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- Herausgeber: Periplaneta
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
Clint Lukas’ relentless hero works hard, although he despises work; he produces movies, even though he hates movie people; he fancies himself a ‚ladies’ man‘, but constantly gets into fights with them. Why does everything always have to be so complicated? He’s not the one to blame. At least, that’s what he thinks. The Berlin author, stage poet and movie director presents a marvelous collection of brutally honest, headstrong and self-deprecating short stories, stories of himself as a byronic hero, a dawdling globetrotter, a sarcastic observer, always far from normal or ordinary. Defiant, furious, sarcastic, vivid and entertaining close to the pain threshold. WORK OF MOUTH is a showcase of popular Berlin stage literature, based on the MundWerk edition by Periplaneta publishing. The works are brief, concise, sometimes simply hilarious, sometimes quite painful, daring more often than not, and, as a rule, off-beat. They are written by authors with experience on stage, in capturing an audience, and in weekly deliveries of the best text they can provide.
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Seitenzahl: 154
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Work of Mouth
periplaneta
CLINT LUKAS: „Alive to Love and Strive – Berlin without compromise“
“Für die Liebe, für die Kunst – Stories ohne Kompromisse” first published in Germany by Periplaneta September 2011
“Alive to Love and Strive – Berlin without compromise” first published in Germany by Work of Mouth October 2014
Work of Mouth is a division of Periplaneta – Verlag und Mediengruppe Marion Alexa Müller (Proprietor), Bornholmer Str. 81a, 10439 www.periplaneta.com
Copyright © Periplaneta – Verlag und Mediengruppe 2011, 2014 All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Translated from German by Claire Förster Edited by Charlotta Mellies, Matthias Niklas Cover designed by Nina Ball with a photo by Benjamin Hiller Author photo by Uli Meier Designed by Thomas Manegold
print ISBN: 978-3-943876-80-2 epub ISBN: 978-3-943876-48-2 e-book version 1.1
Clint Lukas
Alive to Love
and Strive
Berlin Without Compromise
periplaneta
Lindenbügel
Mr. Lindenbügel suffered from prostate cancer, had once been a cop, and was, all-in-all, a pretty nice guy. He was always pretending that he didn‘t like me, but I totally saw through him. Too bad, though, that my tongue had slipped once again. I had accidentally called him ‘Lindendübel’.
“Goddammit, it’s Lindenbügel!” he shouted.
“Yeah, what did I say?”
“Lindendübel!”
“Sorry.”
“How stupid can you be to mistake ‘Bügel‘ for ‘Dübel‘?”
“It just happens, right?”
“Better watch out what I can make happen to you, boy!”
“ What kind of name is that, anyway—‘Lindendübel’?”
“Lindenbügel!”
“Exactly. I mean … if I could just call you ‚Horst‘—“
“As soon as hell freezes over…!”
“Well, okay. Maybe not.”
“What do you mean?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t get smug with me, boy!”
“Shall we go for a walk now, or what?”
“Are you getting senile already? You can see plain well that I’m already completely dressed!”
I helped him climb into his wheelchair—not without making a total mess of it, of course. Nevertheless, we went out onto the street.
“Jeez! What’s so bumpy down there?” he complained. “Want me to soil my pants, don’t you?”
“Well—you see that the street hasn’t been cleared off snow yet, right? What could I possibly do about it?”
“For fuck’s sake—they sent me some smartass to go out with.”
“I wish I could say I was forced to, but unfortunately, it was entirely my own choice.”
“Uh … A good Samaritan and a smartass!” He actually stopped talking for a while, as we were making a round on Kranoldplatz. Just enough time to let him gather his spit for the following exclamation: “And you like that?”
“What?”
“Pushing old farts like me around in a wheelchair?”
“Dunno. Looks like it.”
“Or did they charge you with community service?” “Nope.”
“Sure … And how does your girlfriend like having Mr Goody Two Shoes by her side?”
“Don’t have a girlfriend…”
“Your ‚chick‘, then, or whatever you call it now… What does she think of your job?”
“I’m free as a bird.”
“You mean gay?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“So—you are gay.”
“No, I am not gay.”
“So why don’t you have a girlfriend?”
“I just … don’t.”
“I don’t get it.”
“It simply didn’t happen.”
