STUDY ABROAD

I spent the first half of my third year in college at an institution-like apartment complex in the trendiest part of Dublin, doing my best to subdue my ever-heightening depression by writing screenplays with a furious and, I’ll admit, dangerous zeal, experimenting with black tea, and wondering if I was in my artistic prime, which some lazy research into my favorite authors seemed to suggest, and, if not, how said artistic prime had somehow passed me by without me having accomplished a single goddamn thing. The notion that perhaps an artistic prime is something that one blossoms into after the age of twenty and that indeed sunnier days lie ahead never crossed my mind. In response, I grew a beard.

The program that I had traveled across the Atlantic to take part in was half-baked and understaffed, leaving me with more time on my hands than anyone on prescription drugs ought to have. I turned to exploring the city on foot, which only worsened my ennui. In the four months that I was there, Dublin was dreary, dark and wet, and since I was tackling the streets during daylight hours and on weekdays, I sometimes felt like the lone survivor of some terrible disaster. The beard didn’t help.

I was a walking stereotype: a wealthy, privileged brat wandering the world, unable to cope with or even understand his own boredom. Dublin is a wonderful city, rich with history, a place that ought to have inspired me to no end. Instead, all I managed to pull from it was the sense that everything that was ever going to happen in that city had already occurred and that there was no sense in expecting further excitement.

So I spent a solid three months wandering around town with low expectations, bored out of my mind, bearded, amusing myself with lustful thoughts about a girl I had only just met. She was a fellow student; much more beautiful and charming than any city could be; a girl who, unfortunately, already had a steady boyfriend, one that she spent most evenings crying over the phone with because they were so in love and missed each other like hell, a situation that, admittedly, I only made worse with half-hearted come-ons and regular drunken inquiries into how serious they were. Suffice to say, nothing happened between us.

When walking around Dublin wasn’t enough to cure my lovesick blues, I booked weekend trips to Europe with a few friends and together we would plunder the continent for experiences that we hoped one day we would be too ashamed to tell our grandchildren about. Sometimes I was just as bored in those places as I was in Dublin. Other times, we plundered a bit too hard, and I now have only the foggiest recollections of what transpired during those lost weekends. If I had been smart I would have carried a journal. I suppose that’s what separates me from the Kerouacs of the world.

By the time my family visited in November, my juvenile self-pity had taken a drastic toll. I felt like I was an apparition of my former self. I was writing mindless drivel on a daily basis about a twenty-story monster who selfishly attacks New York City. I was abusing my brain with alcohol and other drugs, and fantasizing about women who were too good for me. In those three disastrous months, left to my own devices, I had managed to strip myself of any and all character. I was growing up in the worst possible way.

It was this morose little prince that my family was content to spend their Thanksgiving vacation with. Having never been to Ireland, they booked a trip for the full week. During the days I would write, overdosing on black tea, and at night, when I was crashing from the dizzying caffeine high, I would meet up with them in their hotel lobby for drinks. Then, a bit drunk, we all journeyed out into the rain in search of decent grub, which was as difficult to find as rumor suggests.

Every night it rained intermittently, so sometimes our dinner plans were based solely on how far we could run to during the brief dry spells. One night, it was pouring so hard that we only made it five blocks before we decided that dinner was going to be one of the four restaurants within sight. Tired of Irish cuisine, we chose a small Chinese restaurant with an obligatory name like Pearl River or Shanghai Moon.

It was a neighborhood place, filled with quiet locals and staffed with Polish immigrants. The room was decorated with glowing red lanterns and paper dragons. An enormous aquarium filled with puffer fish separated the dining area from the waiter’s station and the kitchen. It reminded me of Shangri La, the Chinese food place my family frequented growing up in Phoenix. All that was missing was the piano musak.

I was twenty years old and legal to drink in Ireland. I took advantage of this and ordered a Chinese beer from the waitress, Stanislawa. She nodded, said something unrecognizable in a thick Polish accent, and moved on to take my sister’s order, though her eyes lingered on me for a second or two, as if she recognized me and couldn’t quite place it. That, or her English was so terrible that she wasn’t sure I had finished my sentence.

Either way, I was smitten.

I watched Stanislawa throughout dinner. She was attractive, blonde, probably in her late twenties or early thirties, with creamy white skin and a pointed nose. She was the only waitress working the room, about ten tables in all. When she wasn’t serving a customer, she was taking instructions from a squat jowly Chinese woman in a flowing silk dress.

