-> Previously: The semi notable adventures of cryboy
The days before the wind had been blowing. On television they were talking about climate change, but I didn’t believe the talk. The journalist asked no questions. He himself knew too little, so it didn’thelp that he got someone with knowledge on board. It was like this on two days every year, she had told me. She came here every year. She wouldn’t tell me why. She quickly faked a fit to change the subject, and bored me with the tiresome “don’t you want to drive there?” and already the question had disappeared under my voice, but I also knew I could ask it later.
We walked along the beach, which was littered with dead fish that the tide left behind when the water receded. Jellyfish were also everywhere. Between the dents in the sand, their bodies are decomposing. We stomped along the edge of the damp sand, my eyes were captivated by the carcasses.
“Is this how you imagined the beach?” she asked me.
“More or less”. She hacked her hand into mine and she pulled me over the little piles, saying nothing. It’s as if she wanted me to take that fleeting image with me. After a while we saw a pier, standing on its wooden stakes, from far away and the closer we came, the less the dead animal became and the more rubbish laid along the water. Under the platforms, a few young people sat together with junkies. They leaned against the logs and buried the needles in the sand. She suggested that we don’t take this route and said she would like to see what seafood restaurants have been opened there since she was a teenager. Most of them were closed. What did she expect? We sat on a bench and I picked up the magazine that laid there and tore it apart and gave her half.
“Now we can share this great literature”.
As a child you are given an idea of life and death. Two opposing forces pulling. Going out with friends and having fun – life; not washing your hands after peeing – death; getting ahead in your job – life; getting drunk alone every day for fun – death. Commitment to animals, environment and people – life. Attaching yourself to a bride like a stalker and promising her love she doesn’t want – death. Simple morals that every child, no matter how stupid, understands, and as you get older these boundaries blur, they should – but only as far as you push them. Once you puff on a cigarette from a schoolmate and you realize that these limits are just made up. That nothing bad happens, especially if you don’t get caught. If you lift the rules for yourself, you quickly lose a lot of discipline. But only having discipline gives you a bad angle on the full potential that can be tapped.
And then you get even older – eighteen, twenty years old – and you also notice that there are no fundamental rules. Religion gets lost or finally sounds silly to you after years and suddenly there is not even punishment after death. You realize that no border really exists if you are only willing to die when crossing it. The rules are changeable, given and created only by circumstance. From place to place. Land to land. Even from office to office or family to family. Some people think the idea brings peace, others think it’s all made up, and these wackos think it’s the white men in the ivory towers who are behind it and will hunt them down because someone is holding back their potential and not sharing views with them. In reality, one is subject only to the rules of physics and is enslaved by the rules of man. A heavy tome and some of them are not even written down formally. And because a godless, outlaw, unmoral man is still a human being and there is no higher power that makes you pay for your actions, it is easy to jump to the conclusion: Life has no rules and chaos reigns at all times. You are a burning bell tower that only beats at the end times, and you yourself can be the devouring fire or Quasimodo. The fire assessor. The fire department. The cop looking for the bad guy, but never the bell tower. You can never be the bell tower.
I sat on the sofa in her apartment. I’ve been there since yesterday. Fall asleep on the sofa and then spent my day at the pier. She didn’t throw me out even when she drove to work, but I got bored watching TV and couldn’t think of anything to write, so I went out and didn’t come back until closing time. She trusted me because I didn’t sleep with her. In the meantime, I had planned to do it, but it didn’t come to this. She called me when I was missing at her flat and because she said she did not want to be alone, I came back to her in the evening. Another opportunity that I wanted to take, not at any price, only when it came up. Because she was a desirable woman, as much as I hated to admit it to myself, and because she wanted to stay that way, it meant work. Stacey went jogging in the morning and did yoga in the evening. Her hair hung down to her face and her ass stuck out. Towards me.
“Do you have to do this pseudo-sport in front of me – I’m a guy too, you know.”
I was hard. I pushed my cock from my fly down my jean’s leg.
“You should join in”
“I’d rather sit here”
She went from dog into the sun salute. She stretched her arms up, then behind her leg, then she put one in front of the other and squatted down. When she was on the floor, all I felt was the desire to fuck.
“You met a girl at my pier, you said” I got myself out of the trance. I looked on the table. On the glass. With the wine. The main reason being that my gaze detached itself from her body.
“Hmm?”
“The woman you mentioned in the message”
“She’s quite nice”
“Sounds good to me.”
I took a sip. I wanted to choke down the whole content. Just being drunk. Take your mind off things.
“Who is she?”
I dropped off to answer. I had conquered half of the half-liter glass. She seemed excited, the subject was exciting, so I didn’t keep herwaiting.
“She owns a nail salon”
“Where did you meet her?”
“Down by the promenade”
“Drinking, I suppose. Say that Schradinski was at the beach again?”
“Now and then I like to feel the sand between my toes”
“Schradinksi, and I thought I was sentimental”
I shook my head I was sick of talking about it. She was through with her exercises. She stood in front of me. Looked down on me. She took the glass out of my hand and drank. She smiled down at me from above. Did I really seem that uncomfortable?
“Look, if you’re trying to screw with me, I’ll shut up”
“Oh, no, come on, Nate”
“What else is there to know?”
“Did you talk to her or did she talk to you?”
“When has anyone ever approached me?”
“So you her?”
“You got a problem with that?”
“Why are you so testy?”
“Because it’s none of your business. We are not together.”
She gave me the glass. The last drop went down my throat. I gave it back to her and she gave me more, immediately allowed herself the top eighth of the glas and pushed the drinking vessel into my hand. It slopped over. My fingers were soaked in red wine. I spilled it on my trouser leg.
