Just Kiss Me One Last Time by Brian Hesse (reading books for 5 year olds .txt) 📖

find the classical works of Richard Wagner that appealing to digest. This is not good old-fashioned snobbery I am talking. In fact, I find that today, I would much rather the murky vomit stained depths of the beer cellar much more satisfying to the senses than a high culture event. Even on a happy social occasion, the cultural elite must strain under the pressure of adhering to the unspoken principles socially acceptable behavior. I remember straining that night just to keep myself from falling asleep, and I had my Mothers sharp elbow jabbing into my ribs to remind me that even a nine-year-old boy had to keep up appearances.

 

But it is not only boredom that slowed time, making two years feel as if four. The worst part of that life period was living a lie. For two years I divided my time working at the trading company, watching my Father rapidly age and die of heart failure, and avoiding Ada Myer as much as possible. Not that there was anything wrong with Ada. She was a normal young lady with the same hopes and dreams of any young woman in Germany. She wanted to break free from this town. She wanted to see the world but not through a lens of war-torn poverty and struggle. I felt sorry for her in many ways. After making love she would lay her head on my chest and talk sleepily about things that she could only read about in books. She would speak of the rolling emerald hills of Ireland, the hot rolling sands of Egypt, and the rolling waves off then Western coast of the United States. Always rolling this or rolling that as if she visited these places before. Maybe she had in a countless number of dreams trapped inside her head as she lay next to me at night. I felt sorry for her because she does not know how alone, she is. Everyone is born, lives, and dies alone, but at least if you have someone to love, you live and die alone in the comforting illusion of togetherness. Sometimes I do not know which is better. To live an illusion and face suffering as that illusion falls apart, or live the truth of aloneness, and accept suffering as a natural part of human existence. Either way, one day I will shatter her illusion, and tell her the truth about me, but for now, I must honor my brother and keep the flame of her illusion alive.

 

Chapter VIII Decision

 

The time of coming out to Ada was not how I planned a countless time before in my daydreams at the Trading Company, or idle nights alone at the family flat. I daydreamed a thousand times over explaining to Ada my sexuality, that I was sorry to her, and would always remain the best of friends. The scenario ended differently each time. Sometimes she would hug me and tell me everything was as it should be, just before affirming our eternal friendship. Other times she slapped me hard, crying as she stormed out the bedroom door. But in my dreams, she killed me every time. Revolver, knife, bludgeoning. A dozen different ways to die, and I suffered them all. None of this happened of course. Even worse than reliving the past, is holding on to any definitive outcome of the future. The future never works out as planned because we are never the same person then as we are now. This principle of constant change is, I am convinced, a universal truth governing g all life; however, sometimes events so outrageous and beyond control, change who we are in the present. Murder, even accidental will surely change an individual, and on November fifth, nineteen-twenty-three, murder solved my problem of deciding when I was to leave Ada Myer, my brother Hans, the Trading company, and everything I knew as “my world.”

 

Chapter IX Turning Point

 

“Karl, go to Mrs. Frieser’s house and clean out the basement of her flat. She is old, and has nobody to do it for her,” stated my brother, as he hurriedly left our flat on his no doubt to a Nazi SA meeting. His meetings were becoming more frequent now. I had a strange uneasy feeling that something violent was in the air. There were several clashes between Nazi SA brownshirts and Communist agitators. The economy in Frankfurt is picking up but this seems to only agitate the various political factions in Germany. Nightly news stories of clashes in Munich and Berlin indicate a growing restlessness in society, and Frankfurt is not immune.

 

Mrs. Frieser is very old. She is a good friend of the family, and my Father when alive, would often send us boys to help her in times of need. Life is hard enough without having to shovel snow, paint your flat, carry your groceries and clean out your own basement, when you are ninety-two. So, I was glad to go help the old lady.

 

“Now make sure you sweep good Karl, I don’t want any rats making a nest down there,” stated Mrs. Freiser, as I was walking out her door with broom and dustpan in hand. I could hear her calling after me with some more useless instruction as I walked down her basement stairs.

 

“And don’t forget to lock the door after you have finished. I will give you some money in a few weeks.”

 

“Ok Mrs. Freiser, I called back. I won’t forget.”

