once, had gotten off at Jarvis to buy drugs.

Laughter ensued as everyone began to joke about money, and the strenghth of American currency and the barter system. And then we got on a train. The man asked the man on the other side of us if he was homosexual (he drew the word out, like, "Excuse me, sir, are you a ho-mo-SEX-u-alllll?") The man laughed and said no. The other man approached him, touched his collar and said, "I love the V-neck tee."

It was a nice shirt.

We made it home. There was a dreadful minute where I was worried that I'd lost my keys, but they were safely at Madeline's.

Hopefully this sort of adventure can occur again before they head out.