When i had finally encouraged myself to get out of the bathtub, i saw the message from R: 9 o clock. It was six now. Three more hours. I could do that. I had to. I lay down and even slept a little. Then i hurried to his room.
He had bought me a present. An ipod. "You like it? I have already put some songs on it for you. You like music so much, i think this is good for you." I loved it. I had always enjoyed my Walkman, when you hear a song whilst walking, it feels as if you are in your own videoclip. Every street you pass, the people you see, you decide the close ups or the wide angles, the pace, and no one knows they are being filmed by your eyes.
R. started to explain the i-pod, how you could shuffle songs, or choose just one artist, or a genre. how you could scroll through it. He showed the songs he had already put on: the beatles, the police, lots more eighties stuff, and one song by duncan browne: the wild places.
I thanked him. It truly was a marvellous gift. The white sleek design, and the music too. He looked genuinely happy when i stroked the ipod. Sitting there with him, i finally started to feel safe.
I asked him how he was doing, if everything was all right, why he hadnt called for me yesterday.
"Why, did you miss me?" He got up, and went to his suitcase. He started rummaging through the paperwork. "Where are my glasses, here." He did not put his glasses on but went to the bathroom instead, locked the door, and let the tap run. He unlocked the door.
"Do you think i am a selfish man? I mean, do i strike you as selfish? I always thought that being a bit of an egotist is the root of all happiness but i wonder."
He looked at me for some kind of validation.
"Lately there seems to be this kind of ambivalence in me..... Do you know what that word means, ambivalence?“
„Oh, but i know many words.“
"Yes, you do. That is what you are here for, to give me your words. And put them in a nice order, so that they make sense. I never seem to make sense as soon as i leave my work. The negotiations and the numbers, I can trust them. My thoughts, i don´t want to have to worry about.“ He laughed shortly.
"Do you have any favourites, you know, number one words?"
I had to think about it for a while, but then i said: "Sometimes i like certain words. Like a good song, On occasion i think I can fall in love with a word, the sound, the meaning, the subtlety or just the very directness of it. Lament.. i like lament, and lethargic for instance. Especially the combination of both in one sentence should be something i could try to use soon. And how about tragic, tearjerker and teetotaller, ah, that would be an interesting one too. But they don´t automatically have to be words that start with the same letter. Mildew and vomit can also have their charm, when you think of it. It is all about how i would use them, how i would mold them into something new, something that could surprise me. Pneumonia was one of my all time first favourites. A real high school crush so to speak. I remember tasting the sound and the meaning of it, i must have been about fourteen. I could imagine that this would be my cause of death, it had such a romantic feel. Much better than cardiac arrest or clogged arteries for all i cared. hmm.. filigree, mayhem and preposterous. ah, i just will linger on those three for the rest of the evening i guess."
R. laid his head back on the pillow. He gestured to me to throw him a cigarette, and lit it. He inhaled deeply.
"for me, ambivalence will just do fine."
I asked him why he was so interested in that specific word.
"We are not turning this into some kind of session thing are we?"
I said that i did not know.
"You know, were i tell you my hearts desire, i dont even think my heart desires something. it just pumps the blood real good. That´s all there is. Better leave it with the storytelling, is much more relaxed if you do that. So what will your story be about this time? And can you remind me that I need to buy Christmas gifts for my wife and kids tomorrow. Maybe you can do a Christmas story for me. Have you seen that market at the river? Real bad taste. But i can tell them it is genuine German Christmas galore i got them. Or could you get them something?"
" I dont think i am good at buying gifts for anybody, and i dont know your family, why dont you get them ipods either?"
"That is a good idea, leaves the wife. Can you buy her some jewellery for me, that would be good. I dont have the time. so, a Christmas carol can you do that?"
"I dont know, i am not so much the Christmas kind of girl."
"You never celebrated Christmas at home, with your folks?"
