Dublin

January 2, 2008

Bought a packet of white shirts at Marks & Spencer’s, and it feels special to crawl into a white shirt of a morning, especially after a night when no white shirts were worn.

I hiked across town New Year’s Night to the National Concert Hall to hear a concert by the National Symphony. In the lobby, the biddy factor was high, so I should have known what was coming. I bought the ticket to have something to do that night, without even asking what the program was. Predictably, the music was waltz-y, Strauss-y, very Viennese. I wonder how the Viennese managed to capture New Year’s? The music was unchallenging, frothy, amusing, and at the end I realized I’d had a good time. The conductor was an excellent showman; the soprano was a local favorite, and the tenor–one Michael Bracegirdle–was superb. I was seated almost under the stage, near enough to hit the concertmaster with a brick thrown underhand, and I could watch every detail of the soloists’ physical technique. My location made the orchestra sound stringy, and I knew the mix was off for me a little. It will be years before I need to hear Strauss–those Strausses–or Lehar again.

Ranged the darkness for a while. Found an alley for an emergency piss, like a good Irishman. I ended up at the George, which I didn’t think I would do. I met many, so it was some angel led me there. Ray was compact, handsome, maybe a little desiccated, as though he had been left out in the sun too long. He looked very gentle, but also very disillusioned by everything around him. I was interested, but I could feel his interest cooling into the default mode of polite disappointment. John with his prematurely white hair was garrulous and funny, but also a little competitive, the way educated Irish sometimes are. I said something which he thought was profound, and we spent the rest of our time together dealing with that, he alternately challenging and honoring the intelligence which I’d had–God knows–no intention of revealing. Had to refuse his offer of a bed for the night, as I had no stomach to continue fighting that fight. One slurring but quite beautiful Irishman suggested an alliance between us, but in the end he was too drunk, and all the name I have for him is “Sheeshosh.” he looked like a farmer out of a Benton painting, all sinew and shoulder. Sweet Martin was from Brasilia and makes pizza in a Dublin suburb it would cost him a hundred euros to taxi to if he missed the last bus.

Then came Francisco. Francisco is from Barcelona, with the dark, fragile beauty and sculpted black hairline of Spaniards. He was twenty six, I would guess, perhaps younger, and as great as his beauty was, the beauty of his spontaneous, absolutely un-self-conscious affection was greater. Francisco was kissing me within moments. I did myself proud by not asking why, but responding one for one. His demonstrativeness might have been embarrassing in another place, or if I had very much of a capacity to be embarrassed. I couldn’t stop smiling, even laughing, with his dark head burrowing into my chest. I think he and I were playing in different theaters, but as he had little English and I no Spanish to speak of, our separate dramas could keep their uncommunicated purity. I walked him home to his hostel. He wasn’t very drunk but he was very– something– innocent?–and I was afraid for him. I’m glad I made the effort. He didn’t have a private room in the hostel, and if it didn’t bother him, it didn’t bother me, either. I have met men who were pure desire. Francisco was something else. He was pure generosity. At one point I lost consciousness– it’s melodramatic to add “wafted off in a sea of bliss,” but that was precisely the case–and when I came to he was kissing my eyelids, the cardamon-scented warmth of his body all around me. I left when Francisco fell asleep, his body buried so hard into my chest that I didn’t know how to breathe. I left because the room was beginning to fill with other guests, and I didn’t know how to make my excuses with my reason for being there asleep. In any case, bless Spain. Bless Catalonia. Bless the gold sun and the gold son of the Mediterranean.

The thought crossed my mind concerning Francisco’s choice in the bar, “Why me?” I was likely not the only one asking that. I think the answer is that he knew he was a fountain, and he needed a deep pool to contain him. He knew he was a whirlwind and he looked for the jagged coast which could endure his onslaught.

All the beggars in Ireland are frauds.

Pavel wants to send Edward the King to a theater in Prague. He asks me if I mind.

The toilet in my room flushes with warm water.

The special display at the National Library is Yeats. After coffee in a French café where you can look out on Dawson Street through a great bubble of a window, I hurried there, whimpering with greed at the not-yet-open door. It was a series of videos about his life, quite well done, along with objects such as specimens of handwriting and a trophy he won in a foot race as a schoolboy. I could not hear the poems read without weeping. There were movies of the poet, as well, which were a good thing. One assumes he moved like a heron or a phantom, but among family and friends, drinking and laughing, he was a strong natural Irishman, and that put a foundation under all. Yeats is my spiritual father. There amid the ghosts of my father I realized it was time to stop mourning and start spending the inheritance.

Crossed the street to see Hugh Leonard’s adaptation of Great Expectations at the Gate. I had planned not to like it, but in fact it was thrilling, and, as I had never read the book, the surprises were an actual surprise.

There is a terrible wind. I keep thinking of horses.