no.9 “college”
„wanna ravage my cunt coarse now hard!? looking for relax longtime fuck if ur hot I fuck you too.“
Reading that text I almost dropped my phone, and decided right then and there that I did not want Grindr sending me notifications any longer.
„What’s wrong?“ Antonia asked, looking around, embarrassed because I had apparently gasped loudly. I had met her that morning while we were both staring at a plan of the building the introduction course for first semester English Lit students was supposed to take place. We instantly bonded over the fact that we were completely lost and about 15 minutes late already, and both didn’t really care. I couldn’t believe I had found my best friend before classes had even started. And such a cool one at that! Antonia wore a used dark-green military coat that had holes in it, rocked Beats by Dr. Dre and had pink pastel tips in her brown hair, months before the movie Spring Breakers would even be released. We sat next to each other in the small lecture hall and were introduced to our professors and tutors for the upcoming semester. What I loved most about Antonia was that she rolled her eyes a lot. There was this kid who constantly raised his hand to ask if any of this would be part of the test.
„What test,“ Antonia would say. „She’s telling us where the restrooms are, how are you gonna test that information?“
„Whoever pisses in the halls, fails, I guess.“ I said. She laughed.
Banter! We were a great team already, and by the time we got to class schedules and she asked me if I loved Tina Fey as much as she did I knew I had found someone special.
Strutting our new fun tote bags with the university’s logo printed on them we strolled out the building and along campus. We visited the enormous newly-built central lecture hall, a concrete and glass square next to a 200-year old castle with a green copper dome observatory as its highest point. We admired the parallel layers of history and architecture only a European campus could offer, and felt very sophisticated because of the thought. I asked her why she moved to Dresden, an annoying question for anyone having recently moved to Dresden, as I knew from experience. Antonia was originally from Hanover and said she wanted to get away from her hometown, which I could identify with, and that she was „kinda over“ Berlin and the schools there hadn’t accepted her, which I could identify with even more. We parted ways when she had to cross the lawn to get to an Art History introduction class, while I was about to hit German linguistics hard, but we made a date for lunch at the cafeteria. I loved planning this, saying these things, „lunch at the cafeteria“, „English Lit“, „credit points“, „study breaks.“ Going to college was awesome! For a small-town boy like me it was all so new and exciting and academic. Who could say what hair color the next person I met would have? Not me! What a crazy life.
Desperate to start that crazy new college experience I crammed everything I could into that first day of classes. I registered for an entry level Japanese course. I went to a thing called Turbo Frisbee where about 42 dudes and six girls with shoulder pads and helmets would be locked up into a gymnasium and compete for one tiny frisbee in shockingly violent fashion. These frisbee people were very serious about their sport and when after 15 minutes one contender lost a tooth, nonchalantly got up, blood dripping from his mouth, kicked the tooth to the side of the field so no one would step on it and continued running after the frisbee, I left, with high regards for those brave mercenaries in velcro, but with even higher regards for my own dear life. The last extra-curricular activity I had planned for that night was an improv class functioning as a casting call for the student theatre group of the Technical University of Dresden, one of the oldest amateur theatre groups in the country.
I had done this before and it was a lot of fun throwing around these „Yes, and…“’s, especially when someone mentioned ISIS and I had to „Yes, and…“ and come up with information that turned out so ludicrous and uninformed I cannot mention it here. But the best thing about it were the people. They’re so much fun. Amateur theatre people are your favorite breed. There was quirky but very elegant Celine, who had light brown bangs and silk skin like a 1960s haute couture model. Steven and Sheba were pregnant together and also had a beaded braid each that reached the lower end of their backs. Isaac was a skinny thirtysomething with a goatee and a black Beatles haircut who gave me a high five after the two of us performed an improv slam dunk involving a simultaneous fart and burp. It’s hard to explain, you had to be there. But more importantly: Was he flirting with me? He seemed to be laughing extra hard at my jokes and smiling at me whenever we weren’t part of the scene. By the time he asked me if I had plans for the night I was madly in love, and had signed up to be a full-time member of the theatre group.
