07-10-2025, 02:50 PM
It was one of those days when I just didn't care about anything... didn't care what I still had to do, didn't care if I was expected, I just had to get out of this eternal routine, these always same feelings that come up in me... I don't belong there, don't belong to this. It wasn't the first time that I had decided not to go home after school, but to take a side road instead and leave the city behind me. Sure, I was expected for lunch, and it's not that I didn't want to be there, but on this day I longed even more for that place, my place. Yes, somehow the open, lonely landscape was the only place where I really felt safe and somehow also secure - not that the city scared me, no, but somehow I didn't dare to be the person I really am there... Nobody wants people like that, I've been told that often enough so far. Without a word of farewell, I swung myself onto my bike, stopped at the bakery to pick up some provisions in the form of sandwiches and cold cocoa, and then I left the city as if in a hurry, on a path that became narrower and narrower and could ultimately only be described as a sandy road. The road led directly on a hill, the perfect vantage point - on one side was the entire city, others liked to say somewhat pejoratively ‘our village’, about 50 m below me - on the other side only hills and forest, occasionally interspersed with arable land, individual houses and numerous lakes. I wanted to go there, and I had planned to stay there until the sun disappeared below the horizon. It was late March, and the first day this year when it was really pleasantly warm, so that the jacket could finally stay at home... Winter had kept me from going to ‘my place’ for the last few weeks, where I had been every few days last autumn after I found it.
I left the hill and rode through the forest on abandoned narrow paths, going up and down through increasingly dense pine forest, experiencing nature in Germany... I didn't meet a single person on these routes, and that was exactly why I wanted to be here. No, I don't hate people, if I did, I would probably have an easier time in life; it wasn't people per se, but what they did. At school, I was often in the middle of it, from the outside I was certainly not considered an outsider, I talked about the same nonsense from yesterday's evening programme on Sat1 and about the experiences at the last party... but in my mind I was somewhere else entirely. My circle of friends, yes, sometimes I called it that, this circle was no more than a provider of activities, if Matze wanted to go to the cinema, he just called the others to see if we wanted to come with us. But woe betide if Hendrik called us and told us about his troubles in the last few days, then it was ‘Leave us alone with your shit’... no, nobody said that, superficially we were there for each other, it was different.
Whoever caused grief, whoever showed themselves to be a spoilsport, was just not taken to the party the next time. But basically, the whole thing wasn't a problem, because apparently nobody had any grief... well, at least that's how it seemed. I can't remember a single occasion when we had any kind of in-depth conversation, when any kind of problem came up... no, our circle of friends was a circle of entertainment, the whole point of it was to have someone to chat with at school, to go to parties together on Friday nights, and now and then one or two activities in between, like a round at the café. In between, it's every man for himself again and you just have to see how you get your things done. And everyone seemed to accept that as a fact of life. Yes, really, that's apparently how it is.
I still remember the times of yore, when we were together like a family, I still remember the adventure games we used to play back then, we split into two groups and disappeared into the forest, the aim of the game was to secretly ambush the other group and scare them, and often it was the case that nobody really knew who the hunted was... It was actually a stupid game, but it was fun and you could really feel like you belonged.
Back then, it was just part of sticking together, it was just a real friendship - back then we were also too young to be infected by all the crap out there, we were just still people, children, not media zombies or economic robots. Yes, those times are long gone, at some point it started with television and magazines, soon people only talked about television, then computers came along, then you suddenly had to be cool, tried to get rid of all friends who weren't cool and instead looked for cool friends... back then I was one of the first to become unpopular, to no longer receive invitations because I wasn't cool enough. Even back then, I longed for the old games, for being together. I was criticised for not growing up, and at some point I identified with it. The old friendships, the togetherness, all gone, but now the social constraints took hold... To be cool, you had to have seen cool TV shows, the ones that mostly ran on RTL and SAT1, and then talk about them throughout the breaks. Of course, as a boy you had to go out to catch girls, but it should never come to actually falling in love. No, it was just part of it, to have one, she should be as pretty as possible and look good at parties. Well, you grew up and this youth cult came to an end, instead it was now about to secure a professional base, and so they all came with their study guides, stock market prices ... now you had to be no longer cool, but make a good picture. Just no planes in the classroom, maybe the teacher tells it to the future boss ... just do not attract attention, who attracts attention becomes unemployed ... Yes, that's how I interpreted it, I didn't know why standing out or falling out was so frowned upon, and I still don't know today, I just noticed that suddenly no one was talking about their previous interests. It started in the days of the youth cult and only got worse later. If you're not like everyone else, you're out of the game. If, to make matters worse, you also interrupt the endless entertainment and amusement with serious topics, you're out twice. Yes, the latter was the worst... don't even come to school without laughing for a day, otherwise you won't be invited again.
