Читать книгу: «Guys around the Globe», страница 2

After about 1.5 years without a word from him, after I had already forgotten about him, I suddenly received a message from him on the social networking site where we had met initially. He wrote that he hoped I wasn’t upset any longer and that he would like to see me again, that he could explain his behavior in the past and that we should go out for dinner, to a restaurant of my choice, regardless of the price range, he’d cover the bill. An odd statement, wouldn’t you say? Where I come from, it’s self-understood that you pick up the bill when you invite a woman to dinner, so why point it out? It started making sense later on though.

I answered by first setting him straight and telling him that I had never been upset, merely annoyed, and there’s a big difference between the two, if you ask me. Then I agreed to meet him for dinner. He replied that what had happened in the past didn’t matter, all that mattered now was that we had gotten in touch again and that I pick up my present in April. Present?!? My birthday is in April, so I assumed he was referring to that, and of course I love presents, who doesn’t, but this odd approach must be some sort of Austrian rite to try to charm a woman…

We went out for dinner and his explanation went as follows: When he contacted me the very first time, he was going through a rough time because of an affair he had had with a subordinate of his and he didn’t want to involve me in the whole mess. Why contact me in the first place if you are in such a mess? Because he wanted something new to help him get over the other mess. Very flattering.

He also told me how he had tried to find me a couple of times over the past 1.5 years, how he had come to the address where he had picked me up the last time, but my name was not at the door (which is true), how he had googled me to find my phone number (which he had lost mysteriously), and how he had seen me in our neighborhood one day, loaded with shopping bags. When I asked why he hadn’t stopped to say hi or to help me with the bags at least, he said that he hadn’t been sure it was me. So what did the Austrian do in this situation? Even though he had left above-mentioned social networking site in the meantime, he signed up again to contact me. Aaaaaaw, how very romantic, isn’t it? I nevertheless gave him credit for his attempts, if he ever really undertook them. And of course the bottle of wine we consumed in record time during our reunion dinner helped us relax and it brought back the mutual liking we had experienced the last time we had spent time together.

On the way home he then asked out of the nowhere whether we would go to his place or mine, and I must say that it was a real pleasure to reject him. Did he really think he could just show up like that after 1.5 years and get me into his bed? My ass! I gave him a kiss on the cheek and went home. He showered me with text messages that night and the next day, and since I hadn’t had sex in months, I agreed to meet him the following evening, when I literally went over to my neighbor’s for sex. As simple as that. Romance is sometimes highly overrated, and there is something to shagging one’s neighbor, I must admit.

The following day both of us went out of town for the weekend, and it was nice to be all excited about a new lover, waiting to see him again. But I already knew I didn’t want a relationship with him, even though I couldn’t yet pinpoint why. After both of us had returned from our weekend trips, we met again for dinner. At the restaurant, the waiter asked whether we wanted to start with a glass of champagne, to which… Hm. I just realized that I haven’t given him a name yet, so let’s call him Dr. Freak – the academic title because he loved to point out that he had a PhD, while the name best describes what I think of him now.

So Dr. Freak suggested we order a whole bottle of champagne of my choice. Alright. I chose. And over the following ten days I was reprimanded repeatedly for my choice, believe it or not. The waiter gave me three options in terms of bubbly, and I chose the brand I like, which is Dom Perignon and which happened to be the most expensive champagne on the list, although I didn’t know that. I was given the choice, so I chose. He didn’t say anything that night, but brought it up the next day in a text message, talking about the fortune he had paid for the champagne. WTF?

Although he ‘scolded’ me jokingly, I didn’t find it the least bit funny. And on top of it he told me that it was ok because it had been a special occasion, i.e. his birthday. At that point I still refused to comment on his moronic behavior, still hoping that he would turn out to be normal after all. It’s not like I deliberately chose the most expensive champagne in the restaurant, I chose the one I like because I had been given the choice. And it’s not like the guy doesn’t have money, he certainly does as he loves to brag about his possessions and the amounts he paid for them. The expression on his face when he’d boast about his acquisitions was quite hilarious. While stating how much he’d paid for something, he’d stare at me with the expression of a calf, wide open eyes staring at me expectantly, waiting for some sort of approval, I assume? But instead of admiring him and ooooohing and aaaaahing I was trying hard to keep my sarcastic remarks to myself. It takes a lot more to impress me than dropping names and price tags. So I simply stared back at him with the same calf-like expression.