The Chinese woman, who I assumed was the proprietor, never looked at Stanislawa as she spoke. I’m not sure if this was a class issue or if she didn’t want to take her eyes off her customers. Nonetheless, Stanislawa nodded continuously throughout with a thin, gummy smile on her face. I’m sure she only understood every other word.

Several times throughout dinner Stanislawa caught me looking her way. The first few times this happened she came over to see that everything was alright. After being repeatedly told that we were fine, that we had everything we needed, she finally picked up what I was dropping – whatever that was.

Dinner was delicious. I don’t know why, but Chinese food always seems to taste better in the rain. After we finished our meal, my father paid the bill. I asked to take a look at it.

“Why? What’s wrong?” my sister asked.

I shrugged, pulling out a pen from my pants pocket. At the bottom of the bill I wrote my phone number. “I’ll meet you outside,” I said, confident that my actions didn’t require justification. I am prone to making pointless gestures in the presence of company.

We pulled on their coats and ambled towards the door. “Rain stopped,” someone said. “Let’s find gelato.”

My father handed me a mint, which I pretended to have trouble unwrapping. “Thatta way.”

The moment the door closed behind him, I doubled back to the waiter’s station and handed the bill to Stanislawa. “Thank you,” she said.

“Hey. Call me,” I said in a low, breathy voice, hoping that I would sound confident and sexy. Judging by the blank stare she gave me in return, I don’t think it worked. I cleared my throat and pointed at the number scribbled on the bottom of the bill.

“Oh. This is your number?” Stanislawa asked. She suddenly looked frightened.

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” she said, stuffing the bill into her apron. “I will call you.”

“Great! I’m around. Whenever. Thanks for dinner,” I said and turned towards the exit. I saw my sister and stepmom outside, looking skyward. I popped the mint in my mouth and pushed open the door. My family looked at me expectantly. I pointed in the direction of the gelato store.

We walked down the cobblestone streets with our hands in our pockets. My little sister ran ahead and shouted that she smelt ice cream in the air. I took a deep breath, smelling only the sweetness of the rain, and wondered whether or not Stanislawa was humoring me when she said she would call.

It turns out she wasn’t. She texted me later that night.

Now, before I go on, I should probably state that giving my phone number to waitresses is not something that I normally do. In fact, this was the first time that I had ever done it, and barring any absurdly fantastic meals I have in the future, it will probably be the last.

So why did I do it? I’m still not sure. I wasn’t feeling particularly amorous that night. If anything, the Chinese beer was only making me more heartsick. A lot of it may have had to with the fact that it was the week of Thanksgiving and both of my roommates were out of the country, so this was the last chance I would have to bring a girl home to an empty apartment. Granted, I could have had a little more tact and not picked up the Polish waitress during dinner with my family, but the other option – hitting the pubs by myself – was not on the table. At this point, my beard was certifiably bushy.

Stanislawa had stayed true to her word. We were having a dialogue. Now came the hard part, convincing her to come over. Like, now. I sprawled across the couch and addressed the flurry of texts heading my way.

Was that girl at dinner your girlfriend? No. She was my sister.

You aren’t going to murder me, are you? I don’t think so, but who knows where the night will lead us?

And, most importantly:

Will you be providing alcohol? Of course. Isn’t that how people have sex?

If you’ve ever wondered how one convinces a working-class immigrant who has just worked a six-hour-shift to walk to one’s apartment for a late night drink, don’t worry, it’s very easy. In fact, I wish it were a lot harder. Then I could sell books about how to do it.

The truth of it is, she was surprisingly game and seemed to have made up her mind to come over before the first text was even sent. I did next to nothing.

Now it was my turn to be worried.

We agreed to meet outside Turks Head, a popular pub just down the street from my apartment, in fifteen minutes. I brushed my teeth, put on a new shirt, and flew out the door to meet her. She showed up ten minutes late, looking brave and maybe already a little drunk.

“I not can stay long,” she said. “I go to class tomorrow morning. Very early.”

“That’s fine. What do you want to do? Want to go to a pub or…?”

Stanislawa groaned. “No, no. You live around here?”

“Yes!” I said, straightening up. “Right around the corner, actually. Cow’s Lane.”

“We go there if you want.”

“Now?”

“Yes. Class tomorrow morning. Very early,” she repeated. She started in the direction of my apartment. I followed close behind. “You go to school?”

