Wrecked (27 page)

“What do you mean?”

“Yeah, well, do you want to have big breasts so every man lusts after you? Isn’t it enough that I think you’re attractive? Why would you worry so much that you might not get the attention of a few assholes?”

“No, it’s got nothing to do with whether everyone wants me, though being thought of as pretty would be nice. And I’ve learned since I was little that you’re only considered pretty if you have a certain bust size. I feel unwanted, unloved. I don’t
feel pretty. I feel worthless. It drives me crazy. I can’t explain it. It’s just the way it is.”

“Then get implants if it’s so important to you. And you might as well join a church while you’re at it. Kill two birds with one stone.”

“Only over my dead body will I take the easy way out. If you want to be loved for the way you are, you have to stay the way you are. If you changed yourself you would never know whether you would be loved without the implants.”

“I can’t hear it anymore.”

“I’m working on it. Oh, man, just turn the movie back on.”

For a second I feel as if I need to go check on Liza. But she’s not here. I have a guilty conscience because she’s gone, because she always has to shuttle back and forth between her parents. Whenever she’s away—which is every week—I always vow to be nicer when she’s back. Doesn’t happen very often, though. She’s annoying. She pushes my buttons and can drive me crazy.

During the few school holidays we spend with Liza, I try to travel as little as possible. I have little nervous breakdowns all the time with the kids. The way everyone in my family does. My grandmother used to have breakdowns. My mother had them with us. And now I do, too, with my stepson and daughter. It starts as soon as I hear the word
holiday
. If we take a vacation with the children, it’s not a holiday at all. It’s total hell.

Life at home, when the kids are in school, is much easier. But if you have to spend an entire day entertaining them so they don’t get bored, and then they get bored, you can have a nervous breakdown, too. What happens to me is that I run around screaming uncontrollably. I watch them with squinted
eyes and think the following sentences:
You are ruining my life. I can’t stand it with you around. You are pissing me off
.

Really horrible, vacationing with children. But as with all of my grumbling, the opposite is true, too. Vacations without children are just as horrible. When I have nothing to take care of I immediately start to think I’m an egomaniac with no point to my life—you might as well just kill yourself if you don’t have kids. That’s what goes through my mind when I’m on vacation alone with my husband. I’m just an unlucky woman.

The movie is over and I’m unexpectedly tearing up. The ending made me really sad. I hate to cry. I’m afraid of crying. I can never stop. I wipe away the tears quickly. We have our usual postfilm chat. We both liked it. Then, as always, I go to bed before Georg. He wants to watch an episode of
Six Feet Under
. I can’t.

Bathroom. I practice making silly faces in the mirror, faces I’ll never need to use. I look proudly at my graying temples. I feel older than I actually am, and it surprises me whenever I look at myself and see that I’m still so young. I brush my teeth.

When my husband asks me what I want to do in the future, I never know how to answer. What do you want to do? What do you want to do? Hobbies? Dreams? Desires? I always think, surprised,
What? I’ll be gone soon
. It would be like investing in a vinyl record at this point. I don’t have any hobbies or passions, nothing that would be worth living for. I live because I have a child and a husband. For them. Not for me. Now I quickly comb my hair so it won’t be too badly tangled in the morning.

On the way to bed, I wonder why people have sex in bed at night anyway. It seems so out of place. I refuse to have sex in bed at night. Because I never know what’s going on. We lie
there next to each other and never know if the other one wants to have sex or not, or wants to go to sleep or not. It’s maddening. At least for me. And then I can’t fall asleep. I’m thinking the whole time,
Is he breathing that way because he wants to have sex, or has he fallen asleep?
So I can have sex in bed only during the day.

If sex is as important to everyone as it seems, why don’t people have furniture purpose-built for it? Why do you have to have sex on the site where you sleep or on the couch? Why don’t homes have a sex room or at least sex furniture? I don’t get it. It would make sense. I want to know exactly what the story is: okay, now we’re going to sleep. As if I’m autistic. Don’t try any funny stuff in bed at night.

