Chapter 1

(m oo d: people I don´t like~UPSAHL)

"the way I l i v e my life is not the way I´m gonna remember it afterwards, it´s the way I f e e l it."

Sarah

I am bored. Bored of the society, that is around me all day long. My mother talks about her job all the time, as she always does and my father just stands on her right side quietly, in hope, that my mother doesn't want to include him into a conversation –but she'd never do that anyway, because she talks with pleasure about herself and her job.-because he doesn't like conversations in general. Tense he loosens his tie and tightens it up again, in an endless circle. The man standing across from my mother and who nods after every word she says, as if he was interested, for sure has no plan what she's even talking about. And his friend standing next to him just inspects her from top to bottom and I make a face by imagining what he's thinking. His wife seems to be tense like everyone in here and –as vain as she might be- she looks at her husband very jealously. She keeps stroking over her white blinking pearl chain and I need a moment to notice that I'm doing the same. Fastly I remove my hand from my matte golden chain, but now I don't know what to do with it, like with the rest of me. My thoughts circle around the most insignificant things in the Universe and when I hear the word profit out of my mothers' mouth again, I swear I pretand to have a heartattack. It feels uncomfortable to stand here and to see how all the people in here judge you by your external appearance, your salary and things like:

„How does your plan fort he next ten years look like?"

And I just want to answer: „How should I know how my plan for the damn next ten years looks like. Do you also have some space for spontaneity? No? Thank you.",

but instead I just say anything else, but you could never please them with your answer unless you say something about Harvard, Yale, Princeton, lawyer or marrying rich, anything like this. Those answers always turn around my stomach, hearing them and there were those really uncomfortable situations, when I even said them. It's that feeling you have to have as a Kleptomaniac, when you get arrested because of doing a robbery or to get sentenced for murder as a compulsive lier. You get sentenced for things you aren't even responsible for or am I wrong? Am I responsible for the whole shitty world I'm living in? My whole life feels like taking fresh air in Winter with wet hair. Cutting wind, like the people's eyes staring at you and lethal, but not because of a likely Pneumonia or Cystitis, but socially deadly. What's for people in this room at least just as bad as the physical death. One time in you don't stay in, but risk with every step to get kicked out again. And I do not understand , why everybody here wants to avoid this. For me it would be a blessing to get away from here forever. Out of this society, this life. I'm just here to finish school. Not to finish life.

„But of course you need to take care oft he taxes on income, or you'll end like our acquaintance Cindy, I guess...", my keyword to go. It's not the well known word profit, but mum starts to blaspheme abount aunt Cindy again and that's enough reason for me to friendly say good bye to the little, tense society standing around and the woman with the pearl chain prefers now to lay down her fingertips on her husband's shoulder, instead of constantly touching the chain. I turn around to the rest of all the tense people here,decide to take my way through their little rich-society-groups, deepened into their rich-society-conversations and go for a glass of illegal alcohol-consume. It's complicated for me to live in the country, where you aren't allowed to drink alcohol before the age of 21, but every idiot can shoot around with a weapon without any license.

Celebrations like that one are everyday life since my arrival in New York, but I even don't really know, if I'm here because anyone celebrates birthday or if the host just had fun by spending money for ostentatiously and overpriced decorations and the golden-glitter atmosphere. I think while sitting down on one oft he bar chairs and looking at a golden ball at the table in front of me, which some people in here would really call stylish. The bar is crowded by people. Seems like I'm not the only person to have the idea of bridging this lame party with drinking alcohol. Champagne-whyever she was named after an alcoholic drink-told me she'd persuad her parents to come here, then the evening at least wouldn't get that bad. Even though I do not understand, how you could even beg to come to a place like this. But in this case I would be terribly happy to have her with me. Champagne's parents don't appear often to celebrations like to this one, because they do not just feel too good for the normal citizens, but also for their own kind. And they really don't like letting her daughter to partys, charity-celebrations or to everything with alcohol or boys included. I guess she's the clichee of a rich, spoiled girl. She likes bridging boringness with spending money and I admit I'm suprised, she's not a mum yet. But 'til now my friend didn't appear and I think she's not gonna show up anytime soon. I bet she's with her boyfriend again. His name's Cham-I don't like him, he's damn idiotic- but they can't let their hands by themselves. It's unpleasant for anyone around them, but Champagne doesn't care. So I need to -above all as her best friend- endure this all day long. In any case she calls me that.

„Rum-Cola, please.", I say, as the barkeeper tabs his finger impatiently on the table and then disappears again with my received order. A couple minutes I just turn myself around and around on my bar chair and keep looking up to the vaulted ceiling, from which huge chandeliers, with sparkling diamond-pendants hang down, a bit like in a palace. But soon my interest for this activity sinks and I start looking around myself. A big difference between Champagne and me is our point of view towards strangers. She sees them as the persons packing her Chanel-dress into a paper-bag, after she showed her golden credit-card or as the people serving her breakfast with view on the Times Square. Further she's not interested in strangers, apart from attractive strangers, with good body and male. I think humans are interesting in many ways. They are... we are so imperfect in everything we do. You can read so much out of their actions. Like the young man standing a couple meters apart from me at the bar. He's big and skinny and his suit looks borrowed. He keeps on drinking out of his wine glass-I can see his nervosity, by the little waves his drink makes, just because he holds it-, but it won't be enough to contact the young woman, who's standing some meters away from him and talks to two single men as it seems. He shouldn't try and he knows. He doesn't fit in here the way I don't feel accompanying in here and the men are well-built and I bet charming. The dark-haired woman likes the attention she gets and the guy at the bar is a nervous wreck. The barkeeper puts the glass with the brown drink right in front of me onto the table and I lightly scare myself, because I was so much into stalking the one, who wants to fit in and the one, who already does like a clichee. I turn around my glass some seconds, until I drink a sip and another sip, until it's empty. And the bridge to surviving my evening starts building itsself.