The Wages of Sin

I wrote this piece for one of my classes. We've been discussing creative non-fiction, so this is my attempt at that genre. The events, obviously happened a few years ago, but most of it happened as I relate here. Some things just don't fade or go away.

The summer of 1998 I was a college student—again—working on my master’s degree and teaching certificate. Though I’d traveled frequently, I’d never traveled extensively or gone overseas. In fact, I’d never flown in a commercial airplane—ever. Although at the advanced age of twenty-six I physically appeared several years older than my traveling companions, in actuality I was by far just as naïve, maybe even more so.
Our group, comprised of thirteen college students from around the United States, had toured the literary sites of Briton—the Globe, St. Paul’s cathedral, the Clink, the Tower of London, Shakespeare’s home in Stratford, Canterbury cathedral, Warwick castle and others—and now we had landed on the Emerald Isle. Our first night in Dublin I can barely remember, having imbibed too much cider—how should I know “hard cider” contained alcohol? We’d done the pub crawl, as many of the literati of Ireland spent most of their time in these establishments. Life seemed grand as we lifted a pint in each pub. By the sixth or seventh pub, I was defined schnockered, one step beyond drunk.
The next evening we had free to spend in whichever way we chose. Most of the newly twenty-one-year-olds chose to do another, unsponsored, pub crawl, but a few of us opted for a different entertainment. A flyer I’d picked up in one of those infamous pubs listed the dates and times for movies showing around Dublin. To our surprise, a nearby theatre’s schedule included Lolita, starring Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert, as the late selection, showing at 11.00 p.m. We, of course, tantalized by the thought of seeing a film banned in our native, if Puritanical, country, had to go watch it. We owed it to Nabokov. We put it down to being English majors. Face it, as just a bunch of college kids we anticipated a fairly safe “thrill.”
Returning to the convent-turned-dormitory, we walked along O’Connell Street, one of the widest streets in Europe and the main avenue for the city. Chatting madly about the performances and secretly titillated at having watched a movie about such decadence, we didn’t notice that we passed the GPO, site of the Irish Provisional Government’s headquarters during the 1916 Rebellion that eventually caused the liberation of most of Ireland from Briton. We also remained oblivious to walking next to the Abbey Theatre, founded in 1903 by W.B. Yeats and home of the National Theatre of Ireland. It has the enviable history of having hosted plays by Yeats, Synge, and Shaw. Since it sits almost directly on the Liffey River, the building drifts in place upon a concrete raft, a feat of modern engineering and faith. On another architectural caveat, I vaguely took note of the bridge we used to cross the LIffey, simply because of the way the lights reflected off the river’s surface, never realizing that I crossed the only bridge in Europe that’s span outdistances its length.
Having crossed the river and navigated the weird intersection where O’Connell Street morphs into Grafton Street and crosses College Green, we cruised by the massive stone wall surrounding Trinity College. The illuminated Book of Kells called softly to us from within its hermetically sealed and pressurized-for-security glass case, but we stayed immune to all its entreaties. Once beyond Trinity, we turned down Nassau Street. In the daylight, I had taken photographs of the multi-colored doors, the Georgian architecture, and yearned for a chance to live within these remaining elements of history. Crossing the street, still talking about inconsequential things, we noticed a man take off the front wheel of his bike, secure it and the other wheel and frame to the wrought-iron fence around Marrion Square. Once assured of his transportation’s safety, he vaulted the fence and disappeared into the park, somewhere behind the reclining statue of Oscar Wilde, one of Dublin’s most revered playwrights, the author of my favorite, The Importance of Being Earnest, a tale depicting the life of Jack, a very proper man who invents a devilish brother in order to rush off to “save” him, allowing Jack the opportunity to commit the very deeds he disapproves of in “polite company.”
“What’s he doing?” Sherry asked.
The rest of us shrugged. “I don’t know,” Beth answered. “Who cares?” And blithely we continued on, passing one of the many pubs within “our neighborhood.”
Reaching the red doors of the dorm, which looked like any of the other row houses on that street, one of the two security guards on duty buzzed us into the building.
“”Ello, ladies. Did you enjoy your night out?” the cute one asked.
Giggling and barely replying we crossed under the crystal chandelier and dashed up the stairs to our room.
The next morning found each of us in varying states of readiness as our guide told us to come downstairs as soon as possible. A constable waited to talk to us individually.
Constable? Did we do something wrong? My mind immediately flashed back to Lolita. Maybe we broke a law by going to see the movie. Even though the guide assured the officer only needed our assistance, I still couldn’t help thinking of the verse from Romans: the wages of sin are death. The early-bird of the four roommates, I descended the stairs, gaining distinction as the first, lucky person to talk to the police officer, a likeable looking guy in a dark suit, not unlike our coach driver Phillip.
“’Ello. Please be seated,” he began before introducing himself as Detective Sean Casey. My mind raced, thinking: isn’t there a baseball player named Sean Casey?
“So, Seamus tells me you were one of the ladies who came in late last night. Is that correct?”
Seamus? Oh, the security guard. I could feel perspiration dot my forehead and upper lip. “Yes, sir,” my usually boisterous voice barely eked beyond my lips.
“What time was that?” he asked. Seeing my confusion, he added, “When you returned to the dormitory, what time was that?”
Wide-eyed, I paused. “I don’t know. The movie started at eleven. It probably played for about an hour and a half, and then the walk back probably took twenty or thirty minutes.” I licked my lips, catching the faint salt crusting on the upper rim. Doom had arrived as surely as Emily Dickenson’s gentlemanly depicted death. I had broken the rules and gone to see a movie about incestuous pedophilia. Now I recoiled from god’s lightning bolt on high.
“So, that would be about 1 a.m. Right?” He noted something in his little spiral notebook. Oh, god. I promise I’ll be good from here on. “Did you happen to notice anything unusual on your way home?”
The question stunned me out of my panic. Trying to remember the walk home, my previously quelled sense of humor reemerged. “Excuse me. Not trying to be flippant or anything, but I’m from the middle of nowhere in the dead-center of the United States. Nothing ever happens there. Everything here smacks of the unusual to me.”
He smiled, and I realized his handsomeness, a totally Irish, buttoned-down sort of handsome, at least.
“Point taken. Alright, did you hear anything, screaming or laughter, that seemed odd. Or did you see anyone odd on your walk home.”
Okay, that made more sense to me. I gazed off in the distance, rolling through my mind’s videotape of the night. The dude at the park!
“Yeah, I did.” Looking stunned, he began to write once more in his notebook as I told him about the bicyclist who jumped the fence. He asked me to describe the man, which I did, surprising myself with the details I could recall.
Nodding, the office stated, “That sounds like Padrick, but I’ll check it out.” Does everyone know each other here?
“Can I ask what this is about?”
He looked at me, a weariness and disillusionment deep in his eyes. Reaching some internal decision, he nodded.
“Sure, but I’ll ask you not to talk to your friends until after I’ve questioned them.” I nodded agreement. “Last night someone killed a prostitute two blocks down by the canal. I’m interviewing people in the neighborhood, looking for anyone out between midnight and two a.m., hoping they’ll have seen or heard something that’ll help us.” His tone indicated that a like event or events had occurred before and that he didn’t have high hopes of finding a clue to lead the police to the perpetrator.
“Oh… well, I hope you find whoever did it.”
“Thank you, ma’am. If you happen to remember anything before you leave for home, just tell one of the security guards. They’ll know how to contact me, and I’ll come round again to talk to you.”
Walking out of the parlor, with its thick plastered crown molding and the delicate fresco around its chandelier, I contemplated the night, our daring, and what it really meant to brave the world. While we laughed and hurrahed about seeing a racy movie, someone had murdered a woman within a mile of us. And we’d traipsed on, blissfully unaware. Tomorrow I knew that danger would once again lurk, because we planned to journey to the north, to Belfast, to the home of Sein Fein and contemporary Irish rebellion. Walls may separate sections of that noble city, but the bombs still detonating on a frequent basis could make us just as dead as that prostitute down by the canal.

