13:09 Monday, 11 October 2004

Saturday night rolled around, and the girls from the town who volunteered to pick me up came and took me out. I was alone in the house waiting for a word from them when the doorbell rang at 7:00. I answered it and it was the most stunningly gorgeous German girl I may have ever seen. Her name was Simone, and she told me what the plans were for the evening--to go to a bar in Ichenheim and then to a club in the nearby small city, Offenburg. She would come pick me up an hour later, at 8:00. She spoke to me in English until I responded in German, and she seemed extremely nervous, blushing when she saw me. I misinterpreted this as a sign that she found me attractive. As I later came to realise she was probably just nervous because she was afraid her English might not have been good enough for me.

So 8:00 rolled around and the whole time I was very nervous wondering how I was supposed to deal with an extremely beautiful girl who found me attractive. But when she came to pick me up it seemed that all of her nervousness had dissolved, and she took me in her car to the bar on the outskirts of the town. I expected to find the other girls who would be coming along waiting for us at the bar, but we were the first ones there. And as this was an extremely small town and every person knows everybody else, she found someone she knew right away and sat at a table with HIM.

Immediately my bubble began to deflate. She introduced me to the guy, who has a weird name I don't remember that starts with a P. He asked me the standard, where are you from? what do you study? how long are you staying in Germany? questions, which I clumsily answered because they were in weird-dialect form, and then I sat there for awhile while the two of them spoke to each other and I tried to understand what they were saying but couldn't decipher more than a couple of words per sentence. I ordered a beer, thinking we were there to drink, but she ordered a soda.

In a few minutes, Julia arrived, and I said "Hallo" to her and she sat down at our table. As soon as she came into the bar and said nothing to me it was absolutely confirmed that my earlier assumptions had been correct—she was in fact only interested due to the drunkenness.

So more of the girls came in and the guy left the table and soon I was the only guy sitting with five German girls, and Julia was the least attractive of them all. My memory had given her a lot more credit than she was worth.

So after I had another, smaller beer (to kill the ridiculous nervousness I was feeling) and they all had a soda and we played stupid card games (including Arshhole, which is Asshole in German in case you couldn't figure that out--and I was the Arsh for most of the game) we left to go to the club, taking three separate automobiles. Julia, by the way, did not come. Not that I gave a shit.

So we drove to the Music Club Offenburg, and I discovered the devil’s earthly residence. Satan is a DJ at the Music Club Offenburg, and this place is—beyond any doubt—Hell on Earth. Admission to Hell, incidentally, is 4 Euros and 50 cents, but you also need to pay 50 cents to hang up your coat. When we arrived I thought it was pretty crowded, because no matter where you stood in the hallway outside the main bar/dance-floor area, about 12 people would nudge by you every half a minute. After waiting on a line to have our coats hung up, we went into the main area, where the music was so loud you couldn't even hear a person shouting into your ear right next to you. There were a total of 5 bars in the one room, and a giant dance floor covered with fake snow (the them was Fall). Above the floor hung a giant disco ball, a rigging with lots of coloured lights which spun colourful patterns on the floor, and huge paper Icicles. The party now consisted of me, and 3 German girls including Simone, one moderately attractive girl and one not-so-attractive one. We found a bar with four open stools and sat down, observing the party. I was wondering when they were going to start drinking, because fuck knows I was going to need a lot of beer to enjoy this. But they didn't drink at all. They just sat there, watching the party and occasionally making comments to each other, no doubt about the various guys on the dance floor.

We sat there for probably an hour, although because this was Hell time moves much slower and it seemed to me like 6 hours, the girl sitting next to me turned to me and shouted in my ear in German. Not only did I not hear what she said, but what I did hear was incomprehensible because, after all, it was in German. When it was clear I didn't understand, Simone came up and shouted even louder into my ear in German, and I managed to make out s few things, about how normally this was better but tonight it sucked and they were thinking of going somewhere else, like maybe to a smaller bar. I made it clear that I was in full support of this idea, but she sat back down and we sat there for like another half an hour, which of course to me was three hours. I kept wondering if they had changed their minds and if I should go order a beer because I was way too sober to handle the current situation.

