Friday 28 February 2014

No Booze! No Sex! No Projectile Vomiting At this Party.

Mid Term.                                                                                                                                               At At Mid Term we go to watery mysterious County Cavan, myself having laborously disposed of the teenagers in various cunning ways. The boss gone west, the boy scheduled to spend his days working on the Uncle's farm,  his evenings allocated to friends and relatives. The Beautiful Girl carries on with her adoption by the Beautiful Boyfriend's parents. I am lying on the smooth bed in the deep deep quiet of  a  hotel bedroom  in Sean Quinn's fantastical hotel when the text comes in.  "Your dog found in the local (pub), please come get him".  "Oh" I say from the Zen space I have achieved,  "Oh. The boy must have let him out again, as he left the house for his Aunt's. "No" says my husband "No. The boy is in our  house partying with his disgusting mates, and there is not a thing you can do about it. Nada. Nothing". The boy's phone appears to be dead.

Next Morning
"Yeah, yeah, just got back, got the dog, yeah, from the um pub.How did I know he was there? What difference...I mean he was actually at the front door, when I got back, yeah, yeah,  saw him thought the um window.  How come I?...alright! ok! so I was here last night, had Joe  and Jack over for a few...anyway why should't I be able to...yeah yeah just Joe n Jack, that's all,  no party, no prob"  So I put it  firmly out of mind. Snatch back the greatly anticipated time out.  "After all"  I tell my husband," after all, sufficient onto the day is the evil thereof  etc etc, don't you think darling".  He takes his face out of a largish cocktail, post swim and sauna, under the marbled ceiling of the Quinn Taj Mahal and nods vigorously.

Home again. A slow unveiling.
He begins a delicate sniffing as we walk back into the house, my very own sniffer dog spouse. My stomach tightens at the prospect ahead. My bubble bursts. Yes oh yes, it was a party. The evening is a slow unveiling. Broken sweeping brush in the kitchen, the chopping board smashed, empty vodka bottle on the mantlepiece, cigarette ashes scattered in unlikely places, and strangely, one of the rockers from the rocking chair lying madly in  the front garden. "I uh tidied up like you said" a cowed boy offers, "It was uh the dog who smashed the chopping board". "Right " I say, "right, well I' m off to bed now,  we will discuss this tomorrow".  "And we will " I assure my disgruntled spouse, "when I'm. like,  fresh, and decided on penalties. Now I have seen the fall-out. Tomorrow".

Disgusting.
In the morning I escape gladly to work. Penalties are set out for the boy when I return. "Well that's that", I declare heartily,  "he had to do it, so did I, now it's done. Over. So, did my recording of Eastenders take do you think, angel?  Let's just  see". But oh, dear reader,  so not over. "Your new printer?  probably never work again. Probably. I mean I did my best to mop up the beer, but... ." Huh??  "Yes! I have been finding things all day. Disgusting! I mean I think I got em all. And... disgusting!"  I had got into the most recent dark doings on Eastenders when these sepulchural utterances sound from my left side, where my husband was, I thought, quietly reading. .

It was the projectile vomiting he particularly objected to..
I hold Eastenders.  I inspect. There is a slop of beer on the printer lid, which I mop and remove. "Well no harm done, ." I utter brightly, wondering why he, the prophet (of doom) hadn't actually mopped it up. I have regained the thread of sorrow in Eastenders when  "It was the projectile vomiting that I particularly objected to.... look over there on the wall, and also the cigarette burn to your painting"!!!!!!

Hysteria
I hold Eastenders. I call the boy down, hysterically. He assures me earnestly that the brownish marks on the wall are not in face vomit but the Beautiful girls  iron tonic spattered on the wall by Smoke n Sam, who got completely out of hand, weren't actually invited,  "and I just could't stop them if you want to know the truth, and I 'll never ever have people over again after that" he finished in an actually  aggrieved tone. (masterly)

