hotel hessischer hof, franfkurt, beginning of december 2002. the last night

i put on a dress and some make up and then up and down and out we went. not that any of the bars we visited would ever enter our list of all time favourite hangouts, the alcohol did its job in camouflaging the complete lack of style and atmosphere nicely. bottles. the men liked ordering bottles of stuff, that was a thing i instantaneously noticed. bottles of cremants as starters. not champagne, R. explained. champagne was only for those who didn't know or care. a good cremant, of the right winery, could be so much better than most of the sparkling wines sold anywhere. and it should be drunk by the bottle, otherwise there was no way knowing what the winemaker had it intended to be about. The true tale of each winemaker could be distilled if one drank his best sparkling. to the bottom. so there we went. i was this nights guinea pig to prove R.´s empirical research of bottle drinking. i was to learn the winemakers stories behind their great grapes.  a cremant de Loire, pink. bottle. drink. glass filled, i drink it up, and more glasses, same routine. bottle empty. new bottle. just one glass each, and off to the next place, leave the bottle behind, even though only halfway emptied. More sparklings. i would say half a bottle each, and then some, as the bottom needed to be reached. cocktails too. those, that goes without saying, did not go by the bottle. mojito, b52, the bar´s own martini, mixed with conversations. questions asked to and fro. nothing worth remembering, neither the questions, nor the answers given by any of the three of us. Oh what fun we had. we did. i started to relax a little for the first time that week, as a matter of fact. I laughed. I had fun. all was good. I liked the city, afterall. maybe i needed to know this city by night only. And both R. and Maiko were actually quite funny. i think. i did laugh at their jokes, but maybe they weren´t telling any jokes. we did laugh a lot. we ate i think, we went to macdonalds or something I had insisted on it. the lights in the fast food restaurant shone bright, but in the pink bubble of yet another bottle of cremant purchased someplace, it was a nice bright. It had taken some negotiations to get the men to accompany me, but  i needed food too. badly. too much alcohol in my blood.  i ate my veggie burger, the two guys watching me chew and swallow. now, our venture was to go on. the bars were to be left behind, we could always return to one later. first, we would go dance. 

we went into the first club we found, but it was still very early for any nightlife to happen. with the exception of the odd customer, no one there.  it was sufficient for us however, we had our private little party. we sat down next to the dancefloor. the dj and the light technician pretended that it was full house, loud music, strobelights, smokemachine in full action. without any customers it looked completely meaningless, all smoke and mirrors for nothing. but that is how nights work. good clubs are the perfect nothing, the guest are what make the night, they are the circus artists, but instead of being paid, they willingly leave their money to be a star in their own show for a couple of hours.  we sat on our plush chairs and looked around, at the lights, the bar, the staff and at the freak: no matter where you go, every night has one fixed parameter. before the night really starts to take off, there is the freak. the freak is a guy, at first glance harmless, but deadly to nightlife if given too much space. usually not very handsome, clothing and hair look like they have not been washed for at least three weeks. the freak dances without limitation. what i mean is that he has no inhibitions, no shame. he moves just the way his feelings tell him to, and that does not have to be anywhere close to the beat of a song. if you go to a club, everybody dances in codes. like in the old days, the court days. it is not so apparent any more, the steps seem more random, but do not let this superficial observation fool you. trends do happen, every social layer has its own movement. every music scene their own steps. except for the freak: he juggles his body in a spastic fashion, reaches his point of exaltation within ten minutes, and stays on his peak from there on. as long as the freak dances, no one in their right mind will dare step on the dancefloor, as if his socially unadapted behaviour is contagious, the social status the professional party goers have will be diminished by mere proximity to the freak. then, by some kind of unspoken rule, the freak disappears, he never stays late. the real party may begin. bottle. vodka. i said i could not do vodka. or, so i explained, i could do vodka but the night would, i predicted,  change soon. it would be like this: me, hanging over a toilet-bowl. the one in my or R.s hotelroom. throwing up. R. would have to lean over me and would have to keep my hair from getting into my face. i hate it when i throw up and my hair gets in my face or wet by the vomit. R. looked at me. an expression in his eyes i had never seen before: "oh, i would love to do that for you, that would be so beautiful." i stared at him, not quite sure how to interpret this. neither of us said a lot after his statement. So it was another bottle of sparkly, for me, and  vodka for the guys. The club was  no longer as desolate as when we got in. and we had our fun anyway. the dj was spinning and concentrating on mixing the minimal records in such fashion that they sounded like one boring track. a group of girls dancing, looking our way, the guys smiling back. i smiled back as well. i found it funny how the girls were so interested in two men at least twice their age. they looked nice, the girls. fresh., lipgloss, a little blusher. they were somehow untarnished. happy. Maiko looked at the girls and said he needed a refreshment. he went to the mens´ room. when he came back R. went to the toilet as well. Maiko had a chewinggum in his mouth and was gnawing on it. he started talking to me. The nights he and R. had were always so special he confided, but now, here, with me it was even better, i did bring out the best in R. did i know that? I shouldn't look so surprised, i must know how much i meant to him. "He really cherishes you. you are so special to him, you help him so much with whatever that little thing the two of you do is, I should have seen him during the negotiations today, he was a monster! brilliant! R. tore the  opponents apart without them realising it. Tore them apart, and they were saying thank you and please can we have more of his batter? they would have loved for the assault to go on and on, and would have kept smiling at it, begging for more. it was hilarious" he said.  i should have been there, telling me in hindsight it surely must sound stupid.  next time i had to i simply had to accompany them, i could go as their secretary or something. R. was back from the restroom. Maiko shouted at him: "next time she will go as our secretary or something!" R. nodded and stared at me, blank. Maiko looked at the dancing girls, they were something special he said, he really cherished girls like that.  R. kept looking at me. Then, Maiko asked if i wanted a refreshment. i understood. coke. I did not want to do cocaine. not in Frankfurt, this city had somehow frightened me, and even though i was really having a good time or maybe because of it, i dared not take the risk of the drugs not working the right way.  the days i had spent here had been worrying. and i did not like the way coke makes your heart pound, nor the fact that the effect never wears out on time it keeps on long after you have become bored by it,  when you just want to lie down and sleep.