“Yes.”

“What do you learn?”

“Dramatic writing.”

“Writing? English?”

“Yes. Like English,” I said, jogging ahead of her so I could unlock the apartment complex door. It was drizzling again, but Stanislawa didn’t seem to care. She ran a black glove across her face and flicked it towards the ground, like a farmer wiping sweat off his brow in the middle of the summer swelter. This was clearly a different woman than the one I met at the Chinese restaurant.

“This is nice area. You work?” she asked.

I yanked open the door and showed her in. “Not really. It’s a study abroad kind of thing.” We were now at the bottom of a stairwell. The pale yellow light and beads of water on her brow made Stanislawa look sickly and harsh. “New York University.”

She followed me up the stairs. “You are from New York?”

“Yes.”

“I like New York.”

“Oh, really? You’ve been there, or…?”

“Yes. I lived there. With a friend,” she said.

My apartment was on the second floor, at the end of a bland, blue-tiled hallway. Stanislawa and I walked there in silence. Normally the air would be filled with the sounds of student life; gentle guitar strumming would waft up from the courtyard every night; the giggling would start once the actors were home from class, accompanied by the smell of cheap weed. Tonight the building was empty, quiet, and lifeless – spooky like an abandoned hospital.

We arrived at my apartment, which the school had furnished with an ancient television and an uncomfortable living room set, but not gone so far as to hang any sort of artwork on the walls. It looked like a bachelor pad, which I suppose it had become.

Stanislawa ducked into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. “I will be there,’ I heard her mumble. The faucet squeaked on.

I tossed my jacket on the couch and walked into the kitchen. It was time to break out the booze. I sorted through the fridge. Half a gallon of milk, some ancient eggs, a few bottles of amber lager, and a mini-keg of Jagermeister. Perfect. When I had promised Stanislawa alcohol I foolishly assumed that my absent roommates, both big fans of drinking, would be playing bartender. None of the alcohol here was mine. I spent all my money on tea and sandwiches.

Stanislawa appeared in the doorway looking refreshed. Trying to remain calm, I grabbed a couple lager bottles and held them up. “Beer?”

“Wine?” she countered.

Stanislawa clearly had a different vision for the night. I furrowed my brow and glanced back in the fridge, looking for a bottle of wine I knew wasn’t there. “No. I think my roommates drank the last of it.”

“Okay,” she said, already over it. “Beer is good.”

I set the bottles on the counter and used my shirt to twist the caps off. “So you live with roommate?”

I handed her a bottle. “Yeah. Two. They’re out of town. Do you want to sit?”

Stanislawa shifted her weight, really thinking about this. Perhaps she thought “Do you want to sit?” was an oblique American euphemism for sex.

“On the couch?” I added.

“Yes. Okay,” she said, unsure. We sat down on separate couches and took turns sipping our beer. “I have class tomorrow morning. Very early,” she said with a sigh. It was quickly becoming the anthem of the evening.

“What kind of class?” I asked.

“English. Like you.”

“You speak very good English.”

“Thank you,” she said. She stared at the black television screen. “Could be better. Yes?”

“It could always be better. I’m still learning, myself,” I joked. Stanislawa nodded, trying her best to mask her confusion. She finished her beer and set it on the table. Mine wasn’t even halfway empty. I chugged to keep up. “You want another?”

“You have no wine?” she asked.

No. I had no wine. I knew this, and was pretty sure I just told her, but still I stood up and walked towards the fridge. This was instinct, trying to please my guest, a trait that I picked up from my father, who was so good at bending over backwards for visitors that he ought to have gone into the hospitality industry. He taught me a lot of things about being servile, but never told me what to do in times like these, when the Polish immigrant sitting on the couch accuses you of hoarding the good stuff – in so many stilted words. I swung open the fridge and stared into it, my mouth agape, not quite sure what to say.

After a few seconds of silence, Stanislawa conceded. “I will have beer.”

“Okay.” I grabbed another and twisted the top off. “So where are you from?” I asked, hoping to gain some forward momentum after the disastrous wine incident.

“Poland. Small town. I work there many years and save up money to go to U.S.”

“That’s when you went to New York?”

“Yes. I went with my friend. We live there half year. I love it. Then money ran out and we did not want to go back home, so we come here. That was three years.”

I took a seat next to her on the couch. “You’ve been here three years?”