Isaac invited me to a party of a friend of his in the heart of Neustadt, which is sort of the artsy/party/hipster neighborhood of Dresden. The university and the theatre class was basically at the other end of town. Since it wasn’t that cold that October we decided to walk. We got a Wegbier for the road and he started telling me about his studies in regenerative energies which he had begun in his late twenties and was doing a masters degree in. I liked his way of talking, soft but astute, with a firm conviction of liberal-environmental beliefs. He rolled and lit a cigarette while we were walking, took two drags and then offered it to me. I usually don’t smoke, but when a guy like Isaac offers me a cigarette like it’s a symbol for mutual understanding then I simply cannot refuse. So I inhaled deeply and coughed up smoke like a madman. He laughed, which made him even more likable.
Passing one of the tall dorm buildings around campus we realized our beer was already empty. Lots of these buildings have makeshift bars and clubs on the ground floor, so we decided to get some more beer at a place called the „Underwater Fish.“ The place was packed with nineteen-year-olds and one group of knowledge-wizened students in their mid-twenties, the regulars, and the one giant speaker standing in the corner was blaring what you would call Techno Trance. All in all a pretty good turnout for a Tuesday night. Having spent the last seven years at the university Isaac met a friend or acquaintance wherever we went. He seemed to be known by all. And every time another old friend waved him over, he would take me with him and introduce me. I was getting major signals. I gained importance in his life. Was this one of these situations where you meet someone eerily handsome and are so urged on by soul starvation that you seem to form a meaningful bond over just a couple of hours of knowing each other? Or was I just on the verge of being blackout drunk?
What felt like thirty minutes tops turned out to be four hours we spent at „The Fish“, as the residents liked to call it. By then I couldn’t have walked a straight line if it hadn’t been for Isaac holding my arm and leading me across the bridge over the river. He said he wasn’t drunk at all, and when I kept caressing his jet-black hair he didn’t slap my hand or anything, he purred.
Finally we arrived at the sixties-themed orange-pink bar in Neustadt where the party was supposed to be. Only we got there about six hours late. The whole front of the bar was glass, so we could see there were but a handful of people left in there, with the lights already dimmed. The door was locked, but Isaac banged on the glass and to my surprise Celine from earlier unlocked it and let us in. It turned out she worked at that bar part-time and knew Isaac more intimately then previously presumed. There was only one other waitress behind the bar and two large Russians with shiny white kippahs and a video camera hovering over two Mimosas. Isaac approached them with arms outstretched and they greeted each other like long lost friends. I asked him if he knew those guys and he just said „No, why?“ The Russians handed us a shiny white kippah each and asked us to pose for the camera as guests for their brother’s bar mitzvah. They told us to have fun and appear as having the time of our lives. Isaac did some toasting for the camera but then quickly turned all his attention to quiet-but-confident Celine who stood by and giggled every once in a while. I had no idea who their brother was supposed to be or why he was allowed to be out this late, and I’m not sure anyone present was actually Jewish, but I took the free drinks anyway.
On my way to the bathroom I recognized Isaac’s bag he had thrown in the corner and noticed a small plastic leg sticking out. I couldn’t help myself and pulled out the leg. It was a 40cm BABY born doll with a straw hat on its head and a watering can in one hand. „Who are you?“ I confronted the doll, but it didn’t answer. When I looked Isaac in his watery brown eyes, by that time almost licking Celine’s bare shoulder, and asked him what the doll was about he told me matter-of-factly that he was married and had a daughter. I smiled and said something like „Congratulations!“, but quickly turned away to the coat hangers. Just then it hit me that I didn’t have a clue who these people were, and yet here I was, pretty much ready to get married and convert to fake Judaism if need be. I decided that this whole night was a complete failure, a jeu perdu, but that I wouldn’t walk away from it empty-handed. I grabbed my kippah and got out of there. Outside the door I stopped, looking back in through the glass façade, Isaac barely noticing I was gone, still partying with the two Russian bears and fun-in-an-elegant-way Celine in that annoyingly chic sixties interior. Taking out my phone and adjusting my kippah, that morning’s man with the cunt in want of ravaging suddenly didn’t seem so bad anymore. And after all, how coarse could it be?