Death, Taxes & The 2year Itch

It was most definitely time to get the hell out of dodge. The situation had got to a point where it was no longer a viable option to stay and fight, we had to leave.
I got a phone call around seven o’clock in the evening asking me to make my way into town. Turns out one of our friends had just split from his partner and was seeking solace in drink, which is generally where you find most heartbroken men after a nasty break. I had been seeing a girl a little up to this point and I had made plans to see her this evening, but a friend who needs a drinking partner comes first hands down. Knowing that the particular girl in question was quite tempestuous I wasn’t looking forward to the call I had to make. I was hoping the answerphone would pick up the line, but it wasn’t to be.
“Hello”
“Hi Sam, it’s John”
“I’m glad you rang actually, where are we eating tonight? I’m getting dressed and want to know what to wear”
“Actually Sam, that’s why i’m calling. Unfortunately i’m not going to be able to make tonight. I forgot but i’m supposed to be dog sitting tonight, I promised months ago” I thought that was a fairly good excuse considering it was thought of on the fly, it might have had something to do with a man stroking a dog on the television.
“Pardon? Dog sitting? Over me? There was me thinking that we had a genuine connection, well you can stick it you pathetic fool” The line then went dead.
Well, it could have gone much worse. Samantha was a very volatile and impulsive person and I think that’s why I saw her again after we had slept together, you never had quite the same person the next time. I found out the hard way that she was quite hostile at times when a girl tried to ring my mobile phone and she flipped out for a good half an hour, but I calmed her down after I informed her that it was my hairdresser calling. Luckily, she never noticed I go to a local barber.
So the night was set, I was meeting my friends in a local bar in half an hour. I threw down a few Jacks for the road and set off, little did I know that it was going to be quite a defining night.

When I landed at the bar I saw that Jody and Kieran had already landed, and looked perched to order.
“Make mine a double Jack ladies”
Kieran looked to be in fairly good spirits although he had just ended a fairly turbulent two year relationship, although I didn’t want to say anything at that point for the fear of bringing back an influx of painful emotions, so I bought him a drink. I think that is inherently a male reaction, instead of talking about how we feel about x,y and z or risking talking about other peoples emotions, we offer all the support in the world through a glass. Works for the majority of us.
The next hour or so went something along the lines of round of shots, round of shorts then a little smalltalk. Repeat that around 15 times and you’re where we were. What kind of friends would we be if we didn’t ply our good friend with astronomical amounts of alcohol in his hour of need?
The downside to the whole keeping morale in the group high was that we were all a little worse for wear, and the night was scarily young.
So we had two options, either we could really ease down the consumption of the demon drink or just take the ride. So we just carried on the way we were going, simply because we felt well past the point of no return. I turned to the bar and asked for 3 random shots, primarily due to the fact I was beginning to lose the power of processing written word. Whilst I was waiting for the kinder style surprise of the bartender, in walked the one person that I wasn’t expecting. Lucy.

I met Lucy about a year ago during a local music festival. It’s the one time of year where the entire town is closed for business apart from the local bars, which often results in a great deal of frivolity and adult mischief. The children are usually left at home, which frees up the merry go round somewhat for alcohol induced pranks. I was watching a travelling band from the south who were just finishing a terrible rendition of ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ when I first saw her. She was stood with a friend of mine and they were most likely ripping into the god awful band who were now trying to win the crowd back with a rock version of ‘Thriller’. Whilst I did admire the perseverance of the band, they seemed to be getting slightly put off with the repeated throwing of pints at the stage, luckily for them the glasses at the festival were all plastic. I headed over to my friend to get introduced to the striking girl stood next to him whilst the bouncers escorted the band off stage before someone figured out that the beer bottles were more aerodynamic.
I found out that she was called Lucy and she was visiting from a town some distance away, which is why we hadn’t crossed paths before. I also found out she had a thing for tequila, so we were on good footing from the offset. We spent the rest of the day watching the bands do their thing and drinking most of the watering holes dry of their finest gold beverage. In the morning I snuck out of the hotel room Lucy was staying in, and I hadn’t seen her since. I didn’t bother waking her up because it was going to be extremely awkward now we weren’t running off 40% proof and she didn’t leave me her number because she knew I wouldn’t call.

