3

"Hey Karl, want to take a piss off your balcony?"

Jurgen Schneider is one of my few friends. I don't know why he is my friend. We have so little in common. I like the beauty of nature and art. He likes to kill baby bunnies and wouldn't know a Picasso asshole. But nonetheless, he is my friend.

"Not today Jurgen, I just want to sit here awhile," I replied. I really didn't want to just sit here, but I really didn't have an urge to piss off my balcony, or torture Mrs. Koning's German Shepherd. Three years of working in the,makeshift library turned hospital, on Gunther Street, changed me inside. Endless days of changing bandages stained crimson and brown with blood, sweat, and floating particles of dirt. Endless nights of listening to the screams of those refusing to die and the low guttural moans of those accepting their fate, changes a young man. I am just seventeen, but I have smelled the sickeningly sweet odor of death more times than I can count.

I can still smell death sitting here in the fresh breeze of Frankfurt gardens with my only friend, Jurgen Schneider.

"What happened to you Karl? You are no fun anymore," asked Jurgen,

looking at me with an expression mixed with wonder and resentment.I felt rage swelling within me like a balloon stretching under the growing pressure. I understand his wonderment of my transformation. I understand his unspoken fear of a potential ending of our friendship. But this did not cause my anger to subside.I blurted out harshly,

"maybe I am just tired of these stupid childish games." I stood up and came within inches of Jurgen's shocked expression. By now the rage was unstoppable. As if watching an actor play his part on an elaborate set, I was no longer in control. I am a mere spectator now. with my tirade. "Maybe Jurgen, I find it hard to play pranks as I watch men without limbs, without faces, without lives stumble along the street aimlessly trapped in the horror of the past. Maybe I am seventeen and feel guilty that I am not among the dead, diseased, and broken. Maybe, just maybe, you should grow the fuck up also."I would like to lie and say that I felt regret at having said these words to my best friend. But I do not regret my outburst. In fact, looking at his childish dumbfounded expression, gives me the urge to pounce on his face. To just let go of years of pent up sorrow...of pent up sexual aggression. I am not a learned man, but I know my feelings and where they originate. Like any person who has lived for any length of time in their own head, I am truly empathetic to my own

I missed my crush Roland. I missed caring for his battered body. I missed the feel of running a warm sponge across the hard ripples of his bare stomach. I wanted to die from my loneliness.

"Fine Karl. I don't want to hang out with a fag anyway. Oh yes, we all know your queer, and your world is coming to an end. You and all your freak fag buddies."

As I watched Jurgen walk away toward Gunther Street, kicking at the long blades of dew-covered grass along his way, I felt numb. I felt confused. I felt scared. How can he possibly know what I have been feeling inside all these years? How can he know my deepest secret fantasies swirling above my bed like torturing demons? I began to ask myself questions that I never considered before. Am I a freak?Is my love for another man wrong, immoral, punishable by hell fire, as preached in every church in Germany and, as I imagine, throughout the world? Are my days numbered? I felt a chill pass through my body with this last question. Although there are no signs that homosexuals are to be officially punished, the possibility of such action is not so far fetched in my mind. People are angry since our defeat in war, and when people are angry,they need someone to blame. Will it be those deemed amoral? Will it be Jews?

I sat there under the shade of a large elm with my head resting against its rotted bark. My eyes closed, reliving the past few moments of our falling out, I could feel the back of my head settling gently into a large groove of the bark. I imagined my entire body slowly absorbed into the tree until nothing of my existence is left. My stomach feels heavy like a led weight resting on my bladder. If Jurgen knows about me, then everyone must. I am afraid to open my eyes. I can feel the stares of the passerby's piercing my mind with their looks of condemnation. Images of hell fire grow steadily out of the blackness in front of my eyes.

Karl is that you?" came a familiar voice from above. I dared not answer. Is this it? Is this my final judgement? Has Jurgen come back to put me out of misery?The hell fire recedes now and is replaced by an image of Jurgen standing above me with a thick log, ready to bring down on my head scattering bits of bone and bloody meat amongst the dew-covered grass.The voice repeats its question,

"Karl is that you?" Cautiously I open my eyes ready to face the final blow that will send me to the fiery depths of hell. Because isn't that what we have been taught is the destination of those who don't fit in.

"Roland, its you!" I exclaimed, but immediately regretting my response. This was nothing like my nightly fantasy of meeting him again. In that lucid dream state, I embrace him tenderly felling his hard muscles under the softness of my fingertips.So,I tried again.