in the ABC of drugtaking i was surely no novice. at 14 i had started experimenting. these were really sweet naive attempts that lead to nowhere. for instance, in history class i had learned that the Greek oracle of Delphi chewed laurel leaves to go into a trance. if she were capable of babbling like that, i had to try it. One Thursday afternoon when my parents were gone, i closed the curtains in my room. lit some candles and incense and put on an old pink Floyd record of my brother, i was sure that the psychedelic music would enhance the experience. i chewed the laurel leaves my mother kept in her kitchen cupboard for her soup and goulash. I sat on my bed in my room, looking at posters in which i was expecting something would occur soon, movement maybe, a hand sticking out, or at least the colours changing. but nothing happened. The leaves tasted dull, i kept chewing, hoping for this ultimate trip to start, like christiane F. described in her book, but there in my room at my parents house, none of this presented itself. After an hour or so i gave up, opened the curtains, turned the recordplayer off and started doing my homework. I did not give up that lightly however. I would take drugs. My friends had  heard of more culinary drugs: nutmeg, we tried, eating, rolling a joint with it, making tea, didn't work. certain mushrooms, the skin peeled off, were supposed to create some sort of effect, but we didn't remember whether it was the skin or the mushroom we should eat. one part was lethal so we did not dare. after i graduated highschool  came the usual drugtaking of that era: speed, weed, opium, or whatelse was on the menu. recreational use, every three or four months. It was all rather innocent, never too much, not too often. we all had at least one friend who did too much on a daily basis, and seeing them go cold turkey or just loose their minds ending up in an asylum was so not cool.  i had an upstairs neighbour who worked in an institution for the criminally insane. thanks to her employer, she had the most amazing supply of all kinds of prescription drugs. happy times they were. or, rather, happy minutes. i really liked that stuff. the feeling would start with a light urge of giggling. a sense of elation and happiness would tingle into the core of my bones. all is good. all is fine and nice and isn't the planet a good place, and i am a a good person. all is good, my body is warm life is safe. conversation is only possible the first five minutes, slowly i have more difficulty of finding the right combination of words to make a coherent sentence. but i dont feel the need of forming a sentence anymore. talking is just too exhausting. one vodka would be nice. drinking the vodka is the plus to the drug. now all speeds up. for three minutes i am completely transported, a little horny and just at harmony with earth and the universe. then they dont matter either. all that matters is me. my ego and i are one, complete. downside of the medication was that i would fall asleep about ten minutes after taking them. no matter where i was. at home, in a club. sound asleep. it became my own secret contest: to  take the pill, and then stay around at a party just long enough not to crash there but to make it home on my bicycle.  i would award myself with a gold medal if i even managed to take my clothes off before zoning out. but the ten minutes, half an hour most between the intake and the coma were worth it every time. 

but now, here tonight, not the right moment. how to politely decline? i could think of no excuse which would take me off the hook lightly. R. would make fun of me, and if he wouldn´t i was sure Maiko would.  i decided i would fake it. i took the little parcel, went to the bathroom, took a little bit out and flushed it. just put an fraction of it on my left nostril, and then wiped it away to make it appear realistic. when i came back the club was even more crowded. boys and girls had joined the dancefloor. Maiko was gabbing at R. And R. just looked at me. Coming from the bathroom towards him. sitting down next to them. folding my hands in my lap, then, being so uncomfortable by the constant scan of R, i took another glass of cremant and lit a cigarette for my other hand. 

The music became louder, the beat paced up. Maiko got up and started dancing, chatting to no girl in particular, whilst moving.

I smoked. R. said: "the meeting has gone really well."

"yes, Maiko told me."

"he and i really work well together."

"i am glad to hear."

there was some kind of rupture in the movements on the dancefloor. all of a sudden a group of people disentangled themselves from the crowd: one guy smashed another guy on a table next to where we were sitting. a girl was cheerleading the guy who had pushed the other. Maiko rushed to us, exited: "A fight!" we looked at the fight, as if it was none of our concern at first.  i just sat there and let it all happen.  i saw the guy just going on in a frenzy, pounding, pushing hitting. He looked like a regular office clerk, wannabe yuppie, dark hair, normal height. the guy on the table had a blue and white striped t-shirt on. a sort of sailor shirt. his ear was bleeding, the blood drizzled on his shirt. His head was turned facing us. i saw his fear. 

i wondered when the security would come to break this mess off. no one came. the audience had turned away from them, apart from the girl who was now hysterically encouraging her boyfriend to kill the victim. Maiko had returned to the dancefloor. R. looked at the whole scene with disgust. The guy on the table still had his face towards us, one eye was closed, bleeding. the other eye was looking just passed us. The girl took a glass and smashed it, she gestured with the broken glass to her boyfriend, for him to take it. 

I jumped up, ran to the girl and took the glass out of her hand. I heard myself shouting at the two of them that they should stop immediately that i was so shocked that i had never ever seen such a brutal misbehaviour. i wrenched my body between the two guys. it seemed to help, but then the girl started accusing me of being a complete idiot and i should mind my own business. her boyfriend told her that it was ok. i said they should really just stop and leave.  another girl came standing next to the girlfriend and started screaming at me as well: how on earth did i get the idea of defending that bastard? i became  scared. what if they would use the glass on me? i tried to keep talking in a clear voice, not having them sense my fear. I said it was an outrage, that they looked like sensible people, how could they do such a horrendous deed. Then  Maiko was beside me and said: "guys, you have had your fun, now just go home ok?" they were silent, as if thinking, then decided to actually listened to him and left. i was trembling all over. maiko lead me to our table.  the guy with the blooddrenched shirt got up and stumbled to the bathroom without looking at us. i wanted to go after him to ask if he was ok but Maiko pushed me down into my chair. "just a ballroom brawl, they are drunk." R. said: Why did you jump into that fight?" 

"i don´t know." 

"you should never do that. it could get you into trouble." 

