Storied By Josh

 

 

The Rhine curled around our little bit of land. Then in that time and place, the world was a little bigger and there didn’t seem to be so much hate, but this was a farce. The social media empires had yet to be established. I think that maybe the angst was always there, we just didn’t have to see it so much and so always.

Her name was Delilah and the way her golden brown hair curled around her eyes was something only Germany could give you. She loved women and they loved her. I suppose I loved her too but that was only different. I had known her for a time and I realised the hurt she went through to be what she hated and loved terribly. They told her she chose this path and like in all places a man came to her one night and tried to show her the error of her ways. He took her innocence and she hated him but in time her hate turned to sorrow. By the time I met her she was wary of men but let me stay at her flat anyway because she said she was a good judge of character. Besides,
“I’m between girlfriends and the cat doesn’t do much for conversation.”

I made her breakfast with some things I snagged at Lidl and she told me I could stay maybe as her pet and friend as long as breakfast was made every morning and I followed her rules.

“Don’t ever get drunk and try to love me. I am not in love with men. I find your smell irritating.”

I told her I thought I smelled very nice but that I had no interest in convincing her otherwise. She laughed and said the sooner I decided the smell of lavender was acceptable she would stop washing the sheets on the couch every day.

I came to Germany as an intern for a programming company. They fast tracked me to junior management. Berlin had promised a contract to us once their airport was finished. It was due to be done in six months they said. That was three years ago. The airport still wasn’t finished and my company pulled out of the country. I fell in love with the cold dry air, the smell of Alexanderplatz during Christmas and stayed. The company gave me a tidy severance package and promise of a job if I ever returned to the states.
“Don’t wait too long.” They said “A year IRL is a decade in the programming field.”

I understood and tried to keep up with the changes in code. It became difficult and so I invested in a couple up and coming companies. I understood the markets better. Germany granted me a permanent residency after I was able to prove I could live independently indefinitely.

I stayed on her couch and ate lunch with her and we walked along the train tracks and down the streets in the middle of the night. She took me to gay night clubs and taught me how to dance. I met her friends and they first looked at me as a dirty foreigner but soon enough accepted me. I called Delilah my little deer.

She left home at sixteen after coming out to her very conservative Bayerische parents. They told her when she realised that her choice couldn’t survive Christianity she could come home. She left them and her mother cried for her daughter and Delilah cried for herself but also for her parents. She turned to MDMA and a few other things in the months after.

After the terror she quit doing them and instead drank. As all good alcoholics are, she was most interesting just a little tipsy. She still had faith in humanity, somehow and marched against the AfD when they rose to power. She helped out at soup kitchens and started working at a veterinarian or Tierarzt clinic. She started out as the janitor but made her way up to technician. She loved caring for the broken little homeless things that came through her door. I suppose that is why she adopted me.

When I was younger, as a typical American boy would be, I was a homophobe. In highschool I depantsed the gay boy in the middle of the hall. I pushed his head into the toilet and flushed. I called him terrible things that I dare not utter now. I would throw food at him during lunch. He would cry silently sometimes. But he never stopped me. And I hated him more and more. To me he was an abnormality and a threat to my fragile masculinity. I’m not quite sure what I was afraid of. But I suppose it really was that I would find out that I too enjoyed men as much as him. I was pathetic.

One day he stopped me as I pushed through to get out of class.
“I love you.” He said to me.
“Shutup, —-” I told him.
“You are beautiful he said to me.”
“I’ll kick your —- ass.” I said to him.
“We are all beautiful.” I punched him and his nose exploded in a beautiful red.
He began to cry. “Can’t you see? He said as the tears fell down his face. “Can’t you see I bleed like you?”
“Get your AIDS blood away from me.” I screamed at him. And he wiped his nose.
“We are of value.”
“You’re a shit. Fuck you.”
“You are better than this.” And he turned away and I stood there with my hand shaking. I saw red and there was a fury in my chest. An anger that I could not control. I wanted to scream but instead I began to cry.

The whole school watched me stand there with my fist balled up as tears fell down my face. and I sobbed and sobbed. Then he was there and he held me and I cried into his shoulder.
“I’m sorry.” I said to him.
“I forgive you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you.”