“I told you what’s going on between me and my ex-boyfriend”
“When have I ever asked you to do that?”
With my truth, I cracked her mood once and for all. She threw a grim look at me, then turned around wordlessly and marched into the kitchen. From thesound I could hear that she opened one of the hanging shelves.
“Then why even mention that nail girl?” she whispered to herself in the kitchen in a low voice.
“So that you leave me alone with your miserable appeals to find myself a girlfriend”
“You cannot go on without closeness to others,” she shouted to me under the splashing of the tap.
“I know I’m dependent on others, even if it’s just to pass the time until I die”
“Is there really anything that could make you happy?”
“Fuck you.”
She came back with her own glass and she sipped on it. Her sweatpants were tight. The sweat stains in the armpit area of the grey sweatshirt were huge.
“What happened to you to make you this way?”
“I am actually someone who shouldhave been dead. You know what I mean? I shouldn’t have been thereanymore, the air I breathe is stolen, yet I am.”
“And that makes you…special?”
“No, we are all born in shit and blood. Some in more, some in less. No point to all of it, but we all need to be able to find it. You don’t have to be a scholar or math magician to know what’s wrong with the math. Killing yourself is therefore not a wrong decision and I made it and yet I am still here – more senseless than before – I would not have thought it possible”
She put the glass down on the table next to mine and lit a cigarette without a word. She took a drag, flicked it off and bent down to me.
“So?”, she asked, “What next? Isn’t writing your thing?”
“Yeah, I will base my entire existence on a talent that I believe I have”
“So full of doubt. It must behorrible in your head”
“Imagine hell, but instead of knowing the reason for your stay, you’re always wondering why you’re here.” She held her peace. She wouldn’t say anything to that. I kept her quiet, sipped wine. She turned her back on me.
“I have a dream too. I understand”
“Everyone has a dream. The question is when is it time to hang it up?”
“I know you’re a cynic, you don’t make a good secret out of it, but sometimes you’re a pain in the ass.”
She drank the wholeglass and looked at me. She looked angry. It’s like she’s about to throw me out. I mentally prepared myself to leave, maybe evencome up with a clever saying in case it was loaded. We looked intoeach other’s eyes. I was just waiting for the signal to leave.
“Go fuck me”
“Sorry what? Did I hear you right?”
“I want you to fuck me. You stare at my body all the time and I would have to be blind not to see that your thing wants to get out of your pants”
“Okay” I said overwhelmed and aimlessly, not sure if she meant it. She put the wine aside and came towards me. She sat on me and I kissed her gently. I looked into her eyes. In the blue stones that cried out so much for life. I couldn’t help thinking about death again, but I pushed it aside and kissed her with less restraint. It was a long, wet kiss. I ran my hand through her hair until I got stuck, pulled at it, we stopped our tongues and she smiled. Then she kissed me and lifted her wait. She fiddled with my belt until she finally opened it, her lips pressed against mine the whole time. I took off her top and fought with the clasps of her bra. She gave me a hand. It was not like riding a bike, it was much better because I didn’t have to pedal alone. I picked her up. On the way my trousers slipped down my joints. I waddled her slowly towards the bed while we kissed wildly.
Arriving at the lower edge of the bed, I dropped her and then, a loud crackling sound. “AHHH”, she screamed and curled up on the mattress.
“You okay?”, I asked and lost my balance as I bent forward. I banged my head on her hip. Ouch.
“NAT!?!” I ducked out of bed, my palms got a hard grip on the mattress. I let the pants fall off my joints, so that I could stand up again and there I stood next to the bed in underpants.
“What happened?”, I asked her.
“I can’t move. My fucking back. I have lumbago” she whimpered.
“How can you have lumbago at that age?”
“Shut up and help me instead you asshole”
“Seriously is this just a young girl mask that I can pull off and have a dramatic revelation that you are really seventy-two?”
Stacey crawled closer to the edge of the bed, but she didn’t get far. She could not sit up and I watched her struggle with the blanket.
“Shut up and drive me to the fuckin’ hospital!”
“Shit, I don’t have a license.”
“How the hell does a 24-year-old not have a license?”
“I’m sorry that I grew up poor and was not sheltered in my parents house by being fed Avocados. My father would not have spent 1100€ if he could have bought me a new kidney with it”
“CALL FOR AN AMBULANCE THEN”
I pulled up my pants. And took my cell phone out of my pocket. I dialed the number. The operator answered.
“What’s your emergency?”, the voice asked.
“We got a medical abnormally. My…my…ehm…the woman”, she looked at me, “she is 23 and she has a scuffed back, it threw out, and she can’t move”
“Is she currently experiencing pain, Sir?”
“Yeah, but she still is capable looking at me with a grim stare, so it can’t be that bad, just send an ambulance”
I gave him the address. In the minutes we waited for them, I got her lightly dressed, then sat beside her and stroked her head. She was tearing up from the pain and I told her to crush my hand if that helped her.
“Oooh, how much I would love to, asshole”, she said catching breath between whimpering the pain.
The boys from the hospital ringed the bell. I let them in. They transported her out on a litter and I went with her in the car. They closed the door on us in the back, I was holding her hand. When we arrived, I got kicked out of her room. I got myself a magazine. It was the same I had in my hand at the pier. They really never bother to replace the range of reading material. I skimmed through it, my eyes locked on top half I hadn’t seen until the doctor gave me the permission to get into the room again. She was laying there, sleeping, but at least not in pain. I put the magazine down on the surface beside the bed, after I had asked a nurse for a pen; wrote a message that I would come back, then I left the hospital and had no clue how I should get back to the flat without money, my wallet or the mood to commit a criminal act.
I walked. After all, time is all I had.
> Next: Talentless
John D.Dexter 