The DJ, Satan, was playing non-stop loud, German techno, and shouting at the top of his voice with the microphone turned to top-volume (often using both English and German in the same sentence) about how OFFENBURG IS NUMBER ONE!!! and IT'S TIME TO PARTY!!! and when more fake snow fell from the ceiling how ES SCHNEET (it's snowing) SO IT'S TIME TO PARTY!!!! HIER IN OFFENBURG, ALWAYS....NUMBER...ONE!!! Then he played a song which I didn't recognise but which apparently is a popular German dance song because all of a sudden the previously empty dance floor became filled with Germans doing some strange, bizarre German line dance. There were about 20 of them dancing like robots, 17 men and 3 women. The girls continued sitting and talking to each other about the various guys they saw (this is only an assumption but based on how they were pointing at the guys on the dance floor while talking to each other I assume it's a correct assumption.) So we sat there until I was just about to get up and order a strong, strong drink, then we left and went back into the hall.

I thought it was crowded before, but it turns out when we arrived it had been relatively empty. Now you couldn't even move out in the hallway without elbowing through a sea of German teenagers. And God help you if you wanted to stand in one place, because every half a minute, at least 46 people would elbow by you. The girls kept bumping into people they know and talking to them for 5 minutes (half an hour) each while I stood there with my hands in my pockets, behind my most paranoid eyes as Germans continued to bump into me again and again. Finally they decided to get our coats and leave. That naturally took 20 minutes (two hours) and finally we were back outside in the fresh, cold, rain-filled air. The line out the door literally stretched to the edge of the parking lot. That is NO EXAGGERATION. From the edge of the parking lot, up two flights of stairs, Germans from all over Offenburg and surrounding towns were actually waiting on line to get into Hell. I couldn't believe it.

So the worst was behind me, but now the party of three girls I was with had grown, as three other girls joined in, one of whom I remember from Rheinfest, an extremely attractive girl named Tanya, and another who looked exactly like the actress from Natural Born Killers only slightly more attractive. We stood out in the rain for a good half an hour (a REAL half an hour) debating what to do. They suggested "ins Kino gehen" (going to the movies) a few thousand times but I think it was just a joke. Other ideas included going to Europa park (the giant six-flags-like amusement park) where it was Oktoberfest. But this I believe was also just a joke because, after all, it was cold and raining. I was particularly glad it was cold and raining, because it fit my state of mind perfectly.

But eventually Simone lost patience and yelled at everyone saying she'd rather be doing anything other than standing there for a half an hour talking about what to do. So the three other girls got in there car and drove off and the three girls I was with originally packed into Simone's car and we drove off in search of a bar that the girls knew and trusted. It took forever to find a parking lot with free spaces but eventually we did, not before finding the other car with the other three girls and shouting at them across the road to meet us outside the Eis-Cafe (ice cream cafe). So we parked and waited for them in the rain outside the Eis-Cafe for a good twenty minutes before we saw any sign of their car, which we saw pull into the parking lot across the street, but then waited another 10 minutes before they actually made it to us. Then they decided on a destination and we headed off down the street to the Palazzo where they could drink Eis-Kaffe (ice-cream coffee).

The weather took a turn for the worse at this point, which made me smile. It started raining harder and lightning flashed off in the distance every now and then. As we were walking through the rain and the girls became soaked—which is of course a huge turn-on, making the beautiful ones at least twice as beautiful—it dawned on me that if I was a normal person I would be enjoying this. Here I was in fucking Germany hanging out with a bunch of beautiful German girls. To any other guy it would be a fantasy, but to me it was a nightmare. I accepted that my mood was not going to change just because of a thought like that, and I would continue to be miserable for the rest of the night.

When we got to the Palazzo it was closed, but there was a small open bar right across the street (actually in the MIDDLE of the street as the streets in Germany are fucking strange) so we went inside and the 7 of us all pulled chairs up to a table in the corner and checked out the menu. The waiter came and took everyone's orders. The girls ordered first, most of them getting Eis-Kaffee with one or two getting tee or some other weird non-alcoholic beverage, and I ordered a Bitburger (my favourite Pilsner). The girls looked amused, but I didn't care. My brain NEEDED beer at this point, and beer it would get.