And at some point I had stopped laughing. It must have been a few years ago that I started to feel somehow alienated, no longer part of it. I couldn't understand why the others lived their lives the way they did, why the things that used to be of interest suddenly didn't count for anything anymore. Why friendship no longer really meant friendship. Somehow I no longer felt like participating, I cancelled more and more often when I was invited, it just didn't mean anything to me anymore.
So I just went along with it every day, chatted a bit, occasionally went along to the activities, always grinning. And there were quite a few days when I could have thrown myself at everything within reach. ‘Hey, don't we want to go to Hamburg for shopping?’... my answer was something like “No, I still have to study” and my thoughts were - what the hell am I supposed to do shopping in Hamburg, I don't give a damn about consumerism and I don't need to spend money to be happy... at the same time I thought about what it would be like to plan an adventure holiday together... no, I didn't say a word... otherwise I would have been out of favour. So I picked out the things that were still bearable, a visit to the cinema, for example, so as not to be completely left out. And the frustration rose in me, I drove through the city, and every stupidly laughing person my age I encountered only made it worse, because I knew what was behind this laughter... it wasn't laughter from the heart.
I saw all the damned concrete blocks where I would later work if I were a ‘marketing assistant’, for example – I didn't even know what that meant, I was standing in front of it, and I didn't even want to know what it meant. I didn't care about anything... and it wasn't long ago, last summer, I started feeling the need to just leave the city for a while, so I just rode my bike out, further and further, into the forest, no more ‘marketing assistants’, no more stupid laughter, no more concrete blocks, far away from it all, I suddenly felt really good again, yes, on warm summer days I enjoyed just riding into the forest, looking for a clearing, lying down in the sun and enjoying the warmth... not a soul in sight, and I liked it that way. Sometimes I would lie there for hours and enjoy the summer warmth. And while I was sitting there, I dreamt of how it used to be, dreamt of good friends, sitting together by the river, swimming down the rapids together, sitting around the campfire together in the evening, talking about the people ‘out there’, moving closer together, knowing that we belong together. Just us, the river, and our tents.
Forget all the same old drinking parties, where the more frustration the more drinking, until you've drunk enough to forget the frustration. Forget all the idiots who came to school in a suit to secure their place in the next largest office block, forget all the RTL afternoon shows where you could only tell the difference between people and puppets by their movements... Yes, and the whole thing was just a dream. A dream that I knew couldn't be realised, maybe I would have found someone who had similar dreams, but when it comes to implementing them, graduating from high school stands in the way, after graduating from university, looking for a job, and finally starting a family... Family, the institution where the ideal world is created every year at Christmas, only to be followed by the return of everyday life, which all too often is not an ideal world.
Yes, it was a self-deception on all levels that constantly wanted to be carried out around me, and I no longer felt like going along with it. I wanted to finally feel alive again, and the greatest feeling of being alive, of being human, I still had out here... and I was always drawn to places where I didn't meet ‘the others’, who didn't appreciate the atmosphere here at all. But at the same time, I hoped to meet someone here who didn't belong to the others, someone who was on the run just like me... yes, I longed for this person, imagined him, and enjoyed the idea of having found this person.
And somehow this longing also caused me difficulties, because it was more than the longing for a good friend, no, it was also the longing for a person I could hold in my arms, a longing for security, and I always thought of a boy, dreaming of holding this boy in my arms and being allowed to enjoy his closeness... was I gay because of that? I couldn't deny it, it was just the way it was, I was attracted to boys, yes, even at school I sometimes met one or the other whose gaze intoxicated me, like a rush, because on the one hand I really liked looking this person in the eye without attracting attention, but on the other hand it made me feel even more like I didn't belong, even more lost among the others. If I were like everyone else, with the same goals in mind, only with the difference of being attracted to boys instead of girls, I might face an obstacle, but I could overcome it. But I'm not one of the others, I can't find my way into it somehow, and I don't want to. At least I never wanted to, but since I clearly felt for the first time a year ago that I was attracted to a boy, since then I somehow wish I could just be like the others, belong, because it would just make life easier... but I know that would just be self-deception.
