We met under the dancing Santa

Allison and I got together last night – we had been experiencing serious separation anxiety, after spending so much time together in Ireland. Like: where the hell is Allison and why am I not seeing her every minute of the day???

We went to see Closer which I absolutely MUST write about … I will, just need to get my thoughts together …

Then we went to an Irish pub in her ‘hood, and drank. Hair of the dog, you see. Standing on a corner of the bar was a life-size Santa, who was motorized … He would stand up there, frozen, staring off into space like a creepy robot … and then, at some unseen cue, or someone flipped a hidden switch, or SOMEthing, he would begin to gyrate about like a fat hip-hop dancer. His head would turn too, swiveling on his neck … It was strangely disturbing. There was a sexual element to his dancing … and I just do NOT want to think about Santa in a sexual context.

Allison and I would be deep in conversation. The frozen Santa was behind me, and I would be talking, and I would suddenly see Allison’s eyes move off mine, looking up behind me … I would turn, and there Santa would be, jerking his hips and arms back and forth …

This, needless to say, brought on howls of laughter from us. We would stare up at him, silently, just taking in his crazy dance … Then we would glance at one another, silently … because, after all, what is there to say in such a moment? And then we would burst into guffaws.

We reminisced about our trip and laughed so hard we cried. We pounded on the bar, we re-told stories to one another, and all in all had a great time.

A couple of amusing quotes:

— I said to her, “I wish we had taken more pictures at O’Neils. I wish we had a picture of the murderer I befriended.” I befriended a murderer at a pub called O’Neils. That’s all I really can say. Great guy. Murderer. Uhm … what?

— The two of us HOWLING about Rory falling in Mary’s foyer. He was trying to be so so so quiet, and then BOOM, a major wipe out. And he landed in a position that made him look like a male gymnast frozen on top of the pommel horse or something. One of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life. Tears of laughter streaming down our faces.

— “The Sin Bin”. Allison and I were obsessed with “the Sin Bin” … the rugby announcers casually saying, “So and so is still in the Sin Bin” … which, I assume, means that the player had a penalty called on him, and was pulled out of the match temporarily. But it is called THE SIN BIN, and Allison and I absolutely LOVE that. We have decided that when we have children (uhm … not with each other, of course … Not that there’s anything wrong with that!), we are going to break the monopoly that the words “Time Out” have on today’s parenting style. We will not give our children “Time Outs”. We will put them in “the Sin Bin” for 10 minutes. We LOVE the Sin Bin. “Eat your lima beans now, and no fussing, or I’ll have to put you in The Sin Bin.” Allison put herSELF in The Sin Bin at one point, after making a dumb joke. She made the joke, we sat there silently, not laughing, and then Allison said, “I think I need to go into The Sin Bin for that one.”

— We HOWLED with laughter about Ricky, our silent cab driver. Hard to explain, definitely a “had to be there” thing. But we were snorting about Ricky.

And there was a hell of a lot more we talked about. I did an impassioned monologue about the Virgin Mary, and what Mary means to me. (Allison, you’re a saint for listening to all of that!) We talked about Howard Hughes, we talked about Hepburn and Tracy, we talked about Julia Roberts, we talked about our shared love of Michael Jackson’s music (we both cried out “THRILLER” at the same moment) – we also talked about what we feel is his obvious guilt – I think the dude’s gonna go to jail, I really do – and we talked incessantly about Closer, the movie we had just seen.

Talk talk talk talk talk.

Under the watchful eyes of the creepy dancing Santa.