Diario de Madrid: Junio 2005: El Bar Irlandes 3: los individuales

Some people just make you feel so helpless. There are a lot of these at my bar. The dull, the restless, the hoplessly useless, the undefined, the unrefined…..

The most interesting are the individuals. Nuria, the neurotic man-eater, who visits the bar on a nightly basis, always with a different guy on rotation. They dote on her slavishly, buy her gifts, paw over her warm, brown skin, then get rebuffed after they’ve paid for her entertainment. Mostly these poor creatures are so pathetic I have no sympathy whatsoever, but occasionally even my man-hating heart goes out to the wretches.

Sylvia, the woman of no particular origin, sits in the corner, writing her thesis on how to analyse history purely through photos. She has 169 images of the fall of the Russian Empire. She chain-smokes and drinks tea, but only up until 6 o clock. She has her own cushion that stays behind the upright bar-flap when she’s not here. She has numerous friends who come and sit and chat round the corner table, always in Spanish, although she’s lived in Paris, Dublin and a number of other European cities. She has never been to the Orient but she has used alternative medicine to cure back problems, induced from too much bad posture: sitting on the floor with her legs akimbo and writing her first thesis, 14 hrs every day for 4 months. She has a shock of curly blonde hair that frames her face and a contented-cat smile. Her voice is gravely, and rolls out of her mouth in a soft, indeterminate drawl. There is nothing silly about her – she’s solid and certain. And kind. Sure, sometimes her blue eyeshadow falls below where it should be and she entertains the company of pseudo-intellectuals, but she has a certain place in the world. Of that I am sure. She makes me feel safe when I sit next to her. There is nothing fripperous or extraneous about her person. She needs background noise to work but she doesn’t desperately seek the company of others by coming to the bar. She people-watches and lends a kind ear to those that seek it.

Malcolm makes me want to cry at times. He’s the type of person I would like to have shot at birth. Not for any malicious intent, just purely because it would have been an act of kindness. He has a toads face, with shallow muddy eyes that bulge glassily. If those are windows to some kind of soul I give up any faith in God, as I can see nothing there. He is the worst of Nuria’s fan club – and the most fervently hopeful. I don’t think he’s ever understood a single thing about the world or where his place in it should be, so, like the rest of the truly lost, he will sit at the end of the bar, supping his pint and laugh at jokes that were not meant for him to share.