‘Gay’ – I couldn't identify with that, because this term simply stood for more than love of the same sex; a whole way of life was associated with it. And it was precisely the world from which I actually wanted to break away, a world of superficiality, conformity, relationships without real togetherness, love... that's how I perceived it, it may have been prejudices and probably was, but that was all I could experience, I didn't know any gays in my circle. Yes, I read stories, coming-out reports, ads, everything I could find on the internet, and never did I really recognise my feelings, no, there were one or two exceptions, individual sections of a story that I liked. Where love was also a deep friendship, where the feeling of togetherness was really conveyed, yes, I longed for that, just to have someone I could like, with whom I could share everything. Yes, and these feelings were only a part of me, not my whole life, I didn't have to reflect what people understood by ‘being gay’ because of that – no, I wasn't gay, maybe from the other side of the river, occurred to me one day as I was crossing the bridge of a wide river that connected two lakes.
Yes, there were many days last summer that I spent in solitude out there, thinking about it, and somehow I lost even more touch with our old circle of friends, who had long since only existed in our language. And it was these doubts that sometimes took away the feeling of freedom out there, where I left everything that upset me. If I knew that I could find the people I was looking for, these clouds would surely quickly disperse, but how could I succeed?
Today, after the long winter, was unusually warm and the pine forest began to smell of rising essential oils and warmed sandy earth. I enjoyed the warmth, the smell and the light. Here, far from the city, I felt liberated and transported back to the old, carefree days when we were still playing warriors in the forest... Yes, I wished I could see everything again through the eyes of that time, without the eternal questions of whether and how my dreams could ever be realised.
I had travelled this route countless times, each time I headed for the same familiar place down by the lake, but today it was a small side path that had taken my fancy. I turned off and just wanted to see where it might lead, fully expecting that I would have to turn back anyway. The forest became quite dense and the path always seemed to run along the top of this sandy ridge, at least there were no more ups and downs.
At some point the ground became so sandy that the wheels spun and I had no choice but to continue on foot; I didn't want to turn back anymore, the distance already travelled was too long. And so it was already late afternoon when the path suddenly led steeply downhill. I had never seen such steep slopes here before, but well, there must have been a reason why this landscape was associated with Switzerland. In front of me, a view opened up into a wide, densely forested valley, bordered by trees on both sides, in which a small lake was hidden.
I slid more or less down the steep, trampled sandy path and quickly found myself at the bottom in a rather dense, damp and also quite cool forest. From here on, I only had the choice of continuing along the edge of the valley floor in either direction. Yes, with a little effort you could still ride straight ahead, and so I headed towards the lake and was relatively amazed to find a jetty and a narrow sandy beach running along the hillside. A wooden paddle boat was moored at the jetty, which still appeared to be completely usable, and to top it all off, there was also a small, self-built wooden shed. The whole thing amazed me a little, because my usual place on the lake was certainly not as remote as this one, and the whole lake was also a bit bigger, and there was not a single jetty and not a single boat to be found. The whole thing seemed a little eerie to me, so far off the beaten track and yet too interesting to continue.
The first thing I did was to check out the wooden shed. I looked through the keyhole (dark), shook the door (locked). It didn't even have a window, which was hardly surprising... It wouldn't have been difficult to break into the shed, but I didn't know why it was there or whether it belonged to anyone, so I left it. Yes, hunger finally moved me to go to the jetty and enjoy bread and cocoa, with birdsong and frog croaking as an accompanying concert. The remoteness had an effect, no one used the path along the valley, a real idyll by the lake.
I dangled my feet under the jetty and wondered if this place wasn't much better than the previous one. Maybe I would always come here in future, paddle around the lake in a boat in summer... It's so much easier to just forget everything and take life easy. Yes, maybe I would even open the shed, the paddles are probably stored there, and if there's a thunderstorm, I would know where to put them. The slope would be perfect for sand boarding, you take a flexible board with a smooth surface, attach two ropes at the front, smooth surface on the sand, tighten the ropes and off you go. Well, actually I should be studying for my A-levels... it's just around the corner, and I've done more or less nothing, my parents have been asking, sometimes intrusively, yes, yes...
