The I'm Grand Mamual E-Book

PJ Kirby

• Herausgeber: Gill Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 243

Beschreibung

PJ Kirby and Kevin Twomey are two Mammy's boys from Cork who are always up for a skit. In The I'm Grand Mamual, they take well-worn expressions that their mams have always said, and share hilarious and heart-warming stories from their lives where these sayings have rung true – from schooldays to holidays, coming out to going out, and sustainable thrifting to end-of-night shifting. The I'm Grand Mamual is a big-sisterly companion for taking life in your stride. Mam might always know best – but Kevin and PJ will show you the rest!

Leseprobe

PJ

To my dad, thank you for always supporting me in my life choices, even when you didn’t fully understand them. I wish you could have seen where they led. This one’s for you.

Pat Kirby, 1947–2013

Kevin

To my dad, who always told me how proud he was. I know he would be particularly proud of this.

Jerry Twomey, 1958–2022

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Hey Girlies

1. Growing Up Gay

2. School and Education

3. Styling and Self-Expression

4. Love and Relationships

5. Moving Away and Making Money

6. Following your Dreams

7. Finding Joy

LGBTQ+ Resources and Being a Better Ally

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Authors

About Gill Books

Hey Girlies …

I’m Kevin.

And I’m PJ.

And together we’ve written The I’m Grand Mamual!

Woooooo!

We’re published authors! Can you cope? When we first got asked about writing a book we were like, ‘OMG absolutely!’ We were imagining how stunning the finished product would look on a coffee table in our respective houses and Kevin was ready already updating his Tinder bio to include ‘author’. We thought of the press tour, the book signings and how much of a pinch-me moment it would be to walk past a bookshop in Cork and spot our faces in the window gracing the cover of our very own publication and we started fighting over fonts. But the process has been so much more than that. Writing this book has been such a joy: recounting the journey we’ve both been on together over the last few years and recalling formative tales from our childhood, finding comfort in how far we’ve both come and thinking about how happy our younger selves would be to see us living our lives authentically and on our own terms.

Kevin: The pair of us met in 2013 when I was studying in UCC and PJ was teaching hip-hop classes for the dance society on campus. Despite my background being more modern and jazz-based, I went to PJ’s class to see what all the fuss was about and I had such a scream. He taught a routine to Rihanna’s ‘Cockiness (Love It)’ and though I felt completely out of my comfort zone, I didn’t care. I think we both felt a bit of a connection to each other that day, perhaps because we were both closeted gay men who loved dancing and we saw a bit of ourselves in each other – or maybe PJ fancied me a bit. Who knows?

PJ: Now, I definitely didn’t fancy Kev, but I was up to ninety when he came to class because I knew straight away he was a flaming homosexual and I was panicked that he would see that I was too. Anyway, the fear quickly subsided and we got so friendly that year I asked him to MC the fundraiser I was hosting to support me going to dance college in London. If there’s one thing that boy can do, it’s host a party. He was fab.

Kevin: The day after the fundraiser, I spotted him in town sporting a pair of expensive Air Jordans, which he insists weren’t purchased with the money he had raised the day before. (I suppose this doesn’t really have anything to do with the story of how we met but I just love telling people that it happened.)

PJ: I’ve never worn Air Jordans in my life, by the way. I moved to London that September and Kev followed the year after but was living in Essex so we lost touch for a bit, both busy doing our own thing, but moved in together three years later when Kev graduated.

Kevin: Initially I slept on his pull-out couch for three months before we could find a bigger gaff, and though my back was broken from sleeping on a mattress that was the thickness of a Ryvita cracker, I was happy to be reunited again with my best friend.

