It was beautiful, really. Craning my neck to see past the crowd, I spotted my friend take hold of the two pints of Guinness from the bar and begin to weave his way through the throngs of the tipsy back to our table. He bumped into people, sure-it was impossible not to-but not even a drop of foam, let alone beer, skated down the sides of the glasses. He slid by couples with tongues so deep in each other’s mouths that they pushed each other off balance. He touched past a group of burly guys wearing rugby jerseys, not always the safest thing to do in a country that didn’t legalize homosexuality until 11 years ago.
Throughout the entire walk back, his body alternately and fluidly slackened and stiffened to make it through the crowd. But his face, no more ruddy than normal, showed no signs of anxiousness. He was calm, cool, controlled. Still, what were most impressive were his hands. They gripped the glasses so surely, so solidly, so easily, despite the continuous jostling. They were still, but pliant, like they were cradling a baby. Soft and firm.
Now, it’s not as if the beer didn’t swim around in the glasses, even with the steadiness of his hands. The heads alternately crested over each side of the pints, coming tantalizingly close to spilling. It was a game for me to see how high the Guinness could extend beyond the safety of the glass rims before disaster would strike. It never did. He put the beer on the table and sat down. It seemed not even gravity could come between an Irishman and a full pint.
“So what was I saying there, then?” he said.
“Something about the smoking ban,” I said, diving into the Guinness like I was bobbing for apples.
“Oh right. You see, for me it’s a good and a bad thing. I mean I’m not smoking now, which I would have been if they didn’t ban it in the pubs. I guess that’s a good thing. But the bad thing is that when I’m going to smoke one later, it will have to be outside in the rain.”
We both took sips. I had a foam moustache. I quickly licked it off.
“You know that bird over there was looking at you when you licked off that moustache.”
“Which one?”
“The blonde behind your left shoulder.”
I turned my head. She was heavily made up and tanned, something highly circumspect for the least sunny country in the world, especially at the end of March. She had long, strappy boots, a mini-skirt, and a jean jacket that covered a tight black shirt. She was sitting at a table with other similarly dressed girls. Louis Vuitton purses lay on the table next to bottles of Smirnoff Ice.
“You should go chat her up.”
“Naw man. You know what they say about girls like that: A terrible beauty is born.”
“Indeed,” he said mock gravely. We burst out laughing and polished off our pints. I got up gingerly.
“My round then?”
“It is indeed.”
“Another Guinness?”
“Sure.”
“How much was it?”
“Four quid each.”
I made my way through the crowd and finally got to the bar. After the publican placed the full pints in front of me, I surveyed the scene. It was a long way back to the table. I had to make a decision. How was I going to hold these glasses? I tried to think of the different ways I had seen it done. There was the “ice cream cone” where you put your fingers above the top rim of the glass like your hand was the dip of ice cream and the pint the cone. I decided that was a bit too risky. Probably only for experts. More regularly, people would grip the glass normally, meaning on its side, but where to put the fingers?
The pint glass itself slopes down like an hourglass but stops at a certain point and doesn’t have fat bottom. Should you hold it on the top part? No, probably not enough control over the whole glass. On the bottom part? No, for the same reason. The middle seemed to be the only reasonable way to go. Now the second question: How far apart should my fingers be? I guess they should be far enough apart to control as much of the glass as possible, but not too far that I couldn’t have a strong grip. People trying to order crowded around me. Think, Liam, think. Make a decision before it gets even harder to move.
I desperately tried to remember the way my friend held the glasses before the last round. Ah! He held them with four fingers in the middle and his thumb underneath the glasses on the bottom. At last, the secret! There must be something to the extra thumbular control from the bottom that makes the pints impenetrable to pushing. Convinced that I had the right method, I started back to the table.
Immediately I bumped into a guy who was dancing to “Sunday Bloody Sunday” being played over the speakers. Beer splashed out of the pint and onto the back of his pants.
“Ah, bollocks!” I exclaimed.
“You’d better watch it there, boyle,” he warned.
“Sorry, sorry,” I said.
I continued to manoeuvre my way into the crowd, alternately shifting my eyes between the people in front of me and the pints.
“Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.”
I guess no one heard. Unfortunately, I had little of my friend’s grace when I knocked into people. The pints were becoming more slippery as foam and beer slid down the sides of the glasses and in between my fingers.
Still, I had made it up to the rugby guys with only a reasonable amount of spillage. One jabbed out his elbow, probably to demonstrate to the other lads his scrumming skills. It caught me square in the rib. The pints had no chance. About a third of each was lost to the floor, my shoes and my arms. I looked aghast. The rugby guy just shrugged. Outnumbered, outsized and thoroughly defeated I made my way back to the table, wet with disappointment and unfortunately with more than just my ego bruised.
I put the pints down on the table and slumped down in my chair, wiping my hands on my jeans.
“What’d you do there, Liam? Take a drink out of both glasses?” my friend joked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m not in this country long enough to know how to do it any other way.”
Liam Dillon is a junior in the College and an associate editor of The Georgetown Voice. He knows that social drinking is an art, not a vice.
