Channelled by Luke O’Connell
Ryan Tubridy
In the days before I became the much-maligned presenter of “The Late Late Show”, it might surprise you to learn that I actually did have something of a personality. I was a fun-loving youth, and had yet to adopt my smug, faux-witty, self-professed “old fogey” persona which the people of Ireland have come to hate. Many years ago, I was lucky enough to receive a ticket to the Ball and went, despite my now public views about Trinity being guilty of anglicising Ireland’s middle class. It made for a welcome escape from my time studying Classics at UCD, where my old buddies from Blackrock continued to bully me for being such a massive prick. My current squeeze was then a comely 1st year student, but it didn’t stop me ogling her across a crowded tent of whatever the dance music du jour was, imagining the day when I might one day feel her at the end of my emaciated, quivering member. Eventually, my palms frothy with the agonised sweat of what felt like one hundred years of solitude, I weasled over to this prize piece of nubile flesh. “D-do you like this music?” I yelled over the noise, my oily saliva giving her ear a shower of a thousand wet willies. As she smiled fellatially, I wondered if she suspected that one day I would be paid multiples of Barack Obama’s salary for pandering to Ireland’s D-list. Did she know that one day I would write a bestselling hardback about JFK? I handed her an ecstasy tablet then which she ate from my hand like a grinning horse. I grabbed her then — just as a beat dropped, as they say — one spindly hand around her back as the other reached magnetically for her shapely arse. She swooned as I loomed, ogre-like, and we kissed, for what seemed like longer than an episode of the Late Late, although really it was no longer than one of my pointless interviews with another RTE hack. I bought her a few drinks, trying to get her as drunk as I could, and soon she was falling about the place as I steadied her in my arms. We spent the evening together, she and I, unable to keep our glistening hands off one another, dancing like young people do, shifting with abandon under the Campanile as I shoved my shovel hand up her flowing, menstrual-pink gown and felt my forlorn shaft suddenly mimic the shape of my general beanpole physique. I could feel my virginity reaching for its jacket. But then I snapped out of it, returning to reality, returning to the hideous dance beats and her face so far in the crowd and mine just another nobody in a sea of tuxedos. I would have to wait until I had become the soulless beast I am today before I would have a chance of wooing this sweetheart. But I will never forget that Trinity Ball, and the time when, just for a moment, in the reverie of that moonlit shag’s cusp, I felt alive.
Gay Mitchell
The Trinity Ball is a great occasion for community and solidarity among the college staff and students and beyond. It is an invaluable part of student life which is cherished across the spectrum of Ireland’s third-level institution. It’s hazy to me now but I can just about remember going to one in the 70s when I enjoyed a dance and a boogie as much as the next man. I set out with four friends in my father’s old tux, smoking a marijuana stick outside the Dart station before we entered the grounds. We were not long in the gate when I turned around to say something to my friend Tom and I realised they were nowhere to be seen, lost in the vast crowds. Of course, this was in the days before mobile phones but I did my best to locate the lads. It was all in vain, however, and no matter how hard I looked or how many people I asked, there was no sign of my friends. I looked everywhere for them but it was as if they had deliberately cut me loose! In the end, I decided to do my best to enjoy the night anyway and spent the evening wandering around alone. Initially, I made a half-hearted attempt to gain some new friends from the student body but this proved fruitless. Was there something wrong with me, I wondered? I have battled with a deep sense of solipsism for much of my life, and then, as I pushed through the happy and high students, camaraderie in full swing, whooping and wahooing, I wondered would my life always be so. Was I condemned to walk the lonely street, the only street that I had ever known? I promised myself that one day I would make things different. One day I would make people like me. I would have the last laugh then. As I left the Ball, alone again naturally, I found my friends, giddy on the evening’s gaeity. “Where did you go off to, Gaybo?” they asked, but I sensed that I was being had for a fool. I turned to the young man who I had considered my best friend and, with all the vitriol and strength I could muster, looked him straight in the eye and told him to shag off.
Gerry Adams
I hate the Trinity Ball and everything that it stands for, but I was happy to hear that a woman I was throwing the shag into in the 70s had gotten me a ticket, not long after the outbreak of the Troubles when I still had some time on my hands for cavorting with women. After a couple of pints, I got a bit rowdy and decided to stir things up a bit, because I am always game for a laugh. I yelled “Fuck the provost! Fuck the provost!” but it was misinterpreted by a group of West Brits and Brits alike who attempted to join me in a chant of “Fuck the Provos! Fuck the Provos!” It was a cause of deep shame for me for some time but I took solace in the fact that I was kicked out for starting this loutish, if anti-republican, ruckus.
Ann Doyle
With a horn on me the size of Montrose Studios, I attended Trinity Ball in the 70s, hardly a novice to the seedier side of sex in which I would later revel. I had wanted, for some time, to get pounded ‘neath the stars in Ireland’s oldest college, and Trinity Ball seemed to me to be the most viable approach. Knickerless, I pranced from tent to tent, my neckly silverware bouncing off my bust as I frolicked. A minute past six o’clock tomorrow evening seemed so far away and I could be as shagged and hungover as I liked. On the cricket pitch I bonked, and down by the Buttery I published a Ball Guide of my own for two Junior Sophisters who have since become very successful in their chosen careers. My thirst for unceasing gratification was insatiable and I saw little music in those few passionate hours.
