He stumbles at one point and pulls me down with him. Then once we’ve both gotten up again and lumbered over to each other, he kisses me. Out of the blue. I barely manage to spit out my gum. Afterwards he seems very happy, and I am happy, too, because he ate mint ice cream and the flavor makes me think of something far away and pretty.
I figure he’s ready. So I pull him to a patch of lawn that’s still free, behind a lilac hedge in full bloom. As I let myself fall to the grass, he stays upright, looking around as if he’s lost his way in the dark woods.
“What’s up? I say. “Are you worried about ticks? Or mites?”
“N-n-no,” he answers. I hadn’t realized he stuttered a little. Maybe he hadn’t done it earlier.
It takes all my self-control not to laugh.
“Are you really twenty-four?” I ask.
“Just turned,” he says.
“Can you help me get these heavy things off?” I ask.
“What things?”
“The rollerblades.”
“I’ll try,” he says, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Man, it’s hot here.”
He kneels down and gives me another kiss. Then he starts working at the buckles of my inline skates. Finally he has my foot in his hand and asks, “What are you laughing at now?”
“It tickles,” I say.
He lets go of my foot and lies down next to me. He plucks a blade of grass and starts to run it along my arm, from my fingertips, past my elbow, up to my shoulder, and on to my collarbone. I wonder whether he thought that up himself or saw it in a movie. It’s all I can do to keep a straight face. It tickles.
Then he traces the same route with his pointer finger. Collarbone is once again the last stop.
He looks into my eyes. I look away so as not to laugh. Then I turn back to him and we make out in the soft grass for a little while — until he starts working at my arms again.
I’m dying to ask him whether all computer science students are so hesitant, but I contain myself.
I roll onto my stomach and bury my face in some daisies. I feel the blade of grass on the back of my knee. It heads down toward my feet, as if this guy has never heard of the practical aspects of a skirt. But then again where would he have heard about it, with only five girls in his department.
It dawns on me that the night isn’t going to go according to plan unless I push him along a bit. Not that this is so awful, but I just don’t have forever. Back home I’ve just started reading interviews with the American surgeon Robert White, who wanted to transplant heads. It worked on monkeys.
I turn onto my side, prop myself up on my elbow and look pensively at the guy in front of me. Short blond hair, pale face, light eyebrows. He’s chewing on this sorry blade of grass and blinking his eyes nervously.
“What’s the deal with you, Volker?” I ask.
How can it be so difficult to say a name? It’s just a word. The most painful word in the world.
He frowns.
“You mean, how far along am I towards my degree?”
“That, too,” I say. “Do you not find me attractive?”
“Of course I do,” he says quickly. “Very. Lie back down.”
I fall expectantly onto the grass and look up at the sky, and then feel his hand on my arm again. And once again he stops at my shoulder.
I really have to use every ounce of restraint not to flinch and giggle.
“You are so thin,” he says quietly. “Incredible. I really like that. How do you do it?”
I forget to eat, I think to myself, annoyed. Not to please you, you wax-faced jerk. But because I usually have other things on my mind. I think of Clara, the anorexic girl in my class who comes home once in a while between stays at the clinic. And Katharina, who wears long sleeves in the heat of summer because she constantly cuts her arms with her father’s razor. Not to try to kill herself, just to cut lines in her skin.
But in summer — or in gym class — the long sleeves stick out a lot more than a few slits would. There’s something creepy about the long sleeves because they are clearly concealing something. Katharina seems to know this, too. Sometimes she looks proud of the reaction she gets.
I don’t understand either one. Starving yourself or cutting yourself. I mean, it’s idiotic to take out your anger on your own body. And pointless. It should be enough to be the target of everybody’s ridicule.
I have to consider the fact that what I’m doing right now is not so very different.
But I don’t want to quit halfway through. If I get up this minute and go home, it’s possible that I might end up grabbing for a razor blade in the bathroom and testing that out. What a feeling. If Katharina does it so often, maybe it would do me some good.
It’s getting cooler.
“Listen,” I say, irritated, “is it possible you’re shy?”
“Me?” He opens his mouth and forgets to close it again. “Why would you think I’m shy?”
“I don’t want to lie around here in the grass all night, you know.”
“Where would you rather be?”
I look at him for a long time. We just don’t understand each other.
Suddenly he flushes, turning red beneath his sunburn, and begins to stutter again.
“It’s j-j-just a little f-f-fast for me,” he says. “I can’t just do it straight away.”
“You can’t? How long do you need?”
“Oh, man. I’ve never met anyone like you before.”
“You don’t like me?”
“I do. A lot. You have an amazing body and nice skin, darker than mine.”
“Yes, which is why I never get sunburned. Get that god damn blade of grass away from me. Please.”
He tosses the blade of grass onto the lawn, thinks for second, then leans over and kisses me. I close my eyes so I don’t have to see him. I try to imagine it is someone else. I guess Felix was right. All men are the same. If I keep my eyes closed, this guy isn’t even here.
In that case the only person here is the one I picture. I put together an image of Volker’s face from my various memories, building it like a mosaic from countless shards. But it slips away from me. I’m not sure anymore what he looks like. I can’t picture his face anymore. And the more desperate I become trying to piece it together, the more details fade.
To distract myself, I try to figure out when the right moment is to alert this college kid to the condoms in my bag.
Just then my mouth is freed again.
“Have you overexerted yourself?” I ask. Immediately I’m upset with myself. I could have asked him that afterwards. If I scare him off too quickly, I’ll feel really lonely and ugly.
“It’s just weird that we don’t know each other at all,” says this other, false, blond Volker. He sounds tortured. “It’s just not normal. Shouldn’t we talk first?”
I’m taken aback. “We’ve already talked,” I say. “But if you want to, we can talk some more. What do you like to talk about?”
“I’m sure you’d find it boring,” he says sheepishly.
That’s for sure, I think. But I say, “That’s not true. What are you into?”
“Cars,” he says quietly, in a tone suited to describing a first, shy, romantic experience of love.
“Cars,” I repeat. “Cool. What kind of car do you want to have when you’re all grown up and rich?”
“Porsche Carrera,” he says without a second’s hesitation.
There is nothing more boring than cars, I think, but answer competently, “I know somebody who wants a white Mercedes.”
“Which model?”
“No idea.”
“Mercedes are good, too,” he says appreciatively. “A Mercedes would work. I’ll never drive a foreign car.”
I sit up. “Never? Not a Citroen, or a Volvo? A Saab? A Mazda?”
“All crap,” he says, a look of disgust flashing across his face. “Never.”
“Oh,” I say, lying back down on the grass. The evening sky is gray with a few shimmering red clouds in it. The ground is getting a little moist. “You’re a nationalist.”