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After I graduated from pole climbing, I was told to report to work the following day.  I would meet my gang of employees and start my job as a resident installation foreman for New Jersey Bell Telephone. “Fresh meat!” The speaker was about seven feet, hugely muscled, tattooed. with a buzz cut. “Excuse me?” I’d heard him, but I hoped he wouldn’t speak to me like that again.
“I said, ‘fresh meat.’ Where are you from, baby? You’re new, right?”
I nodded.
“So, which side? Business or residential?”
“Residential.”
”You just get out of pole school or what?”
“Hey, looky, look! It’s our new management hire!” A very spiffy, buff man with slicked-back hair and a wide smile was standing at my elbow. ”Howdy, Mary Ellen.”
“Molly.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” the fresh meat guy said, spitting on the ground. “She’s one of them bitches?”
“Watch your filthy mouth Halloway and fuck off!” The spiffy man extended his freshly manicured hand. “Welcome to hell, Molly. I’m Marco Lopez, and I will be your tour guide.”

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Of course, I wasn’t healthy enough to accept we needed to stop seeing each other. During the few months that remained in the Trinity year, we drifted apart. He came to say goodbye when I was leaving Ireland, and we drank coffee in the back garden pretending we would see one another again although neither of us believed that was true. Trine was driving me to catch the train to begin my trip across Europe, but he was standing on his head and refused to say goodbye. I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Don’t forget me, Christopher Robin.”

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I landed in Dublin and was in a cab headed to Emily Murphy’s flat on Wilton Place before I felt anything but a mild sort of shock that I had actually managed to leave the country. “Are you visiting a relative?” the cab driver asked.
“I’m going to Trinity for a year.”
He glanced in his rear-view mirror. “Ah, Protestant then?”
“What? Oh, no. I’m a lapsed Catholic. Well, not even lapsed, never started. My grandmother was from the North. She grew up in a convent.” This need for self-identification was always in play in Ireland. Unlike race in America, Irish people looked alike and needed a guide to hate each other. It was almost impossible to remain mysterious about your belief system or to deny religion when choosing a side was necessary.

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