PJ: When we moved into our tiny terraced house in Stratford, living in a gaff where I didn’t have to climb over Kev’s bed to get to the fridge in the morning was a welcome change. We loved having people over for dinners, cups of Barry’s tea we’d smuggled over from trips home and pre-drinks ahead of a big, gay night out. The idea for I’m Grand Mam came about in January 2019 on a trip to Budapest for my birthday. After a few glasses of red wine on our Ryanair flight, we asked the air hostess for a pen and started planning our first episode of I’m Grand Mam on the back of a sick bag as we crossed over Europe, 10,000 feet in the air.

Kevin: We arrived back in London with big ambitions and a touch of food poisoning, but that didn’t deter us. The microphone we had ordered from Amazon was waiting for us so we felt obliged to follow through with our plan. Otherwise, it would have been a waste of £50. Sure, it would have been rude not to. And now the rest is history. We never anticipated the podcast getting so popular and achieving the success that it has.

PJ: It’s been a bit of a whirlwind, girlies. Thanks to the success of the pod, we’ve been able to perform all over the UK and Ireland, shoot stunning campaigns, and be featured in loads of glam publications. We were even mentioned in Vogue, which is mad. Okay, it’s not like we went for coffee with Anna Wintour, it was a tiny mention – but we’ll take it!

Kevin: In 2022, we did a live UK and Ireland tour, performing to sold-out venues in Cork, Dublin, Galway, Belfast, London and Edinburgh. We also appeared on The Late Late Show, and we were weak because our mammies got to be there too.

PJ & Kevin: But for us, the most rewarding thing about starting I’m Grand Mam has been bringing a smile to people’s faces. We’re constantly getting messages from Irish expats from all around the world telling us of how we’ve helped cure them of their homesickness with our nostalgic tales and our self-deprecating humour, all delivered in our cutting Cork accents. We’ve also been completely overwhelmed by messages from LGBTQ+ people who’ve shared with us that through our honest and open conversations about our lived experiences as gay men, we’ve helped them celebrate their queerness.

Now we’re going from podcasters to authors and creating The I’m Grand Mamual. Think of this book as the big-sister advice book for the gays and girlies of Ireland. This book is a celebration of identity and a guide to living life as your most authentic self. Using the sage words of our mams as the starting point for each chapter, and showcasing how we’ve applied this advice to our own lives, we’re hoping to give some direction and guidance to others that need it. As out and proud queer people we can throw away the rule book as we’re already going against the grain of societal norms. Hopefully, this book will give others who are struggling to fully accept themselves the encouragement to follow the way of the gays. As queer people, we have a shared experience of feeling like the outcasts, the odd ones out. This book is for anyone who has ever been made to feel like they don’t belong and to highlight that there is strength, beauty and unity in our otherness.

Meet the Mammies

Nuala and Phil are two icons in their own right. They are the embodiment of what it means to be an Irish mammy; patient, kind, quick-witted, altruistic, tea-loving, compassionate, weather-obsessed women. They gave birth to two absolute legends, so cheers for that. Our mams are at the heart of our podcast and the origins of the title I’m Grand Mam unsurprisingly stems from our relationship with them. Irish mammies are worriers by nature – ‘You better wear your jacket or you’ll get pneumonia!’ ‘Put that down, you don’t know where it’s been!’ ‘Did you dry your ears after your shower?’ – and our mams are no different. This anxiety escalates when you move away from home as a mam loses her ability to have regular surveillance over your life and because she believes that there are weirdos out there in the big bad world that don’t exist in your local parish. When we moved to London we were met with constant messages, phone calls and FaceTimes from our frantic mammies, who would always ask if we were okay. In an effort to not cause further fretting, our response would always be the same: ‘I’m grand, Mam.’

Our mams have been our mentors, shaping us into the individuals we are today with their percipient pointers and their enlightenment, which has informed a lot of the decisions we’ve made in our lives. As we’re so generous, we didn’t want to keep all this insight and information to ourselves – no gatekeeping here, girlies – and decided to get our listeners in on the guidance by giving our mams an entire section to themselves in the podcast, known as ‘Mam Knows Best’. We encouraged listeners in need of some words of wisdom to submit questions for Nuala and Phil. Initially, we read out their responses but once our mams mastered the art of recording a WhatsApp voice note, we knew it was time to give them their moment in the spotlight and have them feature directly in the podcast, and The I’m Grand Mamual is an extension of this.

