A Misanthrope on the Sunny Side of Life E-Book

Mario Lehmann

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 189

Beschreibung

Life has a few adventures in store and unfortunately, even author Mario Lehmann has to realize that hindsight is usually wiser. So he takes us on a journey through the stages of his life and shows us how he has fared and how this has made him the person he is today. After his childhood and training in the GDR, he came to the realization after reunification that the grass is only greener in the West if you know how to capture the best meadow. And once he had learned that, some of the women in his life also started to go crazy. Just as well that life often has more to offer than agonizing togetherness.

Leseprobe

A Misanthrope on the Sunny Side of Life

PROLOGUE: From the Hotel of Knowledge

The door to the room slams shut behind me, slowed down by the soft, dark blue carpet. There is a rich sound, followed by the clacking of the door. The world stays outside. The Baltic Sea island is just a backdrop for me, the sea outside the window so that I can finally think. I only recently signed the divorce papers, which, to be honest, wasn't particularly difficult for me. My heart hadn't been with Claudia for a long time. So now I have an ex-wife. She wants to use the weekend to pack up her stuff and move out of our apartment. I don't need to be in the middle of it, I don't need the chaos. I need distance. From everything. The last few months have really taken their toll on me. My daughter is really enjoying my absence. She's spending the days with a friend.

I am alone with myself. Isolated, soundproof. Far away from everything else. I jerk the TV plug out of the socket, switch off my phone and sit down on the bed. A strange bed that someone else has already been lying in. But it's still comfortable. I look around, concentrating on the details of the room: a cushioned chair at a small desk with colorful information leaflets on it. A bottle of water with two glasses. What for? After all, I've booked a single room. An armchair with a reading lamp. A closet next to it. When I look inside, the hangers clatter against each other. A white bag for the laundry service dangles from one of them. How practical it would be to stay longer. I probably won't unpack my clothes. I've always lived out of my suitcase when I've been traveling. The bathroom, functional. I take a cursory look at my face. I look the same as always, only older, more worn out. No wonder, the last few years have been no walk in the park. I got divorced after nine years. Claudia and I probably shouldn't have got married back then. The bed, a pillow on the left, a pillow on the right. Also meant for two.

The air smells of salt. The water can't be far away. As I look out of the window, searching for the sea, I hear the cries of seagulls. Sounds like a vacation.

That's where I am now. Now it's time to wait and let my thoughts flow. After all, that's what I'm here for. I've booked a hotel room for three nights.

Nobody knows where I am. I want to use the seclusion for myself, let my thoughts run free, create a bit of order. Without any distractions. Who knows what will come up. Certainly not just good memories. But if I go for it, I'll feel a bit freer afterwards. And maybe even happy.

I sit down in the armchair and take a deep breath. My fingers drum on the armrest one after the other. Slowly at first, then faster and faster. One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four. There's nothing to do, nothing at all. No music or voices to distract me. No book to read. Something like panic rises in me: what should I do for three days, what should I occupy myself with? Should I have stayed at home? Does this even make sense?

I'll order something to eat in my room later, I need to consume something to distract myself. One of everything, please.

I have a plan, and so silence comes over me. The seclusion makes me feel lonely. Not easy for me to bear, even if I have chosen this place myself. Who am I without others telling me? Who should I relate to? To whom should I turn? And who should I differentiate myself from if there is no one there but myself? Such considerations can really drive you mad. Complete silence carries the risk of hearing voices that aren't even there. My head is buzzing. Flashes of memories twitch. My thoughts are getting louder and louder. Hard to ignore.

Somehow I was always disappointed: My mother let me down, my wife bored me, my colleagues tried to betray me, the guys at the club kicked me out.

I've had a lot of knives in my back. And I've pulled them all out again.

Fatherless

Others have fathers who climb trees or play soccer with them. Who help them with their homework and give them birthday presents. Not me. My father wasn't particularly friendly, let alone fatherly. He separated from my mother when I was eight and my sister Elke was five. I never saw him again after that, he never asked after me. I never had any contact with my grandparents, uncles or aunts either. There was no personal bond between us anyway. His brother only turned up once at a later family celebration without being invited. My mother never talked about him, as if he had fallen from her memory, as if the marriage between the two of them had never existed. Only Elke and I were a visible remnant from that time.

