new years in the mid-west

Jakob Ossmann

by Jakob Ossmann

Story

One new years I was in the US, visiting my girlfriend at the time. We did a little tour through the Mid-West to visit her old college friends. We arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio, on New Year’s Eve. The night was bright with Christmas decorations. Fred and Roy were a gay couple in their late twenties. They liked Fox News and scented candles. On the pastel colored walls Pope Benedict and a master’s diploma in philosophy. On our way into town, the four of us talked about cowboys and Indians. We were drinking espresso martinis in modern saloons filled with confetti and balloons. One balloon burst and everybody dodged. Roy said “everybody afraid of firearms”. We were dancing like horny teenagers, and I asked my girlfriend whether all this would end in a foursome. She said the two didn’t have sex because of God. Fred was as drunk as everybody and drove us to a waffle house. The vulgarly obese woman serving us was oddly cheerful considering time and place and I don’t think we tipped. At night my dreams were black and white, the twin towers, two thick erect cocks reaching into the sky, pulsating with money, just never ejaculating. The next morning, we went to a Latin mess. Women and some children wearing headscarves. The incense somehow didn’t help the hangover. We were all desperately hungry, driving their old Dodge through the morning breeze, from diner to diner, but every place was packed. I try to fill the silent wait with questions about church and God and all that. Fred escaped onto a postmodern charade about corrupt politics and holy Pope Benedict, the last true Jedi. Roy gave a heartfelt account of the orthodox paradox of God being everything and nothing simultaneously. Accepting that, he said, it becomes our duty to find out why we aren’t not here. Fred insisted that hell was a physical place. Outside, there was thunder like in the movies and it started raining. Nobody had any patience left, so we pulled into the parking lot of an Indian restaurant. We left wet traces while making our way through the empty red booths. The windows were thin and fogged, so we took our fingers to draw clouds into the layer of condensation. We stared awkwardly from face to face, measuring the space of an empty diner. The food was great. Back at their place, there were actual guns lying around on the living room table, and they suggested we could go to the range to shoot some targets. Instead, we went to a dive bar. We got hammered and played pool. Here, everybody knew everybody. We ran into another old friend of hers, Rick, who had modeled for a while in Paris but was back now teaching sophomore girls the shotgun. Paris was nice, but he preferred a small town with big cars. Three wise old drunk guys started talking to us, long beards and a breath to kill. One was French and when he found out I was German, he asked me what I thought about Nietzsche. I pretended to have read the one about Zarathustra. He nodded and said “Good one. I read all the books. All of them. The bible too. Now, all I know is that I know nothing,” I nodded. He drank his beer. The conversation didn’t rekindle, so we played some more pool. When we left, a guy in a full leather rodeo costume pushed an empty shopping cart across the parking lot. Over the sound of squeaking wheels he was singing “Stars and Stripes” with a beautiful, deep voice. The last fireworks echoed in the distance and I wanted to hold on to the holidays. But the snow was melting.

© Jakob Ossmann 2023-10-01

Genres
Anthologies