Free The Orange Mocha-Chip Frappuccino Years by Paul Howard

anything.
    And suddenly, roysh, I can, like, sense that I’m being watched and I sort of, like, stop and I hear her going, ‘What the fock are you doing?’ I turn around and I’m like, ‘This isn’t … em …’ She goes, ‘Are you stealing money from me?’ I’m like, ‘No, I was–’ She goes, ‘ What were you looking for in my bag?’ And I don’t know why, roysh, I just said, like, the first thing that came into my head. I was like, ‘Lipstick.’
    She looks at me, roysh, as though she’s, like, weighing this up in her mind, and then she looks down at my hand and, like, her expression suddenly changes. And then I look down and I realise that I’m holding a pair of her tights, and she’s staring at me like I’m some kind of weirdo and she goes, ‘Lipstick? OH! MY! GOD! You are one sick boy,’ I’m like, ‘I swear, I’m not one of those trans-whatever you call them.’ She opens the door and goes, ‘Get out of my apartment! NOW!’ I’m like, ‘Please don’t tell any of the Nure goys about this.’ She goes, ‘Oh my God, I am SO going to tell everyone what a weirdo you are.’
    I walk back to my gaff, knowing that by next weekend this’ll beall over town. And they’ll come up with a focking nickname for me. It’ll be Cross O’Carroll-Kelly, how much do you bet?

    Michelle from Ulster Bank has left another message. She says it’s urgent.

    Asked the old man for two hundred lids. Wanted to get, like, a pair of trousers and a shirt, roysh, and he goes, ‘Don’t have that kind of money on me, Ross. But your mother and I are going into the city this afternoon. You can get whatever you want on my card.’ I’m like, ‘Which means I’m going to have to go into town with you two?’ He goes, ‘Yes, what’s the problem, Kicker? Lovely summer’s day …’ And I go, ‘Do you honestly think I want to spend my day hanging out with you knobs.’
    Basically I’d no other choice, though. I was going to Annabel’s that night, pretty much guaranteed my bit off Ali, this bird who’s, like, first year morkeshing in Mountjoy Square, and I needed new threads. So I lash on the old fleece, collar up, and my baseball cap – pulled down over my eyes obviously – and get into the back of the old man’s cor, bricking it in case anyone, like, recognises me. We pork the cor in the Arnott’s cor pork, focking northside, and head towards Grafton Street. The old man looks a total dickhead as per usual in his camel-hair coat and that stupid focking hat he wears. The old dear has the usual fifty baby seals on her back and I’m just there, ‘Oh my God, I SO have to get away from these two.’ The old man’s like, ‘Slow down, Kicker,’ but I’m walking, like, fifty metres ahead of them and the one time I do look back, roysh, is when I’m halfway up Grafton Street and the two of them are looking in the window of Weirs, her hanging off hisarm, obviously trying to get another piece of Lladro out of the focker.
    So I head on into BT2, roysh – they know where to find me – and I hit the old Hugo Boss section first and stort thinking about getting a new pair of loafers. My old ones are, like, a bit scuffed. The next thing, roysh, who do I bump into only Jill, this mate of Ali’s, roysh, who does a bit of modelling and she goes, ‘Oh my God, hi ,’ and sort of, like, air-kisses me. I’m like, ‘Hey, babes, how goes it?’ flirting my orse off with her. She’s there, ‘Oh my God, Ali’s just, like, texted me this second. Are you going to, like, Annabel’s tonight?’ I’m like, ‘I could find myself in that vicinity,’ playing it totally Kool and the Gang.
    Anyway, roysh, all of this is sort of, like, by the by, because what happened next was I suddenly heard all this, like, shouting and shit over by the escalators, and I recognise the old man’s voice and I turn around, roysh, and there he is, arguing with these two coppers who, like, have a hold of him. He’s there going, ‘You are not