"Last Orders" by Graham Connors

"Last Orders" by Graham Connors  (2013, 4 pages)

March 1 to March 31

Graham Connors
County Wexford

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I first read a short story by Graham Connors while reading the short stories in 30 Under 30 - A Selection of Short Stories by Thirty Young Irish Writers.  I really liked Connors' story, "Great Expectations" about a young man's first sexual encounter.  

Great Expectations"  is a very well written thoroughly entertaining account of a young man's first sexual encounter, with his oh so sexy girl friend in her parents house while her parents, especially her very scary father, are out for the night.   

We can feel his anxiety and self criticism when he is in her bedroom with her half naked and all he can find to talk about is the posters on her wall.  The girl says she wants them to watch a porno movie she got from her 15 year old brother's room, to see what he is into.     We see him get more nervous, and aroused, as it looks like sex is actually going to happen.   He thinks about the things his buddies have told him about girls.  Then something terrible happens, no her father does not burst in with a gun, and it all goes flat.

I was very happy to see a new short story included in a recent issue of The Bohemyth - A Literary Journal.  "Last Orders" is set in an Irish college town among a small group of friends.   It is about four college age people who live together.   We have David, the party is for him because he is going back home, Laura, the male narrator, and Aisling.  The mode is very somber.  We sense Laura may love David but I do not sense there was ever a real romance.  David is not Irish, he is from Trinidad.  I will quote a bit from the story to give you  a sense of the wonderful prose style and high narrative skill of Connors.

"David had lived with us for nearly a year, a great silent hulk moving quietly about, talking about music or movies or about his confusion at an Irish person’s happy disposition in such as sunless country. David was from Trinidad and had followed some crazy idea of coming to Ireland in search of adventure. We laughed about that many times, telling him that if he wanted adventure to try walk through Temple Bar unmolested around 2am of a Saturday night. He never did, to the best of my knowledge. One night, years ago, with the rain sluicing down the windows in great torrents, he told me about home, about ‘his’ island as he called it. He had been home only once in four years, for his sisters wedding. In that moment I felt that David was running from something, as if he had let some gap develop and he regretted it. He rarely spoke of his family and when he did it was always of his mother. I once asked about his father, had he passed away? David replied with a simple, soft ‘no.’ Though I wanted to, I never pressed him on this, I never went fishing for more information. That evening he told me that he had been away for a long time and he felt maybe he was ready to go home."

Part of the attraction of David is that he brings with him a sense of a place unlike Ireland.  I loved these marvelous lines:

"Home, I always found it strange how he spoke of it. Home never seemed to be thousands of miles away but somewhere you could walk to, somewhere just around the corner that he could visit whenever he wanted. To me David held a little of his home inside him, stored in some jar or cubbie hole in his soul. He carried the sun and warmth with him and, though it was a kind of precious energy that kept him going, he was not afraid to share it with you. That was David and that was why people loved him."

The ending of the story is very moving.  It has a lot to say about the nature of friendships, of the bonds of youth, perhaps never to be as strong again, about what it is to lose someone and know there will always be void where they once were.  "Last Orders" is a first rate short story with very subtle insights that I greatly enjoyed reading.

I have a feeling one day I will be posting on a collection of short stories by Graham Connors and I hope it is not too long coming.

You can read this story here.  It is totally worth the few minutes it will take you to read it.

Graham Connors has kindly agreed to do a Q and A Session for Irish Short Story Month so please watch for that coming soon.

Author Data

Graham Connors is thirty years old and has previously been published in wordlegs magazine, 30 Under 30 (both e-book and paperback editions), Allegory magazine, Under Thirty magazine, The Bohemyth, The Lit Garden, Link magazine and long-listed for the Doire Press International Chapbook competition. He is the founder and editor of Number Eleven Magazine as well as contributing editor for the Dublin Informer newspaper. He successfully staged his first play, ‘The Mortal Pitch’, in both Wexford and Dublin.  He is from Gorey, in Co. Wexford but has lived in Dublin for the last ten years.  Someday he’ll find his way back home..

Mel u