But all they wanted was that I passionately return their kisses, nothing more, maybe put my arm around their waist but not slide my hand up the back of their sweater.
You’re doing this only to get me excited, I know. Men do this to make women lose their self-control.
Oh, how awful, how can you do a thing like that.
They’d slap my hand no matter where it sought contact with their bare skin.
Mean boy, they said sulkily; try as you might, I won’t let you do that.
It was quiet now because the taps of the waterfall had been turned off at ten o’clock sharp at the power station, though the steeply rising rock garden with its footpaths remained illuminated by floodlights all night long to make patrolling easier for the police.
Their aggressive lips desensitized mine, and I found no passion in aggressiveness. I wondered whether they had learned this aggressive kissing from one another, whether I should fall on them with the same aggressive vehemence.
Hurrying toward the dark grove, I discovered that the light was on above the urinal and the door had been left wide open. Normally, this should have been closed when they turned off the waterfall.
Inside it was dark.
As I carefully entered the place, which smelled strongly of tar and urine, expecting to step into muck or bump into something unexpected, the beams of floodlights coming through the narrow windows high up on the walls temporarily blinded me and made me stop.
A familiar stench and familiar human tension warmly pervaded the space.
I should have realized immediately that I’d fallen into a trap and would not easily escape; I was in a snare. But from that moment on I was once again standing outside my own personality.
I saw nothing, only heard and felt on my goose-bumped body that many men were standing in front of the tarred wall opposite me. Somehow they seemed to fill the place completely. It was as if the temperature had risen sharply, for it seemed feverishly hot. As if disturbed by my entrance, the men rustled their clothes and made little knocking and shuffling noises on the floor. I stared, opened my eyes wide, wanted to see what was happening, what they had so abruptly interrupted when I came in, but darkness and the light coming straight at me simultaneously blinded me. Then the dark silence became deeper and tenser, and I could hear in it, at arm’s length, directly behind the open door, the solitary dripping of a faucet.
This is how water drips into a broken porcelain sink.
I did not move from the doorway.
This somebody, whom I was observing within me, did not turn on his heels and take off, as he should have. In his terror he did not run away, rather he stepped out of the harsh light and into the feverish darkness that had always tempted him. Dispassionately and almost omnisciently, he glanced around in the new space, though he could not have seen much of it.
Tar and water formed a compound fragrance at once sharp, clear, deep, and dark; it devoured all other odors and threatened the sense of smell.
All the while his abandoned persona could not swallow, and his entire body was trembling gently, mainly in the knees, because of his shaking soul.
He found pleasure in this bodily fright.
He heard the sound of his footsteps, which told him that with his entire being he had once again become like soft cat’s paws on which he would rush to his doom. Although in the empty shell of his persona someone was dissatisfied and sending out danger signals, whispering you cannot do this, you must not do this. As if somebody was still there who could be convinced to do something.
The one now standing in the space abandoned by his corporeal reality was not strong enough to convince himself of anything.
He made his move to do it, for the first time in his life, in any way possible, and with anyone.
And if it is not I talking to myself in this way, to stop the other one inside from going on this risky adventure, and if I am not the other one either, who has already taken his first step, then what should this stranger be afraid of.
There’s good reason to fear pleasure, because pleasure puts one at the mercy of the other person’s pleasure, leaving both personalities defenseless by entrusting them to each other; however, if there is no I, no self, then there is no need for any persuasion, no need for any restraint.
Pleasure is probably one of God’s nicknames.
And personality is nothing more than a bundle of traits whose rich offering is to be used freely according to one’s needs and fancies. And in that case, it could not possibly have anything to do with that senseless struggle with which the stupid petite bourgeoisie, squeezed between prohibitions and obligations, try to ensure their existence, thereby expelling a certain amount of permanence, stability, and security from their bodies’ archaic reality.
I don’t want and do not need such false security.
As if he were saying that he did not need the rough, uncouth proletarian girls or the prim, lisping young ladies teetering on high heels around whom he had made his obligatory reputation as a skirt chaser. And he needed even less the experience-seeking school and college girls, though they permitted everything and in their great curiosity did many things themselves.
I don’t need them either.
I had no idea what was waiting for me at the bottom of this peculiar dark muteness.
With their interrupted frozen movements, the men stood close to one another.
In a solid line they stood, like somber Roman warriors.
Only their shoulders were visible, the lighter spots of their backs, maybe the arcs of their necks a little bit.
Ordine stat.
For the most part, the deep darkness of the pissoir’s tarred wall swallowed their shapes.
He belonged with them.
They all turn in his direction, heads tugged as if by strings, because they want to see him, who it is who’s come, is he really one of them, perhaps it’s someone whose leaving they’ll have to wait out silently and motionless. But they did not turn away from the tarred wall either, because they were not ready to give up their hard-earned privileged places. First the newcomer had to give evidence of where he belonged. He had to take his place among them. The darkness conveyed something of their movements and intentions but very little of their bodies and faces.
At most, the reflected light from above illuminated the edge of their profiles or skulls.
It wasn’t that there were no barriers between these somber, ready-for-anything men, that they had no inhibitions. On the contrary, at the sight of the newcomer they literally froze into their own inhibitions.
Yet they seemed to have been waiting for him as they would for no one but the Messiah.
Their hungry attention and wild imagination converged on the body of the newcomer. They waited for somebody to free them from their inhibitions so that in their mutual muteness they might make a first move. If at a time like this someone had urinated loudly into the common silence, with his clumsy dribbling he’d have had little hope to claim he belonged among these men. They all pretended they had just finished their business and were only shaking the last drops off their pricks so as not to wet their underpants.
Directly opposite the entrance there was a free space in the otherwise solid lineup.