The freakiest thing, however, was what ensued that same night at his place. Just as I was about to drift off to sleep, he started mumbling some incomprehensible things in a very strange voice. It sounded like a warped version of a stupidly giggling Beavis or Butthead, it was utterly creepy and I was about to get out of bed and run home. And I am so not kidding or exaggerating. I asked him what on earth was wrong with him, and he replied that he had only been joking. I’ve certainly met my fair share of freaks in my life, but this gave me some serious chills as I sensed that this wasn’t merely a seemingly über-proper businessman in his 40s goofing around. He probably sensed that I was about to leap out of the window and decided to hid his multiple personalities for the time being.

The next morning, as he was opening the bedroom door to go make coffee, he once again started talking with that strange voice, telling some imaginary crowd (addressing them in plural voice with his Arnold accent) to move out of the way. Was this Austrian humor I didn’t understand or signs of complete and utter mental derangement?

Apart from huge differences in our mental health, the two of us were on a completely different wavelength in every way. Although I might be ‘unusual’ (as one of my exes once described me), at least I am not insane. I am a strong-willed person, and I like men who are equally as strong-willed and who are unusual, but I am not into deranged freaks. I am also not a morning person, but Dr. Freak would usually wake up around 5 a.m. to go running or biking, even if the temperature outside is far below zero. Obviously he didn’t go running when I spent the night at his place, but he was hyperactive way too early, which drove me up the wall. But even though I might be a bit grumpy in the morning, I am polite enough to reply to a “Good morning”. He remarked once that I was so sweet to reply to his morning greeting, his ex would usually only order a coffee and light a cigarette without replying to his morning greeting. And why would I want to know that? Would you tell something like this to a person you basically just met?

But the best announcement was yet to come (and this is still the morning after the champagne and voice incidents), when he proudly announced that he was ready to have a relationship with me! That certainly woke me up, and I told him straight to his face that I didn’t want a relationship. At first he was quiet, then he said it was alright, we could just get together here and there and have sex, plus we could travel together, or as he defined it later on in a text message, we could be ‘fuck bodies’. Perfect! Little did I know that his hurt ego could not handle my rejection of a relationship so generously offered to me on his part.

So we started our ‘fuck bodies’ relationship, and slowly his behavior started to change, he became less attentive and extremely cold. I brought up his cold behavior once and he replied that I simply couldn’t expect all the goodies since we were merely fuck buddies. And if that statement wasn’t already pathetic enough, he added that I was such a nice person that he felt sorry for hurting me deliberately!?! Basically he was punishing me for not wanting a relationship by treating me like a cheap whore. He was probably hoping that I would change my mind and run into his arms, begging him to become his official girlfriend. Well, he can wait for all eternity, for all I’m concerned.

But the freak show was far from over yet. At one point I had a friend in town and Dr. Freak invited us out for dinner one night. Since my friend was here on business, she brought along a Greek colleague, and when I asked the Austrian nutter whether he would mind if her colleague joined us for dinner, he joked that he had no problems with financially supporting Greece (Greece was experiencing a huge financial crisis at that point). Huh? I was still trying to make sense of his very odd sense of humor, but obviously we don’t live on the same plane.

The evening went fine, despite the fact that Dr. Freak immediately told the Greek guy in detail how we’d met, basically claiming his stake so the Greek guy wouldn’t get any ideas. I found this extremely annoying considering that we were not in a relationship, but I was still trying to stay positive and not make a fuss. As I’ve been getting older, I have learned to control my temper and to give people a second chance, so I was really holding onto myself during the dinner not to kick him in the ribs during the dinner. Dr. Freak insisted that he pay for the dinner. Great. But like the champagne bottle, this was not the last I was to hear about the fact that he had paid for the dinner. How stingy can you be? Don’t pretend to be some big shot by paying the bill and then rub it in a dozen times. If you’re stingy, fine, but don’t pretend to be generous.

