Axolotl Roadkill (19 page)

(I-now-because everyone’s stopped doing

culture-think-doing a bit of

art-wouldn’t do me any harm as the

idiots’ mainstream arrogance is suddenly

befalling us, the lower

middle class has it’s parents’ money – so we could

almost . . . be like Oscar

Wilde wrote . . . are you down with me? guess so)

are you flattering me? aren’t we experts at that?

don’t I know all the tricks?

is hate love hate and hate love or love despite

precisely because nevertheless or simply

it isn’t

simple

PS: Just to get one thing straight: there’s nothing you can give me in terms of music that I don’t yet have, don’t already know. And darling, there is no generally accepted hierarchy that covers all aspects of life. That’s a classic German fallacy. Of course you’re miles above me, but you know that already. I’m less than existent in German culture. But I don’t care about that. I’ll just let you have your world and you let me have mine.

You’ve adapted to set patterns of thinking and feeling because you’ve internalized norms. That’s your personality structure and that’s carved in stone for the most part.

Not that I care. I don’t know what to say to you, honestly.

My dear, I’m really not made to worship other people – even you – how can you think something like that? Why should one person be above another person? What criteria is that based on? Let me assure you, I’m a long way down in your ranking system. Personality structure? Since when has anything like that existed and why should personality be static?

OK, I’m not fucking German and I do not understand half of your way of thinking
BUT
, Jesus, how dare you think that music is received by me just the same way as it is by hundreds of other people? That was insulting. Well, it’s the internet and it’s easy. Press delete or ignore – what the hell did you think I had to offer you?

Let’s just not talk about music, OK? What norms have I internalized? Saying that’s just a phrase, and phrases are way below your level. Also, I’d really be interested in what my structure looks like, that one that’s carved in stone. Because you’re the first person who’s ever been able to define it in words. What do you want? To keep me?

Yes, of course.

Sorry, Mifti, we didn’t really talk properly at the wedding – just wanted to get back to you on the subject of that thing again. You’re plagued by existential fears? Man, hey, YOU’RE the one plaguing the EXISTENTIAL FEARS! I messed up. I’m a baaaastard, I know. But seeing as we’ve had the same kind of missing each other so many times the other way round, and seeing as you love me, just like I love you (and dammit, I do!), I know you will and must forgive me. Yup, it’s as simple as that, honey-bun (goddammit!). Shall we go to Stadtbad tonight? Or to Arm und Sexy. Or we could have a grog together at lunchtime or eat mince. I’m at the office, the only dumb thing is I forgot my telephone so you can only get me via thingy, you know.

That’s easily said. And you know it.

Dear Holy Saint Mifti, in view of yesterday’s situation I started wondering what you expect from me. To look old and ugly next to you? To admire you unconditionally?

I have to ask you again, how can you not have noticed that I’m not made to worship other people? You’ve had enough experience out there! And I’m not some insignificant director’s 46-year-old ex-girlfriend who you want to manipulate.

All I’m getting at is that I want you to allow me something that makes me me. I feel like we’re in an ‘anything you can do I can do better’ situation. Of course you get more confirmation, because I’m a complete coward and I hoard files of photos and texts and music on my computer and under the bed. Because I create extreme amounts of stuff and then lose interest in it as soon as it’s finished, which actually corresponds to the idea of art, that if it’s a question of art or life, I’m always shouting out: both – and please, what’s the difference if you mean it seriously. Your family said art, mine said money. And now, as you can imagine, I’m annoyed that it’s all lying around somewhere not making any profit.

I ask myself three things: are you worth all the effort and why should I ever go anywhere with you ever again and apart from that, how inflationary is your use of compliments, in actual fact?

Sometimes I wish I knew how you’d insult me, then I’d know what’s the worst thing to expect from you – and that’s not psycho, it’s strategic.

I’m so dissociative that I can turn into what other people see in me, so I’m sure you’ll allow me to ask a couple of questions before I transform into a forty-year-old wreck just to make you happy.

I’m fantastically socially compatible, as long I don’t care about the people I’m dealing with. If you say so, I’ll keep Saturday free, but if I end up hanging around and waiting and don’t hear from you, then I won’t do anything with you again.

And if you’re gone now, you’re gone. Better now than later, when you’ve got used to someone.

I’m sooo tired, Mifti, I’m tired and dumb and sad and I’m just scared that the little bit I have will end up halved and halved to infinity, and nothing will be left of me.

I means love nothing else.

I means: it means love nothing else.

Meant.

I can’t walk straight any more. The train arrives quite blurred, and it’s boiling hot inside. We take off our sweatshirt jackets and grab four seats facing each other. There are all these super-micro-families in endless variations of checked shirts around us, making like they’re really ‘touched’ as soon as their gaze inevitably falls on me. So I’m sitting there, an insane emptiness in my head, everything’s kind of all right, and only the whites of my eyes are visible, so to speak. My pupils keep drifting off the whole time. Everything, happens, like, kinda.

