Magnus Stanke - Time Lies

‘Babes, you waiting for someone or something?’ Anika said, taking in the atmosphere and noticing the smell of candle wax. ‘What’s that tune you’re playing – Zarah Leander? You want to get with the times a bit. Trio, Nena, Markus.’

Dagmar decided to ignore the questions. Anika talked a lot and rarely remembered what she said from one second to the next.

‘I’m joking, babes. Who would you be waiting for, right? I hear you’re living a real nun’s life these days. You don’t hang with us anymore, with the cool crew… But all that’s going to change, babes, that’s why I came,’ Anika said.

Dagmar relaxed. Anika hadn’t noticed anything – not the negligee under Dagmar’s t-shirt, not even the tub of lubricant next to the bed.

‘See, me and Carsten, we’re off to Holzminden tonight. You remember Carsten, right? Well, he’s got this really bodacious friend over, the one with the wild tattoo. We were kind of thinking you’d want to join us, babes, on like a double date. What do you think?’ Anika said.

Dagmar didn’t think Carsten was particularly bodacious, especially not when he was drunk and trying to stick his tongue into her ear. His mullet didn’t help and neither did his flimsy excuse for a moustache. Back in school he used to shave the skin above his upper lip three times a day, sometimes more, because somebody had told him when he was twelve that shaving would stimulate his follicle growth. He’d often come to school with shaving cuts, but as a method for growing a bushy beard it had failed miserably. Now he wore his moustache, such as it was, in long wisps of blond hair, the strands of which could be counted on two hands. As far as the friend with the tattoo was concerned, he had to be Volker, a guy from the next village who showed off a headless, big-breasted torso on his bulging right bicep each time he inhaled a lung full of glue fumes from a paper bag. Even on their best behaviour Volker and Carsten were no match for the man Dagmar was waiting for.

‘It’s sweet of you to think of me, but I can’t tonight. I’m…indisposed, and besides’

‘You’re on the rag, really? That sucks, babes, like Dracula. Unlike the count, I don’t think Volker digs blood. He says he doesn’t mind but he almost fainted when I chucked my tampon at Carsten the other day, just for a laugh. It wasn’t even used but you should’ve seen his face,’ Anika said.

‘Why don’t you ask Regula? She might be up for it,’ Dagmar said.

‘No dice, babes, I already asked. And Beate and Ursula and Heike. No joy with that square bunch, if you know what I mean,’ Anika said.

Two minutes later she was gone, probably continuing to scrape the bottom of the barrel of available girlfriends. That was if she hadn’t already exhausted her list by asking Dagmar, which wasn’t all that unlikely.

Anika was a near-stranger to Dagmar now, and they hadn’t clicked for what seemed like an eternity. They had met at school after Anika failed her final exams for a second time. She was two years older than Dagmar and had sat next to her in the last year of classes, during which time she benefitted immensely from the fact that Dagmar’s handwriting was easily legible, even from a distance. As a thank you for letting her copy difficult answers in several exams, Anika, who had started growing breasts at the tender age of nine and had had a following of hormonal teenage boys ever since, had taken Dagmar under her wing, introduced her to lipstick, eye liner, cigarettes, canned beer, and, equally importantly, to the ‘graveyard shifts’ at Anika’s favourite spot for hanging out with the boys. Until then, Dagmar had been fatally introverted, shy and lacking all kinds of self-esteem. She had a huge complex about the size of her nose on her otherwise symmetrical face and would never forget how Anika, with the help of a little make-up and not a little magic, brought out the vivacity of Dagmar’s eyes and the sensuous fleshy quality of her mouth. Under her friend’s guiding hand her nose actually seemed to retreat, at least in noticeability.

But all that was now at least four years in the past, in which time Anika had stagnated in her interests and hobbies while Dagmar moved on. She would always be grateful for the push her confidence had received when the boys and men – and even the women – started looking at her face before checking out her smallish boobs, but she knew that Anika would always be Anika. She knew this because Dagmar had tried and failed to help ‘work on her brain’ in Anika’s words.

‘Brain in vain. Men don’t really want a brain in a woman, babes. They want something they can grab, hold on to, squish and nibble on.’

‘Brains are squishy,’ Dagmar said.

‘Brains may be squishy, but they’re not sexy,’ Anika said.

‘I wonder,’ Dagmar said, but now she was long beyond wondering. She knew she liked sex, but she also liked using her brains, even if she hadn’t done much of that in school. She had drifted through with the least possible effort and in the shortest possible time in order to achieve independence from home such as she knew it – although that in itself had taken some kind of brains.

At fifteen and a half she was free from it all, free to start a dead-end apprenticeship for a dead-end sales clerk position in a dead-end village. The money had been surprisingly good, all things considered – good enough to feed her growing interest in photography and home movies. Using black out curtains and candlelight she had built a small darkroom in her studio flat and had even acquired a JK Optical Printer to allow her to duplicate eight-millimetre film. All her spare time was now dedicated to photography and home movies.

Being a foundling – somebody left her on the steps of the local Catholic Church when she was about two – and having grown up in the care of the local priest and his sister, she still felt slightly uneasy about the circumstances under which she had moved out of the vicarage. Being a girl had barred her from becoming an altar boy. When she was eleven, Father Thomas had gifted her with her first camera to take pictures of church-related events, and Dagmar took to it immediately. She never stopped taking photographs and her aptitude had given her a first taste of success and recognition within the community. Her innate eye for strong compositions and her acquired technical know-how had attracted the ire of the village photographer Rainer Werner who feared for his livelihood when he learned that Dagmar didn’t charge for her pictures.

But Dagmar was never interested in becoming the local portrait snapper. Reluctantly Rainer Werner ended up trusting her and occasionally even asking her advice. He paid her by passing on unused film stock and equipment he no longer had use for. Life continued unstoppably and sometimes unnoticeably. All in all the small community had been good to her, and she wanted to repay that kindness as best she could.

*

Dagmar hadn’t moved from the window since she’d watched Anika get into Carsten’s VW Polo and drive off. For now, at least, her sexual appetite was forgotten. Sometimes when she heard her lover’s steps on the stairs, she would be so hungry for the act of sensual physicality that she’d leap onto him, into his arms the moment the door closed behind him. There was no single surface in the room that they hadn’t used for lovemaking, not one. And positions, let’s not get started on positions. When coupling, Dagmar liked to display the one part of her anatomy she was proud of – her eyes. Her unknown biological parents had also gifted her with plenty of hip and torso flexibility. She had yet to discover a position where she couldn’t twist around far enough to glimpse into the mirrors of her partner’s soul during coitus.

Her love affair had begun years ago, when she still spent time with the graveyard shift gang, soon after she had laid eyes on the man for the first time. Well, she had seen him uncountable times before, at mass, but somehow those times didn’t count, hadn’t affected her. No, the first time that did count was a little over three years ago. She had lost her virginity to Detlev, Carsten’s older brother, days after making out with Carsten at a birthday party. She had been tempted to make it with Carsten too, just to see what it was like. In hindsight she was glad she’d resisted the urge. Detlev was four years older than her and more experienced with girls, probably more than Carsten would ever be. He had been reasonably gentle and attentive. However he had also been too immature or square or macho-brained to entertain the thought of a prolonged, no-strings sexual affair after that first time. By nature or nurture he was the hit-and-run type. Dagmar was never in love with Detlev, but would have happily continued experimenting with him.