The Sheila Variations

ROAD WORKS AHEAD

I'm standing in The Ice Bar at the Four Seasons Hotel in Dublin, sipping a tall drink with so many layers it looks like an overachieving jello-mold, green-white-clear-white-green. It is a work of art, but it has no taste. I think it's a mojito but I really can't be sure. With the exchange rate being what it is, the drink costs as much as my entire monthly electric bill.

The Ice Bar is a scene. I hail from Manhattan where, if you despise "scenes", as I do, you must verge off the beaten track, you must rely on word-of-mouth, you must be persistent in finding quiet pubs where you can relax. Otherwise you'll find yourself on a Friday night smack-dab in the middle of some hideous scene, sipping a wildly overpriced drink, feeling fatter than everyone else on the planet, and wondering, "Wow. Am I a total bitch or is everyone here incredibly shallow?"

Dublin is not "sceney". It is not "cool." Dublin is the kind of place where you can sit down in some unadorned dusty pub, and five minutes later find yourself deeply embroiled in a great conversation with a stranger, a stranger you could, conceivably, talk to all night. Dublin is relaxed, it is sociable. The opposite of sociable is, of course, "cool".

Well, it's a new Dublin now. Ireland is in the EU, money is pouring into the economy, and now Dublin needs a place called The Ice Bar, where the elite can congregate and consume. To see and be seen in the scene. I had no desire to go to The Ice Bar. None. However, we knew someone who knew someone who once went to school with a bartender there, and so we made our way to the palatial Four Seasons Hotel to check it out.

An Irish friend heard of our plans and gave us navigation tips for The Ice Bar experience. "Oh, so what you're gonna be seein' tonight then is cool Dublin. It's all about the phones and the clothes and bein' cool. So keep yourselves cool. And do not pay for a single drink. Look pretty, look approachable, and some man will pick up the tab. I will be very angry if I hear that you paid anything for one of those ridiculous drinks."

We took her advice seriously. We sprayed perfume on our wrists. We did our hair. We carefully defined the creases of our eyelids with smoky shadow. The primping felt like a grim duty. Cool Dublin is no fun. No fun at all.

The Ice Bar is a high airy white space, filled with confusing echoes. The noise is deafening. There are very few places to sit, and maneuvering through the bar is difficult. It is also nearly impossible to get to the bar itself to order your jello-mold. And once you're at the bar, it takes forever to attract the attention of the bartender. Everyone mills about, standing, talking at the tops of their lungs, doing battle with the echoes. In order to use the bathroom, you must venture out into the frightening hotel lobby, overwhelmingly plush and hushed, with flower arrangements, deep carpets and curly-cued chairs. The bathrooms are like something out of Versailles, and you feel embarrassed urinating in such a luscious immaculate setting. Not to mention the fact that the bathroom is where the dolled-up gorgeous-smelling teetering-heeled Irish women congregate, jabbering on their cell phones as they re-do their makeup. Gorgeous intimidating Amazons.

My eyelids may be smokily defined but I am wearing a biker's jacket, and I look like the lumpen proletariat party-crashing the rich folks' cocktail hour. I'm the buxom Irish maid scarfing wine in the pantry.

The bartender with whom we have a thrice-removed connection is nice enough, welcoming, although too busy to chat. We find empty spots at the bar, elbowed in by the Amazons, and we let him prepare drinks for us. Due to the green-white-clear nature of such drinks, they take twenty minutes to arrive. They are beautiful, with garnishes of mint, but I feel distinctly like an imposter sipping it. Like someone is going to race over and demand my Ice-Bar Identity-Card, because I obviously don't belong.

Now let me be clear. I do not yearn for the "good old days" of Irish famines and a gazillion % emigration and dark store-fronts on Sundays. What is happening now is a boom. I imagine someday the boom will collapse, like all booms do, and people will settle down, and the economy will stabilize. But Dublin, in the early years of the 21st century, has the manic energy, the gleaming greed of all boom towns in all eras. It is now Ireland's turn. Ireland has never had a turn. For the rest of my stay, I hang out in little pubs called McSorley's or The Four Provinces, meet funny down-to-earth people, drink whiskey, and have a grand old time.

But meanwhile, the forces of change and progress are upending this conservative society. The entire country appears to be under construction. By the end of our jaunts through the southern and western counties, my friend and I would laugh every time we saw another sign proclaiming "ROAD WORKS AHEAD". Road Works Ahead? Really. What a shock. The cranes and bulldozers and mountains of dirt everywhere are visible proof of what is happening. A country building itself up, digging down for a new foundation.