Then at some point a park bench. Edmond, Annika and me staring bombed out of our brains at a couple of bunny rabbits by the tree opposite us. Funnily enough, I expect a yielding crack as my skull is shattered by something like a baseball bat and I tip over. There’ve been no sounds for a while now anyway. I give a wail of pain, grab my head and crawl around on the grass, yelling through the litter on the ground, I breathe out, and bright white smoke rolls along a neat sandy path, disappearing in the shadow of the tree and coming back to us a moment later, until we’re wrapped in a lead-grey cloud. Crazy weather, by the way, I think it might be Sunday, Wednesday at most. A group of women in bright pink sports outfits jog past us, laughing. My mobile rings. Edmond and Annika give each other a kind of funny look, and when my father pipes up on the other end and says, ‘Kiddo, I have to read you something!’ another paranoia attack struggles to the surface.

‘What?’

‘They knocked out the old stove in the bedroom yesterday, the whole flat’s covered in dust sheets and someone knocked over a bucket of rubble. Anyway, on the wall behind the stove, where that huge picture of the forest used to be, there are all these old newspapers from 1960, and it says, “To Yuri Gagarin, USSR – congratulations on your great achievement! Humankind has always dreamed of flying into space!”’

‘Ah, that’s sweet.’

‘Do you want to come round for a bit?’

We don’t say a single word on the way to our father’s place. We haven’t exchanged one word all day long, but suddenly the silence isn’t the result of pure boredom, it’s something else; something more unnerving. As if the other two were in on a plot against me, and it’s giving them a guilty conscience.

The builders have left the flat in a very, very bad state. Franziska’s wearing a white T-shirt and invites us in with a pseudo-relaxed gesture. I want to go to the toilet but my father’s standing naked at the basin with his back to me and says, ‘Can you wait outside a minute?’

I say, ‘Dental floss in the bathroom is actually totally unsexy, but camouflaged as a shark like that it looks kind of decorative.’

We’ve been through some pretty strange situations in this atmosphere. Our last family get-together started with a Patti Smith cover version of ‘Gimme Shelter’ and ended with us rushing outside without saying goodbye. My father was enthroned on one of his rococo furnishings with his back to us, staring at the TV tower through the wall of windows. So now we’re back here again. Nirvana, just like the old days. Here we are now, entertain us, yeah, that’s right. Something suddenly stops buzzing. Either the light or the wasp trapped in the window frame.

I’m offered a seat on the sofa in a mega-formal manner. I’m starting to notice more and more clearly with every second how sober and upset this family is acting. Franziska with her fear-instilling horsey teeth is hanging on a chair, her torso leant forward in a mega-opportunist pose, a permanent nervous grin on her face. She’s put on the hand-me-down Sabrina Dehoff scarf I gave her. My father’s staring at a table leg, his fingers spread and affixed to his mouth, Annika’s smoking, and Edmond looks me in the eye without laughing for the first time in his life. So they start off talking about how they all find it difficult to distinguish between the terms signifier and signified. I say I mainly find it difficult to distinguish between DIY stores and electronics stores, but nobody laughs. In fact nobody here has laughed at all during the past half hour. ‘Hey, I was really loving that!’ I say, for no reason other than desperation.

Annika says in a pretty bored voice, ‘Who did that come from again?’

‘From Consti, when he was bouncing.’

Dad, ‘Bouncing?’

‘At that thing in Munich last year, when he shouted down the stairs, “Hey, guys, they’re playing hip-hop!” And we like totally bounced for six hours in a row, and later we were in a taxi, Consti was at the front and Timo and me were in the back, and he turns round and says, “Hey, I was really loving that!”’

‘Ha ha.’

‘He was deadly serious and we were like, “Awesome, yeah.”’

‘Awesome, yeah.’

‘Mifti, we . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘Mifti, I have to, actually—’

‘Don’t say anything, Dad.’

‘But—’

‘Please just don’t say anything, all right?’

Annika: ‘Mifti?’

I sense strong waves of energy pulsing through me. I feel movement. Enormous, increasing movement. When I look around, shapes form out of the blur. I’m facing four people radiating sensationalism and sadism. Every pore of their bodies seems to be radiating light. The group gathers around the dining table and I know it’s time for me to sit down.

‘Mifti, look at us. We know you’ve got massive problems.’

‘Why the hell do you think you have the right to claim you know the slightest thing about ME?’

‘We’re not talking about dope or truancy here.’

‘So what are we talking about?’

‘You’re mortally unhappy.’

‘Did you read that in the book
Why Our Kids Are Turning into Dirty Sex Beasts?’

‘No.’

‘Do you ever read parenting books? Do you sometimes get so bored and sentimental that you read those instant parenting instruction manuals, and now you think you ought to fulfil some duty sixteen years on by telling me I’m mortally unhappy? Do I get an answer?’

‘Honey, I’m really sorry about this, but . . . Edmond?’

Edmond rummages in his bag, pulling something out in slow motion, and I see that it’s a magenta notebook with my name written on the cloth binding.

Mifti: you losers.

They’ve got everything I wrote in their hands there, and I feel like I don’t even exist any more. I close my eyes, and as I rotate around my own axis I’m suddenly detached from my body as a cloud-like empty hull, no idea how that happens all of a sudden, and I watch everything that takes place from above. I see my body screaming and I feel how that scream drives into me. How I try to resist with all my strength, but it must be some kind of incomprehensible detachment from my model of myself. I’m just about to enter a state of non-existence.

My body tears the notebook out of Edmond’s hands and runs to the door. Edmond grabs my arm and says, ‘I’ll say one thing for you.’