Just Kiss Me One Last Time by Brian Hesse (best ebook reader android .TXT) 📕

you were hypnotized by Roland. He seduced you. You are young and cannot be blamed for that kiss. You are going to do this, or I will turn you over to my friends. I will not have you destroy my only chance to be something in this life. Remember Karl, you were given the education, while I was put to the side.”

 

I want to resist him with every fiber in my body, with every once of fight I have left, but he was right. The thought of abandoning Roland made me want to die. But this bastard was right. I owe him everything now.

 

“I will do this, but we are no longer brothers after this one. You hear me! I yelled with my hot breath and reddened face just inches from his. I owe you nothing after this you brown shirted pig.”

 

I could see the anger hot beneath the surface. His eyes turned the blackest of coal, and I felt genuinely in fear of my life. But the death blow did not come. A sinister smile creeped across his face as he stated, “that’s fine Karl. Oh, one more thing. If you live in this city, you will have a girlfriend. You don’t have to touch her fairy boy, but you will put on a show, for the sake of our family name.” “Her name is Ada Mayer, and she will be at the house for dinner tonight.”

 

Walking to the police station with my brother, feeling less than Judas, I could not have realized in my most fantastical nightmares that I would commit two murders before fleeing to Berlin. I have heard rumors of the wonderful nightclubs playing a new type of music, I think called jazz. Nightclubs that never shut down. Places of dancing, music, and freedom to pursue one’s sexuality with absolute freedom. The world is in chaos. People are starving, there are no jobs, the government is in collapse, and people need diversion. In Berlin, the capital, alcohol, music, and sex are the pastime of those needing a rest from the brutal realities of the day. I even heard of men and women experimenting with what I would call, gender swapping. There is a rumor that a few men have had surgery to change gender. Personally, I am happy being a man, but how wonderful to meet people of my own thinking. But all of this would have to wait for the right opportunity. Today, I must condemn my first and only love to his death. I did not believe that he would be executed. However, kissing another man under the age of twenty-one is in direct violation of paragraph 175. He will surely spend many years in prison under the harshest conditions. It would better if I was forced to shoot him on the spot and turn the gun on myself afterwards. So yes, that March the tenth, nineteen twenty-one, I committed my first of two, accidental murders.

 

“Ahhh, my friend Hans Werner, what brings you to our station,” asked a tall lanky man wearing the black uniform of the criminal police. He stood up and I can see for the first time how tall he was. He must be at least six foot five, with golden blonde hair with the dark blue piercing eyes of a doll…brilliant but lifeless.

 

“I am here to speak to the inspector concerning an incident in Gunther Park today,” said my brother in a whisper to denote the need for strict confidentiality, because nobody else was at the front desk. This dramatic gesture had its effect as the policeman immediately picked up the phone and, in an equal whispering tone, talked into the phone.

 

“You may go up to see inspector Heonrich Muller, room 110.”

 

I must admit I was impressed that my brother knew the tall man at the front desk, I surmised that he must be a fellow member in the workers party.

 

“Come in gentleman, and have a seat,” came the voice from behind the large neatly varnished Walnut desk. The man sitting behind the bureaucratic monstrosity was in stark contrast to the policeman we just met. This man was short, no more than five foot four, dark brown hair quickly receding and leaving a small comical bald spot on the back of his head. He was not neatly shaved with a big bushy mustache and an odorous hint of tobacco on his breathe.

 

“So, what can I do for you,” he stated, as he looked directly at me. He would not even look at Hans. I was in this alone. This is fitting I thought, betrayal is a lonely business.

 

What came out of my mouth next will haunt me forever. I will die a thousand deaths before the end because of a just three sentences.

“I was hypnotized by a homosexual in the park, he kissed me, he beat up two boys Jurgen Schneider and Peter Luther. I escaped and immediately ran home to tell my brother what happened. His name is Corporal Roland Aust.”

 

The inspector smiled at me, turned and smiled at my brother and said, “Well that is enough for me. You may go young men. This case is closed.”

We walked home in silence, knowing that our sibling relationship was at an end. I hated him, but more, I hated myself. I am no different than the brown shirted thugs who march down the German streets hating everything that is pure and good.

 

Chapter V Denial

 

I spent the rest of that day alone in my room judging time by absently watching the shadows creep across the bedroom walls. After returning from the police station, I ran to this very room, locking the door, and falling on my bed. I can’t even think. Only the past remains in this room of dirty yellow cracked walls. All is silent accept for the occasional banging and creaking of the radiator expanding under the heat and pressure within its coils. With each bang I am brought back to earlier events of the day. The time just after I sealed the fate of my last love, Roland. As we were leaving the inspectors office, my brother slammed the door hard behind us. I jumped when I heard that noise because just at that same time, I was thinking of Roland being forced into a prison cell and the bars slamming loudly, sealing him inside his tomb. That’s how I imagine it may feel to him at this very moment; like a lonely dusty tomb.