Dig deep enough and what do you find?

The Ice Bar, apparently.

My friend's camera sits on the bar, and an enormous gentlemen beside me, waiting for his drink, says, "Is that yours?" He is huge. He has no neck. He is wearing a pinkie ring. A pinkie ring? In Ireland?

I reply, "No, it's my friend's."

"Oh, because I was going to tell you that I had that camera, but then I upgraded from my Nikon 2000 to a Minolta 5 million, and I also got a new digital blah-blah-blah which has video capabilities as well as a satellite hook up, 8000 megabytes of storage space, and my very own room with a view."

This entire monologue is unsolicited. I don't know how to respond, mainly because I have no idea what he is talking about, and so I struggle with my own facial expression. Does he need me to be impressed? What the HELL is he babbling about? It's all brand-names and numbers.

He isn't done yet.

"I'm very big on the upgrading. I now have two fully-loaded Mercs with 10-wheel drive and purple-tinted skylights, seat-warmer pads and a talking GPS system ..."

Honestly. He doesn't need me as a partner in this charade, this mockery of the word "conversation". If I walk away, he would keep talking into thin air. Maybe he has some compulsive-talking disorder. Mercs? Then I put it together. Mercedes Benz. Wow. This dude is pathetic. Not because he has "two Mercs", but because without even finding out my name, he has to blurt out all of his possessions. He is a materialistic Rainman.

The list of perks in the Mercs goes on. And on.

Again, I struggle with my own face, trying to wrench it into some mildly interested mask, and not let the outright boredom trickle down over my features.

Irish men, while sometimes rowdy, and never shy, are always polite. They know how to introduce themselves, they know how to ask for your name, and they always remember the name. One phrase you never hear in Ireland is: "Sorry, what was your name again?" Their good manners are instinctive in that respect. But Huge-Merc-Dude, while he speaks with an Irish accent, has none of the usual charm of the Irish Man. This is what money does. I feel like I am in a time-machine, and have suddenly been transported into a yuppie happy hour down on Wall Street, circa 1986, surrounded by blind self-interested greed.

He's still talking.

"And it has a Microwave-oven in the back, as well as TiVo, 20 horsepower engines ... and magnetic force fields around the --"

After ten days of invigorating back-and-forth banter with people all around the country, it takes me a while to even register this gentleman's rudeness. And once I do, the guy is toast.

I interrupt the compulsive cataloguing. "What's your name." It's not a question. It's a command.

"Seamus."

Now I no longer worry about my facial expression. Now I am openly annoyed. "I'm Sheila."

A look of uncertainty wafts across Seamus' large ruddy face.

As always, the second I speak I give myself away as a visitor. I look like an Irish local wherever I go, and so I am now accustomed to the immediate response to my American accent.

"You're from the States?" Seamus asks, his first question of me. I can tell he has already lost interest. Not because I'm from the States, but because he literally could not care less about me, where I'm from, who I am. What a boring topic compared to videos and cars and cameras.

"Yes. I'm from the States. Nice to meet you, Seamus." I'm blunt. I turn my back on him and leave him alone, and happier probably, with visions of gadgetry dancing in his head.

Guys like Seamus are a dime a dozen in New York City. But it is disorienting to meet one here. Maybe people's personalities change once they walk through the vaulted white doors of The Ice Bar. Maybe the echo-chamber of the bar does something to people's listening capabilities. Maybe if I met Seamus at McSorley's or The Four Provinces he wouldn't have been so pathetically eager to impress. I have no idea. I just know that if he listed one more "perk" at me, I might punch him in his fat head.

I put down my mint-julep or whatever it is, and order a beer. Fuck it. I'm a member of the proletariat and proud of it.

When Eamon first speaks to me, I have my guard up, a leftover from Seamus. How quickly one becomes jaded, hard. But with Eamon I go back into familiar Irish territory: talk that occurs spontaneously, takes on a life of its own. It is easy to keep the tennis ball in the air. Eamon grew up with the bartender we had come to see, they were childhood friends. Eamon lived in America for the last ten years, and has now come home for a three-month stay. He doesn't know what he wants to do next, and so he's moved home with his mother while he figures it out. He had been living in New Jersey, so he and I have a lot to discuss. We love the same pubs in Manhattan. We talk about Puck Fair, and Swift's. We talk about music, we exchange email addresses. The conversation is lovely, light, it's fun. Seamus recedes into the past.