I lie down in bed. I need to calm down a bit. I’ve gotten worked up thinking about the topic of sleep versus sex. Man, I can get so agitated—by myself, all alone, in a dark room, and about something so fundamental. So stressful. I stress myself out. Fuck. My therapist has offered to give me antipsychotic drugs many times. But I don’t take them. I’m afraid of antipsychotics. I’ll never take them. Over my dead body. Whenever I’m so depressed I want to die—which is often—I never take any drugs that will keep me from feeling that way. Anyway, I often have the impression that depression is exactly the right feeling in this world. So why should I fend it off with medication? A depressed outlook is the right outlook. I’d rather kill myself than take drugs against it. It’s more romantic, more honest, more real.

As they always do at night in bed, my thoughts wander to my mother, the woman for whom I had my daughter. Whenever my mother is out and about with my daughter these days, I am deathly afraid. For my child. My entire body aches when she
drives Liza somewhere in the car. I vividly picture her driving into a bridge support, either on purpose or not, and killing them both instantly. In the version where it’s an accident, her subconscious jerks the wheel as they pass the pillar because she wants to be where her own children are and have her grandchild there, too. That is, she wants to be dead, like them. In the version where she does it on purpose, she wants to take revenge on me because she’s so bitter that I could still conceive and she could not.

As long as she lives she’ll never have her uterus filled with happiness-generating flesh. She’ll never be a bacon-wrapped date. A filled praline. A stuffed chicken
cordon bleu
. She’ll have to live alone in her body until the day she dies. It will be bad for her. I’m happy every time my child comes home safely. I say to myself every time,
I didn’t expect that
.

In my corpse pose I muse quickly about my husband’s sexuality. It’s better than thinking about burned children and the aftermath.

My husband’s sexual socialization couldn’t have been more different from my own. He hardly ever had sex. And he never got the girl he wanted. Had a chronic shortage. And had sex with women he found disgusting because the good ones didn’t want him. The kind of sex where you fuck and then want to get away fast. I never experienced any of that. I grew up able to fuck the ones I wanted to fuck. I had a crush on someone, liked someone, and then I had sex with the person. I never had anyone between my legs I didn’t think was totally cool. I never felt disgusted after sex with anyone. I never felt bad or wanted to get rid of anyone afterward. Never. I could always be very proud of everything that happened. I could always show off
my sexual partners. How could two people with such different sexual backgrounds fit together? I take it for granted. I’ve never known it any other way. For him it’s still a wonder that someone would willingly put on sexy underwear for him and sleep with him, that someone would spread her legs completely, use both hands to pull apart her labia until the mucous membrane nearly rips, just so he can lick her. Everything in our life is a deal. That’s the way it is. Up to now I’ve benefited from that. But I don’t want to anymore. I want to be free. Or at least more free. And when you want more freedom, you have to fight for it. And discuss and talk, sometimes the entire night through. I breathe myself to sleep with my usual trick. Good night, crack in the ceiling, my sword of Damocles.

W
e sleep in. For my husband, that means sleeping until nine. For me, until eleven. I get up and go upstairs to the kitchen, as always, and make coffee for us. It’s always his second because he makes one on his own. My goal every morning is to make mine better than the one he made for himself. But it rarely works. Making good coffee is harder than giving a good blowjob. Georg is doing tai chi in the living room and I put his coffee on the floor. I’m not sure whether you’re allowed to drink coffee while doing tai chi. No idea. Agnetha says it’s his decision, regardless of whether I think coffee and tai chi are opposites. She says my dear husband can do with the coffee as he wants. Which is fine with me.

I take my cup of coffee downstairs to the bathroom. I have to shave myself for the prostitute. Not for my husband. Those days are gone. He’s not as particular as he was at the beginning of our love.

As I shave in the bathroom, I look now and then at my graying temples. I’m very proud of them. Can you be proud of something gained with no effort? Perhaps it would be more apt to say I find my graying hair beautiful.