“More or less.”

“You live in Dublin?”

“Oh, no. Too much money. I live in Lusk. You know where? Forty minute train ride. Every day. Very boring. But this is only way I can live. My friend, who is with me in New York… she move back to Poland. This is last month. She can’t afford here. I can’t afford here. I work hard not to go home. This is what keeps my going. Home is… bad. My friend has no choice. Back to Poland where there is nothing. Very sad when she go.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Terrible. Yes. I have no friends. Sound strange but it is true. I have no life but work and class. And when I go home… I live with boyfriend of my friend. My New York friend. She is gone back to Poland and still I live with him! I have no choice. Terrible. He is bad, lazy. He do nothing to help. His friends are worse.”

“What does he do?”

“I said. Nothing. He is lazy. He treat my friend like…” She looked out the window at the darkened apartments across Cow’s Lane, basking in the silence. “Terrible.”

I stared at Stanislawa, unsure what my next move should be. I had never had a date dip this quickly into no-mans land. I’ve been on dates that have climaxed with me puking all over myself while the girl sobbed and moaned like her family had just died in a fire, but at least we had a nice dinner first.

I felt inclined to match Stanislawa’s tale of woe with one of my own, as if hearing that I too was a prisoner in my own miserable life would make us kindred spirits, but was at a loss. I considered making something up. Maybe I could have lupus.

She turned towards me and sighed. This was not the youthful sprite with the gummy smile I thought I had picked up at the Chinese food restaurant. This woman was an experience, an old soul with a broken back. A future member of Naggers Anonymous. I don’t know how they do things in Poland, but in America, we wait for the second date to talk about how rare it is that life meets our grandiose expectations.

I smiled and shook my head. I felt the ground beneath me giving way. The conversation ship had sailed. Things were only going to get more depressing from here on out.

My mind reeled. What, exactly, did she mean by home being ‘bad’? What was she neglecting to say in that pregnant pause? What if her brother had died of malaria or something, or her father had lost his arms and legs in a brutal civil war? My history of Poland failed me. If she was allowed to go on talking, would I eventually have to counter with a tale about the time my best friend slapped me on prom night? Did that even remotely compare? It was a dizzying spiral that had no hope of bottoming out in sex. I had two choices: throw a Hail Mary or throw myself out the window.

“Can I kiss you?” I warbled. “I just…”

She smiled and leaned to the side, nearly lying down. “Yes.”

This was an unexpected turn. Suddenly, everything was back in its place. I was back on familiar ground. I climbed on top of her and kissed her cheek. Then her neck. Then her mouth. She took off my shirt. I peeled off hers. I kissed her sternum and worked my way down. She grabbed my head and pulled me towards her face. She looked serious.

“You are bad boy.”

“What?”

“You are bad boy. Yes?”

“Yes.”

I tried to kiss her again, anything to stop her from talking. She wasn’t done. She made a pbbbt sound with her lips and pushed me off.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I go,” she replied.

“Where?”

“Home.”

“Now?”

“Yes. I have class. Very early,” she said. She was already searching for her shirt.

“Can I call you?” I asked, immediately regretting the question.

“Yes,” she replied. She stood up. “I work tomorrow night. You text me.” She grabbed her coat and hurried toward the door.

“Tomorrow, then,” I said pathetically. She opened the door and stood half-in, half-out. “Thanks for coming over. I had a good time.” She faked a smile, gave me a final kiss on the cheek, and started down the hallway.

After she was gone, I returned to the living room and drank the rest of my beer at the window overlooking Cow’s Lane.

The street was empty, save for Stanislawa, who stood outside the shuttered bakery, smoking a desperate cigarette. I was glad that the rain had let up momentarily, because Stanislawa had a journey ahead of her. It’s a long walk down Cook, over the Ha’penny Bridge, and up the Strand to get to Connoly station, down the same streets I would explore leisurely with the hopes of curing my boredom. It’s a long ride north, past St. Anne’s Park, through Clongriffin and Malahide and Donabate to get to Lusk. It’s a long walk inland until Home, where New York friend’s boyfriend would be asleep on the couch, and where head could finally meet pillow.

It’s a long way to go for someone who has class. Especially when it’s very early.

I turned away from the window and sat my drink down on the table, my head swimming with regret. I sat on the edge of the couch for a long time, running my hands over my face. Stanislawa may have slept on the train that night, but my journey home was no shorter than hers.