During the months of Karina’s timeout in Norway there was a strong bond developing between us. A bond that I considered unbreakable, and as strong a bond two people can have between one another without having any kind of sexual relationship. When I think back on the first time I met her there is actually not a shred of logic as to how the situation between us had shifted from loathing and hatred to a kind of agape, a groovy kind of love with no lust, no jealousy, no ownership – just support, loads of fun and all the understanding of the world. My relationship did not at all suffer with the new addition to the family, my boyfriend had no problems accepting our bond, and did not object to me spending time with her at all. She was totally in love with David and Giovanni and just couldn't get enough of them.
I think we must have seen each other every day for two months. Actually this was during my days of recovery, and she speeded up the whole process. We went to a guru together once a week, meditated for hours at the time, cooked vegetarian food and spent time just laughing at ourselves and our funny lives. At that time, Karina was down to 10 cigarettes a day, and after a while she was down to zero. The first day of zero cigarettes was celebrated with a bottle of champagne, a beverage she had not even smelled since she came back to Norway.
I kept wondering about Karina’s metamorphosis that had happened so fast, and I could not avoid considering if I too had undergone something similar. Had I become more accepting after experiencing first hand cruelty and hatred between people? Was I actually the one who had changed? Or did we kind of meet in the middle? I never quite figured that one out, but I was pretty damned sure that I was quite innocent considering the events taking place when I encountered Karina the very first time, some 28 years ago in the capital of Norway. For all these years I was sure that I had done the right thing, I was sure of the fact that I never wanted to see Karina again for as long as I lived. Yet, something had brought us together. Had I chosen to recompose on any other island or in another country than where she happened to live, none of this would have happened. She would still be an incident that you put between brackets and keep it there. But destiny wanted this differently, and that why I cannot let go of the convincement that something beyond my control had made this happen.
As a matter of fact, Karina felt exactly the same way. She admitted to having deleted me from her life, to having loathed my guts for years, to having had no desire of ever seeing me again. Everything was different and whatever vibrations one of us would try to check out, they were reciprocated by the other person. After only a couple of days together we referred to the incident of Oslo to our common Armageddon and we would actually spend hours just ridiculing ourselves and our crazy actions at the time.
Right I know, I know – you guys are probably dying to hear about the Armageddon in Oslo in the 1980ies. So are you ready? Remember, this Armageddon was probably just the newborn baby of the real Armageddon that I experienced some 25 years later.
I didn’t want to seem rude or cold so I behaved the way one is supposed to behave among other people. I politely sat down beside her, poured and mixed different kinds of cocktails according to her desires, and focused on the fact that she might be interesting to talk to. After all, the whole party knew that she had been serving a prison sentence for dealing drugs, and not considering the expression” curiosity killed the cat” I actually found her quite fascinating at first. . Proximity creates in one way or the other trust. After an uncertain number of gin and tonics, a hell of a lot of cigarettes and cocktails, Karina took a break from her attempts at in vainly picking me up and started talking. And man – could she talk. There was an eruption of words and sentences, the words ass, fuck, hell, dick and cunt coming to a lot more frequent use than for any practical reason. Everything and everybody was vehemently discarded as phonies or bullshit. She actually reminded me of Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, my all time favorite novel, and so I was almost star struck at her way with words, due to the fact that she knew how to use all kinds of combinations of English, Norwegian and even Punjabi expressions to an extent that it actually sounded quite professional.
What happened next was what really pissed me off, and I still can’t believe I went along with it. Karina grabbed me by the arm, pulled me towards her and started kissing me everywhere. I don’t know why I didn’t react. Pushed her away or just told her to stop, but I didn’t, I just let her do it. Of course, it didn’t last long before she wanted even more than that, and suggested we took a small time out in the master bedroom. I realized then what I was getting into, and I pushed her away as I clearly stated: “NO”, I don’t want to do that. That’s when she turned angry, well actually she turned outrageously angry, and she started screaming at me to the great entertainment of the whole party. I screamed back at her when she demanded to know why I wasn’t interested . And I played the gay card without even considering the fact that there were macho men and probable gay haters in the same room. To tell you the truth, I had never played it before. I wasn’t even out of the closet at the time, and only a handful of carefully chosen people were informed of the real me. Karina just laughed at me, and she said that I was a coward to use gay as a cover for avoiding intimate relations with her, as she so professionally put it. So far so good. I was getting ready to scram when two not – so – innocent - looking - guys entered the room. They were both headed in my direction, and they walked pretty fast. I sensed that something was about to happen, and then I didn’t sense anything else before I woke up in the hospital. Chapter four will be ready when you guys are ready. A small like will get you there.
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