Sunday morning. At the coffee stand. The guy is here working on the new bar right now. The whole project is really coming along great. We love to see it!
In a plot twist I did not expect, the coffee shop owner’s white boyfriend is apparently not her boyfriend. Or maybe he is and they have an arrangement. It’s Thailand so it’s hard to tell, you know? People have all sorts of things going on here. Anyway, the last two days he’s brought a new lady friend to the shop with him. They are looking pretty cozy. I’m kinda disappointed in a way. I was rooting for him to be with the owner lady.
I decided to go out last night on a whim. As soon as I walked into the bar, everyone started laughing. I said, “You were just talking about me, weren’t you?”
My Irish friend, who I have started calling The Moose since he told us the story about his Canadian girl, just goes, “It was the Irish faeries. They brought you here tonight. I knew you were coming. I felt a change in the wind.”
Okay, sure, yeah, whatever. I can roll with that. Apparently the faeries picked out my scarf for me too because he couldn’t stop staring at it the whole night.
“Where did you get that scarf?”
“I fished it out of the $1 bin at a secondhand shop back in South Dakota.”
“It looks Irish. You look Irish. Even your hair is Irish. You have perfect cailín hair. Do you know what that word means? It means you’re an Irish girl. I’m teaching you some Irish now.”
“I am an Irish girl.”
“Yeah, but you don’t even know, do you, girlie? You weren’t even trying to look this way on purpose. You can’t help it. You just do.”
He picked up his phone and searched for a picture of a scarf similar to the one I was wearing. He pulled up an old black and white picture of an Irish woman wearing a long shawl. It looked exactly like the scarf I was wearing. It was actually kinda freaky.
“I told you the Irish faeries were here tonight,” he said.
It was such a strange moment. It felt so weird to look at that photo and realize I know nothing about myself. It was very spooky. It was like seeing a ghost. I don’t know else how to describe the moment other than “freaky.” Faeries indeed.
I asked him again if they had been talking about me before I came into the bar. He tried to be squirrelly about it and avoid the question but I got the answer out of him anyway.
“Yes, we were talkin’ about ya. Everyone is talking about you. You have made quite a stir. People aren’t quite sure what to make of you yet. Personally, I think you’re alright, but that’s because I’ve sat here and talked with you before. Some of those other guys, though. They don’t like you bragging the way you do about your men.”
“I haven’t been doing that since Antony. I stopped picking up random guys after that. I don’t want what happened that night to happen again.”
He nodded at me approvingly.
“That’s probably for the best,” he said. “You don’t want to be taking home the wrong man.”
“I think I already did that.”
“He’s sorry about that. He should have been upfront with you.”
“Yeah, I mean, let’s be real here. He could have told me and I still would have fucked him anyway just because he’s so hot. So whatever. It’s the dishonesty part that bothers me. The way you fuck a single person is totally different than the way you fuck a married person. He deceived me on a deeper level.”
He just laughed at me. I decided to change the subject by showing him an old photo of myself from South Dakota holding an AR-15. I was in my backyard with my brother and my ex-military friend, who was teaching us how to shoot. The look on his face when he saw me holding an assault rifle was priceless.
“Ah, I knew you were one of us. I can’t look at you the same way anymore now.”
“Oh, you actually have some respect for me now, huh?”
“Yes.”
“It’s really not that big of a deal. We were just out in the yard doing target practice. This gun is very popular in America. It’s the one they all use in the school shootings.”
Everyone nearby all laughed awkwardly together.
“That’s the darkest joke I’ve heard in awhile,” a nearby patron said.
“It’s the truth.”
I turned back to my conversation with the Moose and pulled up the full post.
“Look see, the caption even says, ‘Celebrating my Irish heritage this St. Patty’s Day by channeling the IRA.’ It’s supposed to be a joke. I showed it to my Irish Minder but he didn’t say anything.”
My friend looked at me with a sparkle in his eyes and laughed hysterically for about five minutes. “I knew you were one of us,” he said again. “I don’t know how knew, but I knew.”
“And how is my Irish Minder doing, btw?”
“He gave us the Spark Notes version of your life story last week.”
“Yeah he’s been all up in my business since what happened with Antony.”
“He’s all up in everyone’s business all the time. That’s what he does. He makes it his business to know everyone else’s business. And they all wanted to know your business after that night.”
“So you have been talking about me with all of your Irish friends?”
“Yes. Everyone knows who you are now.”
“I see. Should I be nervous?”
“No, you’re okay. You’re Irish. You’re one of us now.”
Hmmm.
Fun times at the American Bar. So here’s my question: when do I get my invitation to the Emerald Ball? Just tell me when and where and I will be there wearing a gown. So ready. Just make sure you keep Antony in a separate room far away from me because if I see that man in a suit, I will die on the floor immediately.
Oh Jesus, why did I do that to myself? Try not to think about that, Betsey. Think about the way this man deceived you instead. And he did. He really did.
If I had known he was married, I would not have told him about Andrew, and I definitely would not have been laying naked in bed next to him crying over Andrew while he comforted me. That was intimacy. I wouldn’t have been intimate with him like that if I had known. Do you even realize how absurd it is that I was crying over one married man to a completely different married man who didn’t even fucking tell me he was married before asking me about the deepest, darkest secrets I keep locked in the inner chambers of my heart.
What the fuck is that?
It annoys me even more than he gets to go home to his wife and then send someone out to collect all the info on me. So now he knows everything about me, and I know NOTHING about him except his zodiac signs.
That’s some bullshit right there. That’s next level deception. Shady ass shit. You know what I’ve learned from living in Thailand? The phrase, “Be careful who you exchange your energy with” is highly accurate. There has definitely been a change in the wind since this man blew into my life two weeks ago. I don’t even know what to make of all of this.
When in doubt, just blame the faeries. They set me up. They saw me out hunting for trophies and sent this Irish stag my way to fuck up my day. Now I’m all disoriented and lost in the forest while they run around playing tricks on me like A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Now I know how that play was written. Willy got too high in the forest on a trip to an Ireland and was never the same since. That’s how he ended up with head of an ass.
It all makes so much sense now. Who even knew this would be the outcome of randomly choosing Bangkok and boarding a flight that same day?
I went home alone last night and up to the roof. The moon was a perfect glowing yellow crescent, hanging up in the air like a smile. I looked at the moon. The moon looked back. I realized I had stared into the void for so long that the void started to stare back. And when it looked back, it just gave me that empty, vacant, cheeky Thai grin, like it knows something about the world that I do not and will never understand.
Irish faeries indeed.