From that moment we became friends. Kids would ask me when I had become gay and why. I would tell them that I loved them. They did not need to know that I wasn’t gay, because that didn’t matter. All they needed to know was how beautiful they were, and maybe they, like me wouldn’t hate so quickly.

I went to gay pride rallies and pushed away my bigoted upbringing. My transition and evolution was painful, like being born. I do not think for a second that I have atoned for my sins to my fellow humans. But I am better now, because a small little gay boy who was stronger than I will ever be, forgave me every time I beat him. He forgave me every time I uttered terrible things to him. He forgave me every day.

Sometime I awake in the night and a scene of my abuse to him flashes in my mind. I’ll not forget it. He told me on the day we graduated that I needed to forgive myself. I hugged him and told him “never.” And he smiled dolefully at me.

We drifted apart. He went to Berkley, I went to UCLA where I studied code. We kept in touch via email sometimes, but that too ended, as all things in life do. We drift apart and the only things we have are the memories of each other.

 

I told Delilah of him while we were drinking in her flat late one night. She said that all good straight men had to be converted by a gay man or woman at some point. “How many stories have you heard like that?”
“Not many.” She truthfully said. “It is rare for the homophobe to change.”
“It’s rare for anyone too.”
“Not as much as it is for the homophobe.”

She told me about the Terror then and I didn’t know how to react. She showed no emotion. She stated it as one would report the weather. I didn’t know how to react. I felt a pit in my stomach.
“He was my youth pastor.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“Who would believe a little gay girl?” She said, scornfully.
I didn’t answer.
“Do you think about him?” I asked.
“Sometimes in the dark I feel a terror. Like he’s suddenly there and I am paralysed. I cannot sleep after that. But otherwise, no I never do.” I reached out and touched her hand. “You do not have to feel sorry for me. It is a thing that is common and we have learned to survive beyond it.”
“He is a monster.”
“That is dangerous thinking.” She said to me. It is not some mysterious evil monster. It is humanity.”

 

After a few months she was offered by her clinic to move to Koln on the Rhine. She was tired of Berlin anyway and thought it would be a good change. I asked if I could move with her. She said only if I continued to make breakfast. I told her I hadn’t made breakfast in over two months.
“Fine come along, but this time we’re getting you your own room. And I’m throwing that stinky couch out.”
She wasn’t pleased with the fact that I hadn’t taken a liking to her lavender body wash yet.

I had a comfortable stipend from my investments and her clinic helped us in securing a small cottage on the river just outside of Koln. It had two bedrooms, a full living area and a small kitchen. The patio was a small one from a sliding back door. Later our neighbors told us it was cheap because when the Rhine flooded it would sometimes reach the house.

Delilah told me I needed to find a job. I told her I needed to find a proper roommate who would allow me my habit of writing a blog poorly and getting fat.
She told me sometimes I was too American.

 

I built us a sturdy, ugly bench on the banks of the river. We would share a pack of lager there sometimes and listen to the far away sounds of traffic against the birds on river in the evening. It became the apex of my week when we would walk to the Spirituosengeschaft, and purchase our drinks. We would talk of our week. She met a boy who was a girl and they were dating for a time, but she was a sloppy drunk and Delilah soon abandoned her. She was good company to me occasionally would stop by even after they were no longer together and read things I wrote. Delilah’s ex only read what I considered too awful to post online. She said they were the most honest stories I wrote.

I also met a girl, her name was Elise. She had jet black hair and a fire for progress. She worked for the far left political party: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or SPD. I fell in love with her because she purchased an Amerikanischer Kaffe in front of me at the cafe near where Delilah and I lived. I asked her on a date and she said we had already started. She stayed the night sometimes and I asked if she’d like to move in and she told me no, not yet.

Delilah told me one night while we were dead drunk she knew Elise would steal me away from her.
“How can you know this?”
“Because it is how all things go. Soon our paths will diverge.”
“Rubbish.”
“No.”