The crowd partied on and i sat there.  Maiko went back onto the dancefloor, to sometimes come back for another go at the vodkabottle, joking around with R. who would amicably reply. I did not want to talk, but i was not asked anything by either of them. Finally their bottle was empty and i was allowed to go back to the hotel with them. we picked up our coats. I saw the guy with the striped t-shirt leave. he had washed his face, but still looked terrible. his left eye was shut tight and had some kind of sachet of blood hanging underneath, or maybe it was his eye, it looked as if it was cut loose. he rushed by us, didnt acknowledge any of his surroundings, as if he was ashamed.  Maiko tipped the wardrobe girl and tried to chat her up. We waited until he was finished trying and then left.

It was freezing outside. we liked the cold air and decided we would walk to the hotel, unless we would get too cold. We would go and eat wurst. that was what the Germans do afterall, eat wurst. Frankfurter wurst. But they are called Wiener wurst in Frankfurt. We went to the wurst stand. we heard the shouts. It was so strange, i recognised the voices immediately. the guy was shouting: "how does that feel? huh? you know what it feels like now?  you will never forget." the victim was howling in pain. i heard a crashing sound. we ran towards the noise. The guy in the striped t-shirt was on the pavement. The other guy was jumping on his knees. his girlfriend standing beside him, she was silent, just looking. her expression was almost of a sexual delight. i got a feeling that beating people up and watching it was some sort of a nihilist cult for them. i froze up. i couldn't handle it anymore.

this time R. shouted. just one word. "hey!" he walked towards them. slowly. the couple looked at the three of us and ran away. R. stopped a cabdriver and told him to call an ambulance. he then continued to walk, halted another cab and told me to get in. 

"what about that guy?" 

"Maiko will stay with him, dont worry, we just have to go home now." 

in the taxi i said that i was sorry. 

"what are you sorry about?" 

"i dont even know. i think i just say Imo sorry because i dont know what to say." 

"so no story tonight then?" 

"would that be allright?"

"no story tonight.  i will call you when i need you next time ok, should be some time in the new year, January, February."

we took the elevator to our rooms. when i walked to my room R took my upper left arm and pinched it. he smiled.

I packed my luggage and waited long enough to be able to halfway breathe, took a taxi to the airport and waited for 4 hours until i could board.

trafficjamslambang, hotel hessischer hof, frankfurt, 2002

the car ride back was exhausting. R. was driving, i could overhear the conversation he and maiko were having. it was scattered over the insanely loud techno tracks that maiko put in the cd player. they were shouting to one another, recapturing the day. it was dark outside, the lights of the other cars shone into my eyes way too brightly. R. was speeding. at some moment we just dashed by every car that was ahead of us. i had to convince myself that we would not crash into a truck or slip over to the other side of the highway. i had to keep my eyes on the speedometer, to try to make it go under 200 with my sheer will. Under the 200 we would be safe. i wanted to be safe. R. and maiko were elated, apparently the meeting in cologne had gone well.  i kept counting the distance we travelled in my mind, to figure out how much longer i would be stuck in that car with them. the speed we were going, it should not take any longer than an hour.  towns i used to pass with my parents in the seventies and eighties, back then, in our Simca, slowly getting along in the traffic jam, now just seemed to vanish before i even knew we had reached them. i kept begging for the car to slow down, i tried to imagine that R. had to go to the toilet or something, so that i just could get out for two minutes and regain my breath. the air we slid through seemed to congest my lungs, it pushed itself onto my sternum, the sound of it drumming into my ears, in a counter-beat to the drums of the house music that pumped through the speakers.  that whole journey we were only once taken over by another car. The men seemed duly impressed by that driver. R. turned to me: "did you see that guy, crazy, i say crazy. cool!"  i did not have the courage to ask R. to slow down, he would have surely found it amusing, and would have only sped up even more. i tried to smile, and counted the distance passed, deducting it from the distance ahead of us. ignoring all the traffic we passed. 

i had once heard that BMW had a special treat for rich Chinese customers: after the purchase they are allowed to do a test drive in Bavaria. no speed limits there on the highways. one road is called the panorama highway. it is leading through a fairy-tale landscape. The main asset of that highway is the road as such. it folds itself like a garland around the mountains.  curves, bends, tunnels in abundance. The clients are accompanied by a professional rally driver. They can speed along for as long as they like, as fast as they want to. not even a speeding ticket, just good clean high-speed fun. I even had to think of a movie i once saw, or maybe i only saw the opening scene. it was a baptism. of BMW´s. by a priest. a long line of cars, one after the other having sprinkled holy water onto them after leaving the factory doors for the first time. a welcoming of the new generation. i just hoped this car had been baptised too, and that we would make it. and on we drove. 

when we finally reached the hotel i wanted to just lie down and go to sleep, but R. had other plans. he wanted a story. and afterwards he said, we would go out. there i sat, on my chair. in Frankfurt. again. i gave him the only story i knew about a highway.

hotelroom on the highway (trafficjamslambang) 

Schiphol hotel van der valk, the Netherlands.

I know this guy who works with the technical department on many filmsets. I was working on the same set as he was, and since we lived in the same neighbourhood we started commuting together that week. Every day we would pass schiphol airport and the motels just behind it. On the third day, out of the blue, just after our first coffee he started telling me that this was the hotel he took girls to fuck. I knew he was a married family man so I was rather confused about the announcement. But, then, as it was obvious he was not intending to take me there, for if he were that surely would have been the absolute worst pick up line I had ever heard, I was ok with it for now. We just talked about the day ahead of us, the filmschedule. All day on the set I found myself looking at the guy and wondering who it was he took there, and how he invited the girls, and then what he would do with them.

On our way back home, about half an hour before we would pass the hotel, my curiosity won.. I just had to know. So I asked him: Who are the girls you fuck there, not your wife, I suppose? He answered, no, it was definitely not his wife, it were girls from filmsets, mostly the make up or clothing department, they were the most fun, and if not available he would take the production girls, who were always very much available, but less fun. Actresses, he said, where out of his league, they where for the directors of photography or for the directors themselves. I was a bit baffled by the very soberness and earnestness of his answer, I remember looking at him to see if he was kidding me, but obviously, he was not. His nose did not wrinkle in the way it did when he was joking. Plain, that was what his statement was, just like I had asked him whether he had sugar in his coffee or not, and today I even wonder if that question might not have puzzled him more than the very personal one I had just asked him. I wanted to know whether his wife knew about it, but the more pressing question on my mind was whether it was always this hotel or whether he had places all over the country where these fucks would occur. He really started enjoying our conversation at this point. He had several hotels, this one was ok, but actually not quite cheap enough, he liked the really cheap formula one motels even better, the ones where you just needed a credit card to get into a room. Right. ..but this one is ok too, if I really like a girl, and think we can have big fun I might even take the swimmingpool room, you know, it has its own swimmingpool, but mostly I just go for a standard room. Swimmingpoolroom is good to impress a babe. And you know, it is not always on my mind, but then, if there is a traffic jam, I think to myself, we can sit here, frustrated about the traffic not moving, or we can really have a ball in a sleazy room, and then I know what I like best...