Too Tight

This week was just too chaotic to even think about writing. I've been gone to the Write to Learn conference at Tan-Tar-A for three days. Between preparing to present at that conference and trying to get my homework done and straining to fit in a visit with a candidate for the Endowed Literacy Chair (which never happened---long, frustrating story), I didn't write anything but school work. So, I pulled a poem from long ago. This was written in probably 2002 a year before my dad died. He had a variety of illnesses, mainly Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and congestive heart disease. I wrote this piece after he'd fallen down the stairs at home. This, if I remember correctly, was the injury that finally made us place him in a nursing home; he was just getting to be too much for Mom to take care of.

Too Tight

“Don’t squeeze so;
It hurts.”

Dusk.
A mosquito and chigger-bitten girl
Runs willy-nilly over the yard
In pursuit of elusive lightning bugs.
Just out of reach, the nighttime torch bearers
Cavort, test aerodynamics, as the girl giggles.
“I got one! I got one!”
Her shouts ring out.
Chubby legs turn;
She races back to the porch.
Open fist reveals guts & slime.
“Eew!”
overzealous pursuit brings untimely end.
Daddy’s shoulder muffles heartrending sobs
And sops tears one by one as they fall.
He knows how tight to give bear hugs.

Twenty-five years later,
The child is now grown.
Daddy, her hero, has fallen,
One rib and some soreness add to the tally of age.
She once looked up into his eyes—
Love, respect, adoration communicated freely.
Suddenly, she’s looking down into thinning hair.
Love, respect, adoration still faithful but blue.
She stands and embraces him,
Remembers bear hugs so strong which
Gave her wings, lifted her feet off ground,
Squeezed breath from both lungs,
Made her fly through the night.
Yet again, forgetful and overzealous, she squeezes too tight.
She fights back tears, looks back over his shoulder
As he, ever patient, whispers, almost wheezes,
“Don’t squeeze so;
It hurts.”

Little Pig

Thursday we celebrated the Chinese New Year in one of my classes (I'm a PhD student, so I'll probably refer to my classes often). Part of the warm up activity was writing about our "year"--the year in which we were born according to the Chinese zodiac. I thought this an auspicious way to begin my blogging life.

While I think the characteristics of my Chinese year suit me--noble, chivalrous--I very much dislike being a boar. It makes my insecurity rise because of its homonym, bore. Nobody wants to be thought uninteresting. But...

I do think some of the boar traits are ones I have. Pigs are relatively intelligent creatures, known for their adaptive techniques to protect their sensitive skin (i.e. wallowing in the mud--see related website: http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~twig/animals/html/021896.html). Boars--especially those in the wild--are fierce protectors, charging a perceived enemy and ripping its hide with their strong tusks. A recent blog post on the Daily Mammal (found at: http://dailymammal.blogspot.com/2008/01/north-carolina-week-european-wild-boar.html) said that boars are much more dangerous than mountain lions or other predators because of the ripping action.

So, I guess I should be proud to admit I'm a boar. I'm tough and smart, adaptive and tasty. I admit it: I'm a boar. I'm a boar!