Exciting Times

by Naoise Dolan

People who’d gone to Oxford would tell you so even when it wasn’t the question.

I saw no difference between that and Irish people putting

“sure” in random places, it served a similar function sure, but that wasn’t English either. English was British.

I have every respect for people who follow their passions, but I prefer stability.”

And all your minding happened in one mind, hopefully your own.

I wanted other people to care more about me than I did about them.

“Look, if I could explain my job in a sentence, it wouldn’t pay so well.”

“I can’t be held responsible for every tin-hat notion you come up with.”

Others were obeying the ever-robust principle that one could not expect rich people to stay anywhere too long.

“I wonder which creates more jobs—my directing capital where it will stimulate the most growth, or your writing books about how this makes me a bourgeois parasite.” “Certainly the books.

but British men were resourceful, and found school not only interesting, but the most interesting thing they’d ever done.

Julian had complimented both my outer sparkle and the interior layer only clever people saw.

Ireland you got five years for rape, fourteen for aborting your rapist’s fetus, and a lifetime in the laundries for the fact of being raped, and there was a laundry still open when you were born. None of this was directly the fault of the men you fucked but it influenced how you went about

fucking them,

The trouble with my body was that I had to carry it around with me.

The English taught us English to teach us they were right.

I didn’t interrupt them when they talked about Infinite Jest. Admittedly that was because I hadn’t read it, but nor had they.

Parents couldn’t change society, so they aimed for its inequalities to harm someone else’s child rather than their own.

The more compound adjectives describing an apartment, the higher the rent.

Besides, the rush-hour train served for company. I settled in under a man’s armpit, felt the stud of a woman’s handbag digging into me, and thought: I am a part of something.

Before I met her I’d wondered if “uncouth” meant uncouth then what did “couth” mean, and now I knew: “couth” meant Edith.

my niveau de français is between me and God.

I tried to see myself as she did when I dressed myself or bought things.

I wished I could watch her be friends with other women. If I knew how she normally went about it, it would be easier to know if we were different.

When I met someone I liked, I wanted all of them, and fast.

Edith was calm about things she couldn’t change. Her firm was full of horrible men and she had to be nice to them. You did in every job, and at least hers paid well.

but more fundamentally because bosses did not like to employ people who thought they should not exist.

i’ve known her two months and it feels like she’s the only person in my life who has ever mattered or existed.

There was a predictable dalliance with the sister’s dashing fiancé, but we forgave him for being formulaic because he was played by Gene Kelly.

I think you want to feel special—which is fair, who doesn’t—but you won’t allow yourself to feel special in a good way, so you tell yourself you’re especially bad.”

It felt unfair that this was happening only now that my top priority was not finding out more about Julian.

It had felt that way, but maybe it did for everyone at that age.

I felt like abandoning everything else I did to try to be happy, and just spending the rest of my life finding things Edith needed to be told, and telling her.

What the heck have the Irish got against Ireland?”

I loved Edith so much it seemed only sensible to worry about losing her. You could hardly stake that much in someone and not think every now and then of what you’d do without them.

Once I told someone I’d do something, I always did the opposite.

It occurred to me that most beds did not come with a particular Edith, that actually most people had no Edith at all, and that those people had to sleep in those beds or other relevant furniture and pretend to be happy.

It had never made sense to me that men thought women they’d had sex with would like to hear them be unkind about other women they’d had sex with.

Plenty of people are willing to offer you intimacy. That terrifies you. You prefer feeling like no one will ever love you.”

he doesn’t make me as happy or as sad as you do. that means i care less about him,

This was why people became teachers, I thought. It wasn’t to help people. It was to be the cleverest person in the room, always,

she said I never did anything practical with my life anyway, so there was no need to focus on quote-unquote handy phrases.

The ex was probably a better person now, he said. Everyone was terrible aged twenty.

It was like drinking something I’d been holding till it cooled, finding it still too hot, and gulping anyway because I’d been cold too long.

you’re terrified of vulnerability. This is so both because others have been unkind to you in the past, and because you don’t like yourself and are sure anyone who gets close will agree.

“have you ever been afraid to say sorry?” She said yes. If you weren’t afraid then you probably weren’t sorry.

Really my grievance was that he was in charge and not me.

He often said he didn’t meet many people like me. But I didn’t know if that meant there was necessarily a vacancy for them.

But as Edith saw it, she would never be happy if she couldn’t accept herself.

“I feel Catholic guilt when we’re fucking, but I’m not sure if fucking you is the source of guilt or the penance.”