Tomorrow is the annual observance of Scotchtoberfest. Every year, a bunch of the lads get on their best Great War Scottish kits and go for a walk/pub crawl through the Yuppie infested environs of Alexandria. I’ve gone most years since I heard about it, each year in some different and bizarre kit. One year I went in modern DPM and claimed I was in the SAS. Another year I did my best IRA impersonation in civvies and battledress jacket. Several times now I’ve gone as Australian. It’s a day of walking in the cold, sweltering in the heat of bars and drinking until you want to fall over. Should be a recipe for a perfect day.
And yet, I ask myself, why do I keep going to this thing?
Every year – every blasted year – something negative happens. I don’t think there’s a year that’s gone by that I didn’t lose the crowd for at least an hour. One year I spent half the evening opening doors for patrons at various bars around town and holding out my hand for tips like a bellhop. Once I kept curling up on park benches and in spare doorways trying to get some sleep and constantly being rudely awakened by the police. Another year I set up shop as some sort of wool-enveloped homeless guy with a glengarry panhandling for spare change. If it isn’t something like that it’s something else: women, yuppies, Santa Claus. It just ain’t any fun after the first two or three hours. It’s exhausting and it’s expensive.
And you know what? I don’t even like the Scottish – or at least Scots-Americans. If I am ever asked, “Have you ever had a homosexual experience?” I will have to answer yes. I once stood in a room full of men in dresses while they all held hands and swayed gently while singing some gentle and loving tune. It was exceedingly spiritual and deeply gay.
God bless the Irish. At least they have the good sense to wear normal clothing and drink heavily. And I think, given the circumstances of the various Irish diasporas, they don’t spend a whole lot of time moaning drunkenly about the dirty wet hell they left behind. Nosirree. In America the beer is cheap and plentiful, the women don’t all dress like two-dollar whores, cheeky bastards don’t pinch arses in American bars without getting knocked down and you get to see actual sunshine once in a while. It’s the Promised Land, I tell you, the Promised Land.