You (4 page)

“Oh, come on.”

You hammer your lighter on the palm of your hand. The flint crunches, there’s no spark. Great. Now what? You can’t just go back in there and ask for a light, they’ll lynch you. Go to the counter, they’re bound to have a light.

You’re half the way there when this guy comes from the bottom
of the stairs. He was probably in the john, hasn’t missed anything anyway.

“Got a light?”

He takes out this enormous golden flamethrower.

“It’s my dad’s,” he tells you, as if he’d inherited it, as if he had to explain it, as if you’d asked. He probably swiped the lighter when his dad was looking the other way, wanna bet? Guy as tall as a basketball player, much older than you. Mid-twenties. Gives you a light and smiles. Nice.

“Thanks.”

“You don’t like the movie?”

“Boring.”

“That’s the word.”

That smile again; you smile back. It’s better than standing around on your own anyway.

“How about an ice cream?”

You tell him you’re waiting for your friends. You’re not that easy. He looks around, probably checking that he’s not dreaming and he really has met you. Hot mama that you are. Then he winks at you. He really winks. Maybe he’s gay or something.

“We could wait outside and eat our ice cream. My treat. But only if you want to,” he adds, with a big fat question mark at the end. He’s actually really friendly, but let him twitch for a minute or two. Friendly’s only half the battle. You’re not naïve.
Don’t trust strangers who offer you candy
, Aunt Sissi drummed into you, and if you’ve grown up without parents you listen to your aunt.

“Hm,” you say and pull in your stomach and check the guy out—black T-shirt, jeans, Doc Martens, leather bracelet, ponytail. No, he’s not gay, you’ve never seen a long-haired gay; and if your nose doesn’t deceive you he’s got just as much perfume behind his ears as you do. Smells good. When he glances at his watch, you see gold again. You could bet that when he laughs the sun comes out.

“Why are you laughing?” he asks, and you just grin and he says, “We’ve got an hour, what do you think?” Questions about questions. Come on, Stink, behave yourself, he’s not going to go straight for your shorts, and if he does, you’ve put up with worse. So just be cool, go with it.

“Ice cream sounds great,” you tell him and your heart starts to flutter loudly.

Before you leave the foyer, you buy ice cream from the guy behind the counter. Of course you choose the most expensive one, you want to do this in style. The guy says
Go for it
and you laugh, and he laughs too, then you’re standing outside nibbling at your ice creams and glancing at each other. These are really flirty looks, they fall like a veil over your eyes and make your vision a little blurry. Leaving the cinema wasn’t such a bad idea after all. From a certain angle the guy looks like Alberto. Alberto wasn’t an Italian, you just wished he was. Alberto came from the East and his real name was Albert, but what sort of a name is that? Alberto sounded miles better. That guy, oh hell, he could really turn you on. He was wild about you.
Wanna eatsch you up
, he said. Stupid lisp, but at least it made you laugh. And you didn’t want to talk to him anyway. He made out with you wherever you were and nibbled away at your lips as if they were pink chewing gum. And once at the bus stop he shoved his hands down the back of your jeans and grabbed you by the ass.
Alberto, what’re you doing?
you asked him and he pressed himself closer to you so that you could feel his erection, massaging your ass as if it were an overripe peach and breathing heavily.
I’m an ath fetishist
, he muttered in your ear, almost blowing your head off. And you weren’t cool at all by then and murmured back:
Whatever that is
. You had no idea what an ass fetishist was and you didn’t have much time to think about it, because Alberto was pressing and kneading your cheeks till you thought:
Help, he’s going to tear me in two!
It didn’t come to that, though, because Alberto suddenly went quiet and rigid and stopped breathing at all while having an orgasm pressed against your belly, and that happened all at the bus stop on a lovely day in May.

“… never seen it. I went to Berlin a lot as a child. My father lives in Friedrichshain, my half brother in Zehlendorf. But my mother lives in Hamburg, that’s where I grew up …”

The guy talks and talks and smiles at you and you think:
How long’s he been talking?
You smile back and lick a bit of ice cream from your wrist and wonder if he’s an ass fetishist as well.

“So you’re just visiting?” you say, picking up the end of his last sentence.

“Right.”

“Cool.”

“What about you? Still at school?”

You show him your wrist. There’s a little tattoo at the spot where they take your pulse. The writing’s tiny, one word, not more.

“Gone?”

“Right, gone.”

“School?”

You nod.

“High school graduation?”

“Nah.”

You roll your eyes and laugh. Be honest, you don’t look like graduation. You look like a wildcat in a petting zoo. But don’t tell him that. And watch out, here comes the next question.

“And what are your plans?”

“We’ll see. Maybe I’ll open a beauty salon. Something like that. You?”

“I don’t know where I want to go.”

Funny answer
, you think, and pretend to study the movie posters. Let the guy look at you in peace. Maybe he hasn’t got a girlfriend, you could be with him for a while. But guys like him always have girlfriends. One of those smoothies who never have to go to the bathroom and in the morning they smell like flowers. That’s the kind of girl he would have. He’s much too nice for this world—he speaks nice, he smells nice and seems to have money. Maybe he’ll lend you ten euros, then you’d have to see each other again so that you could give him the money back.

You feel him looking at you. His eye wanders up from your platforms up to your worn bell-bottomed cord jeans, the belt pulled tight, narrow waist, blouse under your velvet jacket, long pause on your breasts—of course he lingers there, he paid for the ice cream, he can linger. Perhaps he’s noticed that your red hair makes you look a bit like the actress Kristen Bell, but he’s probably never even seen
Veronica Mars
or
Heroes
.

“How old are you?” he asks and his eyes are on your mouth.

“Seventeen,” you lie, adding a year. “You?”