This book is a love letter to our mams.

Thank you, Phil and Nuala.

AN A–Z OF IRISH MAMMIES

Irish mammies really are in a league of their own. They’re as sharp as scissors and funny without even trying. And though no two Irish mammies are the same, there are certain quips, comments and characteristics that are synonymous with the beloved Irish matriarch and we’ve compiled an A-Z of our favourites below:

A is for Anthony: The patron saint of lost things and the unofficial patron saint of Irish mammies.

B is for ‘Bye, bye, bye, g’wan, bye, bye’: The obligatory phone-call sign-off for mams and how we finish every episode of the podcast.

C is for candles: Irish mammies are always lighting candles for people.

D is for Daniel O’Donnell: The Harry Styles of our mammies’ generation. ‘Oh wow, Daniel is here!’

E is for Eastenders: Because what’s a mam without her soaps?

F is for flat 7up: Prescribed by all mammies everywhere to help cure any ailment.

G is for ‘G’wan away au’ that’: Uttered by mams if you’re talking nonsense or if they don’t believe you.

H is for the heating: Irish mams are always frozen and you can win them over by offering to run upstairs and turn on the heating.

I is for inhaling: Irish mams are the only sector of the population known to inhale as they speak.

J is for jacket: If you’re leaving the house your mam won’t let you go outside without mentioning your jacket, irrespective of the season.

K is for Knock: A place of pilgrimage. Holy water from Knock is to be reserved for special occasions only, like blessing a new car.

L is for LOL: They write it at the end of text messages thinking it means ‘lots of love’ and we love them for it.

M is for ‘Make sure the immersion’s off x’.

N is for nosy: In a good way. Some might say inquisitive.

O is for Orla Kiely: A figure revered amongst Irish mammies. If in doubt about what gift to get an Irish mam, Orla Kiely bits are always a solid option.

P is for potpourri: A mixture of dried plant materials, which didn’t really serve any purpose and were found in most Irish residential settings in the 90s.

Q is for ‘Quick, help me take in the washing. It’s going to lash!’

R is for Rip.ie: Website most visited by Irish mams.

S is for she: ‘Who’s “she”, the cat’s mother?’

T is for tea: Tea courses through the veins of every Irish mammy.

U is for ‘Unless you want a kidney infection, you better get up those stairs and put on a pair of socks.’

V is for vaping: Kevin’s mam loves her vape.

W is for wooden spoon: Mostly used for baking but there’s also the threat of a smack of it if you’re acting the eejit.

Y is for yoke: ‘That’s an awful weird yoke, where’d you get that?’

Z is for zooming in to photos on a phone and asking who the person is.

Now that you’ve had your lesson in Irish mammies, we’re going to get you up to speed with some of the iconic phrases and expressions that make up a Cork person’s vernacular. Language is a beautiful thing, especially when it’s coming from the mouth of someone from the rebel county.

CORK SLANG

Allergic: A strong expression of dislike. ‘My boss asked me to come in to work an hour early in the morning and I couldn’t be more allergic.’

Bazzer: A haircut. ‘Look at the state of your man’s bazzer – it looks like he got in a fight with a lawnmower.’

Bulb off: Two things that look the same. ‘I get bad vibes from the new postman – he’s the bulb off that Hannibal Lecter fella.’

Flah: To have sexual intercourse and also used to denote a good-looking person. ‘That Paul Mescal lad with the chain is some flah.’

Gatting: Drinking alcohol. ‘Are we going gatting in yours first or what’s the story?’

Haunted: Extremely lucky. ‘It didn’t rain once down in Ballylickey. We were haunted with the weather.’