My husband likes me to shave for him. But if I go weeks or months without shaving, like when it’s winter and I just can’t pull myself together to get to it, it doesn’t bother him. He’s a good man, an easygoing man. The best husband. And he knows
from shaving himself in the same areas how difficult it is to shave yourself in spots you can’t even see. And all that trouble just for the occasional porn-film performance with your partner. For the joy he gets when he undresses me and finds my freshly shaved plum with the labia halfway closed. My inner lips are so pronounced that they protrude from the outer lips, along with my clitoris sometimes. But I would never have the labiaplasty that’s so trendy at the moment. You know from the word
trendy
alone that’s it not a good idea—you don’t want to have surgery based on something fleeting, regardless of whether it’s surgery on your breasts or the dangling inner labia of your vagina.

My freshly shaved lips are so soft that you can’t even compare the way they feel to anything. I can’t help fiddling with them myself after I shave—the color, that lurid pinkish purple, turns me on. Georg flips out. Even so, it’s no reason to make sure I’m completely and freshly shaved at all times. Can’t be bothered. He shaves himself for me, too, but also not all the time. He hates the feeling of the hair growing back in, which starts a day after he shaves. He has to adjust his balls all the time when the hair is growing in, even grabbing himself on the street. It makes me ashamed for him because I was brought up better than that and always act as if someone is watching me in public.

I look in the mirror again. I respect people with gray hair much more than people with dyed hair. I’m suspicious of women with dyed hair because they can’t accept their age. Who are they trying to fool with their dyed hair anyway? You can always tell how old people are from their neck regardless of what color their hair is. A woman’s throat is like a tree’s rings. You can’t fake it. You can also leave your hair the way it is and get used
to the fact that surprisingly enough you are getting older—just like everyone else in the world. Along with the gray hair at my temples, I’m starting to get a few gray pubic hairs. What do all the women with dyed hair do about their pubic hair? Do they dye that, too?

I get the feeling that prostitutes are very finicky when it comes to hygiene, shaving, all of that. Everything is removed except for a little Hitler mustache above their clitoris. I do the same thing now. Finished! I rub moisturizer on my entire body, giving extra attention to the part of my ass and thighs I sit on as well as the skin alongside the labia. I stole that trick from prostitutes. It often comes down to skin with prostitutes. Warm, soft skin. Touching their bodies is the best part. And looking at other women’s vaginas.

My body is all set. From the large underwear drawer in my dresser I pull out garters, a thong, and bra, all in black. Sometimes I feel like looking like a prostitute. Other times I go dressed like a buttoned-down housewife, in boring white underwear. Whichever. I know only these two extremes.

I put a panty liner into the black thong so I don’t get any vaginal fluid on it while on the way to the brothel. I’m already horny just from getting dolled up. As a woman with a lot of natural lubrication, I have to plan ahead in order to avoid any embarrassing situations. I put the garter belt on first, with the stockings, and put the underwear on over them so later I can take off the panties and leave the garters on. Then comes a dress that’s really easy to get out of when the time comes. We’re naked most of the time we’re there.

My husband has some particularly sexy underwear for these special outings. It’s usually a bit embarrassing when men
try to make themselves sexy with underwear because it almost always seems gay. But he also wants to do something visually for the women he’s about to pleasure. As far as I’m concerned, he could go in tighty whities—it’s manlier. But I let him do what he wants. It’s part of the ritual. He’s totally shaved—no Hitler mustache above his cock. Like me, he also worried about the fastidiousness of the prostitutes.

Neither one of us is the type to take charge, be the boss of the situation. With us it’s always the hooker. She’s the boss. We put ourselves in her hands. It’s almost sickening how deferentially we treat the hookers. Maybe at some point we’ll get cooler about it all, but that’s nowhere on the immediate horizon. I put on only a little makeup—it’ll just get smeared by vaginal fluid soon anyway. And at that point it’ll be better if I don’t have black-brown-blue makeup all over my face. I braid my hair.