“Too old.”

“Come on.”

“How about twenty-seven?”

“Definitely too old,” you say and laugh.

He laughs too, takes a breath and tells you his name.

“Nice to meet you, Neil. I’m Stink.”

“Funny name.”

You wave dismissively.

“It’s because of the perfume.”

“You named yourself after a book?”

“What book?”

“You know, the novel.”

“No, it’s because I always smell so nice. Here.”

He bends forward and sniffs your wrist.

“Smells good.”

You look at each other. He knows there is more to this name.

“And because I’m mostly in a bad mood,” you admit. “Mostly always.”

“A real stinker, then.”

“Better believe it.”

He thinks for a moment, he looks to his left, he looks to his right.

“I have an idea,” he tells you. “Will you come with me?”

“Now?”

“Now.”

Now it is your turn to look around. Your girls will be gone for more than an hour. You could die of boredom or you could go on an adventure.

“You lead, I will follow,” you say to Neil.

So he leads you down the street and stops next to a Jaguar, smart and red and with Hamburg plates.

“Wow, where’d you get that?”

“Swiped it off my mother,” says Neil and opens the door for you.

Once upon a time there were five girls and I was one of them
. The fairy tale could start like that.
One of them
. That’s exactly how you feel, lying on your back, above you the moss-green ceiling that you painted one afternoon with your girls because the pink was getting on your nerves and you needed a change. You’re living with your parents in an old stylish apartment block they bought when you were born. Your top bunk is six feet up. Every morning it’s like waking up in a forest. Now the green reminds you of the sea that you saw while traveling around the Bahamas with your parents. Of course you had to dive, and it nearly happened there in the water. You lost yourself for a moment. You were part of the deep and you didn’t know what was up and what was down. It was the best experience you’ve ever had, and since then you’ve been wondering what would have happened if you’d made the wrong choice and gone on deeper. How do you lose yourself? Do you disappear or do you become part of the water?

Now you’re lying on your bed, and the moss-green ceiling is within reach of your hands. Even though you’re sure no one can just go missing like that, you’re not so sure what’s happening between your legs.
Is it his tongue or is it his finger?
You look down, his head is moving, so it must be his tongue. God, he’s taking his time. You’re sorry it has come to this. Why did you just let yourself go like that?

He asked so nicely
.

That’s all?

That’s all
.

You tug gently on his hair. Eric looks up. His lips glisten. He gives you a quizzical look, and you wish he would make another face.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it feel like?” he asks back and disappears between your legs again.

You wish it was his finger and not his stupid tongue, then you’d definitely be more aware of it. There are boys who don’t know how to kiss. They swap gallons of spit with you and want to hear you gasping with passion. You want to be kissed so that your lights flicker. Flicker and not go out. Boys should learn from girls. Nessi kissed you once. It was New Year’s Eve, you were sitting drunk on Taja’s bed, and suddenly someone suggested making out and your mouth landed on Nessi’s mouth and it was the hottest french kiss you’ve ever had.

Eric definitely doesn’t know how to kiss, and you’re annoyed with yourself for not telling him on the very first day. Now you are in the second week and he goes at it like a heartsick frog. Taja warned you, and this is what you’ve ended up with—a guy who busies himself between your legs as if he is working with his tongue on a scratch card.

You count the books on the shelf, you tense your belly and admire your belly button with its little ring. You wonder which pizza you’ll have afterward and whether the movie will really be as weird as everyone says. Then you say the alphabet backward and at F you’ve had enough and drag Eric up to you by the ears. After a certain point enough’s enough. You kiss him, and he does his frog face again, but it’s better than all that fumbling. You taste yourself on his tongue, and your own arousal arouses you even further, and it’s like something coming full circle. Eric’s leg slips between your thighs, the pressure is good, you push back, your lower body twitches and it happens so fast that you have to grip the back of his neck so that you don’t lose yourself completely. His mouth lands on your neck, you want to warn him that if he gives you a love bite he’s dead, but you can’t warn him, because all your lights have blown out, no flickering, just lights out, as the orgasm glides through you
like a red-hot knife through a block of butter, without getting stuck once, and that happens twice in a row.

Eric isn’t aware of any of that, he’s too aroused to notice anything. He kneads your breasts and breathes in your ear. You let go of his neck and sink back. The knife has disappeared, now you’re nothing but melting butter. It would be perfect if you were alone now.

“Oh God,” sighs Eric, as you take him in your hand. He twitches, he presses himself harder against you, full with desire and the constant panic that he might come too quickly.

You look over his shoulder at your watch. You’ve got five minutes.

Your hand opens his zipper, you’re lethargic and lazy, it’s as if you’re moving under water. His knees tremble. You push him off you and onto his back. He’s so helpless, you could do anything you wanted with him. His boxer shorts are damp in two places. You touch him and he shrinks back a little. Eric said your face was too much for him, and you imagined him pleasuring himself while gazing breathlessly at the class photograph. Now his eyes are wide open, as if in terror.
This isn’t love
, you think,
it’s something else
. You pull down his boxers without breaking eye contact. You smell his cock before you see it. The scent, the expectation.

“Shut your eyes.”

Eric shuts his eyes, as quickly as if his life depended on it.

You lean down and kiss the head of his dick. His skin is hot to the touch and he tastes bitter. You insisted that he wash beforehand. You have principles. You take him gently into your mouth and feel him twitch and grow and let him fall out of your mouth. He comes in frantic spurts, it’s flowing out of him, onto your hand, his belly, the sheet. He whimpers.
Sweet
, you think, and put a finger on his bobbing cock and can feel his heartbeat. The twitching subsides, the fever has passed. You look up. Eric stares at the ceiling, he can’t look you in the eye, it’s been less than a minute.