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That’s my last update for the day. But it’s St. Patrick’s Day, so I’m going to share something I wrote for one of my classes back at BU. The assignment was to write a travel feature, and all of it is true. The professor who taught the class loved the piece, and it’s within a few degrees of relevancy to today’s festivities, so why not?

My drink recommendation is Jameson and Ginger Ale. Be safe. Don’t Drink and drive. Don’t wear orange.

Enjoy:

DUBLIN-The Irish hangover is a strange beast. A violent half-mad cur abandoned and left to wean itself on whiskey and stout lapped from the gutters of Dublin.

You should never look a mad dog in the eye, but looking the Irish hangover in the eye is inevitable. You must never flinch, or else it will pin you in bed to wallow the day away wishing for death.

Act carefully. Appease it with carbs and coffee. Get straight enough for normal human functions.

But today is not a day to be straight. I need to go on the offensive if I’m going to get twisted enough for what’s coming.

Ice. Rum. Coke. An American drink to curb an Irish Hangover.

Today’s the Irish Gay Pride Parade. More specifically, it’s the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Pride Parade. While not representing any of those categories, I’ve agreed, at the request of a friend working with Amnesty International, to walk in the parade.

Better pour another one.

It’s the summer of 2007, and I’m staying at Dublin City University with a study abroad program from Boston University. DCU, despite its name, is located about 20 minutes away in the relatively quiet suburb of Glasnevin, so getting into town requires a trip on the Dublin Bus service.

It’s an imperfect system. They’re not strict on fare collection, and the top floors of the busses are generally dens of lawlessness, where drinking and smoking run rampant despite the sternest protestations of the law.

Regardless, they get you from A to B.

But the bus will not be depositing me in the friendly confines of the early alphabet and its childish connotations. I’m headed for the exotic, unwieldy region. The outcasts. The Ws. The Xs. The Qs.

Ireland is a Catholic nation, but also a liberal one. In Dublin, churches and pubs blend together seamlessly to form a subdued, but uniquely European cityscape.

Abortion became legal the same time divorce did-the ’90s.

Gay Rights are still in the air, but on the ground that day the situation was strange, bordering on surreal. Angel wings, rainbow wigs and hot pants were being worn proudly in every direction. A crowd of Irish lesbians were dressed in black and pink spandex, looking not unlike a roller derby team. I saw a member of the Gardai-the Irish police force-walking through the crowd to, I assumed, keep the peace.

Nope. He was wearing leather pants.

This was the scene in Parnell square, near the top of O’Connell Street. Had the parade never moved, I still would have seen something more bizarre every time I turned around.

But it does move, affording Dubliners on both sides of the River Liffey a look at the spectacle.

In any political demonstration, poignancy and irony are always separated by fine lines. It was poignant when the parade passed the General Post Office on O’Connell Street, site of the 1916 Easter Rising that kick-started the Irish freedom movement. Here a new generation of Irish citizens was standing up to be treated as human beings.

Outside the GPO is the Dublin Spire, dedicated in the early 21^st century as a monument to the Irish freedom movement. The Spire towers over everything around it, an expression of pride beyond the usual Irish capacity.

The locals call it the Stiffy on the Liffey.

The parade continues over the river into the south side of Dublin. This train of free-willed individuals beyond the norms of religious society passes within a few scant meters of Trinity College, home to one of the oldest known versions of the Bible, the Book of Kells.

The parade makes more sense on Dame Street, near Temple Bar. The shirtless men in angel wings, the Marilyn Monroe costumes and the yards upon yards of rainbow spandex would be at home here any night of the week. It’s where tourists come to drink, and the locals laugh at their expense.

Dame Street runs by the green dome of City Hall and the mortared stone of Dublin Castle, ending at the spires and steeples of Christ Church Cathedral. The parade surges past them all, begging for political or religious defiance.

It never comes.

There are no protests. No picketers. No violence. Instead, the parade simply ends in a park, where revelers enjoy a festival of human freedom.

Maybe that’s too much to comprehend for an American accustomed to harsh reprisals for coloring outside the lines, or maybe walking has worn me out and left me dehydrated, but I’ve seen enough.

I’m heading back to normality, or whatever passes for it in this country.