American Skin

A long time after the principal players in this story were buried, I was sitting one cold February evening in New York, in a studio apartment in the West Village, watching the snow fall, a full-on melancholy building. The windchill factor was ferocious, a neighbour, the only one who spoke to me, said,

“I’m not venturing out till late May.”

Got my vote.

I had a glass of Jameson in my right hand, The Waterboys on the speakers. A group founded by a guy from Edinburgh, Mike Scott, they ended up in Galway, laid down a couple of classic tracks and made little impact outside of Ireland. At the time when U2 was about to conquer America, the boys were playing small venues in Ireland. Their following may have been small in rock terms but it was fierce in its enduring loyalty. “The Whole of the Moon” was spinning and if I had to describe my love for Siobhan, the difference between us; their lyrics may best capture it, saying:

“I saw the crescent, you she saw the whole of the moon.”

Did she ever.

A time when she had a semi-nervous breakdown, I think she was seventeen or so and she saw a head doctor, as they call them in Ireland. She told me that he said,

“You are quite unique in that you have no illusions and that is a hard way to live.”

Jesus, to see to the granite core of the world, I couldn’t hack it like that. I have to believe in... shit, I dunno, some kind of hope. Siobhan believed you made your own luck, and thanks to me, she ran out of all the hard-earned luck she’d strived so long to achieve and that is my burden. It’s not so much that I led her astray but that I had her think a new life was not only possible but within reach. She’d done all the work, and me, I let it unravel. They say no sin is unforgivable, well, they’re wrong. I believe there is one sin without redemption and that is to hold out the prospect of a better life and through sheer fecklessness, to let it slip away. If the Jesuits are correct and the fires of hell are being stoked for me, I’m going to ask,

“Put on a few more coals.”