My heart almost stopped, the shock was in my bones... I felt something on my shoulder, I turned around, sure to see a look of pure terror, someone drew back - I was so shocked that I couldn't even see who or what was standing there, only that it was moving, and after a few seconds the shock and turned into nervous shakiness. Then I saw a young man standing there, maybe two or three years older than me. He was certainly half a head taller than me, had medium-length dark brown hair and was looking in my direction with frozen brown eyes.
The terror was still too deep within me, I couldn't utter a word, nor could he... then, after what seemed like an eternity, he asked me who I was and what I was doing there. Well, still looking a bit scared as I sat on the jetty and without looking him in the eye even once, I described how I ended up here, and of course took the opportunity to ask him about this place. Yes, my suspicion had been confirmed, he, named Manuel, had found this place here as a teenager and had been coming here again and again ever since, now long out of school, working as a gardener in the city's green spaces.
As we asked each other questions, we realised that there were things that connected us; he too had always had trouble fitting in at school, but not only that... he was downright rejected at school, insulted, he said. I could never claim that I was rejected, no, I was basically a student like everyone else, never really stood out, I kept to myself what I thought about the others and pretended to fit in... Yes, over time I had really learned to keep my thoughts to myself and just not to stand out, because when I hadn't mastered this game yet, every critical comment put me one step further outside, and I wanted to avoid that... so I played along on the outside, and was also reasonably back in our so-called circle of friends - it really was one - inside.
He, on the other hand, was apparently a real outsider, did badly at school, was rejected by everyone... when I asked why, he kept telling me about his poor performance and his often embarrassing behaviour at school... I didn't want to accept that as the reason; there had to be more to being on the outside than he described to me. Yes, while I was trying hard to find out more and more about him, I only really realised that he had sat down with me at the jetty. Yes, I only just understood what had happened... here, in a place far away from my usual frustrations, I met a person with whom I could talk, talk about the things I had always wanted to talk about but never could. A lonely person who longs for another person just as much as I do... and this person was now sitting next to me, and I felt an incredibly beautiful feeling of security arise in me, for the first time without pangs of conscience, no, a pure, liberating feeling. I looked timidly over to him, as he sat next to me, towering over me by almost a head height when sitting, to his rough, certainly not flawless facial skin, until I had captured his whole face from the side... From the side, I had seen a rather narrow face and an incredibly pleasant look, completely without this artificial laughter, so wonderfully genuine and deep, but also a little sad or depressed. And I felt so safe sitting there at his side, he next to me on the jetty... I could have sat there forever, no matter what the weather might bring.
Evening fell, the sun was low and no longer hit the lake, it would get cooler, but I didn't care at the moment. He became quieter and quieter when I asked him why he was really so rejected at school, as I had never experienced... there must have been something. And then it burst out of him... It was his parents‘ house, yes, his mother was unfaithful and moved out, his father became addicted to alcohol and loved to beat him up, and obviously they had heard about it at school, yes, they didn't want to have anything to do with him because of his parents’ house, he was probably considered uncool, I thought. And he probably didn't have any money to go shopping in Hamburg either.
He had already moved out, completed his apprenticeship and started his job in the city when his father was finally arrested for drunk driving and is currently still in rehab. Yes, a common family drama, as it is sold in every SAT1 or RTL afternoon programme to attract a large audience, but I had never encountered anything like it in real life. It seemed to belong to the world of television, but certainly not to my life or my environment. I was glad that he had spoken to me, but he didn't say another word, just stared at the lake, for about a minute, until I just got the courage to put my arm around his neck and pull him over to me, until he had leaned all the way onto my lap, embraced him with both arms and pressed his back against me, and when he still couldn't utter a sound, I just held him tighter – until he burst into tears. Yes, I held him in my arms and didn't let go, felt an incredible sense of security and warmth well up in me, laid my head on his side, stroked his belly and simply forgot everything that had been on my mind until then. I only felt him, how he allowed himself to be held by me and realised what affection had arisen in me. I knew that I would not let him go so quickly; he now belonged to me and I to him.
