Patrick’s fucking whining, fucking whining about how as Arlene won’t fuck him how he likes. She thinks cocks are fucking disgusting, he says to me, in this fucking whining voice. Sounds like a no-use lesbo to me, I says to him. Naw, he says to me, naw, Arlene’s not a lesbo. She just thinks it’s dirty, is all. It is, I says to him, especially your fucking rancid member. I have two baths a day, Patrick says, my cock’s as clean as a whistle, he says, she just doesn’t want it in her mouth, regardless. To be honest with you, getting your cock sucked, in Ireland, in the 1970s, was a fucking task. Catholic girls were just not into it back then and a guy eating out a woman? Forget it. Part of the problem, on both sides, was the amount of pubic hair going down back then, but I’m straying from my point, which is to inform you that all this conversation is getting me horny and now I’m popping one.

*

So as we get to The Diamond and they’re playing Donna Summers. There are women on roller skates cutting round the dance floor in the fluorescent lights. We get the drinks in and there’s Arlene and she’s a got a pal with her, whose name I can’t even mind now, but she has her hair up in a bun and with the two curls hanging down sexy, like. But she has this voice. This fucking Dublin voice that I just cannot stand. Pat’s got Arlene up against a wall and he’s whispering in her ear and they’re both rubbing up on each other. I can see Arlene’s panties through the pattern on her dress. The Rolling Stones comes on. ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’. I take a swatch at Arlene’s mouth. You can tell it has never had a cock in it in its life. It’s flat and it’s tight and it’s even got pubic hair on its fucking lip. Her pal is telling me about going to the college, she’s a nurse. She’s telling me that death is recession-proof, especially in Ireland, she says. What the fuck ever, I’m saying to myself.