We were silent for about five minutes, I looked out of the car, at all the passing cars, wondering if the people inside those cars would ever have a trafficjamslambang. Looking at the characterless faces wearing their dusty blueish grey suits sitting in their nondescript cars, I was quite sure that even in their dreams they would be too penny-pinching to indulge themselves on such a highrolling fantasy. One driver looked at me when we overtook his car, and for a second I was scared that he read my mind, so I looked in front of me again. My expression must have been rather weird.

Then I made the decision to ask the technician to join me in one of the rooms. I told him I would pay for the room, and not have sex with him, but asked him to go through the details with me. I wanted to know what he did inside one of those rooms. He thought about it for a second or two and then said: OK.

We got off the highway and went to the motel. The reception was incredibly plastic, but the kind of plastic that is meant to look like something else, and therein, completely fails. There were would-be leather chairs and couches, the wooden floor was laminate, and the greenery was made of polyester. There even were plastic victorian lamp posts with real fake gaslight in them. My colleague told me that we were too late for the dayroom rate. Turned out, your could get a room for just daytime and that it would be much cheaper that way. So maybe my traffic jam bores did go to such a place afterall.

There were still a lot of rooms available. I could choose between: the Mexican suite, of which the only Mexican seemed to be in the name, it was terracotta and blue coloured, as far as the leaflet told me. That would not do, I wanted cheap overindulgence. The technician said I had to pick the room I liked best, he knew most of them anyway. The swimmingpool suite of course sounded brilliant: ..feel like a millionaire! unique in the Netherlands! a double bedroom and a swimming pool to yourself!.. my friend smiled. But that one was above my budget. The Jacuzzi suite seemed to have his approval too, when I glanced at that one, but in the end I decided to take the jungle suite, as the catalogue told me that this was the room you needed if you wanted an adventure. And this was surely going to be a safari into a another man´s sex jungle for me. The suite was not taken, so we took it.

It was hideous. My god. I had to laugh out loud. The walls were covered in a murky greenish paint, and all the furniture was actually made out of plastic bamboo, and so horribly done, with no adventurous imagination what so ever. Some of the palmtrees were real though, to say something nice about it. There even where these scented candles, tangerine flavour, the ones that make you carsick immediately once you light them. My friend pointed out that it had a waterbed. He sat down on it, all of a sudden he became real shy in his movements, now, being here not to fuck he must have felt more naked fully dressed than he ever had before, there was not a trace of the filmset tarzan left in him. He sat, his hands folded in his lap, slightly bend over.

And then I started asking the questions, for I wanted to go all the way now. This was exiting!

..so, you get in to this room, do you first pour her a drink, or do you throw her on the bed immediately?.. ..depends on the girl.. he said ..I mean, as soon as I make the suggestion of going to the hotel she knows what is going to happen, but every girl needs a different approach... I wanted to know how he brought up the idea with the girl in the first place. ..it usually starts on the set, you know, making compliments all day, tease a little, and then make sure you have to drive her home at night. And then, when we are driving, I mostly tell her that it is so odd, that I heard that couples sneak into this hotel to have sex, if she reacts right, she´ll say something like, really, wow. Then I know I just have to wait a little and say that we could just have a look at the hotel bar and check the couples out that have their secret sex dates there and have a drink. The girls always want to. So then I take her in, and if I want it to be this room I would give her a strange tropical cocktail, you know, a ´sex on the beach´ would be too obvious, so mostly it will be something like a ´southern peach´ or a ´pink Chevrolet´... So I suggested we would go to the bar and have one of those then. He sort of felt uncomfortable. He asked me whether I wasn´t  trying to seduce him now or anything. I reassured him that this was not the case. I really just wanted to know. That seemed ok with him. We went over to the bar, and I had my southern peach and he had a beer. ..so now what?.. ..well, there usually should be a business meeting with at least one businessman flirting with a girl, and then I would tell the girl: see, there they go, they´ll take a room, and ask her which room she thinks they will choose. The girl always chooses the room for them that she herself does not want to have. So then I know which room she probably likes. And I start to do the flirt thing, but now more obviously, and they always respond, putting their hands on my leg, things like that. I then say I should really be getting home. They are always so disappointed when I say that, but I insist. Then I look into her eyes and say, what the hell, one more drink is ok. The relief on the girls´ face is what you should see. I have her right where I want her. We´ll have another cocktail.. (So I ordered one for both me and him) ..and then I say that we could just take a room for an hour, tell her the discount story and that it would be fun to see such a room. They mostly giggle at that point, trying to look sexy at the same time, you know, throw their hair back, move their fingers up and down their cocktail glass real slowly, and if it..s a really trashy one, she´ll start eating the cocktail cherry whilst looking at me... I picked up the cherry and swallowed it in one piece. ..not that way, they make an effort to make it look really sexy. I then say, oh well, it is expensive you know.. I stall. And then I tell them, but with you it should be fun, you are such a nice fun loving girl.. And then we book the room... 

