A bedtime story

We’re in a taxi on our way to a karaoke bar because she likes to sing and I like to drink. The taxi driver throws a fit when a news bulletin about the introduction of tuition fees comes on the radio, and says that after this trip she’s taking a break. She drops us off at the place in Schwabing, turns the taximeter off and doesn’t turn her light back on. We enter the bar, order drinks. On the stage a guy who looks like a lawyer is singing Elvis. We drink gin and tonic. Before long, she is up on stage and her voice is so clear and bright and lovely that I consider crying at the impossibility of holding onto this moment and calling it up the next time I get a letter from the taxman, the next time I wake up with bad breath and a hangover, the next time we have breakfast in silence, or the next time we go and hang out with her friends, who are nice and everything, but, well, you know. I think I really could start to cry if I spent long enough thinking about her bright, clear voice, her eyes gazing intently and hopefully in my direction, her slender, healthy body which she knows is beautiful and which really is beautiful for that very reason. Right now thirty other pairs of male eyes are seeking her gaze but they are only staring into space, because at this moment she is standing there, singing, and breathing, for me alone. But it’s all in vain. Not because my heart is too hard, but because it is too soft, much too soft, a sponge, a cloud in a grey sky, and I take a sip of gin and tonic and she returns triumphantly to our table and I kiss her on the cheek and put my arm around her and pull her in close, my fingers gripping her shoulder tightly, but the only thing I’m trying to hold onto is myself.

Later that evening, we’re lying on the sofa watching TV, and taking turns nodding off. When at last we’re both awake at the same time, we decide to go to bed.

We hold each other tightly. We let go. One of us always holds on a little more tightly than the other, one of us always lets go a little sooner than the other. We orbit each other in unpredictable circles and although I love you is nothing but a bedtime story now, it’s a bedtime story that still works.