The Boy Who Wanted to Be A Rock Star Part 2

I saw her on the dancefloor right away when I entered. She wore red, her stilletos cast sparks, her arms were swirling flames. Her hair a smoky cloud. Going faster that I could drive, oh, yeah, rollin' an' tumblin', shaking and twisting, a shaman with the body of a prize stripper.

There were, of course, people, people bumping into her, maybe men ogling her, sweet Norwegian students in reindeer pullovers on their innocent high, other girls, whatever, I simply didn't zoom them into the picture. I did zoom in the bar though, I needed something to fight the adrenaline rush with. I can't remember what music played, what alcohol burned my tongue, I can't remember anything except Ned dancing in perfect silence, all alone.

The Boy Who Wanted To Be a Rock Star

When the book came at last, I was no longer interested. Antony Burgess, fruity academic style. I couldn't work out what he was trying to tell me except that he knew lots of words. I did not expect I'd see the girl anymore. Matse had apparently forgotten her existence. And what was he supposed to do, write sonnets to sing his despair that a bar pickup didn't work out?

And then, of course, I saw her again.

I had gone alone to the Norwegian's Party in Mannheim. It is usually an overly cheerful affair, dresscode is reindeer pullover, talk is about beer (lots of it around) or money (most Norwegians in Mannheim study either accounting or economics). Still, the music is usually good, and in most Scandinavians, there is a lurking crazy black dog which comes out when baited with a certain amount of grain alcohol. And then one can talk to them, quite pleasantly.

I was wired when I got there. You'd laugh, but it was from studying in the library. There is this thing about studying law, the sheer mental urge of grasping a certain problem is like a shot of adrenaline piercing your brain. It is hard to come down from this kind of trip, or to talk of something else while you're on it. Lawyers drink like dragons, all lawyers from the poor yobs who sort out petty criminal offences in the neighborhood to the M&A types. Law students are no exception.

And drinking is mostly what I did at that party, beside watching Ned dance.

Talking Timbuktu

Matse remained solidly drunk for three days after our evening in Orange. The girl who was reading A Dead Man in Deptford kept blinking in and out of my head. To be honest, it was not because I found her that special; intriguing, appealing, yes, but not so fucking special. It was rather because I was startled how hard Matse took her rejection.

Matse was not a shy one, or a romantic one by any means; he knew he was also not particularly handsome, but he compensated with brains and courage, and of course with a mouse head plastinated with a most exquisite skill. He chatted up twenty girls a day, ten gave him the elbow, ten gave him their numbers, nothing to kill or die for. But from this one, for a minute, he had wanted something different. He had wanted her to understand him, to see him - bravado, mouse and all - for what he was, and like him. He wanted to talk Timbuktu to her more than he wanted her number.

Talking Timbuktu is, of course, an album by Ali Farka Touré and Ry Cooder, a style that can be described as desert blues. It can also be a style of talking.

I remember one night, shortly after me and my best friend arrived in Germany. It was summer and we sat by the river (Neckar; flows right through our town) with a bottle of wine deep into the night, watched flat cargo ships from France and the Netherlands chug along on the silent water. Our talk wound and wound, words murmurous with longing, two emigrant underdogs getting plastered at the gates of free Europe. Every town we had yet to see a king's city in the desert. When your yearning has brought you a step short of where you want to be, that's when you talk Timbuktu.

I did not expect to see the girl with the book again, but I wanted to know what it had been about her that had triggered Timbuktu.

Enter Ned

I first met Ned in a bar, a whimsical little place called Orange (Putin's Alptraum). Most people she knew first met her in a bar. Orange, at that time, had the best cacao with rum in town, a decent wine selection (that is, a proper house red and a proper house white) and a crowd of people who studied weird subjects, performed instant art on the Hauptstrasse, generally drifted and generally dreamed of a revolution. The owner was an expat Iraqi with the face of a Persian prince and a CD-collection one was sorely tempted to kill for. The walls often served as exibit space for, I suppose, promising young artists (or people who could talk the Persian Prince into exibiting their work). The quality varied from pretty cool (a Cuban painter who almost had not copied Jack Vettriano) to such crap it was almost cool (a rather hilarious selection of black-and-white nude photos). It was a bar that was kind to loners, and a good place for a midnight conversation.

That night I went there with Matse, a friend who studied medicine and talked mostly of anatomy. He carried a plastinated mouse head in his pocket. He had preparated the head himself in the practical anatomy class and used it in lieu of a pickup line. It is incredible how many girls find it charming to be shown a dead mouse's head by a perfect stranger.

It was Matse who noticed Ned first. She was sitting at a corner table, reading, and he stopped in mid-sentence when his eyes fell on her. Look at that girl, he said. I looked.

Most women, and the least men, did not find Ned beautiful; too many assimetries. She had different coloured eyes, for instance, one grey, one brown. A broken nose, skin white like the salt rim of a margarita glass, long neck, long graceful fingers holding her book, the nails chewed out to the flesh. And a face one never got tired of looking at.

"I want to talk to that girl", Matse said.

"Perfectly understandable", I said. I saw him feeling in his pocket for the mouse head. "Not this foul thing!"

"It is absolutely beautiful", he protested. Then he glanced at Ned again. "Do you think it won't work?"

It was the first time I heard Matse ever doubting his mouse head.

"Doesn't look like the type", I said. "Why don't you ask her about her book instead?"

He squinted to see the title.

"A Dead Man in Deptford", he said, somewhat crestfallen. "You read that?"

I shook my head.

"Can't make anything of the title, and besides, if she has no interest in practical anatomy, I don't want her", he decided and strode off to her table, mouse head in hand.

I stared desperately in my beer. I still remember the song that was playing, Weißes Papier, and the way the girl´s growling laughter tore through its gentle chords.

After about half a minute, Matse slumped back in his chair.

"Didn't like it", he said. "Damn all reading girls."

Usually, he is not one to think long about girls who don't appreciate being disturbed by a man with a dead mouse, but we both got disgustingly drunk. I ordered the book the same night, the keyboard swimming beneath my numbed fingers.

The Greeting Song

This will be the story of Elinor "Ned" Balu. I met her about three years ago, when I was twenty-one and majorly stuck in a South German university town. Looking back, I can safely say I found myself there by mistake. That someone like Ned should have ever erred into that Godforsaken, prim, completely decorative place I call a strike of mad luck.

I want to write about how I found her and how I lost her, and what I learned from her. Ned had a certain philosophy, her way of seeing the world a mixture between Lao Tse and Ruby Tuesday. There was no place she called home, at least not during the time I knew her. I used to rage when people described her as an outcast, but there is some truth to that. She was an outcast the way Dovima amongst the elefants was one, the most beautiful outcast of them all.

I don't know if she is alive or dead. I can only tell her tale.