Later that night I awoke to screaming from her room. The door was locked and she never locked her door so I did not know what to do. I finally broke through it with my shoulder. Delilah was sitting on her bed, nude and screaming. “Do not touch me!” She cried out.
“It’s me.”
“Please, no, not again!” She cried.
“I am not going to hurt you.”
“Please don’t.”
“You are my little deer. I will not hurt you.”
She became a little more normal and began to cry.
I was awkward and did not know what to do. I turned to leave.
“Don’t go yet. Stay a little. I cannot sleep.”
I sat on the edge of her bed. and stroked her hair. “It’s okay. He is not here. He will never touch you again.”
“I am broken.” She said as I ran my fingers through her curls.
“You are strong. You are beautiful.”
“I hate this.” and she sniffled.
“I love you.” and I touched her cheek.
“Don’t leave.”
“I won’t.” But I knew what she meant and I knew I would have to leave sometime because this is how things go in life. She knew too but for now she needed an ally and I would be with her through the darkest hour.

The next morning I awoke on the floor and she was making breakfast.
“Gute Morgen.”
“Morgen.” I said
“Thank you for last night.”
You’re welcome.
“Elise called while you were sleeping. She is coming over later today.”
“Oh? What adventure shall we go on?”
She gave me a look of seriousness. “I have to tell you something.”
“Yes?”
“I am moving out. She is helping me to.”
“What?” My heart fell four stories.
“She and I have been talking and I know she wants to move in and it is time I learned to let my adopted ones go.”
“Where will you go?”
“I have found a flat in town. It is closer to where I want to be anyway.”

I said nothing and chewed my toast but I was not hungry.
She came over and ruffled my hair.
“Don’t throw a fit. This is how things are.”
“But you’re my buddy.”
“Ich werde immer dein Freund sein.” She said to me.
I hugged her.

Elise came over a little while later and I was sitting at my computer. The Word icon blinked on and off. I could not write because I felt a sadness I could not explain. I heard them talking in the kitchen.

“He didn’t take it very well?”
“No. I didn’t think he would.”
“Is he throwing another fit?”
“Yes.” Then giggles.
“He’ll be fine. Let’s get my boxes out.”
“Okay.” I stood up and opened the door.
“Look,” I said. “If you’re bound and determined to abandon me, let me at least help with my man arms.”
“Oh the patriarchy is here to save us again!” Elise said as she laughed.
“Are you done throwing your fit?” Delilah asked.
“No. But there is work to be done.” I said.
“Gute Amerikanische.” Elise said.

We worked in silence and soon the moving van was full. Delilah, as it turned out, didn’t have much in the way of personal belongings. When we were done I made lunch and we did what friends do over lunch, we talked about the nothing that envelopes our lives.

After a time Delilah stood. “It is time for me to go. I still must pull out the deposit for my flat.” I felt a deep pit and it worked to my throat.
“Let me hug you two before I go.” She said. Elise hugged her first. She came to me then and hugged me. She kissed me on the cheek. “My very best friend. This is goodbye.”
“I already miss you, like the evening misses the day.”
“You’re such a romantic.”
“Goodbye my friend.”
“Tschuss, Mein Freund.”

She put her shoes on and made her way to the van. Elise came to me and I held her as we watched Delilah climb into the driver’s seat of the van. She rolled down the window and stuck her head out, “Don’t look so sad! We still have our bench!” Then she was gone.

Elise wasn’t able to move in quite yet and so for the next few days I had the run of the place. I mostly didn’t write but drank very much. Sometimes in the morning and sometimes at our bench on the Rhine. I knew it was for the better and that I would see her again, after all we lived in the same city but I had grown used to her stinky lavender and her company. But mostly I missed her because she had helped me do something I didn’t think was possible. She taught me how to forgive myself.

Elise came to me in a week. She told me about the politics and how soon Germany would allow gay marriage. I told her this was a good thing, after all even Ireland and America had made it legal. “I consider Germany to be the most advanced country in the world. I do not know why they drag their feet on this thing.”

But then I remembered the Terror. Who would believe a little gay girl?
Elise looked at me. “What’s wrong?”
I kissed her on the forehead. “Humanity is the same sometimes and I think it’ll never change.”
“Well then you don’t much know about humanity.”

But that wasn’t it and I couldn’t tell her.

.

Fur mein Freund, Daryn.