“So, then—off you go! Get yourself one! And don’t waste your time around this damn hospice all day!”
“Well, actually…”
“What?”
“There are those trainee nurses…”
“Yeah?”
“They like me, apparently.”
“Really?”
“Sure. It seems they get all confused about my good heart and me being a selfless humanist and stuff. And once I start playing the piano…”
“You serious?” He appeared to like that. I could just make out a grin from behind his back. “But … they aren’t that cute, are they? All I ever see of them trainees is that fat girl…”
“Which one would that be?” I asked
“The one who drops everything—constantly.”
“Oh yeah, her…”
“She just always smashes something.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that one.
“And you—you like her?”
“Well, there are more of them, right?”
“And why don’t they ever come to me?”
“They do—when you’re asleep.”
“What a crappy organization…”
“They are probably scared to get your name all wrong.”
“Dumbass.”
I pushed him back to the hospice and brought him to his room. On the way, we passed a good-looking, red-headed trainee nurse, whom he gave an embarrassingly obvious all-over: Nasty old man scrutiny. “And that was necessary why?” I asked.
“Don’t be a sissy! You’re the lady-killer of the house, anyway.”
“I just said that randomly.”
“Don’t gimme that! She totally checked you out.”
“Um … yes?”
“So—go hit on her!”
“No way.”
“Why not?”
“Too easy…”
“What? That girl’s just about ready to jump your face—her time has come!!”
“Holy Christ!”
“What—what’s wrong, now?”
“Well, she’s like twenty years old. Of course she’s all into me! But that would be like shooting fish in a barrel, get it?”
“Yeah. So where’s the problem?”
“No—way.”
“Sweet Jesus! You are gay.”
“Probably.”
After I’d helped him into his bed, I strolled out. Since all the other nurses were headed for breakfast, I decided to have a chat with the ‚small one‘ sitting alone in the nurses’ room.
“You okay?”
“Hmm—” Before I could phrase a more precise reply, the patients’ alarm went off.
“Can you see who’s ringing?” she asked.
“Room seven.”
“That guy Lindenkübel?”
“The very one.”
“Haven’t you just been with him? Well, I guess I should go and check.” Off she went and I sat there, contemplating. A little while later, she re-appeared with a pretty confused look on her face.
“Anything interesting?” I inquired.
“You’ll never guess what he just confessed to me.”
“So—tell me.”
“I’m not sure I ought to…”
“You certainly should.”
“Well … He thinks you’re suicidal.”
“What?”
“He assumes you want to steal some pills to—“, she made an unmistakable gesture by slashing her throat with one quick move of the hand, “Because of your girlfriend…”
“What the—?”
“’Cause she left you.”
“What—er … You know what? Just … forget about it, okay? I don’t wanna kill myself.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so, anyway.”
“Good, because that guy is just completely nuts.”
“But … maybe you’d like to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“I don’t know. I can only speak for myself, but sometimes it feels pretty good to have someone to, you know, comfort you?” She inched a little closer to me and her leg touched mine under the table.
“Er, listen…” Thank God for small mercies—I could take a look at her name patch. “Listen, Anna. You’re really nice and all, but I’m not broken-hearted or any such thing! I guess that old chum just wants to be our match-maker, see?”
She blushed, but kept her eyes fixed on mine. “Would that be so bad?” she asked.
“No, but—I don’t think it would work out.”
“Are you gay?”
“No! Jeez. That’s what Lindendübel keeps nagging me about, too!”
“I thought he was called Lindenkübel?”
“Lindenbügel, to be exact.”
“Whatever. So—why not?”
“Well … You don’t really know me.”
“But I like you.”
“Really?”
She gave me a smile and I smiled back. Then I asked myself why I was being such a hesitant coward. One thing led to another, and we went out a couple of times. At first, it sure was kind of nice and all, but she admired me way too much. Well, the humanist part of me. But that guy rarely ever showed, and I used to play it a little rough at times, which turned out to be a problem for her.
Now, there’s a new trainee in the hospice: Short black hair, and she even calls the old guy Lindenhügel. Oh—and she doesn’t think my social commitment is all that remarkable. She’s not that interested in me, either, and besides, she’s a much better piano player.
I kinda like her.
When I told the old guy, he just shook his head dismissively. “Boy, I’m 76 years old and have seen plenty in my life. Never have I encountered anyone even remotely as dumb as you are.”