Eamon and I get around to discussing The Ice Bar, and the deeper significance of such a place. I don't want to criticize his country, and I also don't want to be one of those obnoxious Irish-Americans who would prefer Ireland to be backwards and poor so that my fantasies of the place will remain undisturbed.

But Eamon takes a humorous view. "People come to The Ice Bar just to be seen, y'know?"

"Yeah, that's what it seems like."

"They'll come here for a quick drink, and then go off to a funner venue. Where they can watch rugby and have a bit of craic."

Indeed, I have noticed three distinct waves of people come and go. Eamon is right. People were not settling in at The Ice Bar. It's a pit stop, something they have to do.

Eamon says, "I've got my local where I hang out. I came here tonight to see Liam."

We glance at Liam, busily concocting complicated drinks for the hoarding masses, pushing up against the bar. There is the incessant ring of cell phones in the air.

"Not much time to talk to him, eh?" I say.

"No, indeed."

We discuss the economic boom, and how Ireland now has to deal with immigrants from different cultures for the first time in its history. Eamon is positive about it. Most everyone I talked to in Ireland takes a positive view of these new developments.

"I think it's a good thing for this country, you know?" Eamon says. "Immigrants bring a lot of energy with them, just like the Irish did when they moved to America."

I have not thought of it like that. "Good point."

"So a lot of people are grumbling now about immigrants taking jobs away from the Irish, but I still think it's really good for Ireland. We've never had to deal with any of this before, and I think the people coming here from India or Africa or wherever are bringing a lot of good things with them. It's opening Ireland up to the world."

The echoes of The Ice Bar ricochet over our heads. Missing us completely. I can hear him, he can hear me.

"You know, Eamon, it's interesting. I'm of Irish heritage, but I'm American. Obviously. And there is a huge contingency of Irish-Americans who don't want Ireland to be modern and successful, because it messes up their ideas about the 'old country'."

"Oh, Sheila, you've got that one so right."

"And half the time, these people have never even BEEN to Ireland."

"Right right right."

"If these people came here now, and saw that - Oh. My. God. - you guys have highways under construction and cell phones and an Ice Bar ... they would be devastated. They would feel betrayed."

Eamon starts laughing.

I say, "As an Irishman, does that drive you crazy?"

"Oh, I guess they just want to know where they came from. I understand that's important to Americans."

"But the Irish-Americans I'm talking about seem literally BUMMED that there are no more famines. They love that whole martyr thing. They aren't interested in getting to know Ireland now. All they care about is the famine and the Troubles. That's it."

Eamon pounces on this. "Sheila, you are very right on that score. To them, Ireland is the famine and the Troubles, but you have forgotten one item on your list, one very important item, that lies between the famine and the Troubles, and this one item has done more to sentimentalize this country than any other ... and it is called The Quiet Man."

I burst into laughter.

Eamon goes on, laughing too. "The Quiet Man is the reason for that Irish-American attitude."

I have to 'fess up: "The Quiet Man is great, though."

"Oh, I love the movie! John Ford, all that, his Irishness was very important to him indeed, but Americans see that movie and come to Ireland looking for that world. They think all Irish women are going to be Maureen O'Hara throwing pots and pans at them."

"That's so hilarious. So true."

In a world of 1847, The Quiet Man, and the Troubles, there would be no room for an Ice Bar.

The Ice Bar is one of the most obnoxious places I have ever been (except for the lovely exception of Eamon), but I think even its obnoxiousness is a sign of hopeful growth for Ireland. What kind of person would begrudge this island, with its pained long history, a bit of success, a bit of money to spend? What kind of person would wish that Seamus didn't have two "fully-loaded Mercs", and instead had to tool around in a beat-up jalopy he shared with his six siblings? Who would prefer that Ireland remain narrow, hard-bitten, and hungry?

Eamon and I, before we parted ways, raise a toast to Ireland as it is now, to its future, to its success.

"May Ireland continue to flourish," says I, holding up my beer.

"Amen," says he.

And as we clink glasses in that white echo-mad place filled with fashion models and pinkie-ringed Seamuses, the epitome of the new "cool" Dublin, Eamon says what is, perhaps, the warmest friendliest word in the Irish language: "Sláinte!"

It moves me. To hear that particular word in that ice-cool place. The old traditions alongside the new. Nothing is lost. It moves me to see Eamon's kind human grin as he says it.

Sláinte

Sláinte to fat-headed Seamus, Sláinte to The Ice Bar, and Sláinte to road works ahead.

Posted by sheila