The first week after our initial sexual encounter, while he probably still believed that we would end up in a relationship, Dr. Freak had proposed a weekend at the coast, to which I agreed and which I looked forward to. The weekend before the scheduled trip we spent a whole afternoon together, which included lots of sex (because that was the only department where we got along very well), but also lots of talk, including references to the dinner with my friend. I told him straight-out that he shouldn’t have insisted on paying if he didn’t want to and that he should stop going on about it. This shut him up, but a bit later he began a monologue about his ex, how he had bought her two Louis Vuitton purses (although the number varied from two to four in his subsequent story-telling), how he had gone to Cyprus with her and how she had drunk 1,500 euros worth of champagne in five days and that it was just ridiculous, that she was a golddigger, bla, bla, bla... So? Why would I want to hear about that?

He went on and on, and after a while I asked him whether he had finished with his monologue. I told him that I didn’t want to hear any more about his ex, nor did I want him to compare me to her constantly. He started apologizing immediately, telling me that I was right and that I was incomparable. Yes, I know, you moron. By that point I already had the feeling that everything I said was being weighed and compared to his ex, which is quite an annoying feeling. He had issues with Balkan women in general, to him they are all golddiggers and whores, and inwardly he kept comparing our time together to all of his negative experiences with his exes from this region.

Now you might be wondering how I know what went on inside his head. Well, he didn’t hide the fact that he was comparing me to his negative Balkan experiences, he did it openly, telling me how great I was, that I was different and so on. I won’t go into more details here, because it’s simply stupid. At one point I got so fed up that I told him that if I were a golddigger, I certainly wouldn’t have chosen him. Yes, this was harsh, but he deserved it and somebody had to bring him back down to earth. He replied to my statement with his favorite calf stare.

Above monologue also included the remark “Man ist ja sparsam aufgewachsen”, which basically means that his family was very frugal, careful with money and all about saving money, proper German/Austrian attributes, of course. But the whole phrase itself is extremely annoying to me because of the subject “man”. There is no equivalent for it in English, in French it would probably be ‘on’, it’s the third person singular not denoting anyone in particular, an empty phrase, as empty as the things he was saying. To me, the mere use of this empty ‘man’ showed his narrow-mindedness and limited world-view. It’s difficult to explain this, but for me his statement simply brought back many negative memories linked to my childhood as an immigrant in Germany and it reminded me why I had left the country many years ago. This, however, would be a good topic for an entirely different book, so let’s move on.

The following morning I felt sick, like a truck had run over me, which might have been a psychosomatic reaction to his bourgeois bullshit or simply a cold. We merely exchanged a couple of text messages that day since I had cut the use of this communication channel as I found it quite boring. Given his excessive texting he obviously doesn’t have much work to do during the day and sexual fantasies seem to be his favorite topic, preferably described in coarse slang. What a stark contrast to his proper, square appearance and attire. He frequently fantasized about threesomes with another woman, he kept searching the web for escort girls all over Europe and kept sending me pictures of them, describing in graphic details what he would do to them. It never became reality, of course, despite the freezing temperatures. You find this last remark strange? How odd would you find it if a guy told you that he could not get a hard-on if the outside temperature is above +25C? That’s exactly what he told me at one point and I almost fell off my chair laughing, but I suppose he was serious. Luckily my Austrian experience came to an end before the summer.

We didn’t communicate until the next day (so it’s Tuesday and we’re supposed to leave for the coast on Friday), when he asked me whether I was feeling better. I told him that I still felt like hell, and he immediately asked whether we should cancel our trip to the coast, which I found a bit odd. But at this point everything in relation to him had become odd. I told him that it was up to him if we should cancel the trip, to which he replied that he had just cancelled our hotel. I answered that it was fine with me if that’s what he wanted, and the melodrama began.