Confession is hard on the nerves.
"Right!" I said "Right!, I want it all. I don't care what it is, I want it all. I will not have this drip feed of horrors, and that includes you to" I tell my husband. Right,  so, anyway,  there was six boys at the party, booze, music, and some mayhem. That was Smoke n Sam. Who were not invited, but came anyway, and fell on things, sneered at the boy's interventions,  that kind of thing. Oh, and also splattered the beautiful one's iron supplement  tonic about in disgust when they discovered it was't actually alcohol."  I shove a cloth into the boy's  hand,  "Wipe! I say.  " Tonic Smonic.  I know projectile vomit when I see it.  Simpleton!"  my husband utters. The boy flings the cloth at his head. "Retard"  my husband hisses.  I dispatch a shaken boy to his room, confession is hard on the nerves after all, ask my husband is HE done, and return to the East End. " Letting him off the hook" comes a mutter, stage left."Off the hook. Of course you don't care either about the girls clothes, the cheap handbag,  the condoms, in that corner over there I found" !!!!!!!!!
                  
 It was Smoke n Sam what done it.
I hold Eastenders. Well,  friends, after some anguished grilling on my part, I establish that the girls clothes consisted of  a cardigan and bag, retrieved by the triumphant husband from the closet where he had flung them. Exhibit A! "Cheap" he sniffed,  "Plastic" holding the bag at arm's length. As to my horrified vision of used condoms scattered about my living room, there were two, still in package, tucked into a wallet. Now in the bin. Don't know if that too was cheap, or plastic. I climb the stairs shakily. The boy is in confab with his sister in his bedroom. "I said all" I cried, "All ". "How am I to find any sane course between you and him down below?. How am I to do right by you all,  with this bowl of maggots to go on, this gradual torturous reveal. I want it all.  Now. Or I'm off. Permanently."   The beautiful  girl glares at the boy, "Tell her!"  " Yeah,  Ok, right, there were like  two girls, from my year.  But they left at twelve.  Collected by their father" he finishes  piously.  "Was there sex!" I roar. "Mum!"  "Listen!" I say," I wasn't there! This is my house. You are my children. I am responsible.  How old were the ..." "No", said the boy hastily, nothing like that.  It was Smoke n Sam who brought the condoms. Nothing to do with the rest of us. I couldn't get them to leave. Told you. That's all"

On the Cruel Hook.
I am in my living room, staring at a blank TV Screen.  My husband is gone to bed. After I told  told him what I thought  of his drip feed, his projectile vomiting, after he told me what he thinks of my childrearing, my blind eye, my letting people off the hook.  "No hook!," I mutter to myself " no one is going on the  hook in this house. " The beautiful glides in the doorway, asks if I'm all right.  "That's it" she says kindly, "I've had it all from him and so have you. Forget about the condoms, someone always brings condoms to a party. Forget about the other stuff. He is sorry about the other stuff.  Really.  Sorry. "Yes, but, darling" I say,"I am responsible for what goes on in this house"  "So what!" she says,"nothing um really bad happened.. He had to do it, throw a party, now it's done, he won't be doing it again.  Did it myself, only  bigger! better!, remember? (no!).  Now,  I'm past that sort of thing. So will he be.  Also no one could like vomit up the wall like that" she grins and leaves me to my brooding.

Brooding.
I think it must surely be possible to hire,  like,  muscle.  A swarthy  Russian say, to house sit when you take a bare few days away.You could set him up with a Six pack of beer, pizza, the names and ages of the teenagers. Leave him at it. Ask no questions.  Pay him a reasonable fee for his trouble.  I revisit my old plan to offer my house to a team of psychiatrists for research purposes, charge them a reasonable fee to keep the place running,  move to Havier, Spain, , where I would live in the heat of the sun, reading , writing, in solitary Zen like balance. Occasionally I would skype.

What does it mean?
The boy slithers in to tell me he has found the broken wooden rocker between his sheets,  in his bed, "What I mean is, is he like trying to tell me something?" I tell him I will ask and get back to him. ( I now understand that, much earlier, when I was happily absent,  the same rocker was flung back and forth between man and boy in a zinging altercation).  I return to my  my reverie.

