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Donald
Saturday, August 22, 1992
Last night I caroused. I was gonna go out to disco with this dude Noel, but Donald (the readhead on the bunk below me) was describing a good glass of Guiness to me and got so excited he invited me out for one. What the hell, I brought Noel with. I had been telling Donald how I didn't like the taste of beer and he ordered me up a glass of Guiness with a dash of black current. Noel had vodka and lime. They didn't care how old we were/looked, they just served us.Donald left Noel and I to go dancing.
So we talked and talked and talked for one and three quarter hours or so. Women, politics, love, war, everything in little easygoing personal vignettes. It was very pleasant.Women were objects of admiration/adoration, and a woman of sexual prowess was "a good rider."Donald had served time in jail for breaking the collarbone of a guy who told his wife to "fuck off." Of one of the guys he met in jail, a bloke serving life+20 for shooting a copper, Donald called him "a man's man's man." He had previously called a guy "a man's man," a title of high distinction, so one can only imagine the high fibre of this guy's character.
Donald is almost 34, married for 12 years, with 5 kids. He was in the army for 3, served of the border, and in Lebanon. He'd been in scrapes, but he put his "hand on [his] heart" and swore that he'd never see his children that he'd never instigated a fight. He's a street artist in Dublin.
He read us a poem he wrote that said (in so many words) that if you think you'll win, you will. It rhymed, it made sense, it was a poem.
The next morning, Donald was the first up, and the first to leave, I was the second, rising after he had left. When I next checked my wallet, I was $160 short.
Eventually, I was able to smile at it all - my passport and traveller's cheques and all were still intact, and he'd left me 5 pounds to get some breakfast.
At least my heart wasn't broken, that would have to wait until Kim.
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