I suppose he might be right for once.
Public Disturbance
aka Monkey Business
Everyone else had left the flat, leaving Sophie and me in the living room by ourselves: Bored to hell. Sophie smelled nice. She also had adorable eyebrows and a little more than that to offer. I would have loved to get it on with her right there, but instead we just hung around, drank red wine and talked.
I don’t mind conversation. Seriously. It’s just that Sophie was sort of reluctant to come out of her shell. Not that she had really much to say, either—she had an opinion on everything, but knew hardly anything, and she opposed drugs without ever having tried anything harder than a joint. Which did not even have that much of an effect on her, she said. And she objected to violence. She could not relate to the feeling of inner calmness that possessed you when pushed yourself to your very limits after a proper blow. Above all that, she was catholic. “And have you heard the news?” she was just ranting. “This weekend someone tried to steal Baby Jesus from its crib!”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah! You know—that enormously huge one, in front of the Marienkirche!”
“Yeah—yeah. I know.”
“They ripped an arm off that poor child! But they got caught.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it said so in the paper. Someone spotted them and they gave up. Only took the arm with them—who would do something like that?”
“No idea.”
“Would you hold my glass for a moment? Gotta pee.”
‘Just leave it on the table’, I thought. Some people are just peculiar.
When she was well out of sight, I got up from the couch to grab something from the table that needed to be stored someplace else quickly. But where? I squashed it under the couch pillows, but it struck me as an insufficient hiding place. I ran around the room frantically—desperately searching for a better place to make it disappear from sight, still clinging to it when Sophie returned from the bathroom. The instant she spotted the object in my hand she became pale. “This … is … is that … that is not …?”
“Umm, well. Yeah, I’m afraid it is Baby Jesus’ arm.”
“How’d you get that?”
“It was a crazy night, you know.”
“What? You mean it was you who fooled around with little Baby Jesus tonight?”
“Me and the boys, yeah.”
“And you were caught doing it?”
“What a stupid way to put it—‚caught‘, really! And anyway: That damn doll was nailed—how barbaric is that? Nailed straight through its little tummy and fixed to its crib—with a goddamn carpenter’s nail! What a foreshadowing, huh?”
“But why, in the name of God, did you want to steal Baby Jesus?”
“How should I know? At that time it just felt like a reasonable thing to do, somehow.”
She sat down and sulked, even though she knew very well where the door was—she just remained seated and kept drinking.
“If you want, we can just go back and glue the arm back to the stump.”
“And that makes everything alright again, you think?” she yelled.
“Guess not. You got wood glue by any chance?”
“Sure, somewhere.I still can’t believe you would do something like that…”
“Honestly, those good Christians that hammered the nail into the belly of an infant are far worse, don’t you think?”
“Maybe it was not a Christian, after all.”
“Sure. They let Achmed from Ankara build their cribs.”
“You’re a racist asshole.”
“Missy,—don’t go there with me. More than half of my buddies are immigrants and my ex-girlfriend’s from Israel.”
“I really have no idea why I agreed to date you.”
“Me, neither. It’s like a damn missionary school in here.”
“And I could actually report you to the police!”
“Feel free to do as you please. Do you think I care even one bit? Been there, done that. A thousand times over.”
She thought this through for a while, and I continued drinking and conjuring up mean things to verbally assault her with in my mind. “Okay,” she finally sighed. “We’ll just go back to the church right now and put things straight again. You’ll never do it on your own, as I see it. Afterwards, we part our ways. Agreed?”
“Fine with me. Let’s go.”
I opened a bottle for the way while she zipped her coat, and together we stomped through the night, silently. When I offered her the wine for the third time, she finally reluctantly took a sip. “Have you really been involved with the police?” she asked.
“Sure. Hasn’t everyone?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Well, I used to be a punk once, you know? So obviously they had to cuff me at various street demonstrations and put me in jail for the night.”
“Rightfully so?”
“What do you mean, ‚rightfully‘? I wouldn’t drive across half of Europe for a NATO-summit without stirring up some trouble, would I? Or get into a fight with some fascist frat boys.”
She shook her head and put on a dead serious and overly mature face.
“Oh, of course,” I scolded her. “You were never one of those, right? Such behavior would have been way too crude for you!”