I forgot what my father looked like, whether he was blond or had curly hair, whether he was tall or fat. There are no photos of him. I wouldn't even recognize him on the street today.

My father is an asshole who I never expected anything from. Maybe he's not even alive anymore. I wouldn't care. He played absolutely no role in my life. I'm not interested in how he's fared over the years. After all, he was never interested in me either.

I can hardly remember my childhood. What do you do when you're four? You go to kindergarten. You sit in the sandpit. Pushing toy cars back and forth. You tease your little sister. And when you're eight and the son of a single mother who has to make all the parental decisions on her own?

My mother worked as a clerk for the Leipzig water management company and later for the NDPD, the National Democratic Party of Germany. She sat in the office, left the house in the morning and came back in the evening for dinner. Everything went on as normal. We lived together quite harmoniously, everything was clean and tidy, Elke and I worked together. We children kept ourselves busy, packed our lunch boxes in the morning, went to kindergarten, school and after-school care. Wednesdays were pioneer afternoons. I usually picked my sister up from kindergarten and went home with her, where we cooked ourselves something. We had a cake for our birthday and Elke and my mother sang "Because today is your birthday".

After fourth grade, we moved from Leipzig to Leipzig-Grünau, from the city center to the new development area. This opened up new opportunities for me, new playgrounds, a new school. I now went to the POS "Adolf Hennecke", named after the hard-working miner and glorious "hero of labor", whose portrait hung in the foyer and greeted us students every day. My grades were not outstanding, but I got through. Every now and then my mother had to go to the class teacher because I had done something wrong. But there were no real consequences. In the afternoons, I played soccer with my mates, like all boys do. The club belonged to BSG Chemie Leipzig and we played in the district league. I didn't have a fixed position, but was always deployed wherever there was a need. I was quite agile and played well.

Sometimes I was out and about with a school friend in our neighborhood. He lived on the same block as us. We'd chat, ride our bikes around the neighborhood or hang out on construction sites. We climbed into unfinished buildings, walked through unfinished kitchens and bathrooms and picked the locks on construction trailers. Every now and then we took a coffee cup, pocketed cigarettes or stole the keys to machines and equipment. Outside, we would throw them into the muddy puddles and rejoice at the thought that the construction workers would be looking for them for nothing. My buddy and I were in a pretty weird mood. At home, we listened to music together, all kinds of music. Mostly cassettes that we had recorded while listening to the radio. There was always something missing from the song at the front and the presenter would chat in at the back.

I had a completely normal childhood. Like hundreds of thousands of GDR children.

The boy and the bicycle

My mother wasn't very good at choosing her partners at that time. She was probably driven by the desire not to be alone. As a result, she lost sight of other things. She soon met Manfred at the NDPD office. She didn't want to leave us alone, so she brought him home with us. Elke and I then disappeared into the children's room so that we didn't have to be with him. He sat on the couch with us and behaved like a despot.

This person was no better than my father. He spent very little time with us children, he wasn't particularly interested in us or our concerns. He treated my mother quite badly, constantly criticizing and reprimanding her. Sometimes he got violent. And she put up with it. She expressed her opinion, but didn't defend it. She avoided discussions.

When I was twelve, we went to Bad Schmiedeberg on vacation. Elke stayed with our grandma. My mother wanted to go on vacation as a family: Father, mother, son. It was a nice picture, but it didn't really suit us. The two of them were a couple, I tended to do my own thing.

Through the FDGB, my mother had been allocated a small bungalow in the woods just outside the small town. There were other huts all around where people from the NDPD were on vacation. However, we hardly came into contact with them. There wasn't much going on in Bad Schmiedeberg. We walked through the Düben Heath, went swimming, sat on the terrace. My mother gave me pretty much free rein. I was bored and longed to go home.

One evening, I rode to the movies on the bike I had borrowed from my landlord. I was running late, hastily parked the bike in front of the building and completely forgot to lock it to something. After the movie, it was gone. I walked around the building. Nothing. "How stupid," I thought, "but it can't be helped." Besides, it wasn't my own bike. So I trotted back on foot. That was quite a long way. It was slowly getting dark. Fortunately, I found the right path.

"Is the gentleman coming already?" Manfred ranted at me as I opened the bungalow door. He was sitting on the sofa with a bottle of beer.