I pressed my face against his, felt his rough skin, stroked through his soft dark brown hair, felt his warmth... I had never asked him if he was attracted to boys, but what did it matter... I just wanted to like him, just feel this closeness, this security. Suddenly he sat up, took me by the arm and pulled me down to the beach, lay down there, I lay down next to him and we put our arms around each other, wrapped our legs around each other and just stayed there, face to face, I looked into his deep brown eyes, how he looked at me, a slight twinge in my heart, so much I was touched by his eyes, a tingling in my whole body when I held him very tightly to me and then he held me too, I felt his arms around me, held his body tightly, felt his build through the lumberjack shirt he was wearing, the warmth of his breath on my face, saw his loving smile, a smile that I knew came from deep inside. I had never felt so secure, so loved, so deeply inside myself. The tingling deep in my stomach did not let up; it was like a dream. We just lay there, darkness fell over us, with it the cold, but we didn't care at all. Somehow I was beside myself, because I couldn't even begin to comprehend what this day would mean to me.
I left the hill and rode through the forest on abandoned narrow paths, going up and down through increasingly dense pine forest, experiencing nature in Germany... I didn't meet a single person on these routes, and that was exactly why I wanted to be here. No, I don't hate people, if I did, I would probably have an easier time in life; it wasn't people per se, but what they did. At school, I was often in the middle of it, from the outside I was certainly not considered an outsider, I talked about the same nonsense from yesterday's evening programme on Sat1 and about the experiences at the last party... but in my mind I was somewhere else entirely. My circle of friends, yes, sometimes I called it that, this circle was no more than a provider of activities, if Matze wanted to go to the cinema, he just called the others to see if we wanted to come with us. But woe betide if Hendrik called us and told us about his troubles in the last few days, then it was ‘Leave us alone with your shit’... no, nobody said that, superficially we were there for each other, it was different.
Whoever caused grief, whoever showed themselves to be a spoilsport, was just not taken to the party the next time. But basically, the whole thing wasn't a problem, because apparently nobody had any grief... well, at least that's how it seemed. I can't remember a single occasion when we had any kind of in-depth conversation, when any kind of problem came up... no, our circle of friends was a circle of entertainment, the whole point of it was to have someone to chat with at school, to go to parties together on Friday nights, and now and then one or two activities in between, like a round at the café. In between, it's every man for himself again and you just have to see how you get your things done. And everyone seemed to accept that as a fact of life. Yes, really, that's apparently how it is.
I still remember the times of yore, when we were together like a family, I still remember the adventure games we used to play back then, we split into two groups and disappeared into the forest, the aim of the game was to secretly ambush the other group and scare them, and often it was the case that nobody really knew who the hunted was... It was actually a stupid game, but it was fun and you could really feel like you belonged.
Back then, it was just part of sticking together, it was just a real friendship - back then we were also too young to be infected by all the crap out there, we were just still people, children, not media zombies or economic robots. Yes, those times are long gone, at some point it started with television and magazines, soon people only talked about television, then computers came along, then you suddenly had to be cool, tried to get rid of all friends who weren't cool and instead looked for cool friends... back then I was one of the first to become unpopular, to no longer receive invitations because I wasn't cool enough. Even back then, I longed for the old games, for being together. I was criticised for not growing up, and at some point I identified with it. The old friendships, the togetherness, all gone, but now the social constraints took hold... To be cool, you had to have seen cool TV shows, the ones that mostly ran on RTL and SAT1, and then talk about them throughout the breaks. Of course, as a boy you had to go out to catch girls, but it should never come to actually falling in love. No, it was just part of it, to have one, she should be as pretty as possible and look good at parties. Well, you grew up and this youth cult came to an end, instead it was now about to secure a professional base, and so they all came with their study guides, stock market prices ... now you had to be no longer cool, but make a good picture. Just no planes in the classroom, maybe the teacher tells it to the future boss ... just do not attract attention, who attracts attention becomes unemployed ... Yes, that's how I interpreted it, I didn't know why standing out or falling out was so frowned upon, and I still don't know today, I just noticed that suddenly no one was talking about their previous interests. It started in the days of the youth cult and only got worse later. If you're not like everyone else, you're out of the game. If, to make matters worse, you also interrupt the endless entertainment and amusement with serious topics, you're out twice. Yes, the latter was the worst... don't even come to school without laughing for a day, otherwise you won't be invited again.
And at some point I had stopped laughing. It must have been a few years ago that I started to feel somehow alienated, no longer part of it. I couldn't understand why the others lived their lives the way they did, why the things that used to be of interest suddenly didn't count for anything anymore. Why friendship no longer really meant friendship. Somehow I no longer felt like participating, I cancelled more and more often when I was invited, it just didn't mean anything to me anymore.