Back in the room, he asked me if I really wanted to know everything. And I said yes. Everything. What would be next? ..Well, the Jacuzzi is always good, you know, leave your underwear on, it should not become to sleazy to easily... So I went over to the Jacuzzi, filled it, and asked him to sit in it. I told him he could leave all his clothes on, for all I cared, I had no desire to see his body. He said that would be difficult, he had no spare clothes with him. So I agreed on the underwear part. He sat in the Jacuzzi. He looked rather silly, all by himself there in that bubble frenzy. I asked him what happened in the Jacuzzi. The obvious stuff he said, the fondling, the kissing, the touching. And then what? They would go to the bed, they would have to take their underwear off because it was wet. So nudity then. I suggested he put on a bathrobe in this case. He gladly agreed. But he was real cool, he went to the bed, lay down. I sat on one of the disgusting bamboo chairs. And I asked: And then you fuck?.. ..Yes, then we fuck... ..are it good fucks?.. ..mostly, yes, depends on the girl, on the room... And they never fall in love with you afterwards?.. ..Some do, but never for long... I found that I was not able to go into the details of the actual fuck, that would have been too uneasy for me. The last thing I wanted to know was whether he smoked an after sex cigarette. And yes he did. So I sat next to him on the bed, and we both smoked a cigarette. He then put his clothes on, without the wet underwear, and we checked out. 

It is only a twenty minute drive from the hotel to my home, and we were rather quiet on the road. Eventually, I thanked him, for sharing this intimacy with me. He hoped I didn´t think he was a complete freak, and I said that I thought quite the opposite.

Very fascinating to have been part of somebody else's hotel. Whenever I see him on the set now, flirting with one of the make-up girls, I just give him a big wink, and he smiles back. I know then that I will have to find myself another ride home.

R. laughed. "and you want me to believe you didn't have sex? come on! you fucked the guy and because you don´t want your boyfriend to know you you turned it into this figment of yours." 

"i didn't have sex with him, i didn´t even go into the hotel with him. the only thing he said is if i figured a little date there, and he was joking." 

"really, is that how your stories work?" 

"no, but as all i have done today is hang out in a church filled with bones and skulls and then drove home with you guys and nearly got killed this is all i could think of."

"how did you get killed, nearly?"

"well you drove like a couple of maniacs"

"we just had fun, girl. for crying out loud loosen up a little, you are always so tight. did you get me the present?"

i had forgotten. it was still in the safe. i went up into my room and got it for him. I needed cold water on my face. I kept rinsing my face and my wrists. i felt dirty. when i came back to R. i handed him the necklace. he put it into his suitcase. 

"don´t you want to see if it is what you wanted to get her?"

"ah, i am sure she will like it. now, let´s get drunk, we really need to celebrate."

the three of us went through at least five bars, and drank indeed.

the conquest of immortality. how buildings reflect the search of the elixir of youth.

we went to cologne by car. R. had business there, and i had no desire to stay alone in Frankfurt for even 8 minutes or more. maiko sat in the front of the car, next to R. they sped along the highway, and talked a lot. shreds of conversation i picked up, mostly highschool and college memories. They had the meeting in a hotel near the station, so i just went for a walk.

i found a church. There are many of them in Cologne, the dome of course, but i mean a different church. i ended up spending the entire afternoon there, in the chapel of saint Ursula. in the golden chamber to be precise.

the walls are covered with mosaics of bones and skulls, and gilded busts of the holy Ursula and her virgin adepts. The walls reach high up, bones and more bones where ever you turn your head.

legend has it, that Ursula, a devout catholic, was engaged to be married to the king of England, a pagan. he loved her so dearly that he converted to Christianity, leaving Ursula with no option but to approve of the betrothal. before the wedding however, she set out with a group of female followers on a pilgrimage to Rome. she felt it her obligation to do so, her pilgrimage was the barter for the sins her future husband had committed by not having chosen the only true path of religion before. In Rome she had a dream that she and her group would be killed brutally by the Huns.  this premonition did in no way deter her from the journey home. Ursula felt that this was her destiny, and her female companions went with her. The women left for cologne, and as the legend has it, she and her virgin army were indeed massacred. The leader of the Huns had offered to spare them, if Ursula would marry him instead of the English king, but she refused. Ursula and the 11 thousand virgins were slaughtered in a most brutal way, their heads were cut off, arrows shot through their bodies, the were left in a field to bleed to death. The site of the onslaught is, so does the church want us to believe, where the chapel was built.

the chapel, in all its eeriness is of a strange and sinister beauty.  i tried counting all the busts and heads, but there were just too many of them, probably 11 thousand indeed. there is no historic evidence to the legend of Ursula, but this church does a good job in making the story tangible. bones in circles, in triangles, in squares. Latin words made out of bones. skulls. golden showcases with more bones in them. gilded hands with the bones of the martyresses encased in them, the shape of a heart, a sun, all bones.

throughout the centuries different fashionable paraphernalia were added, the crude medieval shapes are joined by baroque cherubs, which makes the sunlit chamber with it´s black and white chequered marble floor all together more lugubrious. that whole day i was the only person in there. the days when people would come to pray here for salvation of the soul are over.

it is weird with buildings. the big ones, i mean. they are the ones to tell us where the true powers lie in societies. the achievement of immortality has somehow always been intertwined with buildings of power. 

in Europe, the very old big buildings are churches and cathedrals. the catholic churches´ regime held the people in it´s inexorable grasp. true devotion was demanded, wandering off that path could mean torture by that same church. but the true punishment lay in the afterlife: hell. only by being an ardent and virtuous believer one could rest reasonably assured of a place in heaven. The quest of immortality was ever present even in those days: the catholic church offered us immortality of the soul: having been good, we would be rewarded by going to heaven and becoming a nice little angel. sinners and unbaptised children had the choice of hell and limbo. Saints were immortal, their bones cast in gold, relics to be kept until judgement day, when they would guide the true believers into kingdom come, like the poor Ursula and her maidens. no matter how hard life was, if good, you could earn yourself a little spot in heaven.

and though this idea of immortality seems to be rather philosophical on the surface, the belief in medieval times was most definitely a very physical one: the bodies of every man and woman that had once lived on earth would rise from their graves. those of the saints would be without blemish, youthful and strong. This is why many relics of saints were used so often in the churches, a smithereens of a single bone of a saint would be enough to conjure him back to life when the end of time would arrive. the sinners would be festered and worm ridden, ready to be taken to the devil. The church held its stronghold long enough, but slowly the powers shifted.

after the renaissance entered the time of kings and emperors. they used the architectonical vocabulary of ancient roman empires and that of the church. the droit divine was translated in the palaces they had designed for themselves. look at Versailles, where the sun king ruled. The emperors just wanted themselves to become immortal, the people should remember them forever. their palaces should reflect the death-defying omnipotence of the rulers. heaven had become a place on earth, being around the emperor was being around the closest thing you could get to god.

in the 20st century the totalitarian regimes liked to go big: Hitler, with the neo neo classicist style of Albert Speer, sampling Greek and roman architecture to emphasise a fake historical evidence for the validation of the 1000 year rule of the third Reich. Had the national socialist architecture followed a logical historic path, the buildings would have had to have the looks of the huts of the ancient Germanic tribes. this would of course have undermined the image of grandeur and wisdom the ideology needed.

