An open letter to Paul Mescal (and a polite request to just stop it)

For the good of the women and men of the world, you need to put a stop to the magic spell you have cast… Edaein O’ Connell pens an impassioned open letter to Paul Mescal

Dear Paul,

Doesn’t it feel like the world is burning?

Doesn’t it feel like the grip we had on the handle of reality is sweaty and now we are slipping quickly?

I had planned to write this to you last week but life got in the way. Then the truths of the world fell around us like dominoes.

Would it be proper to write this now, I thought? After some serious internal and external reflection, I decided we needed something to laugh at.

So here it goes.

Paul, please stop it.

Just stop it.

For the good of the women and men of the world, you need to put a stop to the magic spell you have cast. The weather is hot. The ground is warm. The turf in bogs is crispy.

It feels like a drought is on the way.

We are thirsty and you are the trap.

It started when you burst onto the screen as Connell Waldron. You were the echo of the countryman. We knew you because you broke our hearts before in the form of another. You were the unavailable GAA man with communication issues who we loved to pine over in the smoking area of the town nightclub.

We were intoxicated and the tipsy feeling made us type “silver chains” into the Argos search engine.

Then you started jogging with the chain and the O’Neill shorts in tow. Was it a PR stunt? Well, it worked. Collectively, we lost our minds. People were running around saying decades of the rosary with the silver chains and begging for the rain to quell the fire. Some were on their knees with bibles asking God for divine intervention.

is Paul Mescal trying to KILL US ALL?!?! pic.twitter.com/OWXF5QLdYZ

— Louisa Davies (@LouisaD__) May 22, 2020

Okay, I made this up but do you see what I mean, Paul? It was hysteria.

And then, to make it worse, you went to the shop dressed as if you were walking back from the portaloos on the Sunday morning of Electric Picnic in the best way possible.

 

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A post shared by Nothing But Normal People (@nothingbutnormalpeople) on May 26, 2020 at 3:53am PDT

This hurt. The shell jacket, the shorts and the sunglasses broke me. It stabbed my heart and made me bleed like a punctured pack of cans. There are no festivals this year. Your outfit made me yearn to meet a ‘scauldy’ lad in a field who only smokes rollies and likes to talk about the universe after a few drinks.

My grief is silent but all-encompassing.

O’Neills should thank you. You have made it acceptable to wear their shorts outside of a sports arena. The Daily Mail had them as a must-have piece on its ‘Fashion Finder’.

Next, it will be Vogue and Marty Morrisey will be on the cover with said shorts.

How am I ever going to watch a GAA match with the same level of nonchalance I was accustomed to? O’Neill’s shorts are no longer just an item of sports clothing. O’Neills shorts are now almost a personality trait. They say each of us has an erotic blueprint which dictates our whole erotic personality from our types to our pleasures.

For the citizens of Ireland, our erotic blueprint is now exclusively O’Neills shorts.

We don’t care who you are or what you are doing, but you better have a pair of O’Neills football shorts in your drawer.

You see, Paul, you are part of a cultural reset. You are so very Irish and it is making us appreciate what we already had. Before, we looked at the Brad Pitts and Harry Styles of the world and wondered when they would wash up on our glorious shores.

However, we didn’t need them. We had everything we wanted right in the middle of our local GAA pitch. The men who sat in our local pubs. The men who teased us in school.

We worked with them and we matched and unmatched with them on Tinder.

Thank you for showing us the power of gratitude.

But you must stop it.

Our husbands, girlfriends, wives and boyfriends are getting suspicious. The look of worry is haunting as they see us place another pair of O’Neills shorts and a silver chain on the bed, silently urging them to put them on.

It might be best to leave us be for the summer.

Thanks for everything and best of luck.

Yours sincerely,

The people of Ireland.

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