 

There goes the shadow changing position again, darkening the top half of my brother’s poster situated just opposite the window, looking out onto Wilhelm Avenue. The poster is of a tall blonde German youth with a sledgehammer of sorts hanging over his shoulder. The youth has a dirty workers cap on his head and is looking at the viewer with what I can only describe as intense purpose. The caption reads, Frontsoldaten (Steel Helmet, League of Front Soldiers). Under this caption is the word HITLER in bold red letters. More angry rhetoric from a nation of unemployed hungry soldiers returning to a world that no longer makes sense.

 

Judging by the position of the shadow, I would say it is just two hours until dinner, and my forced coupling with Ada Mayer. My stomach grows hot and sickly with the thought. Yes, I can smell the sweet meaty aroma of sauerbraten and goulash, my brother has been hard at work making for this occasion. My Father will be home soon from a hard day at the trading company. Although the war has brought devastation to Europe and people are starving on the streets, our little family has done well enough. However, I suspect that the beef in savory goulash dishes this evening will have horsemeat as a substitute for prime beef. Nonetheless, you are only repulsed by a dish if you are made aware of its ingredients. I am at least thankful for having food to eat. I wonder what Roland will be eating in prison. No, no, I must get this out of my mind or I will go mad.

 

As I set up in my bed trying to push thoughts of Roland out of mind, I began to fantasize, or maybe hallucinate is a better word for such vivid images. I learned once of indigenous cultures in Africa, Asia, and early America using naturally growing plants and herbs to induce spiritual hallucinations. Is it possible that strong emotion and isolation can bring on such experiences? But without a drug, mine were not spiritual in nature at all. Every time I closed my eyes and tried to push away the events of the day, violent images flashed in front of the darkness behind my eyes. Images of killing my brother, the inspector, and even that young handsome officer at the front desk. Will I ever get over my darkening depression and white-hot rage?

 

Chapter VI An Empty Encounter

 

I am going to spare all the boring details of dinner, my meeting Ada Meyer, and all the fake joy surrounding that table of lies. Only a few observations deserve scant mention. For example, my Father straining under the tremendous effort to smile, as his loneliness and discontent boiled steadily beneath the surface. The false hope of my brother rambling about like a naïve schoolboy declaring, “Germany will rise again under the leadership of Herr Hitler!” Despite the signs of impending doom that permeated the very air we daily breathe. Finally, we come to the biggest falsity of the evening. I smiled. She smiled. I laughed. She laughed. Our eyes met and still I believe that she was too dense to notice my indifference to her fake charms. She is pretty enough. Any man or woman could see her beauty. The ideal picture of the young German woman. Although only seventeen, like myself, she is tall. She must have me beat by three inches at least, and she is all legs. Long curly blonde hair, the color of golden corn silk, that touched the middle of her petite, yet, strong shoulders. Her cheek bones prominent like my brothers, but not rounded and plain like my own. She would make a wonderful dutiful little baby maker for my brother Hans.

 

I will also spare you a detailed description of her taking my virginity just an hour after that dinner in our flat’s basement. I will defer a detailed description because, for me, the act was reduced to the emptiness of just a moment of pleasure…then nothingness. My fantasies of making love to Roland were filled with bliss that surpassed the limited boundaries of brief physical pleasure. My daydreams of lying in bed with Roland after making love…talking, holding, and sleeping in the comfort of each other’s warmth, gave feelings of pleasure that lasted throughout many lonely days…a refuge in good times and bad. At least I can say for my sexual experience with a woman, I learned that it could never bring happiness and peace of mind. All I could think about the entire time, which seemed to drag on for an eternity, was Roland’s kiss. But Roland is gone, and I must move on. I can only hope to find love again before my time is at an end.

 

Chapter VII Lonliness

 

The next two years, 1921 to 1923, trudged on painfully, as it tends to do when the participant is not particularly fond of events. I think of those years in relation to an orchestral production I was forced to attend when I was just nine, one year before watching the walking dead march off to war. The Berlin orchestra was in town and playing at the Frankfurt Auditorium on Reichstag Boulevard. The auditorium was nice enough with its plush red velvet seats, red wall to wall carpeting, and neatly polished stage. The room was packed that night, at least seven thousand in attendance. People from all walks of life attended, but mainly the upper and middle classes. The poor, the majority, do not generally