Kim il Sung, who also claimed an godlike status for himself, and even had a national religion made up for him, the Kim il sungism, which is still taught in north Korean schools to date, had a design made for a tower that should literary reach for the skies, it was never built however. Ceaucescu in Rumania, the African dictators. bigger was better to them. their buildings were often just bleak copies of other dictators: Ceaucescu had become inspired to built his "palace of the people" when visiting north Korea in the beginning of the seventies. The Palace in Bucharest is the second largest building on earth, after the pentagon.  Idi Amin in Uganda , who never tried denying the rumours about himself being a cannibal, saying the blood he bathed in made him immortal and would protect him against any injury;  for his palaces he happily mixed and matched roman, Greek and Stalinist styles. 

at the end of the millennium a altogether different power emerged: the new money. no longer were it legislative or governmental buildings that rose in overdimensional proportions,  it were banks and global corporations who built their temples of money and consumer driven greed. high, sleek, semi transparent molochs emerged in every cosmopolitan city around the globe. within a couple of years, the new money was  where the power had transferred to. look at most governmental buildings these days: so often do you see worn out carpets, dilapidated office furniture. there is no power in the governments anymore. 

the churches and palaces of previous centuries have become museums. whenever i would go in to a church on my travels, i only met tourists, and an occasional old man or woman in desperate prayer. 

With the new power of the multinationals a matching religion has emanated. although, when looking closely it does echo the same desire for immortality: the worship of an eternally youthful body. decay is considered a crime, a flaw, a sign of deficiency, a sin.  not fitting in the image of nouveau capitalism. 

plastic surgeons have become the new father confessors, fitness centres the new holy mass: "Worship your body in its youthfulness! Deny the devil called atrophy, or you will pay for your weakness!"  the holy mass of the devotion to eternal youth seems like a very lonely one to me. trying to achieve the impossible: to look like the photoshopped images that are fed into their minds on a daily basis by advertisements. all these people in the  "health clubs" treading on these fitness machines like rats in cages. sad.

i wonder where the next revolution will take us to. i know one thing for sure, look closely at which institutions build big. that is were the power will have shifted.

hotel hessischer hof, frankfurt, beginning december 2002. it´s all about the money

"so you will get my wife a nice present then, tomorrow? maybe a necklace, she doesn't like earrings too much, i think she has great ears, maybe thats why, that earrings are only worn by women who want to hide them." 

I repeated that i did not think it appropriate to buy gifts for any of his family members, and i added that i did not know his wife´s taste or dislikes. R. got up from his bed and took his wallet out of his coat. I thought that he was going to take a photograph of his wife out, to show me, what she looked like. Or that it would be a picture of him, her and their children. It was his credit card. "Here, you use it, spend as much as you think is right." 

"But i dont even know what your wife would find beautiful, i know nothing about her. " 

"Dont worry, its not about pretty, it has to spell dollars in at least five figures and she is happy."

 I felt utterly uncomfortable. "Can´t you buy her something at the airport?" 

"Do you have plans here?"

"No, not really."

"Well, then, go, shop. buy yourself something nice too. i have these mergers to settle all day, we can have dinner after if you like, say 8 o clock?"

Walking around Frankfurt with R.´s credit-card in my bag made me feel awkward. I had never allowed myself the luxury of a credit-card and very much doubted that with my unsteady income the bank would even grant me one. Now here i was, walking with a credit-card that did not belong to me, buying a gift for someone i would never know.  I was frightened i might lose it, or that it would get stolen. I tried to act as natural as i could, so that i would not look as if i had something with me that was worth the theft.

Now that i was an active customer, the city changed. It felt like one huge airport terminal, shops everywhere and nothing much else to do but purchasing goods to avoid boredom. I went into a newsagent and got myself a Dutch newspaper, it made me feel more at home to be able to read in Dutch. The news itself did not interest me, i just wanted to have familiar words to surround me, to give me some comfort. Using the card on such a small amount felt silly, so i bought an expensive fountain-pen i thought R. might like for himself. I paid with the card. All went well. The woman behind the cash register wished me a nice day. I blushed. She did not see my discomfort. I felt like a con-artist, as it was not my money i was spending here. 

I lingered some more in the shop, looked at the magazines, stationary, the lights in the ceiling. All of a sudden i thought i could go and disappear.  Just step out of my life. Walk out of that store, precisely like i would do if i were continuing my regular life, but then, instead of going to the right, suddenly turn in another direction, and never return to myself.  I could do that. Keep the card, get cash out of an ATM, and then go somewhere. Take on a new identity, some completely common city in Germany, where i knew no one. Alter my name, and then invent a new personality for myself. Become a secretary, or a salesgirl in a shop, like the one i had just met. She did not seem entirely unhappy. I could lead a conventional nine to five life, in which i would function perfectly, and never make a true connection to anybody. I would be alone with my secret, my past. I figured that maybe i would buy some Ikea furniture to decorate my home. Buy it just the way it was photographed in their catalogues, the couch that would fit to the carpet, the table light on the matching side table. Cut my hair very short. Start wearing glasses, which i needed anyway, but i always lost them or sat on them or broke one of the glasses in my handbag. Yes, i could wear glasses, and unremarkable clothing. Watch television at night when i got home. Maybe even allow myself the extravagance of an orchid on one of the coffee-tables. Transform into a complete stranger even to myself. For this instance, i saw that life passing. I wondered how long it would take for people to really miss me. To realise that i was gone for ever. If they would even think of that. I would no longer pick up the telephone, would not answer any of my e-mails, i would simply cease to exist. I would have died, but could still go on living. The temptation of this thought struggled to emerge in full bloom, but guilt made me drift away from it again. My parents would probably miss me the longest, and their worries could be unbearable.  I figured this is what biology does, make your next of kin the ones who are anxious to a degree were all rationality evaporates and can even destroy them. I just did not have the stomach for that.

