The incessant chatter, that sounds like small talk but somehow doesn’t feel like small talk, the unintentional self deprecating humor that underlies the Irish tone, it feels safe. All are at ease. 

The taxi drivers are notoriously the pinnacle of Irish comedians. Mine began with a monologue about his alcoholism. He was approaching 12 months sober and proud. I didn’t get his name or a glimpse of his face, but his voice gave me plenty, and I got to make up the rest.  

“Christmas day will be brutal, of course, to be sober I mean. At least I can have some Guinness to get me through” his tone was light, jolly, but serious. I grinned. He wasn’t even trying to be funny, this was just small talk.

The Irish coast is rugged and cozy. The dip into the ferocious waves, brutal and dangerous, feels sobering, but an Irish kind of sobering. A warm comfort encompasses you as you submerge into the frigid choppiness. Irish sobriety became more appealing by the day. Here it was impossible for any fluke obscurity or horror to occur. Maybe it is just the illusion of being elsewhere. You enter a new world, but there is this underlying faith that you will always make it back home. Or maybe Ireland is unique because here you are always a Guinness in, where nothing can touch you, only the sobering slap of reality when you leave.

Near the Cliffs of Moher is the tiny town of Doolin. Doolin is barren and fleeting, but full of luster and snippets of life. There is a pub and a cheese shop that also sells wool slippers. Before you can truly gather up a comment about Doolin, it’s in the rear view, and you’re just driving on a tiny twisty road that ends abruptly at the water’s edge. It is easy to romanticize Doolin. The temporary nature of it covers all flaws. It is a town you would really only want to be in for that brief second of pure bliss as you pass it by. But then I wonder about the owner of the cheese and wool slipper shop. He lives there. He seems as content as the taxi driver in Dublin, and just about everyone else in Ireland. Is being content in presentation simply the social norm of Ireland or is it genuine? Is it all still just through the lens of Irish sobriety? Is it deceiving me or just unclear because I am an outsider? I wish I had stopped and maybe struck up a conversation with the owner. But that may have altered my romantic perception of it all.

We ended in Belfast. Northern Ireland is not to be mistaken with Ireland. The rain fell harder and felt colder. There were no umbrellas, it just clattered atop the hard steel shell that loomed over the city. The figures were unbothered by the rain plopping down on them. With so much makeup on and hairspray in, the rain drops didn’t even smudge the eyes or cause flyaways in the hair. In Belfast, there was a dissimilar kind of small talk, that instead felt big and loud. There was no glossy layer of Irish sobriety, it was far more extreme…rowdy. All feelings of warmth and utopia drowned around me as I tried to find at least maybe an ounce of familiar New York busting energy. There was a hustle and bustle in Belfast, but everyone was moving in the wrong direction. 

I do see the irony, as I am the cold outsider piling such ridicule onto an innocent place. Did I really hate Belfast or did I just hate it after driving through Doolin? 

Regardless, I rang in 2023 in Belfast, sober, in the single worst club I have ever attended, where I was approached and told that I look like someone who sells cocaine. There it was, the slap. It was time to go home.