So I just went along with it every day, chatted a bit, occasionally went along to the activities, always grinning. And there were quite a few days when I could have thrown myself at everything within reach. ‘Hey, don't we want to go to Hamburg for shopping?’... my answer was something like “No, I still have to study” and my thoughts were - what the hell am I supposed to do shopping in Hamburg, I don't give a damn about consumerism and I don't need to spend money to be happy... at the same time I thought about what it would be like to plan an adventure holiday together... no, I didn't say a word... otherwise I would have been out of favour. So I picked out the things that were still bearable, a visit to the cinema, for example, so as not to be completely left out. And the frustration rose in me, I drove through the city, and every stupidly laughing person my age I encountered only made it worse, because I knew what was behind this laughter... it wasn't laughter from the heart.
I saw all the damned concrete blocks where I would later work if I were a ‘marketing assistant’, for example – I didn't even know what that meant, I was standing in front of it, and I didn't even want to know what it meant. I didn't care about anything... and it wasn't long ago, last summer, I started feeling the need to just leave the city for a while, so I just rode my bike out, further and further, into the forest, no more ‘marketing assistants’, no more stupid laughter, no more concrete blocks, far away from it all, I suddenly felt really good again, yes, on warm summer days I enjoyed just riding into the forest, looking for a clearing, lying down in the sun and enjoying the warmth... not a soul in sight, and I liked it that way. Sometimes I would lie there for hours and enjoy the summer warmth. And while I was sitting there, I dreamt of how it used to be, dreamt of good friends, sitting together by the river, swimming down the rapids together, sitting around the campfire together in the evening, talking about the people ‘out there’, moving closer together, knowing that we belong together. Just us, the river, and our tents.
Forget all the same old drinking parties, where the more frustration the more drinking, until you've drunk enough to forget the frustration. Forget all the idiots who came to school in a suit to secure their place in the next largest office block, forget all the RTL afternoon shows where you could only tell the difference between people and puppets by their movements... Yes, and the whole thing was just a dream. A dream that I knew couldn't be realised, maybe I would have found someone who had similar dreams, but when it comes to implementing them, graduating from high school stands in the way, after graduating from university, looking for a job, and finally starting a family... Family, the institution where the ideal world is created every year at Christmas, only to be followed by the return of everyday life, which all too often is not an ideal world.
Yes, it was a self-deception on all levels that constantly wanted to be carried out around me, and I no longer felt like going along with it. I wanted to finally feel alive again, and the greatest feeling of being alive, of being human, I still had out here... and I was always drawn to places where I didn't meet ‘the others’, who didn't appreciate the atmosphere here at all. But at the same time, I hoped to meet someone here who didn't belong to the others, someone who was on the run just like me... yes, I longed for this person, imagined him, and enjoyed the idea of having found this person.
And somehow this longing also caused me difficulties, because it was more than the longing for a good friend, no, it was also the longing for a person I could hold in my arms, a longing for security, and I always thought of a boy, dreaming of holding this boy in my arms and being allowed to enjoy his closeness... was I gay because of that? I couldn't deny it, it was just the way it was, I was attracted to boys, yes, even at school I sometimes met one or the other whose gaze intoxicated me, like a rush, because on the one hand I really liked looking this person in the eye without attracting attention, but on the other hand it made me feel even more like I didn't belong, even more lost among the others. If I were like everyone else, with the same goals in mind, only with the difference of being attracted to boys instead of girls, I might face an obstacle, but I could overcome it. But I'm not one of the others, I can't find my way into it somehow, and I don't want to. At least I never wanted to, but since I clearly felt for the first time a year ago that I was attracted to a boy, since then I somehow wish I could just be like the others, belong, because it would just make life easier... but I know that would just be self-deception.
‘Gay’ – I couldn't identify with that, because this term simply stood for more than love of the same sex; a whole way of life was associated with it. And it was precisely the world from which I actually wanted to break away, a world of superficiality, conformity, relationships without real togetherness, love... that's how I perceived it, it may have been prejudices and probably was, but that was all I could experience, I didn't know any gays in my circle. Yes, I read stories, coming-out reports, ads, everything I could find on the internet, and never did I really recognise my feelings, no, there were one or two exceptions, individual sections of a story that I liked. Where love was also a deep friendship, where the feeling of togetherness was really conveyed, yes, I longed for that, just to have someone I could like, with whom I could share everything. Yes, and these feelings were only a part of me, not my whole life, I didn't have to reflect what people understood by ‘being gay’ because of that – no, I wasn't gay, maybe from the other side of the river, occurred to me one day as I was crossing the bridge of a wide river that connected two lakes.