Georg is finished with the tai chi he does for his back. I see him pass by the door in his brothel undies. It’s a G-string in the back, running up his ass crack. In the front is a gold pouch for his cock and balls. Embarrassing. But he seems to be in a great mood and is whistling a tune with a beat as fast as a racing heart.

Soon we will let a strange naked body come between us. When he’s fiddling with her upper body, I’m fiddling with her lower body. And vice versa. Your hands are always busy. When he’s in such a good mood I have to be careful not to get jealous—it’s been a long time since he looked forward to us having sex with such enthusiasm. Though if I’m honest, the same is true of me. Okay then. Fuck you, jealousy. Let me do this for my beloved husband. He’s so happy in his golden pouch. At some point I shout, “I’m ready!”

He’s always waiting for me, never the other way around. But he knows women have to do much more in the bathroom than men. And I’d love to see a man try to fumble his way through putting on garters. Impossible.

We drive into town and get a table at Café Fleur for breakfast. The entrance of the brothel is visible from the café.

I can’t eat much. But my husband is hungry. He likes the sense of anticipation, whereas I hate it. He excuses himself and goes ahead to check things out at the massage parlor. That’s what we like to call brothels. I wait in the café and continue to get more and more nervous.

He rings the doorbell and, when Summer answers, he waves to me and goes inside. He knows he has to keep his harpy—that is, me—happy. He has to try to keep me on board so that we get can through this together as a couple. Inside he takes the elevator up to the third floor. All the floors belong to Paradise, the brothel. The madam greets him there and, as always, leads him to a private room so he doesn’t see any of the other customers. You don’t want to run into a business associate or your lawyer or something. He sits there as the women come in one by one, clothed, and do their slow-motion turn so he can see their asses and everything. He will pick one for us to fuck. Up to now he’s always chosen well. Very well, in fact. I’ve liked them all, found them all attractive, sexy, and nice. Been lucky up to this point—or is it that my husband and I just share the same taste in women? No idea. Who gives a shit? He tells the madam he’ll be back in an hour with me. He wants the one he’s picked out to be ready then. See you soon.

I stare the whole time at the door of the building until my husband comes back out grinning. What a shit-eating grin.
He sits back down at the table with me and is as excited as a little boy. His cheeks are flushed and his eyes are gleaming. I am proud that I can make this possible for him.

He babbles on and on. “She’s Brazilian, amazing body, incredibly beautiful face, speaks fluent German, is very funny. Seriously, when she enters the room it lights up. There is no doubt about it. She’s the one.”

I try to keep my composure, but all my alarm bells are going off. Attention! Attention! Keep an eye on your husband! She’s going to steal him away! I talk to myself: No, no, no. No prostitute can steal your husband from you. It’s just your fear talking, Elizabeth. He’s not doing this because he’s looking for a new wife. He just wants to bang somebody else. There’s no danger. Breathe deeply.

“Good,” I say with a feigned smile, pretending to be relaxed. “Let’s finish eating and go inside. Is she available right away?”

“Yes, she’s waiting for us. I’ve booked her for the next three hours.”

Oh, man, three hours? You’d have time to do every position imaginable four times over. Ah, no matter. We can always leave earlier.

He grabs my hand and looks at me lovingly and gratefully. Is that because of me or the Brazilian? No idea. We eat our breakfast and order a glass of champagne as a warm-up. We split it—otherwise everyone would think we were alcoholics, drinking a glass each so early in the day. Too decadent. We pay the bill, then take each other by the hand, and go to the entrance with wobbly knees. We ring the doorbell. He says our real names into the intercom. What do we have to hide? When you go to the brothel with your own wife, you don’t have anything to fear.
Except the clap. We go upstairs, and the madam, with her long red locks, greets me. She’s already greeted Georg. She leads us into their most expensive room. You always pay extra for the room if you want a special one. With all the clichéd props. Giant mirrors, sky blue canopy bed, bearskin rug in front of the fireplace, everything decorated in light blue and silver. The floor-to-ceiling windows are covered with a metallic film that’s completely opaque. After all, the people who live across the street shouldn’t be able to see what’s about to happen in here.