 

So, without another thought or, care of any kind of compensation for the work, I began cleaning her basement. The room itself is no bigger than twenty feet square. I remember thinking how quickly I will be done and on my way for another evening of play acting with Ada. I was looking at an old coo cuckoo clock sitting in the far corner of the unlit room. The only lighting came from the natural sunlight of the half-opened cellar door. A beam of yellow sunlight, laced with swirling clouds of kicked up dust, shone steadily on the slanted roof of the clock. This was a seventeenth century design created by the Black Forest Clockmakers. I could not fathom why such an antique would be sitting so alone and neglected in the darkened tomb of a basement. I wondered, poetically, if this ray of light was the first to touch the still shined varnish of the clocks face. Two small doors are seated at the clocks top, ready to open at twice twelve each day, to display the cuckoo bird extended, I imagine, on a small wooden peg (the perch). I knew this was an expensive antique, because the wheel apparatus of the piece was carved of wood, and not brass. What a shame, I thought, that such an antique may never again grace someone’s silent lonely room.

 

“Hey fag, you thought you were going to get away with your shit,” came the familiar voice of Peter Luther. But this time he sounded a bit off, as if he had cotton stuffed deep into his flaring nostrils. I could hear the homicidal rage just under the surface, but I dared not turn around. My brain instinctively searched frantically for something to defend myself. I was not strong like Roland. This was a contest I was about to lose, and by the guttural sound of his voice, death will be the price paid by the vanquished.

 

Just as I forced the courage to turn around, having dispelled any notion of finding a suitable weapon to aid in my inevitable escape, I felt solid muscle wrap tightly around my throat, like a boa tightly contracting its muscles to paralyze its prey. My world became fuzzy. I lost all auditory sensation except for a faint ringing in my left ear. My right seemed completely blocked. I could not exhale the breath I gasped the moment I felt the muscles tighten against my throat. I believe, although I am still unsure, but I think I felt Peter fully erect as he pressed his body tightly against mine. The world grew darker and I knew I must act. I reached for the antique clock that I was admiring just a moment ago and put it to good use. With clock in hands I threw my arms upward and back as hard as my oxygen deprived muscles would allow. I did not hear the scream, but I suppose there was one, for Mrs. Freiser called from the top of the stairs, “Karl is everything ok down there. Should I come down?”

 

I quickly came to my senses and replied in a shaky hoarse voice, “I’m fine. I just tripped on some wood.”

 

There was a moment pause. I was not even concerned about looking behind me for Peter. I assumed he had fled with a busted nose, and nothing more than a wounded pride.

 

“Ok then. When you are finished just make sure to lock the door. I am going out for a spot of tea with the ladies.”

I felt a wave of relief come over my body, or maybe this was just the warm sensation of oxygen rich returning its normal course. In any case, my relief quickly turned to horror as I turned to see Peter laying in a sticky dark red pool of his own blood. I could not believe that I hit him that hard, and I was correct in this original assumption. I can only assume that Peter received a serious concussion from his encounter with Roland in the park. I must have caused his unhealed head wound to worsen, but this was two years ago. Possibly an aneurism. I almost rushed out the door in my panic, intent on informing the police, but luckily came to my senses just a few feet outside the cellar door. The moment of pure sunshine, devoid of dirt, floating dust, and the smell of damp and newly spilled blood, felt liberating. My initial reaction was to just run. Leave the body and run stupid, I thought. But this would not be logical. Despite the poor quality of detectives in that day and age, finding a link between Peters body and my bloody hand would not take a flash of insightful genius. I would never make it to Berlin. I frantically searched the basement and found a rust stained shovel in the corner opposite of where I found the antique clock, now shattered to pieces on the floor.

 

The next several hours consisted of wrestling with my conscience with each shovel full of dirt I placed in the shallow grave. The dirt floor of the basement was loose and easy to shovel. With little effort I managed to dig a grave at least four feet deep, six feet in length, and three feet in width. I was numb and tired, and as the hours sailed by, I thought more of Roland. I would be leaving him soon for, what I sadly surmised, the very last time. At least two hundred and seventy miles will separate Roland and myself, but even if I did go to prison for this crime, there is no guarantee that I would reside in the same prison, let alone the same cell. If there were even the most miniscule possibility of living with Roland, even behind bars, I would turn myself in immediately, but I am not certain Roland is even alive. It is common knowledge that many homosexuals die in prison from, shall we say, unnatural causes. The officer on watch will simply list the death as a coronary, despite the prisoner being in his prime. The thought of running to the station and simply describing the act as self-defense, which it was, would do no good. This was the only way, at least the only way to ensure my own continued survival.

 

There came a point during all of this shoveling that I thought I saw the first layer of thin dirt I shoveled into the hole rise and fall with respiration, but I dismissed this as