Lamp: To look at someone. ‘She was lamping me all night, so I asked her if she wanted to go to Fast Al’s for a slice of pizza.’

Langers: Extremely intoxicated. Also used as a term for a penis. ‘He was so langers at Michelle’s wedding last weekend he got his langer out in the photo booth.’

Lapsy pa: Someone who’s a bit all over the place/clumsy. ‘We were only supposed to go out for a few jars, but sure, I was lapsy pa walking home.’

Rasa: Raspberry cordial. ‘Two double vodkas and rasa, please!’

Snake: Sneak. ‘I spent a fortune on my top for tonight so I’m going to have to snake a naggin into the club.’

Mockeeah: Pretend, fictional, fake. ‘He said he was getting me the new Dyson hairdryer for Christmas but he only got me a mockeeah one off the back of a van.’

Weak: Obsessed with something. ‘I love the coffee in Some Dose and I’m weak for all the lads that work there, they’re pure sound.’

Up to ninety: To be stressed out because you have a lot on your plate. ‘I was up to ninety because the queue was so long in Penney’s and I was meant to be getting my nails done at three.’

  ONE  

Growing Up Gay

‘To each their own.’

NUALA KIRBY

PJ

The Big Big Movie made me gay

It’s a Saturday night and I’m just after hounding down a plate of chicken nuggets and chips chased with a pint of milk, the only type of meal I would eat that year. I’m the youngest of seven and was a picky eater as a child so I think my parents were just like, Feck it, let him eat nuggs for a year, we’re wrecked from raising the rest of them. We’re hurrying to wash our plates and get the microwave popcorn ready before the Big Big Movie comes on RTÉ. (This was before you could pause or record the telly, so timing was crucial.) After losing a fight with my sister Lindsey for the good seat, we settled in and the film began. This week it was The Full Monty. If you don’t know the plot, it’s basically about a group of lads forming a striptease group after being laid off from the factory they all worked at. A vintage Magic Mike, if you will. Bit of a riskier choice for RTÉ, and I was definitely too young to be watching it, but here we were. Girlies, my little adolescent heart was up to ninety. I was weak for the lead, Gaz, and once they started stripping in the Garda outfits I didn’t know where to look. It was all very innocent of course, but that strange feeling would pop up every now and then going forward. When I looked at the packaging in the male underwear department, when Syed and Christian kissed in Eastenders, one time in Costa del Sol when I saw two men holding hands. I’d get giddy butterflies in my stomach that I knew I had to hide. I knew I couldn’t be gay, you see. Even though I wasn’t completely sure what gay meant, I just knew it was a bad thing used to insult someone. To laugh at them. So, I pushed these feelings down and learned to ignore them. From then on, I knew I had a secret that nobody could find out, so I put measures in place to make sure it wouldn’t happen. Maybe that’s why gays are so good at PR, because we’ve been spinning the truth since we could talk.

Growing up, we’d spend Friday nights in The Residence Bar across the street from my gaff. All of our neighbours would be there with their kids so it was perfect because my mam and dad could have a few drinks with their friends while the kids were kept entertained by the touch machine in the corner as we drank our body weight in rasa. My friend Jordan’s parents owned the bar, so he could snake us a few packs of Tayto on the sly, which was fab. You could also get a stunning toastie, and I’m sorry now, but every bar should be legally required to have a toastie maker on the premises, in my opinion. Anyway, we would be having the time of our lives but, at a certain point in the night, I’d have to get strategic. The older men would be after having a few scoops of stout by now and political correctness would go out the window. I don’t even think we knew what being PC was back then. They would go from a terrible joke about women in the kitchen to a racist one before coming for the gays. The limp wrists would come out, and they would parody the camp man who cuts their wives’ hair. I never understood the joke. I just knew I never wanted to be the punchline, so I kept the head down.