We sit like nervous schoolchildren on the bed and wait. Fuck, I hate the anxiety. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Really. My heart races and skips beats. That can’t be healthy. The madam closes the door behind her as she goes out. We are alone. We look at each other helplessly and laugh. Because we’re so damn polite. We are extremely uncool customers. A cool customer would get undressed. It’s warm in here. Set to be nice when you’re naked, no doubt. A cool customer would make himself comfortable and lie down on the bed. Instead, we sit stiffly on the edge of the bed.

Finally the door opens and she enters. She looks pretty and must have put on a liter of perfume. How does a cliché become a cliché? Whew. Crazy. It’s part of the show. A dense sweet scent fills the room. She dominates the space with her body, her scent, her broad toothy smile. She focuses on me and comes over to me. I know this routine. A good hooker wraps the woman around her finger; the man is already wrapped around her finger without her having to do a thing. The woman could bail out, mess things up. Not the man. The man will get through it. He wouldn’t stop even if the building were on fire.

She says, “My name is Lumi.”

And she shakes my hand. In a few minutes we’re going to have sex and yet she shakes my hand. Funny. Germany. My hand sits comfortably in hers. I barely move. She moves my hand for me. She’d better get used to the fact that I’ll be letting her move me. She has to do a lot more than we do, and for that she gets paid well. She’s quite dark skinned. She has short hair, lots of lipstick, big brown affectionate eyes. She’s not the slightest bit messed up. I can’t stand it when they look messed up. She’s wearing a turquoise kimono with a floral print in golden yellow and purple. This is an expensive brothel and the women wear nice things. Through the kimono I can see she has small, firm breasts with big hard nipples. I know the type. I have the same.

As I mentioned before, because of my breast complex, the safest bet for my husband when picking out a hooker is not to exceed my size. But it’s also a little odd, because as a result I feel as if I’m sleeping with myself. Oh well, my own fault. She has long legs and a fantastic bubble butt. She’s wearing tall black shoes. Man, I’m relieved. She’s good. She looks good, she’s nice, everything. Whew.

“You have a beautiful wife,” she says to my husband. Standard. They all say that, always. They’d say it even if I looked like shit. They’d gloss right over it. This is all about service. I smile at her. Her hands are slick with moisturizer. Like I said, hookers smear themselves like mad so everything feels smooth.

She tells us to relax. She wants to freshen up, which means, I think, that she wants to wash out the sperm of her previous client. You always act as if you’re a virgin in these meetings. A pure, pristine virgin. Sperm from a previous client? No, no. With a wink she floats out of the room again. A second later we hear the water running in the bathroom. We
lie back and stare at the ceiling. We hold hands. We have to support each other in a difficult situation like this. I tell my husband that he chose well. He’s relieved. I can easily imagine sleeping with this woman now, putting on the usual show for my husband. Hot licking ladies from the isle of Lesbos—but better-looking than your average lesbians. Her, anyway. In a minute we’ll twist around and into each other to form a ball of human flesh. It will be hours before the rush subsides. It’s like that every time.

The madam comes in and gives us each a glass of champagne. Sure, fine. Then she leaves us alone again. We take off our shoes and get into bed. Georg takes off his sweater and undoes a few of the buttons of his shirt. I get up and look around the room, like always. Because of my paranoia about the newspapers, I look behind picture frames, in the fabric of the bed’s canopy—anywhere a camera could be hidden. All clear. I laugh at Georg. He rolls his eyes. He thinks it’s crazy of me. I settle back down on the bed. Sometimes I can’t believe I manage to dull the horns of my jealousy. But I do really believe that it will allow us to stay together much longer. Because my husband can take care of whatever wandering urges he has in a permissible way, a way that unites us, I hope. I hope, I hope. So he stays with me forever!