I went out of the shop, and turned right, back into my own existence. 

At the jewellery store a guy helped me pick out something. I made up a story about being R.´s personal assistant. The guy helped me out as much as he could. He asked me how old his wife was. I had to guess. I said she was 41. What her colour was. I did not understand the question. Did he mean her complexion, or the colour of her hair? The salesman explained that some women prefer gold, and others silver. It had to do with whether they wanted to appear cool or hot. Or cool with a hot core. And if they preferred silver, which obviously was for the cool type, we could always go for silver-coloured platinum, to add the hot core element. If she was under fifty, the guy went on, diamonds would not be so much appreciated, unless she did not have a lot of taste. If she was a sporty type, the metal itself should be smooth, and the stones should be encrusted instead of laid in. Pearls were for widows, but rubies could be nice, maybe a necklace with rubies and blood coral. It was his personal favourite of the season. He showed me a golden necklace with the rubies and some polished blood coral. i looked at the price tag. It was nearly 200.000 euros. I was shocked. I had not known that you could buy a necklace which costs this much. Was this what R. had in mind? I didnt know what to decide. In the end i declined, and said that this necklace might be way too much. I explained that it was allowed to be a bit more casual. The salesman became far less enthusiastic, and showed me a platinum necklace with a pendant that had a sapphire surrounded by a couple of pearls and some diamonds. His whole theory of age, teint, taste, or widowhood did not seem to matter to him any more. The necklace still cost nearly ten thousand euros, but for him, i had just demoted myself from an A-list customer to a mere nuisance. I asked him if he would gift wrap the necklace and he sullenly obliged.

I took a taxi back to the hotel, no way i dared walk the streets with such valuables in my handbag.  On one street some guy was hanging up posters. He had covered the street nicely; every tree, every lamppost, and even some walls, were covered with his slightly crumpled posters.  They were designed like the old rote armee fraktion posters: a red star and gun emblem . the logo was covered in handwriting saying: ALLES MUSS WEG! 

everything must go. 

it must have been when i was nine that i first encountered the Rote Armee Fraktion, the Baader Meinhof Gruppe. Growing up with Swiss parents who spoke German, i had a hard time in the Netherlands. Speaking German was like being half a nazi back in the seventies. Whenever my mother and i would go to the supermarket or greengrocer i implored her to speak Dutch. Sometimes she would indulge me on my wishes. It did not make a real difference. Her accent betrayed her German roots sufficiently  to make people stare at us, not even trying to conceal their repulsion. The fact that my mothers parents had only moved to Switzerland from Germany some years after the second world war did not help a lot either. Being German was being wrong. We were the people who were responsible for Anne Frank and all the other victims of second world war. Having a German identity, which in the eyes of our villagers and my classmates was what we had, was being a collaborator to the nazi regime, unless you could prove your grandparents had died in some kind of underground movement. And our family could do no such thing. Our tv had German channels, and i liked to watch German tv, but i would never tell any of my friends. I liked "Persil man". He was a man in a cleaning detergent commercial. he sat in a very serious looking chair, and said that it was scientifically proven that Persil made your laundry whiter than any other product. Another programme i liked was "aktenzeichen XYungelöst", about real crimes.  And one night I was introduced to a group of people, wanted for various terrorist crimes: Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin,  Brigitte Mohnhaupt, and the rest of the gang. Until then criminals to me had always been men in striped suits. Or men who wore dark glasses. They were men. The Rote Armee Fraktion was different. Their group had many women who were just as willing to break the law as their terrorist boyfriends.  I found that truly exiting, scary too, it fascinated me completely. The police station in our village had this box outside, with posters offering ransoms for wanted criminals. Soon after the XY television show a poster was hung up. They were looking for the group in the Netherlands too! The gang looked incredibly hip. Long hair, beards, and the women had dark eyed make-up. Their public relations tactics were smart. Robbing banks for the funding of their numerous attacks and guerilla training in Palestina and Jordan, the Baader Meinhof Gruppe constantly made referrals to Bonnie and Clyde, the huge box office hit of that time. They were the German equivalent to Faye Dunnaway and Warren Beatty, with a pinch of southern American frivolity, in the form of pictures they had distributed of themselves in front of a Che Guevarra poster. Andreas Baader had a graphic designer come up with the logo of the red star with a machine gun in it. No matter how violent and brutal their actions, many of the German and western European citizens felt sympathy for the group. They were the first to address the fact that most politicians and law enforcers in western Germany were ex national socialists. Especially to the generation who had not grown up in the war, but had learned of the horrors of it, the brute statements of the baader meinhof gruppe were a revelation. Their urban guerilla would finally put an end to this discrepancy, the revolution they had in mind would ultimately terminate the fascist state that Germany still was. Their methodology and vocabulary became more and more a twisted duplicate of the fascists they tirelessly combated. The group was caught, Ulrike Meinhof was found hung in her cell in Stammheim Prison in 1976. It was during the kidnapping of Hanns Martin Schleyer that the group became a daily news item. More so after one member shot a Dutch policeman in Utrecht. Then, when the kidnapping turned out to be a futile tactic to have the other members of the group released, Baader, Enslin, Raspe were found dead in their cells on October 18th, 1977. Schleyer was executed by the Rote Armee Fraktion that night. My parents had intense arguments about the abduction, the shooting, about the trial, and the alleged suicides. I didnt quite understand anything my parents said, they were more interested in the legal side of the trial than in the fact that Schleyer had died, or in what the Rote Armee Fraktion stood for. My father would recite the verdict of one court-case, my mother would name the number of a statutory provision, it had nothing to do with the images i saw on television and in the newspapers: these people were rough, they fought with a vehemence that made their small army powerful enough to even get the German prime minister into a complete state of shock.  I did not know whether to admire them or detest them. And my parent´s discussions did not clarify the matter for me either. did i want to join them, were they really fighting for a better world in peace, as one of my teachers in school said, or should i, like the police wanted me to do, go chase them and collect the reward? 