"Corporal Aust, so good to see your not dead." I replied. This response was worse than the last, and I instantly regretted it.My mind went to immediate ease as I observed a soft kind-hearted smile take shape from his rose-colored full lips. My heart leapt as I watched the tip of his tongue gently roll across his upper lip, as he sat down close enough to feel his warmth merge with mine.

"I heard what just happened with your friend," he stated looking away so as not to cause any more undo embarrassment.What a polite and considerate man I thought to myself. Does he not know that not only the immediate past was blurred by his arrival, but the entire past and infinite future is obliterated into nothingness with just his presence.

"Oh that," I stated, trying to brush it off like I did not know what Jurgen was talking about when he called me a fag.

"That was nothing. That was just Jurgen being his usual dumb self."

We sat in silence for what seemed like an eternity but was only a matter of minutes. I was not taken off guard by the realization that with anyone else in the world, such a silence would be maddeningly unbearable, but with him, I could sit in silence forever.

"You know Karl, I was awake every time you visited me at the hospital."My heart continued its rapid thud beating a hole through my chest like a hammer. Could he possible of heard me whisper how I loved him? Could he possibly know how my heart ached for him through long cold nights of confusion, passion, and rage?Before I could speak, he continued,

"Its not safe to talk here. Follow me."We did not walk too far, just to the other end of the park. Here next to a white porcelain bird bath is an old wooden park bench. Nothing in this park is very much cared for and the bench reflects the changing priorities since the end of the war. Grass grows wildly where at one time was neatly trimmed to just the proper aesthetic height. Trees grow until limbs are brushing unnaturally against the dis-proportioned grass, where at one time, a gardener gave great care with his art of trimming and pruning. This bench, once painted a brilliantly bright red, now peeling paint like a leper peeling patches of skin from a diseased and frail body. None of that mattered.

We were alone, in an isolated part of the garden, and my dream was about to come true.

"I heard you Karl. I heard you profess your love for me. I have a confession. I was of the mind to grab your throat and squeeze as tight as I could feeling the righteousness well up inside me, like a good German doing his duty."He paused, giving me enough time for the tears to well up behind my eyes. I am alone, I thought to myself. Is there no one else like me in this world?He continued,

"But then I felt your touch Karl. I felt your soft caring hands glide across my skin. No revulsion at my wounds came from those beautiful hands Karl. I realized that I was beginning to fall in love with you."He came closer to my lips with his. I could feel the warm moistness of his mouth touching mine before we even touched. He placed his hand on the back of my head and pulled my closer until our lips finally met. He held me there for a long time, as I drifted into a euphoria,I never thought existed in such a concrete world of hatred, war, and prejudice. I will never forget that moment, as well as, the ending of that moment, because all things are impermanent. Happiness as well as sadness have the seeds of destruction sown into their very fabric.

"Hey faggots!" came the voice of Jurgen Schneider from across the park.

"Yea, here we go. Gonna kill some fags today," came another familiar voice. This was the voice of Peter Luther. He is about my age, seventeen, but built like a concrete house. His days, since I can remember, have consisted of lifting bales of hay from sun up to sundown. I am not even certain if Roland could take them.

"Run Karl," stated Roland, as he gave me a light push off the tattered bench.

"I'm staying with you, I replied," noticing the strain of concern in my voice. I was not concerned for my own safety. ALL I could think of was him.He grabbed me by the shoulders and kissed me quickly on the lips and said,

"I can take care of them. I will come for you later. Its not worth getting yourself hurt. Now go!"I reluctantly began to run in the direction of the oncoming boys. I looked back as I was running and watched as Roland gave a right hook to Jurgen's face. As if in slow motion, I could see a spray of blood with what looked like tiny white shards flying through the air, as Jurgen laid motionless on the grass. I ran some more still watching the fight and tripped, feeling my legs elevated off the ground.

My head hit something hard and sharp sending stabbing pain into my vibrating skull. I picked myself up feeling dazed by the blow to my head. Warm sticky blood trickled from my head causing thick clots to form in my disheveled hair. I looked and saw Peter lying next to Jurgen, both motionless in the red stained grass. I immediately changed direction staggering toward Roland, now sitting on the decrepit park bench. He looked back at me giving me a signal with his right arm to stay back. It was apparent that his left arm, the arm I delicately bandaged and re bandaged in the hospital all those many months before, was injured again and hanging heavily to his side. I stopped just in time to see three policemen in the standard blue buttoned uniform and spiked helmet running toward Roland. I ran like a coward.I ran because I knew that although homosexuals were not persecuted in public, the dreaded paragraph 175 was in force, and gay prisoners did not fair well in German prisons. Is this the last time I would see him? My heart ached at the thought.

You see, all happinessand all sadness end abruptly.