"I had to walk," I replied.

"Why is that? Where's the bike?"

"Someone stole it outside the movie theater. When I came out again, it was no longer there."

"Didn't you idiot lock it?"

"Nah, I forgot. It's not so bad that the rattle is gone," I said.

Manfred's face got redder and redder, he jumped up and totally freaked out. But my mother stood by apathetically, didn't move or make a sound. I would have understood if they had been worried about me. After all, I had been away for hours in a strange city. But he wasn't concerned about me, only about the stolen bike.

He shouted at me incessantly. I hoped the whole time that my mother would intervene, defend me, her son, protect me. But she didn't. I tried to justify myself, but I couldn't stand up to Manfred. He went into a rage, getting closer and closer to me until he was standing right in front of me. His fists clenched, he was about to punch me in the face. I stood backed into a corner, silent, but facing him grimly. The air between us was charged. There was no way I was going to let this guy beat me up, that much was clear. And he seemed to sense that I would stand up to him. A twelve-year-old against an adult - two heads shorter and fifty kilos lighter. We stared at each other. And he let go of me.

When we got back to Leipzig, Manfred continued to try to be the man of the house. My mother didn't say a word about his freak-out after the bike incident. She acted as if nothing had happened instead of sitting down with me and talking about the situation. To apologize, perhaps. Secretly, her silence proved Manfred right.

Living together became more and more restrictive. I tried not to be there when Manfred came to our house. Or I would hide away in my room and do my own thing. I often went to soccer matches, by then I was playing for BSG Lokomotive Ost Leipzig. Until an opponent kicked me in the shin, twisted my knee and I was out of action for several weeks. The rehab took forever. After that, I stopped playing soccer when I was sixteen years old.

I only just got through at school. But not because I was stupid, but because I didn't feel like making an effort. It was enough for me to pass the exams, I didn't have to get an A. I dropped out of ninth grade, preferring to play football and go swimming. I was reprimanded for my repeated absences, but I didn't stay in school. I hardly studied for my final exams in tenth grade either. Admittedly, I was lazy. But I got away with it.

Start in life

My stomach is growling. I've been out a long time today, breakfast was hours ago. I heave myself up out of my chair and look for the menu card, which must be lying somewhere between the brochures on the table. Salad, spicy meat, salami pizza. I call reception and a man's voice takes my order.

I haven't thought about my father for ages, not for my whole youth in fact. I guess I had better things to do than mourn someone who didn't deserve it. Someone who preferred to leave his two children behind and start a new life. As if Elke and I didn't even exist. Later, he probably tried to get in touch with my sister. I'm not interested in whether they actually met.

Sure, my father left a void, a hole that I might have fallen into if I had thought about him. I was disappointed because he left us. That was probably the reason why I couldn't really trust anyone anymore. And my mother was in the same boat.

She was there, but she still didn't stand by me. When her guy came at me, she should have stood by me, stood in front of me. What could I do about my bike being stolen? Instead, she remained silent, afraid to open her mouth and end up without a man. But with a son who felt safe with his mother. But she didn't care how I felt. She let her guy do as he pleased.

The moment Manfred pushed me into a corner, I was also abandoned by my mother. And I began to cut myself off from her emotionally. From then on, I did my own thing. She was still with him for a long time, well after the fall of communism. They moved away together. Her life with him consisted only of compromises, on her part of course. What he said was true. Manfred died a few years ago and my mother moved to Delitzsch.

So my family was not a protected place where I felt safe. The cold that prevailed instead made me become independent at an early age. I learned back then that I could only rely on myself. That I had to be constantly on my guard so that nobody hurt me. In the end, your own family situation is just a state of the past that can't be changed. Everyone plays a role until they leave and leave everything behind.

The connection to my childhood has been severed. At twelve, everything changed in one fell swoop. It seems to me that little Mario is someone completely different from me. Someone who is sad. Critical. Lonely.

I had a difficult start in life, I realize that today. Maybe that's why I didn't learn to love until later, because I was suspicious at first. The other person first has to prove to me that they deserve my trust. Disappointment comes anyway. I have certainly often missed a certain closeness to another person. A closeness that could dispel my inner loneliness. Does my busyness perhaps stem from the fact that I had to fill the emotional gap somehow? Did I have to pass my time so as not to notice what was missing?