But as news goes, the group disappeared from the headlines. 

then, in the mid eighties, being a punk made knowledge of the Baader Meinhof Gruppe worthwhile again. It was important to really dig deeper into the matter. i suddenly found myself surrounded by people who, under circumstances, would embrace Germany. this was a new sensation. it had to be the right Germany however, meaning, left wing. Heinrich Böll, Margaretha von Trotta, they were good Germans. I had to educate myself into a completely new person. When my classmates in high-school would learn grammar, geography and maths, i was working hard on the subjects communism and anarchy. i was memorising the lyrics of songs by the Birthday party and Einstürzende Neubauten. My tuition furthermore consisted of watching Eisensteins Potemkin and Fritz Langs Metropolis, although the projectionist at the cinema had accidentally changed the reels in the wrong order, so that nobody had a clue what that movie was about. I got a small part in Berthold Brechts  "Threepenny Opera", Brecht was a good German too in 1985. All the punks in our city were the same in a way, we came from rather well to do families, and tried to hide the fact that we had grown up in big houses with huge gardens. we were now part of the proletariat. I dont think we wanted to start a revolution or anything, but we had to have at least some kind of ideal. and hippies were just utterly unfashionable, so we were punk.

That summer I learned more about anarchy. I went on tour with an English band. We travelled in a black van of a friend of ours. We would listen to reggae and neue deutsche welle songs and sing along to them. The van was spray-painted grey and had a graffiti on each of the side doors: it was a red star with the face of Ulrike Meinhof in the centre. The graffiti looked like an Andy Warhol painting. In a way, the terrorist martyr had become a pop icon.

The band performed in a bar underneath a squat in Amsterdam. We were allowed to sleep in the squat.  Whilst the singer and i had a nap on a worn down sofa in one of the rooms, the rest of the band went shopping. Then it was time for the soundcheck. I hung around a little, and looked at the posters in the bar. It was a dark place, just two or three lightbulbs hung from the ceiling. the place smelled as yellow grey as the walls were. I sat down on a barstool and listened to the music. One of the squatters started talking to me. Or more, he started to ask me questions that i was in a way not supposed to answer. He was worried, he said, that i had not realised that i was being sexist. I indeed had never been aware of being such thing. so i asked him what he meant. He started to explain. i was a girl. i had to agree to that. then he said that i was a girl who did not only wear make up, which i could not deny, but i also chosen to wear a short colourful skirt. he emphasised the last two words: Colourful. Skirt. he nodded  to my legs whilst he said that. then he stared at me. his girlfriend had now joined him. she was wearing a huge grey sweater and military pants. The girlfriend whispered something in his ear, and then stood behind him, holding him at the waist. The guy continued: they had watched me all afternoon and felt intensely agonised by my presence in their home. A woman should not be an object of lust to anybody, and my way of dressing was obviously an attempt to attract sexist attention. now, maybe, he continued, i had not done this on a conscious level. Probably i had issues i could not deal with and my intentions were good, they would anyway have to give me the benefit of doubt as i was travelling with this band, who he and his girlfriend knew and admired for their true and virtuous anarchistic standards; but still, it would be very much appreciated if i could wear less conspicuous clothing as long as i was a guest in their squat. he rolled a cigarette. The singer had finished the soundcheck and joined our little conversation. The singer said: "can i have a cigarette?" the male squatter told the singer that he only could offer him a shag, which is the Dutch name for rolling tobacco, so to him it must have sounded like decent English. the singer said he did not fancy men to have sex with. From then on the situation only went downhill rapidly. The squatters had cooked dinner for us upstairs. The band ate the food, whilst taking out their loot of that afternoons shopping spree. It was porn. The band could not believe their luck, Holland was a truly wonderful anarchist country indeed. the freedom of porn was just brilliant, the could never buy such gross magazines in the United Kingdom. They swapped the magazines amongst each other staring at the pictures, showing the worst to each other and to our hosts, who, by then were staring at me malignantly as if i was the root of all this evil. The concert was a blast though.

in my room, I put the necklace in the safe. until it was time for dinner i leafed through the magazines i had bought for R. and read the Dutch newspaper. i had not thought of having the fountain-pen gift-wrapped for him. I needed wrapping paper. I took the newspaper, teared out one page, and packed the pen into it. at 7.30 R. called and told me we would have dinner straight away, he was already in the restaurant. i changed into a dress, took the parcel with the fountain-pen and went downstairs. the restaurant had dozens and dozens of tables. all were set with baroque tableware. every wall in the room was covered with glass cabinets. The dinner plates were hung in these cabinets. very consistent decoration. 

R. was sitting at a table with another man, they were talking. when he saw me he got up from his chair and shouted: "hey puppet, there you are, meet my friend maiko!" the other guests looked up, and then went on with their conversations, or food. "maiko and i still need to go over some stuff, but get yourself something nice to eat." he waved for a waiter who brought me the menu. Maiko looked at me for an instance too long, and gave me a wan smile. "maiko is my main man when it comes to the hard deals, and we really need to close this one before someone else gets a hand on the contract. but now, as long as you are here we will do a little small talk. she can smalltalk so well this girl, and bigtalk too." they both grinned. i desperately tried to think of a polite question to ask this Maiko, but i could not think of anything reasonable to say. i just asked them whether they had been colleagues for a long time. "oh, we go way back." R. said. Maiko nodded affirmatively. They really seemed to get along well.  "when business goes smooth, i refine the process a little, polish things up nicely. the tough deals, thats were Maiko comes in. he also polishes up. very nicely." they both laughed. The waiter came to take my order. I asked for a salad and the gnocchi. I still had the gift on my lap, but i did not want to give it to R. as long as he had company. i realised it was not even a gift, he had paid for it himself. i wanted it to vanish. "eats like a bird this one does." Maiko all of a sudden said. „why are you eating so little, is the food not comforting for you?“ R. interrupted Maiko. "come to think of it, i never saw her eat one single bite before. tea, coffee, cigarettes, thats more here diet, isn´t it?" I answered that i did eat. Maiko said that i should only eat what i liked and when i liked it.

christmas shopping, hotel hessischer hof, frankfurt, beginning of december, 2002

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.

....