my altercations with an irishman

By Sean Keane and Monica Fitzpadrick

It's 2024. My rebellious son Seamus O'Murphy Padrick-Keane wants to borrow the space-car, but he's been grounded for breaking space-curfew. When I refuse to give him the keys, Seamus wallops me over the head with an empty bottle of space-whiskey. Reeling and bleeding, I stagger towards the space-foyer and alert his mother, who cold-cocks the unsuspecting Seamus with a space-wrench as he dashes towards the space-garage. "Seamus," his mother bellows, "You've... shamed us!" His mother pauses as the hilarity of her statement sinks into her enormous Celtic head and the weight of it all eventually causes her to topple over.

Kevin Deenihan has a glass jaw, and collapsed like a rag doll.

While walking home from the pub, I spotted a tiny green-clad man with his tiny foot caught in a steam grate. I knew right away that it was a leprechaun, and that anyone who captures a leprechaun is entitled to his stash of hidden gold. So I looks the wee little guy in the eye, and I says, "Look, let's play it straight here. Ye're captured, and ye'll be telling me where your gold is without any of yer leprechaun tricks." He protested a bit, but eventually led me to a garden with hundreds of rosebushes. I made him tie a red handkerchief onto the bush which hid his gold, and went off to get my shovel. When I returned, every bush in the garden had a red handkerchief around it. I was so angry that I hardly noticed the partially-peeled potatoes being lobbed at me from a nearby tree. The little bastard gave me no gold at all, just a series of tiny-but-vicious kicks to the kidneys. The wee bugger was brutal with the pointy toes, but ye have to respect the man.

So it was wicked cold one day in Southie and I was walking along the river. I was taking a nip a Jameson's that I stole from my old man one night when he was passed out drunk by the fire and suddenly a cop car was pulling up beside me. O'Malley. This was not the first time we'd met. I eyed him up and down as he opened the car door. All the sudden there I was again, skirt around my neck and knickers around my ankles, goin' at it on the hood. We humped like two leprechauns on the glistening emerald isle. I had a confession, I told him, "I don't really know what the word 'altercation' means." He paused for a second to eye me wildly, "And I'm too embarrassed to ask."

"Sit yer foockin' arse down or I'll climb up there and give you somethin' to cry aboot," a disgruntled patron three rows back grumbles towards the stage. "Get yir foockin' foot outa yer arse, Vladimir! Foockin' do somethin!" (Estragon crosses, looks to the man) "I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't have been better off alone, each man for himself." (Disgruntled patron stands, stumbles towards stage and sweep kicks Estragon's bum foot from under him) "Well foockin' A right!" (The sun starts to set) "Aye, let's go," I says to my friend. He says "Feene, we're goin.' We're goin.'" (Nighttime. They do not move. Blood trickles from Estragon's nose. Vladimir sobs like a wee baby in the corner and the curtain falls)

The toughest altercation I ever had was with an Irishman named myself. Scrapping and brawling is one thing, but try learning to read at age 22. It's always tempting to quit studying phonics and drown your sorrows in alcohol, especially when a jerk like Danny McGinnis is giving you shit about Dick and Jane and that foocking dog Spot. Still, you have to battle with yourself every day to stay focused on the goal of self-improve-ment and literacy, unless that McGinnis simply WILL NOT SHUT UP, and then you haul off and smack him one, and he responds with a knee to your groin, and at that point Timothy O'Flanneryhan breaks a bar stool over Danny's head, and someone is biting your ankle, and just before you lose consciousness, you can read the label on the bottle of Bass Ale flying towards you in what seems like slow motion, for the very first time ever.