Yes, there were many days last summer that I spent in solitude out there, thinking about it, and somehow I lost even more touch with our old circle of friends, who had long since only existed in our language. And it was these doubts that sometimes took away the feeling of freedom out there, where I left everything that upset me. If I knew that I could find the people I was looking for, these clouds would surely quickly disperse, but how could I succeed?
Today, after the long winter, was unusually warm and the pine forest began to smell of rising essential oils and warmed sandy earth. I enjoyed the warmth, the smell and the light. Here, far from the city, I felt liberated and transported back to the old, carefree days when we were still playing warriors in the forest... Yes, I wished I could see everything again through the eyes of that time, without the eternal questions of whether and how my dreams could ever be realised.
I had travelled this route countless times, each time I headed for the same familiar place down by the lake, but today it was a small side path that had taken my fancy. I turned off and just wanted to see where it might lead, fully expecting that I would have to turn back anyway. The forest became quite dense and the path always seemed to run along the top of this sandy ridge, at least there were no more ups and downs.
At some point the ground became so sandy that the wheels spun and I had no choice but to continue on foot; I didn't want to turn back anymore, the distance already travelled was too long. And so it was already late afternoon when the path suddenly led steeply downhill. I had never seen such steep slopes here before, but well, there must have been a reason why this landscape was associated with Switzerland. In front of me, a view opened up into a wide, densely forested valley, bordered by trees on both sides, in which a small lake was hidden.
I slid more or less down the steep, trampled sandy path and quickly found myself at the bottom in a rather dense, damp and also quite cool forest. From here on, I only had the choice of continuing along the edge of the valley floor in either direction. Yes, with a little effort you could still ride straight ahead, and so I headed towards the lake and was relatively amazed to find a jetty and a narrow sandy beach running along the hillside. A wooden paddle boat was moored at the jetty, which still appeared to be completely usable, and to top it all off, there was also a small, self-built wooden shed. The whole thing amazed me a little, because my usual place on the lake was certainly not as remote as this one, and the whole lake was also a bit bigger, and there was not a single jetty and not a single boat to be found. The whole thing seemed a little eerie to me, so far off the beaten track and yet too interesting to continue.
The first thing I did was to check out the wooden shed. I looked through the keyhole (dark), shook the door (locked). It didn't even have a window, which was hardly surprising... It wouldn't have been difficult to break into the shed, but I didn't know why it was there or whether it belonged to anyone, so I left it. Yes, hunger finally moved me to go to the jetty and enjoy bread and cocoa, with birdsong and frog croaking as an accompanying concert. The remoteness had an effect, no one used the path along the valley, a real idyll by the lake.
I dangled my feet under the jetty and wondered if this place wasn't much better than the previous one. Maybe I would always come here in future, paddle around the lake in a boat in summer... It's so much easier to just forget everything and take life easy. Yes, maybe I would even open the shed, the paddles are probably stored there, and if there's a thunderstorm, I would know where to put them. The slope would be perfect for sand boarding, you take a flexible board with a smooth surface, attach two ropes at the front, smooth surface on the sand, tighten the ropes and off you go. Well, actually I should be studying for my A-levels... it's just around the corner, and I've done more or less nothing, my parents have been asking, sometimes intrusively, yes, yes...
My heart almost stopped, the shock was in my bones... I felt something on my shoulder, I turned around, sure to see a look of pure terror, someone drew back - I was so shocked that I couldn't even see who or what was standing there, only that it was moving, and after a few seconds the shock and turned into nervous shakiness. Then I saw a young man standing there, maybe two or three years older than me. He was certainly half a head taller than me, had medium-length dark brown hair and was looking in my direction with frozen brown eyes.
The terror was still too deep within me, I couldn't utter a word, nor could he... then, after what seemed like an eternity, he asked me who I was and what I was doing there. Well, still looking a bit scared as I sat on the jetty and without looking him in the eye even once, I described how I ended up here, and of course took the opportunity to ask him about this place. Yes, my suspicion had been confirmed, he, named Manuel, had found this place here as a teenager and had been coming here again and again ever since, now long out of school, working as a gardener in the city's green spaces.
