Kiss Your Mother, Boys--She's Been Dancing

Oh, what a glorious thing the Rover’s Bar is at two o’clock in the morning during the week. None of that nasty weekend crowd with the tart girls and the boys looking for something from the tart girls. Tits and sluts! But none of that on a weekday morning before the sun’s come up. No, no, no. When you’re there at two o’clock in the morning—a Tuesday morning specifically—all you get are freaks and gentlemen. Ah, come kiss your mother, boys; she’s been dancing! She’s been dancing with the most glorious men. Tattooed bikers and a man named Freddy, who kissed me with tongue and told me I belonged in a fox museum! (Hoots.) And I kissed him back with no tongue and told him he belonged in a looney bin, and we both had a genuine, good laugh. After having three sons, I thought I could never dance like that again. My feet ache, and my hair’s always tangled, and when I put make-up on I look like a lost mime in a roomful of noise. But tonight it didn’t matter. Tonight every man there wanted to take me home. They begged for me to come back to whatever flat or loft or big old mansion they live in, and I said, I can’t boys, I’m a mother. Then they all groaned disbelievingly, putting on a real show for your old Mum, and told me that was impossible. Since when did girls of fifteen go about having children, Freddy asked all serious like, what’s the world coming to? (Hoots again, even louder than the first time.) Oh, and there was a man there named Miguel—(Pronounces it Mee-gle.)—from Latin—(Pronounces it Lah-teen.)—America. He taught me some things, ho ho ho, he taught me! The tango, the salsa, the—the—this utterly sinful dance where you shake and scream and put your legs up on somebody’s shoulders while they pretend they ain’t staring straight at your knickers! (Massive hooting.) I should have had some decency, boys, but I didn’t. I wasn’t thinking about what the children at school might say about your old Mum. Call me a lush and this and that. Not that I go out every night like Lucy or Kyra, not like them at all. Always been a good girl, I have. Church on Sunday, so no going out on a Saturday. And oh, the repenting I’ll have to do when I see Father Timothy… (Groans, then laughs.) You should have been there, Father, I’ll say, but if you were you’d never be able to let me in the church again! (Spins around like a whirling dervish.) The marriage proposals! The jukebox music! The dogs outside howling at their masters! Oh, Rover’s Bar was dicey, that’s what it was. Dicey and dirty. One day you’ll drink there yourselves, boys. And if I catch you, I’ll string you up, and I won’t care what age you are. No good gentleman belongs in Rover’s, but when you’re teenagers there’ll be no stoppin’ you, and there’s no denying that. Still, a mother doesn’t have to like it. If your Aunt Kelly hadn’t dragged me there, I would never have gone, but then she ended up leaving with some fella, and I stayed. I stayed until the raucous, filthy hour of two o’clock, when all good Catholics are dreaming of the savior in their beds. Now it’s three and I’m even more awake than I was an hour ago! Why didn’t anyone tell me being up at ungodly hours could be such a religious experience? I feel more joy in me now than ever in my life. I feel like Audrey what’s-her-name in that movie where she fell in love with that old coot Rex Harriman. And she danced and sang—although she didn’t do her own singing, you know—but she didn’t have three glorious boys to come home to like I do and recount all her horrid stories that if the town knew about them, they’d take away her little men. But that’s why it’ll be a secret. A secret between a mother and her sons. Now, kiss me, boys. Kiss me and back to bed with you, you have school in the morning, and you’ll have to get yourself up because your mum is going to be sleeping in with the other sinners. (Hoots again, as the lights go down on her.)