I told him we had. But most memories of the festivities had grown dim. The last couple of years i had made it through those days being high or downed on whatever i could score. My family noticed i was so much more relaxed. Three whole days i would spend in a complete daze, enjoying the lights, the music, in my very private bubble. I would giggle a trife too loud and long at the obligatory jokes my father would tell, i would even sing along to "silent night", then, at appropriate hour, i would dress up, take my gifts with me, and go party. This way i managed. It was never Christmas which i really liked, sober or doped out, there wasnt a big difference. Even when i was still a little girl it was like this. I did like the smell of the cookies my mother would bake, i loved the tree, but somehow my family always arranged the night to corrode into the worst kind misbehaviour: "divorce" was shouted out loudly, but never seen through. "hatred" was whispered through every sentence unspoken. Once, I must have been eleven or twelve years old, my mother got badly drunk and lay down under the glass table we had, calling out for me to come lie down next to her. My father and brother would just ignore her and go on discussing whatever they thought more important. My mother would laugh out more and more hysterically, i became sure she had lost her mind, or was at least on the verge of losing it, and that nobody noticed, or worse, cared. so i just sat beside her and tried to convince her she should at least lie under the tree, on the rug, so much nicer than a glass table. "If you were a lawyer, like your father or me, you would understand why a glass table is so much more suitable." She barked laughing at me. Our cat got nervous, hissed at my mother, and ran away. I just sat next to my mother that whole night, watching her laugh out and making jokes which had no pun what so ever, her incoherent soliloquy went on for hours. I tried to stroke her hair, but she would not let her touch me. those were my childhood Christmases. Sometimes my brother would get drunk, and smash a hole in a door with his fist. My father never drank. He said Christmas was a marketing tool of the fundamentalist Christians. This remark would be neglected by the rest of the family, so my father would go upstairs, into his study. That was the time I lost my belief in Christmas. A couple of years later my beliefs would go into an entirely different direction: I became completely fixated by german female terrorists, and Christiane F. The only Christmas story I could conjure up for R. was this one:
the waldorf astoria, Christmas, new york 2000
my good friend Flo and i were broke beyond repair one Christmas. we both are very talented shoppers, making money on the other hand is not a a part of our character that is highly developed with either of us.
last year things had gotten so out of hand that it had almost become a competition between the two of us who´s debt was larger. we would brag about it, laughing our worries away: 'my rent is due for 5 months already', one would say, the other remarked: 'yeah but my dentist bill was 900 euros, and i still dont have the implant!' you can imagine what fun we had. Didn´t stop us from shopping though. we are so good at discovering nice items in shops that we cannot live without. the 'souvenir de paris' table lamp i bought was just as necessary as the winged pig teapot that Flo took home one afternoon. We tried window shopping at night, to look at things but not buy them, it was useless. we would remember the shops anyway and just go the next day. as far as debt goes we approximately ended ex aqueo that fall, but that didnt make the burden of debt and the friendly debt collectors coming by to say hi! any less. those collector guys actually quite liked us. when they would come at the door, we mostly had the money for them and made them coffee as well.
At the beginning of december our situation hat deteriorated into abyss size proportions, so we decided to go down gracefully and really spend all the credit card credit we had left.
we booked a flight to new york and a room at the waldorf astoria. for two nights. Christmas eve and the one after that. Christmas! new york! the waldorf!
we got ourselves a double room and checked in. the hotel was so over the top Christmassy decorated that we really thought we had found winter-wonderland at last. we were just not quite sure which one of us was Alice. Tinsel everywhere.
the room for that matter was a huge disappointment. no Christmas what so ever. just a room. that sucked. i mean a mini bar can only be interesting for a short period of time, and believe me, the selfdestruct rollercoaster mood we were in did not make this last for more than an hour or two.
completely drunk, we started to walk the manhattan streets and went to central park. boredom started to overcome us big time. so this was new york. as seen on tv. nothing could surprise us. we had seen all the buildings, we knew central park, all the images had been fed to us ever since we were little. tv generation, that is what we are. and we are ashamed to admit this. so, here we were in our own sit-com but had forgotten to give ourselves a nice premise.
action was what we needed, adventure. but mostly, we had to have a Christmas tree. There were still a couple of trees for sale in manhattan, but they were so expensive, and cash was not really something we had in abundance. then Flo remembered a new york friend of his had told him he always got his tree in Brooklyn and that a tree came much cheaper there.
Flo called his friend to ask for directions and on the subway we hopped. this was going to be the best Christmas ever. we would at least save ten dollars on the tree. and, as the main law of shopping states, you should never say no to a bargain.
we took the subway and went on. station after station. i am a coward, but flo is not. after a couple of stops the tube started to get rather empty and i suddenly didnt mind the manhattan Christmas tree variety. but flo wanted to go. so on we went. he knew which station we had to get off, his friend had explained everything very carefully.
at last we were there. i think it took more than an hour. now all we had to do was find the street the friend had suggested and we would have our tree.
there was nothing dickenishes about the area. we walked underneath the subway rails and we got cold. i was starting to opt for going back to the warm and cosy minibarhaven, but flo just wanted the tree.
at last we found the spot. it had a couple of trees, and they didnt look bad. we decided on a rather big one. it came from Maine the salesman said. good. i like Maine. never been there, but read about it in john irvings books. so that was quality enough for me.
flo managed to get a couple of dollars discount and then we went back to get the tree into the hotelroom.
we walked back to the subway station and we really thought that we were being funny, we even bought a ticket for our tree. the tree had become our new bestest friend, and we named him Roger.