So there I was, sitting in a German bar in Germany with Germans. I, the only guy in a party of 6 girls, 5 of whom were at least moderately attractive, 4 of whom were at least very attractive, 3 of whom were at least supermodel-level attractive and 2 of whom were mind-blowingly, heart-breakingly attractive: Tanya and Simone (the only girls of the 6 whose names I remember). And none of them were the least bit interested in me. It was as though God was dangling extreme beauty right in front of my face just to show me what I can never have. "Look at these extraordinary creations of mine, Kyle. Go ahead and try to talk to them...oh wait...YOU CAN'T because YOU DON'T SPEAK GERMAN!!! Hahahahaha...Jeses fucking Christ I'm so funny. Now open your mouth while I ejacualte on your face! Ha ha ha!!!"

Tanya was talking about how she's going to America on Tuesday, so I assumed she would ask me a couple of things. She asked me one question, which I assumed was how long am I staying in Germany and I said 1 year, but everyone laughed at me and she asked again, and I gave another wrong answer until Simone clarified to me that she was asking how long my flight here took. So that was the big question. I said 6 hours, but it takes longer going back. And that was the last time any of them talked to me, except for when I took out my cigarettes and offered them to anyone who wanted one. Three of the girls, including Simone, accepted with a "Danke Schön" and that was that.

I drank two beers as quickly as I could but was still not nearly at the level of drunkenness I wanted to be at, but the girls were ready to leave. Much to my delight, we were right in the middle of the storm, lightning and thunder erupting everywhere, furious cold rain pouring from the skies. I couldn't have asked for more appropriate weather. We dashed along the streets, the girls finding shelter wherever they could, under awnings and bus-stops, but it was futile, and all of us got soaked. The three girls who'd met us left and we said good-bye. That was the last I would see of Tanya.

Simone asked me if I would like to go home or go somewhere else, because she was going to stay out but at least one of the other girls was going back. I'd made up my mind to ride this ridiculous wave to the end, so I lied and said it didn't matter to me and I wasn't tired. If we went somewhere else I could order more beer, and the more I drank, the more amusing and less horrendous the situation would become. So we got back in Simone's car and we headed back towards Hell where the other car was still parked. But they tuned the radio to a station broadcasting the party, and Satan was no longer playing techno. The music was now actually pleasing to the girls, and I began to get a little scared. As we pulled into Hell's parking lot, the song being played was Shania Twain's "I Feel Like a Woman" with the DJ turning down the volume every time she sang "Oh oh oh oh" so that the Germans could drunkenly shout the line. Apparently the girls thought this was deliciously fun and they all decided to go back inside. This being my most hated song OF ALL TIME I had absolutely no desire to do that, not to mention I'd rather die and go to the actual Hell than to go back into the Music Club Offenburg.

So I asked if anyone was still going back, and told Simone I had no desire to go back. She looked disappointed but agreed to take me home. The other girls got out to go party and I took the front seat and Simone drove me back, listening to the madness on the radio for the whole 15-minute drive, during which the storm calmed down. Just before we reached the house where I was staying I apologised for being so boring, (which is, "Es tut mir leid, dass ich so langweilig bin). She said a couple of incomprehensible things to which I only responded, "ja ja ja." Then we were back and I thanked her for everything and said good-bye. I'm pretty certain that I will never see her or any of those girls ever again.

Back at the house I proceeded to get fucking wastedly hammered, smoke cigarrette after cigarette in an attempt to die of lung cancer by the end of the night (which failed unfortunately) and write the most angry, wasted journal entry I've ever written in which I clearly tell myself that if I ever believe again that any girl could be interested in me I deserve a good dose of reality and a firm slap in the face. There is no Hope, there has never been any Hope, and there never WILL be any Hope. Only lies. To live is to lie to yourself. The only Truth in life is death. And the most comforting thought for all of us is to know that no matter what, WE WILL ALL DIE.