"Ugliest Sweater " by Al Ryanne G. Gatcho

Ramel, a Filipino PhD scholar in Literature at Trinity, read the message twice. They told him to wear something hideous—the ugliest he could find—and to bring coins because the card machines go funny after Pub Seven. There were rules: no shots in Pub Three, a chorus of “Fairytale of New York” in Pub Nine, sweaters as loud as parols. It was for the “Twelve Pubs of Christmas,” an Irish tradition of visiting twelve pubs in one night, part endurance test, part holiday cheer. He sent a thumbs-up, then opened a call to Cebu.

“Ugliest?” his mother said, already reaching for paper and pencil. “Will you be cold?”

“No, Ma. It’s indoors. Twelve pubs.”

“Twelve?” she repeated, as if he’d said twelve sacraments.

He explained that it was tradition, that the Irish could make a pilgrimage out of anything. His classmates called it the only marathon worth training for. Their group chat overflowed with sweaters—blinking elves, knitted pints of stout, snowmen with crooked eyes. Ugly was a sport.

“Make mine the ugliest,” he said lightly. “Bright and funny.”

“Oh,” she said. “Funny.”

When the parcel arrived, tied with twine, he opened it on his kitchen table. The sweater was not ugly. It was a field of red, generous and calm. Around the yoke, his mother had stitched parols—green, gold, and between them small boats, a church window, a carabao no larger than a thumbprint. There was no irony, only labor and joy. The cuffs were finished with a braid so neat he wanted to call home and say he understood something, though he wasn’t sure what.

At Pub One they clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re grand, Ramel!” someone said—a phrase that seemed to erase distance. Sweaters jostled: Santas surfing on tinsel, reindeer with lights. His had no blinking. It sat on him like ceremony.

“What’s the joke?” asked Maeve, a third-year with chipped nail polish and opinions on everything. She tugged his sleeve, tracing the parols. “Oh, this is beautiful.”

“It’s supposed to be ugly.”

She laughed. “We use ugly to mean bold. Go big or go home.”

By Pub Three he had learned to nod before speaking. It helped; people thought you were listening, and you were. The night became a trail of tables, each trying to be the center of a circle that wouldn’t quite hold. He lost his cap in Four and found it in Five. He sang in Six because the lyrics insisted. In Seven, they tried to give him a prize for best sweater, but someone shouted that best broke the rules—ugly was the point, and everyone had already won.

He sent his mother a photo from Pub Eight: the sweater glowing under tired fairy lights. He typed Not ugly enough, then Thank you. Only the second message sent.

“You’re keeping up,” Daniel said, generous, as if Keeping Up were a module. “What’s your dissertation again?”

“Thresholds,” Ramel said. “In literature—doorways, passages, how endings disguise themselves as beginnings.”

At Pub Nine they sang the promised song. Maeve leaned close so she could find the melody. Her breath smelled faintly of cinnamon. The sweater, meant as a joke that turned earnest, began to feel like a hand on his back. He thought of the twelve stations in a church at home—how each picture hung at right angles to sorrow—and how this night, drawn for laughter, made space for tenderness. On one television, a goalkeeper threw his body toward a future he hoped to catch.

In Ten he argued endings with a man who believed they should punish. In Eleven he opened his mouth to say something about cold and closeness and closed it again, not because it was untrue but because it wasn’t his yet. He wasn’t drunk; he kept a neat ledger—half-pints, water, one bite of sausage roll—but the night moved through him like a story that comforted first and then asked for truth.

At the door of Pub Twelve they hesitated, not because of the cold—it was soft now—but because the last doorway can be cruel even to people who don’t believe in last things. A wind came up the street, the kind that flips umbrellas to show their bones. Someone shouted they’d never make it; someone else pushed the door; the group followed like one determined animal.

Inside, the barman wore a sweater with two snowmen boxing. The jukebox was losing its voice. A few old men raised their glasses without looking up. Ramel stood behind the group, letting his eyes adjust. He felt, for no reason he could explain, that the room had been waiting for them.

“Here,” Maeve said. She had found two stools. “Sit while the floor forgives us.”

He sat. She touched the parols on his sleeve. “Your mother made this?”

“She thinks ugly means extra,” he said. “She made it extra.”

Maeve nodded. “It does mean that, sometimes.”

They took a picture—just the two of them and a stranger with a sweater so awful it seemed devout. In the photograph, the parols shone without electricity. When the others spilled into the night, the barman came over with a plate of mince pies.

“On the house,” he said. “Only rule left—you have to tell me what those stars are.”

Ramel told him. He kept the sentence short, but the story showed. The barman listened as if recipes were histories, then said carefully, “Nollaig shona.”

Ramel nodded, chewing slowly. The sweater warmed his wrists—not ornamental but working, the way certain words do their winter labor in a paragraph. Outside, rain began again, thin and steady, a gloss on the pavement.

On the way home he typed the message he hadn’t sent. This is the ugliest one, he wrote. The ugliest in the right way. Then, because the hour made honesty easier: I’m warm, Ma. He put his phone away and walked the last street listening for bells and hearing, instead, his own steps—ordinary, and for this one night, enough.