so there we were, me, flo and roger, in the subway station. when the train came in it was the first time we realised that our tree might actually be a bit on the large side. we hardly got it in through the carriages doors. a lot of pushing and shoving it took us. we were laughing, but soon realised that no body was laughing with us. this was a joke that had no pun for anybody else heading down town.
i tried to get flo and roger into singing Christmas carols but soon noticed that this was not appreciated by our fellow travellers either. so there we sat, the three of us. feeling very very much out of place.
at last we arrived at our station and got of as quickly as we could. the tree got stuck in the carriage doors again, but this time we just hurried and pulled it out. it lost a couple of branches.
then, up the stairs, that did not do our poor roger a lot of good either. roger slowly but surely turned into a very sad tree, or mostly, the remnant of a tree.
we dragged our beloved tree behind us until we arrived at the waldorf. and there, they just blankly refused to have us take roger up into our room. we tried to negotiate and we tried begging. i must admit i even tried to cry, but to no avail. they would not budge. we were very welcome to admire the waldorf Christmas tree in the lobby, but it was under no circumstances allowed to take a real tree up into a smoking junior suite.
we got the feeling that asking for the management would only deteriorate the situation. so there we were,
Christmas eve
a tree
and no place to put it.
in the end we carried the thing to central park, and planted it there. we hung some of the empty minibar bottles in it and sang our Christmas song. somehow roger started to feel like the baby Jesus to us. nobody had wanted him either.
it sure was a strange Christmas night.
....
eine Hotelstory von mir:
ReplyDeleteCuatro palmas hotel varadero cuba.
Das hotel ist in der ehemaligen residenz des diktators fulgenico batista untergebracht. Heute erheben die leute die rechte faust wenn sie dort ankommen, aber nicht zum gruße, sondern um sich ein all-inclusive-erkennungsband anbringen zu lassen.
Eines abends genießen wir auf der veranda zusammen mit zwei deutschen mädchen mojitos aus plastikbechern (deutsche mädchen gibt es immer und überall für den fall dass sonst niemand interessantes zur unterhaltung verfügbar ist). Im Hintergrund hören wir den Lärm von der mittelmäßigen aufführung der animateure. Den beruf dieser modernen hofnarren habe ich selbst zwei sommer lang getan. Neben dem lärm der show hören wir jemanden mehrere male laut den namen 'miriam' rufen. wir lassen die geleerten plastikbecher wieder auffüllen. Der barmann der dies tut wirkt wie alle seine kollegen unglücklich, denn er arbeitet in einem all-inclusive hotel und ist dazu verdammt, die gäste so lange zu verköstigen bis all ihr durst gestillt ist. Nich nur bis ihnen das geld ausgeht. Da fragt man sich was so ein kubaner von ausländern denken soll.
Wir trinken die nächste runde mojitos, doch die 'miriam'-rufe verstummen nicht, sie werden immer heiserer. den gesprächen am nachbartisch lauschend hören wir, dass ein mädchen vermisst wird. zwei von uns bieten sich den suchenden als helfer an. Wie alt ist miriam? 16. Wie lange ist sie schon weg? Schon seit drei stunden. Naja, denke ich. Mir sechzehn war ich schon einmal ein paar tage weg ohne mich zu melden. Die eltern sind nervlich am ende. Die geschwister dadurch natürlich auch. Der vater hat sein hemd so vollgeschwitzt dass nur mehr an den trockenen, helleren ecken auffällt dass es nass ist. Die mutter läuft durch die gegend und ruft unentwegt laut 'oh mein gott. Oh mein gott'.
Obwohl wir deren besorgnis fast überhaupt nicht teilen, schließen wir uns der suche an, gehen mit taschenlampen zu viert den strand ab. dabei überkommt uns das ironische gefühl etwas zu suchen aber lieber nichts finden zu wollen, denn wenn wir etwas/jemanden finden heißt das wohl eher nichts gutes.
Nach einer runde den strand auf und ab geben wir die suche zufrieden auf. Der vater hat den unorganisierten und zurückhaltenden hotelmanager aufgefordert, die polizei zu rufen. Diese ist ähnlich diplomatisch. Während die mutter ruft 'wenn irgend so ein schwein sie angegriffen hat!', kritisiert der vater die passive haltung der exekutive. am nächsten morgen schlendert miriam zwischen den tresen des frühstücksbuffets umher. Besser so als anders, denke ich über den ausgang der geschichte. Vielleicht waren die eltern noch nicht viel im ausland und haben deshalb so heftig reagiert. Hoffentlich ist dieses mädchen nicht immer so bewacht.
there is no like button here! darn! i love it, but you already knew that! how is the hardworking man in media doing?
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