Barbies, bisexuals and Britney

I’d hide any behaviour that could be seen as gay. I’d play Barbies with my neighbour Sarah but carry them to her house in a Dunnes Bag for Life so nobody could see them. Looking back, obviously I know that playing with Barbies doesn’t make you gay, but back then I felt like anything that fell outside of what ‘normal boys’ do needed to be done away from the public eye. Eventually, hiding these parts of myself became second nature – and I was actually unreal at it. Sure, I’d slip up a little from time to time and have to talk my way out of why I knew all the words to ‘Oops! … I Did It Again’ by Britney Spears, but that’s where having sisters came in handy. Like, I only watched Sabrina the Teenage Witch because Lindsey liked it, obviously.

It’s difficult to explain, but as I came into my teens I pushed that butterfly feeling so far down I forgot about it sometimes. Like a messy pile of clothes you shove under your bed. You know it’s still there but it doesn’t cross your mind as much. I kissed girls and had girlfriends that I fell in love with, but not the passionate, free-flowing love that I know now. It was more like the love you would have for a best friend. As I grew older, I would hate when these annoying butterflies would come back. I remember one morning I woke up from a dream where I had a big ride of a boyfriend and we were just kissing on a couch for the whole thing. I went and looked at myself in the mirror with tears in my eyes, so angry with myself for having these feelings. The urge came over me to punch the mirror and watch my reflection shatter, which, looking back on it, is ridiculously dramatic and so camp that I should have accepted my fate then and there. Honestly, though, I was nowhere near ready to address my queerness, and who could blame me? Homosexuality was only decriminalised in Ireland the year I was born but, although it was legal, everyone wasn’t running to buy rainbow flags to hang outside their windows.

When I moved to London to start dance college at 20 years of age, I was still in the closet. During orientation, my jaw was on the floor, girls. Every letter from the alphabet mafia was in the room with me. Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans people and everything in between sang and danced around the halls of the academy in Angel. The butterflies were back, but I felt less of a need to push them down. I wasn’t ready to let them fly out of the closet, but it was a welcome relief not to have to shoo them away. I was in the academy for roughly three months when I got a call from home that my dad had had a fall. I was rushed onto the next Ryanair flight back home to be by his side. When my sister was also called back from Australia, I knew that it wasn’t looking good. The next few days were a bit of a blur but, basically, my dad was in a coma and it was only a matter of time before he went. We lived in the hospital for those few days. Time stopped for us, but the world kept going. One day, Lindsey and I went for a walk in Wilton Shopping Centre to have a break from the sanitised hospital hallways, and we hated everyone that walked past us. ‘How dare they be having a laugh shopping when our dad is dying a couple of metres away?’ I said, half-joking but also kind of serious. For them it was just a normal day but for us our world was changing forever. Anyway, if I threw you a dirty look in Wilton in 2013, I apologise, but we were going through it.

It’s now or never

The time came to say our goodbyes and we all took turns of going into the room. For some reason, I was by myself. Nobody trains you how to say goodbye to a parent, so I was a bit awkward. Everyone kept telling me that hearing is the last sense to go so he would be able to hear what I’m saying. I started with the usual checklist: You were a great dad, I love you, will miss you, etc. But then I felt like I was acting, reading a monologue of what a son should be saying to his dad, so I started to speak about whatever popped into my head. I talked about the time we spent together as he drove me to rugby, having chats both shallow and deep that I’ll always remember. About how he used to always grab my mam in the kitchen for a dance and how I romanticise the memory by setting it at golden hour. He’d spin my mam around and they’d laugh as she stumbled over his feet. As I was telling these stories, I could feel the butterflies bubbling up inside me. Tell him. It’s now or never. Hearing is the last to go. Before I knew it, I blurted out words I thought would never come out of my mouth: ‘I’m gay, Dad.’ Panic ensued and I started to ramble. ‘I’m gay and I wasn’t going to say anything. I actually was never going to come out. I’m not sure why I said it. I suppose this whole experience is making me think life is too short and, in the grand scheme of things, who I hook up with shouldn’t really matter. Jesus, I shouldn’t be talking about hooking up, but here we are. So, yeah, I’m gay and I hope you still love me.’

