Chapter 1
“Tip for the future: we’re on the train and there’s this crackhead. Sure, the situation was unpleasant. But doing nothing is the worst thing. It was late, the carriage was almost empty. There was this guy who could barely speak German, the drunk Berliner who was obviously out of his depth, and then me and you. Drunk men, if they annoy you in a good way, you don’t want to know how they’ll react if you provoke them. The only person who could escalate that was you. And I don’t want to hear any excuses. Not that you didn’t notice, or that it wasn’t that bad. If I hear anything like that again, I’ll explode. Do you understand? My female friends thought it was just as bad. We were driving home, one of the guys started talking to me, and at one point he took a good look at your pants in quotation marks and then practically stuck his snout in my lap. Some would say that’s sexual harassment, and they might be right. And now I’m getting angry. That was the moment when I thought: ’That’s enough, I don’t want to have anything more to do with Johnson. I see three options: either you were really stupid, or you have such an egocentric view of the world that you only see yourself and no one else, or you’re just an asshole. Either way, you’re not coming off well. With all the comments you’ve made, I don’t think you really thought he was looking at your pants. Or you’re extremely self-centered. Maybe you just thought, ‘Wow, my pants look great!’ Who does that? It just sucks to have a snout in your lap. And you’re sitting there, trying to get out of the situation, and your supposedly platonic friend does nothing. Then the guy starts arguing about which of us is going to go to bed with her first. As if I were an object! Like people smuggling.
I sat there and listened to it. ’Yes, why don’t you take it, why don’t you do it? Your conversation was about why it didn’t work out. It was about your pants and your relationship stories. And it just felt like shit. Don’t try to bullshit me and say there was nothing there. Did you see the look on the old woman’s face? If she hadn’t been so old, she would have done something. But what’s she supposed to do? And the others, who are perhaps disabled or can barely speak German, what are they supposed to do? And me, what should I do? The only person who could have calmed the situation was you, and you didn’t do anything. That just sucked. I hope you understand now why I don’t want to have anything more to do with you. And if you ask me if everything is okay again: NO!”
She hung up. It had been a year since the incident and a lot had happened since then. His stay in hospital had made him forget all about it, but then he wanted to know. He called her, she said she needed some time, and then, about two weeks later, he heard this monologue. Johnson would have liked to have said something else. He would have assured her that he had changed, that he was a better person now and, above all, that he was sorry. She’s right about everything and I can’t handle it. He got up from his bed, then broke one of his triangles and cut his wrists with it.