Lucy shot me an awkward smile and then moved to the bar. I waited until Lucy had gotten her drink and then made my way over to her. I knew things would be slightly awkward but I was confident I could overcome this with some witty banter, although looking back i’m pretty sure that the amount of alcohol running through my system may have had something to do with the supreme confidence.
“Hello stranger”
“Hello John. How are you?” This was even more awkward then I thought it’d be.
“I’m good” Time for that wit “I can’t believe you didn’t call me you scarlet woman”
“John, you couldn’t even have the decency to wake me before you left”
“ You just looked to be thoroughly enjoying your snooze and I didn’t want to be the defiler of that peaceful slumber” Even I was shocked by the smoothness of the comment.
“Still full of shit then” It seemed I had a critic. Only one thing sprung to mind.
“Tequila?”
“As long as you’re buying”
After a few more shots Lucy loosened up a little and I introduced her to the boys I was out with. We were all in fairly good spirits now, with even Kieran joining in the drunken banter with vigour. But then the inevitable happened and someone mentioned Polly, Kierans ex-girlfriend. He turned so suddenly from a happy, mildly inebriated man to a blubbering idiot that we didn’t have time to try to combat the emotion with liquor. We are talking about full-force tears here that were actually projecting off his face.
I made my apologies to Lucy and the barstaff whilst Jody and I helped Kieran outside. This was met with the barely comprehensible, repeated,
“But I love her”
“Yes we know Kieran” I calmly stated. It was at that moment that Jody and I looked at each other, it was fairly apparent that neither of us were comfortable in dealing with this situation as it stood. So we left Kieran outside and re-entered the bar, with Jodys final words of wisdom “Theres plenty more fish in the sea pal”
It looked fairly bad leaving our friend of need outside, but he was well past the point of salvation. There would be no getting sense out of Kieran until the greif had exited his system post haste with the booze in tow. I suppose it was inevitable with the mental state he was in but we couldn’t be blamed for trying to help. I made a mental note to give him a quick call in the morning to check on him, it was the least I could do after all.
Jody and I made our way back into the bar, but it seemed Lucy had already left by this point. Soon afterward another friend Marcus arrived with his girlfriend in tow. Marcus was in a great mood but he wasn’t out for the night so it seemed pointless bringing him into the ridiculous and now redundant round of shots. This is a symptom of a long term relationships I have found time and time again with my friends, you seem to lose the ability to stay out for more than a few hours. I’d like to say this has something to do with the amount of sex these people are having but by the looks on their faces i’d say it probably has more to do with ‘hugging’ and ‘talking’.
Although I was pleased our duo had once again grown in size, Jody seemed more interested in the girl that Marcus’ girlfriend had brought to the group. Although she was quite an attractive girl my mind was elsewhere, but Jody seemed more than capable of taking care of her. I chatted to the group for a while before we decided to move on to MGs, which was a local nightbar with live bands.
Whilst on our way there, Marcus decided it was his hometime although the girl that was with Jody decided to stay with us.
MGs was packed to the capacity with an awesome band on stage playing some classic rock covers, which made it difficult to catch the attention of the bar staff. Suddenly all the male staff turned towards me, as I looked to my left I found the reason.
“Hello again stranger”
“Good evening Lucy”
“I may have been a little hard on you earlier. Could I get you a drink?”
“Tequila, what else could I drink with you?”
“I could suggest a few things...”
“For instance?”
“I have a bottle of Champagne in my hotel room”
“Its a shame it’s all the way over there”
“We could pay it a visit”
“Lets go”
The taxi ride to Lucys hotel was interesting and i’m pretty sure that the driver had a hard time keeping his car to the road with everything that was going on in the rear seat. I don’t need to tell you that the champagne didn’t get drunk.

I awoke in the morning and faced the same dilemma as last time, and I went with more of the same.
This day was a little different though, as I found out as I was just getting out of the taxi that took me home. My phone started ringing as I was fumbling for loose change and mumbling something about girls never paying for the ride home.
“yup – hello?”
“I can’t believe you left before giving me my morning fix”
The last thing my neighbours saw as they welcomed in the morning was a man obviously dressed for
the previous night running up the street screaming ‘Taxi!’ at a passing car.