A SUMMER IN FRANKFÜRT a.m.

Some evenings were more like a scene from "Hiroshima Mon Amour" than one from a loose yet established gay relationship. At the time, partner was the word used when referring to an affair between two men; one that was short on spending a long time together, but intense while it lasted. He was living in a mostly Turkish housing project on the outskirts of Frankfürt a.m. We visited each other and spent our vacations together. He was a writer. I was a teacher.

“Ahmed, Ahmed” was often heard as if little Ahmed was never around; his mother calling him from one of the windows in the working class immigrant community. 

"What do you know about them?" 

Lots of talk and verbal confrontation were quite common events. He was not to forget his generation's uniqueness, to do so was out of the question. Both him and his friends would engage in talking about their parents’ upbringing, the war, the political and social roles played now, and their commitment to social transformation. Our evenings were -aptly labeled by one of the self-appointed gurus of gay friendly hetero majority communal living- sexual and consciousness raising therapy sessions. It was the eighties and gay relationships had moved from the constraints of either clandestine or assumed roles of middle class propriety into multiple possibilities. 

More than one or two evenings were spent on vocal confrontation after confrontation: from the personal to the politico-personal; to be followed by love making, beers, weed smoking and lots of more talk. 

"What do you know about the war? Were you there?"

A strong sensual desire shaking your insides while challenging the target -the sexy other- is a very difficult to beat experience in the world of romantic conquests. Desire drives the conquering game; played against the one who is letting himself be conquered: an erotic gourmand’s paradise in the realm of twirling bodies, tones, organs. 

The verbal game: to be able to counter reason with reason, small sexual allegories, and back to reason, a challenge, a puzzle where each player is placing the parts without knowing how they will ever look as a whole. 

"Does it matter? Who does the colonization? You, colonized?" 

A smile and the brightening of the eyes can serve as evidence of being on the road to accomplishing the goal, and enough reason to move from the chair to the sofa, sit next to him. Smiles and eyes can reveal the strength of the sensation, the joy of knowing that the body next to you will be yours. 

"Why didn’t you ask about the camps near your house? How would she had known? Who knows how she would have behaved during the war?"

Body heat best describes the intensity of two highly charged thirty something testosterone carriers’ love affair. And a sofa is usually too small to hold all the heat generated by two men wanting to devour each other. A hand on the waist while pointing to the bedroom redirects the tremors, movements, erotic provocations to a smaller and darker space. Comfort and intimacy is determined by the searching bodies and their intentions. 

"Food was scarce, have you ever been hungry? Have you? A home is not a nation. Have you ever fought against the power of a mass?" 

When two naked male bodies meet, undulated backs, necks and head motions form continuous waves as the tip of a tongue melts into a slowly raising chest, a forest of pubic hair. Strong rounded ankles coming out from underneath rumpled bed sheets form a tent, a double tent, a sea of waves, white canyons made of cotton. A moan follows the coldness of oil rubbed against each sensitive part. To taste a salty body can arouse much more than the palate. Loving bodies leave marks on the flat white sheets highlighted by the late summer evening rays. 

“Ahmed, Ahmed”, the mother from the housing project window calls her son, and when Ahmed appears, she scolds him in Turkish, German and in a combination of both languages.

(taken from the book formatted in .pdf, My Bilingual New York, June 2019)