There is a knock. The door to the room pulls heavily across the plush carpeting as I try to open it. I need a surprising amount of strength to move it. The young man from the restaurant hands me a tray with dishes lined up on it. Soup, pasta, vanilla pudding. I have the cost charged to my room. By now I'm really hungry.

The door slams shut and bangs against my knee on the way. Not the first door to take revenge.

The envy of the Carnation

With my journeyman's certificate as an insulation technician in my pocket, I joined the Leipzig scene club Nelke (Carnation) in 1988. It was located in a low-rise building in the middle of my neighborhood. I had often been there before. Axel, one of the bosses, asked me if I wanted to join the club council. Of course I wanted to! That's how I grew into the Leipzig scene.

Axel and Kai had been appointed by the FDJ as full-time leaders of the club to carry out youth work and were therefore committed to the system. They drew up programs and submitted them to the FDJ district leadership for approval. At some events, experts stood around and kept an eye on the young people and the music. There was an official 60/40 rule regarding the East and West music played, but hardly anyone adhered to it. As a DJ, Kai played whatever he could get his hands on. Rarely real records, because it was hard to get hold of them, rather cassettes, self-recorded on DT64, the radio station we all listened to.

For me, it was all about good music when I joined Nelke. It wasn't just music that was simply droned out, but played and mixed by professionals. I also did the odd bit of business, for example building aluminum cases for the sound equipment or installing washbasins and toilets. The materials came from the VEB, where I worked during the day.

The DJs had a lot of equipment to store and transport, but there were no proper facilities for this. So I fiddled around with the right cover for a car trailer and built various lockable transport boxes for the lighting system, recorder and all the expensive stuff. There was nothing like this on the market and DJs were literally snatching it out of my hands. I made a name for myself in the scene because I also realized special requests and earned a golden nose with the custom-made products. I had virtually no material costs.

I mainly stood at the door on Fridays and Saturdays alongside my work at the company. The position gave me a lot of power and influence, even though I was one of the youngest next to Ralf. Our group consisted of ten men who were supposed to keep order and security, just normal guys who did their regular jobs during the week like me. We took it in turns to let people in. If I was at the door, the club was full. I somehow had a knack for letting the right people in.

I made sure there was a good balance between men and women, but the most important thing for me was that the place was fun. The DJs meant that we were frequented by a dance-loving crowd, students from the POS, young people from the factories and dormitories, girls from ballet school, all thirty or under. Some came all the way from Berlin or Potsdam to celebrate with us, and they all had to pass me by. I made quite a few contacts and knew the people.

I particularly liked letting the ballet girls in, they looked good and could move. The Berlin girls brought me records from the capital that we didn't have here. I bought them from them for a hundred marks and sold them to Kai for four hundred. That's how the first Heaven17 LP in Leipzig passed through my hands.

I made clear announcements at the door, but was never insulting or angry. It was usually quite peaceful outside and inside the Nelke. People didn't make a fuss, after all they wanted to get into the club and party. The important thing for me was that the image was right: if you looked good and wore the right clothes, you got in. And people had to dance. Anyone who just stood around and drank would talk stupidly to the girls and sooner or later cause trouble.

At that time, violence was nothing unusual; it was part of everyday life in the Leipzig scene. There were always reports of fights when a dispute had escalated or rival groups had clashed. I suspected that it would happen to me at some point and I resolved to be quicker than my opponent if the worst came to the worst. Catching one out of politeness was out of the question for me. To be honest, I didn't give a shit whether I was right or wrong.

One Saturday, the store was once again packed. There was definitely no room for anyone else. And yet three guys tried to chat me up at the door.

"Sorry guys, it's nothing personal," I confronted them, "but you really don't fit anymore."

"We'll wait for you until you're finished here," one of them would tease before the three of them left. I heard threats like that all the time and didn't give a damn. The evening went on without me giving the matter a second thought.

Around two or three, when all the guests had left and we were just tidying up with the girls from the bar, putting the chairs up and collecting the glasses, my colleague Ralph came rushing in from the door: "Mario, the three guys from earlier are still out there!"

I hadn't expected that. I went outside. The one guy came up to me and calmly said, "As promised, we'll wait for you, asshole."

I slammed the door in his face and took a deep breath.