As we asked each other questions, we realised that there were things that connected us; he too had always had trouble fitting in at school, but not only that... he was downright rejected at school, insulted, he said. I could never claim that I was rejected, no, I was basically a student like everyone else, never really stood out, I kept to myself what I thought about the others and pretended to fit in... Yes, over time I had really learned to keep my thoughts to myself and just not to stand out, because when I hadn't mastered this game yet, every critical comment put me one step further outside, and I wanted to avoid that... so I played along on the outside, and was also reasonably back in our so-called circle of friends - it really was one - inside.
He, on the other hand, was apparently a real outsider, did badly at school, was rejected by everyone... when I asked why, he kept telling me about his poor performance and his often embarrassing behaviour at school... I didn't want to accept that as the reason; there had to be more to being on the outside than he described to me. Yes, while I was trying hard to find out more and more about him, I only really realised that he had sat down with me at the jetty. Yes, I only just understood what had happened... here, in a place far away from my usual frustrations, I met a person with whom I could talk, talk about the things I had always wanted to talk about but never could. A lonely person who longs for another person just as much as I do... and this person was now sitting next to me, and I felt an incredibly beautiful feeling of security arise in me, for the first time without pangs of conscience, no, a pure, liberating feeling. I looked timidly over to him, as he sat next to me, towering over me by almost a head height when sitting, to his rough, certainly not flawless facial skin, until I had captured his whole face from the side... From the side, I had seen a rather narrow face and an incredibly pleasant look, completely without this artificial laughter, so wonderfully genuine and deep, but also a little sad or depressed. And I felt so safe sitting there at his side, he next to me on the jetty... I could have sat there forever, no matter what the weather might bring.
Evening fell, the sun was low and no longer hit the lake, it would get cooler, but I didn't care at the moment. He became quieter and quieter when I asked him why he was really so rejected at school, as I had never experienced... there must have been something. And then it burst out of him... It was his parents‘ house, yes, his mother was unfaithful and moved out, his father became addicted to alcohol and loved to beat him up, and obviously they had heard about it at school, yes, they didn't want to have anything to do with him because of his parents’ house, he was probably considered uncool, I thought. And he probably didn't have any money to go shopping in Hamburg either.
He had already moved out, completed his apprenticeship and started his job in the city when his father was finally arrested for drunk driving and is currently still in rehab. Yes, a common family drama, as it is sold in every SAT1 or RTL afternoon programme to attract a large audience, but I had never encountered anything like it in real life. It seemed to belong to the world of television, but certainly not to my life or my environment. I was glad that he had spoken to me, but he didn't say another word, just stared at the lake, for about a minute, until I just got the courage to put my arm around his neck and pull him over to me, until he had leaned all the way onto my lap, embraced him with both arms and pressed his back against me, and when he still couldn't utter a sound, I just held him tighter – until he burst into tears. Yes, I held him in my arms and didn't let go, felt an incredible sense of security and warmth well up in me, laid my head on his side, stroked his belly and simply forgot everything that had been on my mind until then. I only felt him, how he allowed himself to be held by me and realised what affection had arisen in me. I knew that I would not let him go so quickly; he now belonged to me and I to him.
I pressed my face against his, felt his rough skin, stroked through his soft dark brown hair, felt his warmth... I had never asked him if he was attracted to boys, but what did it matter... I just wanted to like him, just feel this closeness, this security. Suddenly he sat up, took me by the arm and pulled me down to the beach, lay down there, I lay down next to him and we put our arms around each other, wrapped our legs around each other and just stayed there, face to face, I looked into his deep brown eyes, how he looked at me, a slight twinge in my heart, so much I was touched by his eyes, a tingling in my whole body when I held him very tightly to me and then he held me too, I felt his arms around me, held his body tightly, felt his build through the lumberjack shirt he was wearing, the warmth of his breath on my face, saw his loving smile, a smile that I knew came from deep inside. I had never felt so secure, so loved, so deeply inside myself. The tingling deep in my stomach did not let up; it was like a dream. We just lay there, darkness fell over us, with it the cold, but we didn't care at all. Somehow I was beside myself, because I couldn't even begin to comprehend what this day would mean to me.