Love, Sex and Gender
Gerhard Kress
It is an exciting subject. It could be full of exploring the moist areas of the human body, full of sweat and heavy breathing, racing pulse. Life is like one large cake. A cake you sometimes dislike and more often, love. Deciding which slice of the cake to cut off and look at in isolation is both interesting and frustrating. Frustrating, because there is so much more I’m leaving for another time. Here then is that slice I’m looking at. The scouts and my first great love at the tender age of fourteen. My scouts group was unconventional. Given Germany’s recent history and fatal obsession with militarism and uniforms, we decided never to wear the scout uniform nor fly flags. We rejected symbols of nationalism and institutional authority… At least we talked the talk. My scoutmaster and his friend who ran a similar group, but for girls, decided that the two groups should meet. Breaking barriers and myths and ignorance about the other sex, especially for those of us who did not have sisters and had no opportunity to find out that school yard myths are just that, myths. We decided on a disco. The invitation went out, the girls would be visiting us. Great efforts were exerted on decorating the room, providing basic nibbles, putting up bunting, spending hours of choosing the latest in rock’n’roll and putting it all on reel-to-reel tapes. Even more hours spent on ‘talking girls’ and bragging.
Talk full of empty air bravado, while the date drew nearer. My memory does not recall, but I’m certain that words were used like: ‘chatting up the best looking chicks’. Disco Day. Sudden realisation dawned on me that disco day was imminent. With the distinct possibility that I actually had to talk to a girl and perhaps even dance. And how on earth do you approach them? One thing seemed to be clear, implied convention demanded that it had to be the boy asking the girl for a dance. It was the seventies and a bonfire of conventions and traditions had been declared but we had all been brought up by parents who were indoctrinated with thirties and forties values. Time to panic. Perhaps I considered throwing a ‘sicky’. But I couldn’t let the rest of the gang down. I was probably too much of a coward to actually be a coward. They arrived in one large group. Sat themselves furthest away from us boys, continued chatting. Empty space of the dancefloor and the absurdity of our situation gave me the courage of the moment. I crossed the floor. Perhaps madness, but standing there with my back pressed against the wall, like all the other boys, felt rather stupid. I realised that I had moved when I reached the half-way point. And I was on my own. Probably beetroot red and hoping my quest would not end in murmuring an incomprehensible stutter. My eyes were focused on an ethereally gorgeous girl. Yes, I was going to face possible nervous giggling and rejection. I was about to look at her and pop the question when I heard a voice next to me. A boy who had followed me, walked a little faster, asking the question before I could utter the first syllable. Within the split of a second I automatically looked at the girl next to her. Next thing I remember is Susi and I on the dancefloor. I tried to copy what I’d seen on Top of the Pops, felt ridiculous and then spontaneously broke out in exaggerating my moves to hide my embarrassment. Susi copied me and we both laughed like the children we still were. It was fun. The music stopped. A slow, very slow song. We fumbled, trying to work out where to put our hands. And there we were, in tight, sweaty embrace. My chin on her bony shoulder, smelling cheap perfume that her tasteless orange scarf was saturated with. It was the most beautiful scarf ever. The most beautiful smell ever. I was in love. And later her immortal, earwax-melting words. Releasing an explosion in my pubescent ego. “You are different to all the other boys.”
We spent a good eighteen months of our teenage years together. Memory is unreliable, it is fickle. Sometimes kind, sometimes menacing. My lasting memory is of a sore mouth. Sore tongue and lips, from hours spent in doorways with probing tongues and wandering hands. We met once more several years later when I travelled with my then girlfriend Micheline to the international art exhibition ‘Experimenta’, Susi was studying art that, surprisingly included photography. I don’t remember too much, but I did meet the artist who made greasy fat and felt into art objects, Joseph Beuys. And as for steamy sex. Just use your own imagination.