“So I reckon you have a criminal record?”
“Sure, babe, for ’grievous bodily harm’, as a matter of fact,” I replied, rather proudly.
“What did you do?”
“I allegedly broke some nazi’s jaw.”
“Allegedly?”
“Just give it a break, will you? It doesn’t matter. Rather hand me that wine, okay?”
“I just wanna know, that’s all!”
“You’ve made up your mind about me already, anyway—so, what’s the point?”
“No, I have not. Yet.”
“Okay, if you have to know. No, it wasn’t me. That guy was a wimp, and there were six of us. I don’t play by such rules—nazi or not.”
“So, how did you get your conviction, then?”
“They caught me, and I’m not a snitch.”
This shut her up for good. When I shot her a sideways glance, I asked myself what it was I had ever seen in her. Well, I had to admit, she was definitely gorgeous. Damn Jesus and his stupid arm.
When we arrived at the church, Sophie got all nervous. Standing next to the fence that was supposed to keep vandals like me away from the crib, she looked around for any possible witnesses. Once the coast was clear, I helped her over the barrier and then followed suit. Right at the top of the fence, when I was entirely focused on avoiding steel spikes penetrating my groin, the wood glue slid out of the pocket of my pants—only to fall down on the wrong side of the fence, forever out of reach. I cursed a good deal, failed to lift my leg across and pitied myself, accordingly, for the entirely crappy situation I had gotten myself into.
“Hey, look,” said Sophie all of a sudden.
“Argh. What?”
“The doll already has a new arm. Just climb over, won’t you?”
“Yeah, Goddamnit—don’t you see that I’m stuck, woman?”
“Why’s that?”
“Because my fucking pants got caught in the fence somehow. Or my belt or something. Will you help me now or what?”
“Be quiet, someone’s coming!”
“What?”
“Quick, get in here! There are two people up ahead!”
“Goddamnit.”
“Hush!”
My head was pounding and beginning to get alarmingly hot, while I was still trying to break free from the fence. I felt my sweat run down my back in hot streams, finding its path into my asscrack. I pulled and twisted until something tore loose and I was free. Into the crib I went.
“Hurry up, now!” shouted Sophie.
“But—the glue!”
“Just let it be—they are almost here.”
She was already crouched underneath the large statue of the Virgin Mary, where she beckoned me to join her. I crept behind Joseph and carefully inspected the condition of my pants. My expensive and impressively well-fitting Mustang jeans were torn to shreds, and I could even make out some blood. The two assholes who had caused all the trouble were standing at the fence now. And of course they saw the can of glue—and of course they stomped on it, shooting each other looks of sincerest stupidity. Just go home and do yourselves or have some spare-ribs, but mind your own business and leave! I looked at Sophie, who was close to hyperventilating.
“Look,” the guy behind the fence said. “Isn’t someone over there, next to the statue?”
“Udo, let’s just go, okay?”
“No, really—just look. Two people, right there!”
The situation felt so bizarre that I honored it by banging my head into Joseph’s back a couple of times, for good measure. It seemed like my head did have unexpected energy reserves, because somehow Joseph broke free from his socket, even swayed for a moment or two to laugh in gravity’s astonished face and then smashed into Caspar, who went sailing into Balthasar, who couldn’t help but hit Melchior. Eventually, Melchior was flung into Baby Jesus’ crib and crushed it—leaving it in a heap of splinters and shards. For a couple of seconds, all Udo and his girlfriend could do was stand there and stare—open-mouthed and seemingly paralyzed. Enough to gather strength for simultaneous outbursts. “See—what did I tell you? There, right over there—the baby thieves!”
“They must have come back to finish their dirty business!”
While Sophie left her shelter to explain herself, I kept quietly in the background. You gotta keep calm and play it cool, I thought. Because I know when a game is lost.
As the story goes, the cops came and arrested us. Not once did Sophie manage to stop crying during all of it. Finally, she got the chance to experience firsthand what it’s like to spend time behind bars. I, quite the gentleman, offered solace while fantasizing about screwing her right there in the cell. It would have been a quite impressive feat.
Unfortunately, however, her father came to bail her out pretty soon and the next time we saw each other was in court. It was the third charge for vandalism, but the very first one—finally!—for “Public Disturbance,” officially attesting me my asininity.