Once We Were Bastards
In Cavan, we went to see the mass grave of the girls who burned to death in the Cavan convent in the 1940s, locked inside by grim nuns as the flames gained purchase, least the townspeople might see them in their night attire. I am a bit haunted by this story and my husband remembers the grave from his youth, a bare fenced in plot with brief granite headstone. At first he cannot find the grave, and when he does he tells me that it has been made over, a layer of fancy gravel, a marble monument, the girls names listed at the bottom. The nuns have pride of place on this glossy marvel erected by the sisters  to express their sorrow, as it says. "Thats  Ok then" I tell him, "All in the past, all  washed clean in the tears of the  nun. Not. Better to have left the bare granite thing alone, better to have written  "Once we were Bastards" than this revisionist mawkish rubbish. Then maybe they, and the rest of us  who let it happen would all be washed clean it the blood of the lambs babycakes. No?"  He has no answer for me.


Friday 7 February 2014

No Sick Stuff in this House. No Teenage Kicks No Kinky.

He doesn't actually drink.
"Yeah, yeah , think it was the pizza. Oh yeah  definitely the pizza, last night. Yeah."  The boy is at his blandest to an enquiry about  my early morning encounter with his shoes, planted on the hall mat, encrusted with vomit. I mean it was Saturday, it was early, and I only just registered this in passing on my way to a meeting. I was quite tempted to bat the memory away, turn a blind eye as it were. But I gird  my loins for a blistering interrogation.

Not really.
He persists. Yeah, he met up with his friends last night. Yeah he came back after midnight, and yeah  but ... No!  He doesn't actually drink, hardly ever, not really. Well OK OK he may have had a few drinks, but so what?  Why can't he have a few drinks?.   All his friends have a .... , and am I actually saying he CAN'T have a few drinks? Well I can forget that. And anyway he hardly ever only on a Friday, would never ever have more than a few. Like?  Three say, or four maybe. What do I mean four what?  What do I think he means?.  Cans!, cans!, and no he's not  totally underage. Well, but he doesn't actually buy them in the PUB, and besides he paid for them himself,.didn't he? He has a  Saturday job, doesn't he?  And besides what did I do when I was his age, and also and he has already said, it wasn't  drinking, IT WAS THE PIZZA!

IT WAS THE PIZZA.
I tell him that's a crock, and  if he does it again there will be most Severe Repercussions, and I'm on his case, and now I'm leaving him to reflect on what I've just said. I exit stage left.

He will sleep on the sofa.
I  almost make it to the deep deep peace of the marital bedroom, when I am nabbed by the beautiful girl who wants to know if her quite as  beautiful boyfriend could't stay at ours next Saturday night, "because you see we're off to a party thing,and oh NO alchohol! what do you mean alcohol?,  over our way, and how is he to get home after, unless of course you might be able to give him a lift?" but anyway not to worry, she often stays at his, and so...."Often stays at his! But.. but surely only once or twice, and only after I had spoken to his mother. Surely?..and and.... Leave him Home?. No I will not Leave him Home, why should I....and also where would she be proposing  he sleeps? Anyway":.

Naturally.
She arches an elegant eyebrow, "Oh sleeps? Why on the sofa naturally,.IF that's what you want. Whatever. Don't know what the problem is. Never a problem at his. And HIS mother is cool. And very strict. As well". Plus she is eighteen years old. Almost. Can do what she likes. So can he. So can he or can't he. Stay?. I tell her I'll get back to her. Later. "On terms.  With consequences" I throw over my shoulder as I dive through my own bedroom door..

 One day baby.
"I'm gonna leave you now, to get your Severe Repercussions in a row and ready to fire" my husband says, who is of the opinion that I'm peeing in the wind, so to speak, ought to give it up, let it go, bow to the inevitable. "But first perhaps, we should have a little rest" he smirks thoughtfully. "Minors," I say "both of 'em, minors. And I intend to pee away,  frustrate, limit, make tricky - tricky all boozing, fornication and other delightful freedoms, until they reach the age of majority. And roll on the age of majority.  And after that they're can clutter up their own heads with their vomity shoes, and sleeping partners, you and me baby will be out to lunch, busy busy doing esoteric things. And also having ACTUAL good long rests.