My Friend Kenneth
By Michael Woyan
Page 5
America being a country with no sense of
its youth, I learned quickly that it is also
a land of shameless anglophiles. No one in
America sounds more intelligent speaking
gibberish at three in the morning barside
than someone from the British Isles. Of course
the free flow of well-considered ideas were
exchanged too, also often late into the night.
It would not be unusual for the conversation
to carry on back to the apartment, long after
our watering holes had closed for business.
Him sitting on the fireplace's mantle, myself
on the sofa we developed a taste for fine
cigars and single-malt scotch, thanks to
the local tobacconist and co-conspirators
of dubious and conspicuous wealth. Although
being a decent painter in high school, developing
a love for the written word in college and
later being published in a syndicated university
literary magazine, I'd spent my twenties
in denial of my right brain sensibilities
in an attempt to make a businessman out of
me, with mixed results. Like most hidden
secrets around Kenneth, they floated away
like dust on an open windowsill, leaving
us only with our true natures to sort out.
Late nights of scotch and cigars often evolved
into the exchange of Yeats, Wilde, Shaw and
Joyce, discussions of philosophy and politics,
morals, ethics and their pertinence to current
events and various other social commentaries.
Sometimes Kenneth would unravel tales of
local legend from his home in Galway, stories
of old men walking the Irish countryside
saying their good-byes to dear friends only
to return home to pass away in that very
night's slumber. He showed me how vast and
limitless was the Irish imagination and awakened
my own obscure Celtic ancestry never really
discussed by parents of a cold war culture
that was distinctly and decidedly American.
He also told me the stories of his friends
on both sides of the pond, people of various
degrees of honor and infamy. What I found
particularly illuminating about this was
that Kenneth was equally as comfortable with
the amoral trader as he was with the guy
holding several jobs to support his family
as he was with the guy who tries to be a
family man, but always ends up spending more
time at the track than he should. He was
just as jovial with gold-digging women of
kept circumstances as he was with full time
students putting themselves through school
serving cocktails, as he was with women in
loveless marriages of convenience. When I
reproached him about this seeming breach
of principal on his part, he replied that
there were unique qualities in all of them
that he liked and that their own breaches
never directly affected him; he was able
to compartmentalize his friendships in separate
but inclusive contexts that enriched his
life. My friends were all of the highest
regard and unquestionable character in their
walks of life and I often felt uncomfortable
associating with anyone else. Giving this
all serious consideration, I had remembered
what my father, with a very big personality
of his own, had told me in very stern tones
about my selection of friends. He said to
me, "Michael, if you hang around shit
long enough you'll start to smell like it."
Upon further reflection, this was indeed
sage and heady advice for a thirteen-year-old
boy, subject to the conflicts of peer group
pressure in choosing his first running buddies
and girlfriends. However, this revelation
made it illuminatingly clear to me that the
advice was no longer relevant for a man over
thirty with a developed worldview and sense
of personal values. Like my renewed love
of literature and my new sense of Irishness,
this expanded scope of human compassion opened
the gates to a novel world of social possibility
for me. I was now able to learn bits and
pieces from a broader spectrum of people
and their experience, without fear of sullying
my life.
This was made especially clear to me one
Friday evening when Kenneth arrived home
feeling his beer from his post-market consumption
activities. He suggested that we go downstairs
to the Ale House for a social cocktail, to
which I had to decline. He had become a well-loved
regular customer among the what I called
the "Old Town Irregulars." Sort
of a haven for certain species of subtle
alcoholics, quirky eccentrics and other varieties
of people in various states of disconnect,
it was always a social center for everything
anyone really cared about in Old Town. In
response to his bewildered expression I proceeded
to explain why for the past six years I was
barred from entering the establishment.