TOMMY TIERNAN

A fondness for whiskey

I’m probably drinking too much whiskey. Am I? It’s hard to know. I have a tremendous glass of it every evening, measured by myself, five or six mouthfuls in it, great gulps of the stuff. It feels like little fires get lit either side of me skull. Sunset in the brain, and a warm breeze blowing in from the sea. I don’t hanker after it all day, but once the kids are in bed, I’ll remember there’s drink in the dresser. And so what if I send them to bed at half four in the afternoon; don’t mammy and daddy need some time to themselves?

“Will you have one yourself ?” I’ll say to the missus, and my predictable seductions begin.

Or else, if I’m out working, on the road someplace, I’ll slip into a pub on the way back from a show, a boom-proof bar, you know the type. Old and almost worn-out. The type of place that you’d be very easily overdressed for. The reins on the horses go slack; we’ll rest easy here, boss.

I’ll sit in the corner and talk to no one and have a large one with a small cube of ice. Is it OK to be alone and stare at the floor? A fear

cuinne as they in Irish, a man most aisy ’side the wall by himself; shy, maybe. Don’t want some eejit coming over to me, his night threatened by my solitude.

“Are you alright? What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing... just a little depressed, perhaps, but if you leave me alone, I might be able to enjoy it.”

And ’tis a dangerous drop, too, the whiskey. It can turn a man snidey if he has too much. The callow word too aisy hopped out of his gob, and by Christ, eight or nine glasses of the stuff leaves you in the quare position of the outside of your body — legs and head and teeth and toes being completely sober, but the inside of you melted and drowned.

The positive side of it all is that it makes it very easy for people to know what to buy you for Christmas and your birthday. Six months’ distance between those two days in my house, and I swear I have to go at it hammer and tongs to have one load clear before the next one arrives...

I have a slight hangover most mornings. I think I do, anyway. Soft and muggy, maybe it’s cos we sleep with the window closed, and I wake half-starved of oxygen. I have the sleep apnea, too. If I’m not snoring or choking or wide awake from fright, then sure I’m not sleeping at all.

The hangover, if that’s what it is, would be mild enough, nothing that a treble espresso doesn’t cure. I’m probably drinking too much coffee, too. Again, a drug best taken in isolation from others. Best taken with the blank page in front of you and words to be written, or a thousand miles to be driven alone. A time to surf the waves of your own imagination, and, as sure as sugar, be left desolate on the beach a few hours later, when the lowdown occurs.

’Tis no good in company; the mouth goes mad yapping and I’m in broadcast-only mode.

“The fear of it is that if I didn’t drink it, I’d have no personality at all. I’d be vacant and gormless”

The head wins out over the heart. There’s no listening in it.

But the fear of it is that if I didn’t drink it, I’d have no personality at all. I’d be vacant and gormless. Sitting there, dull as the flatlands, without edge or trace of danger. Far too nice for me own liking.

I knew a fella one time who only drank glasses of warm water, and there was no him in him. He’d been through trauma, and I suppose as a coping mechanism, tried to live objectively and without stimulation. He maintained it for a good while, and then one evening got recklessly drunk at a party in the house. He disappeared upstairs to bed, and then came down again, 20 minutes later, in the nip. He spent the rest of the night just flopping about bollock-naked, chatting to all and sundry. We loved him for it…

There’s goodness in tae, but jaysus it’s a brave man that’d drink that. A brave man that’d choose no mind-altering substance and just wander unprotected into himself. A brave man that’d say, “Well, let’s just investigate this boredom and see what’s in it. Maybe ’tisn’t boredom at all. Maybe ’tis the devil’s work to think that it is.”

The devil’s little victories. Those things that come between me and you. Those things that stop us embracing the mystery of the moment as it is. Really? The devil wins with coffee and whiskey? There’s hardly truth in that...