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Published: August 6th 2008
Stalag 17
I snapped this photo of my hostel room in Dublin after the girls left.Things were looking up for me. I had arrived in Dublin the night before. The cheapest sleeping arrangement I could find—at $50 per night-- was to share a long narrow room in a hostel with four girls my daughter's age. The bathroom was so tiny that it was necessary to step out of the shower to turn around. The next morning I left before the girls woke up so as to avoid any "awkward moments." Due to an unforeseen bank holiday, everything was closed, so I ended up sitting on a park bench contemplating the difference between being homeless and simply not having anyplace to go.
But when I returned to the hostel that evening the girls were gone and my friend
Ralph—a graduate student at Trinity College and son of my very dear Zimbabwean friends Rob and Jacquie—was waiting to take me out to a pub.
Night-town The pub was housed in a shell of a building, as if the place had recently been gutted by a fire that no one noticed. It was packed. A group of musicians played a Irish jigs. I leaned against the wall, pint of Guinness in hand, feeling very
Cheers lads!
Ralph, John, and Andrew. Ralph is writing his dissertation on disruptive design and provocative technology. John is a computer guy. Andrew is a professional Viking. much in the moment. I stood between Ralph and a tiny leather-skinned man with a long wispy gray beard and eyes that sparkled. He reminded me of a leprechaun. I listened in to the conversation he was having with Ralph: "Well fook ya" the leprechaun said. ”Well fuck you too" Ralph replied. Apparently the two were on the verge of battle over a bar stool occupied by one of the leprechaun's invisible friends. I pushed Ralph out the door and asked if there wasn't a nice safe biker bar in the neighborhood we could go to instead.
Trainspotting I can make out the shrill whistle of Ralph's fire alarm warning us that it has been disabled. Ralph shut it down last night after it went off several times. It monitors the house's ancient electrical system and rings each time it detects a short circuit. Perhaps the alarm itself had a short circuit. Would that make it self aware, I wondered, or just broken?
Ralph took pity on me and invited me to sleep at his place. Naturally, I jumped at the chance to escape the hostel. If you've seen the film
Trainspotting, then you might have some
Conversation Piece
Stuffed monkeys grace Ralph's mantle. idea about what Ralph's place looks like. He describes it as a squat that they rent. It's a Georgian style building with high molded ceilings, holes where elegant chandeliers once hung, and peeling paint. Perhaps the home of an upper middle class family 200 years ago, it would have been shared by 50 or 60 families a century ago. Some would have rented sleeping space in the hallways. Eventually a few of the residents would have contracted tuberculosis and the health department would have boarded it up.
Fast forward to now. Ralph lives here with several roommates. They furnish the place from
Freecycle, which is sort of like eBay, but free. Two stuffed monkeys grace one side of the mantle. On the other side a Bin Laden puppet battles it out with a Bush puppet. Both are suspended from the hip bone of some large animal. The chairs are like soggy buns that squish to the floor when I sit on them. I can't tell if I'm sitting or lying. In the bathroom I notice a spot on the wall. It looks like a giant prehistoric tapeworm. But is it real or a toy? I touch it with a
Decaying elegance
Ascending the stairs to Ralphs living room. stick and it recoils.
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Debra
non-member comment
You look stately but not plump at the Martello Tower.