Now, I don’t know what I expected to happen next. He wasn’t going to spring out of the bed and be like, Werk, bitch, let’s grab some brunch, but I was just sitting there in silence, sweating. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears as I kissed him on the forehead and said ‘I love you’ for the last time. Cue my journey of navigating grief and coming to terms with my sexuality. The vibes were on the floor, girlies. Losing my dad really did change the way I viewed the world. It’s difficult to explain unless you’ve lost someone so close to you, but I don’t think you ever truly heal from a loss like that – you just learn how to live with it. You also learn to see it in other people and they see it in you. They just get it without having to put words to the feeling. It’s shit, but as B*Witched said in their 1998 smash hit, ‘c’est la vie’. As life moves on, you learn how to look back on the memories you have with them and smile. It still hurts, but I think it helps to tell stories about them so their memory lives on.

After that, it was time to come out to people who weren’t walking towards a bright light.

Fingers crossed they’ll be more receptive. Bleak, I know but if you don’t laugh you’ll cry. Anyone who’s ever come out knows you have to do it like a million times and it’s exhausting but, considering that my first one was the most dramatic thing in the world, I tried to make the other ones as light-hearted as possible. Having a few drinks in my sister Elaine’s garden, I said to my mam, ‘Jesus, did you hear who came out as gay?’ When she turned to me and said, ‘Ooh, who?’ I threw in, ‘Me!’ – which in hindsight was probably a bit too casual. She then added that she was okay with it as long as I was happy. My mam was actually giving a performance that would have swept the Oscars if caught on film. In years to come, I’d find out that she struggled to come to terms with the fact that I was gay. She worried, as most parents do, that life would be more difficult for me. I’m grateful that my mam drew upon what I can only assume were childhood drama lessons in that moment, though. I don’t think I could have taken anything but complete acceptance from the one parent who could respond to me. My heart goes out to members of the queer community who aren’t as lucky.

Another one of my – should we call them outings? – was when I was watching a film with my besties, Dylan and Jordan. A gay couple came on screen and I said, ‘Oh, there’s me!’ and then I basically ran out of the house before they could respond, only for us to meet up later and me to get slagged – not for being gay but for being pure weird and awkward about it.

Coming out became so tedious that I seriously considered renting a billboard in the middle of Cork City that would read, ‘PJ Kirby is a flaming homosexual’, followed by ‘Form a queue, boys’ and my mobile number to make use of the exposure.

Lost in London

Twenty-one, back in London, lost: those were the vibes. I didn’t feel at all stable. I wasn’t dealing with my grief. I dropped out of dance college and tried to navigate the gay scene in London. Grindr was downloaded, my hair was bleached and I’d bought my first douche, even though I didn’t know how to use it yet and definitely just gave myself the runs. I’d go to random hook-ups and try my hand at dating, living my big, gay Sex and the City fantasy. There were about two to three years of me as a baby lamb learning how to walk. Dancing in Heaven nightclub, riding boys I’d never see again and having a summer romance with a guy from Vegas. Throughout this time, the majority of my friends were straight and, although I loved them, I longed for a group of friends who understood what it was like to be a big homo.

Kevin and I started hanging out more in his final year at musical theatre college. We knew each other from back home, but he was based in Essex for three years, so I didn’t see him much. But in his final year he would get the train into London so we could go on nights out. This is when I really began to explore my queerness on a deeper level. We would go to Dollar Baby in Bethnal Green, and it was a gay boy’s dream. I still remember our first night there: we were just in the door and a drag queen jumped from the second-storey balcony onto a strip pole and landed in the splits as the crowd erupted. We were gagged!