He asked me why I was so upset with him (once again I wasn’t upset, but annoyed) and that he hoped that I’d tell him the reason one day, but that he was annoyed now. He went on and on, until I asked him what had possessed him to come up with this imaginary scenario in his head. His only reply was “It doesn’t matter. Forget it”. Which is what I did. He had probably expected that I would start running after him, declaring my endless love and need for him, but he got the wrong person for that. At our ‘reunion’ dinner he had told me that he liked me a lot because I was not as ‘clingy’ as most other women who wanted to get married immediately. But obviously he didn’t believe his own words and obviously he had hoped that I was just bullshitting when I said I didn’t want a relationship. Too bad I mean what I say. Well, most of the time. I deleted him from my life, and two days later I got another text in which he wanted to know whether I was doing better and that he hoped we’d stay in touch. My only reply was that he was obviously crackers, which he blessed with an “ok”.

But it wasn’t over yet, because for the next 1.5 months we were off and on. You might wonder why (and I’m still wondering myself), but the only explanation I have is that the sex was actually very good with him. And it might have gone on longer if it hadn’t been for his asshole behavior and sudden mood changes, for his arrogant episodes. During these episodes he’d bitch about the country he was living in and where he was making a great living (the country of my ancestors), to him Balkans were all stupid monkeys and golddiggers. It’s not like he’s stupid, far from it, certainly no IQ issues there, only some serious EQ deficiencies. I’m not even sure if I would describe him as merely ignorant, but he does have some sort of mental condition, if you ask me. But what to expect from a person who claims at the age of 42 that he learned everything he knows from Asterix and Obelix. Another equally as irritating statement was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back and set a new record: the quickest quarrel and subsequent breakup ever.

We had just started out on a day trip to the coast, he was once again in his ‘I am-a-superior-Arian’ mood and was trashing what is essentially my country. The night before a friend had organized a champagne tasting party at her place, and as Freak and I hit the road that morning, he asked me how last night had been. So I started telling him how we had tried out Serbian and Russian champagne, to which Fritzl replied immediately that it was typical once again how Balkan women referred to anything bubbly as champagne, how they have no idea what genuine champagne is, bla, bla, bla… Basically the same old crap all over again.

First I reminded him how he himself had referred to some weird Austrian bubbly as champagne, and I was about to bring up the Dom Perignon incident, but rather chose to counter using his own weapon, namely blatant generalization. I told him that all Austrians are narrow-minded and have a limited horizon. I have no idea what had possessed him that morning (and thankfully, I’ll never know), whether he was being a complete dick because he didn’t want to go to the coast, but he retorted immediately that we should cancel the trip, that he’d turn around and drive me back home, which I deemed a great idea.

I was seething and couldn’t stand to be around him any longer, so at the next red light I told him that Balkan women also knew how to ride a tram and got out in the middle of the road. The new record set here was the fact that this entire fight took place over a stretch of road of no more than 1.5km! We had just embarked on our trip and managed to end this mindfuck within 10 minutes. Not bad, huh?

And this is how little wimpy aquarius tried to tame the bull, but little did he accomplish. Honestly, there is nothing worse than some moron who acts like a child who didn’t get his favorite lollipop. I’m not being arrogant here, but I’ve been around, I’ve lived in many different places and I’ve seen a lot, so for some little Austrian country boy to start playing games with me and to think that he can get me that way is simply pathetic. I did feel sorry for him many times and I gave him a number of chances, but then I’d remember some of his stupid, derogative comments and I would be no longer sorry. Or I’d remember his pathetic attempts to impress me by promising me a ride in a Porsche or by announcing that he would buy me Louboutin heels for my birthday. Nice gesture, right? That’s what I thought until he added that he would buy them because he was a big fan of ‘bed shoes’, which is Austrian pampa slang for ultra-high heels, and that he wanted to see me in them. All of this might fly with some dumb little maiden from some alpine pasture, and with his kind of attitude he needs to find himself some Heidi who is willing to hang out with him in the Alps, where they can jointly bitch about all those inferior people around them. Amen.

Overall opinion: German guys are quite emancipated, which I like, but in terms of passion and humor they have as much to offer as a celery stick. Needless to say that I’m not too impressed. And I am not too impressed by the memory that many German guys make you pay for your own drinks on dates.

As for Austrians in particular: Please name one sane Austrian you know. It’s not that easy, is it? Freud was Austrian, but considering the vast amounts of cocaine he used, he’d be more known for rehab visits than for his couch today. Schwarzenegger? No comment. Alright, there were a few good composers, but I am not surprised that this culture produced monsters such as Fritzl, for example.