SHOUT OUT TO A GERMAN GIRL

NOTE: I wrote the blog below sometime in 2007, but never published it for reasons I don't remember. It's a little tongue and cheeky, but worth posting. Some strong language/sexual content. Don't read if you are easily offended.




SHOUT OUT TO A GERMAN GIRL

This is a letter from me to a German girl I had a weird, two-hour “moment” with at a bar in Boston on Fat Tuesday 2006. I write it in hope that one day the girl will remember my name, look me up on the Internet and find me here. So if you're not the German girl, you shouldn't be reading this, as things are going to get really erotic and steamy. If you are the German girl, then, "Hey, how's things going? Remember me?"

February 2006. Fat Tuesday. I was experiencing the blues. Only days earlier I discovered that all four of my wisdom teeth had cavities and needed to be removed. Bad news for a man with no dental insurance. Certainly a date with Mr. Anheuser-Busch was on the bill.

A friend from college was going to be in town for a few days, visiting his sister. We decided to get together and do a good old-fashioned bender. We started at a bar called the Pour House on Boylston Street. It was 11am. We got hamburgers and several mugs of beer. The hours began to blur. The buzz began to set in...

By early evening, we ended up at a bar formerly called the White Horse Tavern. I'm not sure what it's called now but I'm sure it's something stupid. I was sitting at the bar, going off on my usual loud, drunken rants:

“No, Paris Hilton is really, really smart.”

“Ok, Burns. Sounds good.”

“No, dude, Paris Hilton is, like, really bright. People don’t understand her.”

“All right, Burns. I believe you.”

“No, Paris Hilton’s REALLY smart. I’m gonna marry her and have her babies.”

“Ok, Burns. Good luck with that.”

“No, you don’t understand...”

When suddenly, I felt a pair of eyes on me. I glanced to my four o' clock and saw this girl sitting alone in a booth, looking in my direction.

I didn't think much of this at first. It wasn't unusual for me to draw attention to myself when going off on my drunken rants. But the glances kept coming and soon I began to realize that, "Holy shit, that girl over there wants my balls!”

Yes, it appeared to be the case. But should it have really surprised me? I mean, who wouldn't be attracted to a guy who sticks up for such misunderstood celebrities as Paris Hilton? Duh!

The question was what to do about it, as I wasn't in the mood for bullshit. All I really wanted to do was go over and ask, "Are you into me or what?" None of this, "Hey can I buy you a drink?" mumbo jumbo. But I was too afraid. Sure, I was drunk and more confident than usual, but when it came down to it, I was still my usual, nervous self.

Ten minutes or so passed. My friend had to meet another friend and had no choice but to take off and leave me. "This isn't good," I thought. My buzz had reached its peak and I was feeling really swell. I sure as shit didn't feel like calling it a night and riding back to the suburbs on a train full of boring commuters. I wanted to party. But there was no one to party with.

I looked back over to the girl who only minutes ago was giving me all sorts of eye-action. "Should I talk to her?" I asked myself. "No, bad idea," I thought. I didn't know her. What if she was a sex addict and wanted to go back to her place and she had Aids? "Aids wouldn't be a good thing to have," I realized. So I packed up shop and left the bar.

Stumbling down Boylston Street in a drunken haze, I started hearing an infuriated voice in my head: "You fucking pussy, Burns! That girl wanted your balls and you just ran away from her! She wanted to take you back to her place and give you Aids! How can you live with yourself, you...you pussaaay?!" I knew the voice was right: I wanted that girl’s Aids.

I was back to the bar in ten minutes - maybe less - and, to my luck, the girl was still there. But I was still too scared to make my move. Where would such an action lead me? What road could it take me down? What radical changes could it possibly bring to my life? But, most importantly, would the girl really have Aids?

All the questions freaked me out, so I made a quick beeline to the bathroom and tried like hell to muster up a leak. I eventually managed to shake a few drips into the urinal, flushed, took about three minutes to wash my hands and, finally, came to the point where I looked in the mirror and said...

“All right, Burns, you hot shit. Let’s do this!”

I reentered the bar, immediately put the girl in my cross-hairs and took a deep breath: “That girl over there is gonna get it so hard and ya know what? I’m the one who's gonna give it to her!!!”

I strutted closer and closer and closer to the booth...shoulders up, chest out - I had never looked so jacked. And, then...

I sat.

"Can I buy you a drink?" I asked in a voice reminiscent of a pubescent Peter Brady.

"Um...no, I'm all set," she said in what I soon realized was a German accent. That’s right: she was German, which, by the way, did not disappoint me in the least. She actually looked a lot like Lola in that movie Run Lola Run, except with bigger boobs and nicer thighs...oh, and she had brown hair, I think - not red.

“Why’d you come back?” she asked.

“I needed to go to the bathroom.”

“Oh...but why’d you sit down?”

“Oh, um, you know, I saw a pretty girl here and, thought, ‘what the heck?’”

Damn, I was smooth. Hell, Humphrey Bogart himself should’ve been taking notes...if, you know, this was 1946, not 2006.

But the Bogart-like charm I exuded was a stark contrast from what was going on in my head:

“Holy shit, is she gonna ask me back to her place, god, I need rubbers, well there’s a C.V.S. a couple doors down, Aids isn’t really too bad of a disease, do you think we’re gonna do it in the shower?”

Clearly my brain had mutated into a bottle of Budweiser.

But the question was how the transition was going to take place? How was I going to go from the booth in the bar to the hot German girl’s shower? I didn’t know the answer to this...

So once again I panicked and struck up a conversation with her! Yes, I know, I know. Stupidest fucking move a horny dude could make, right? But I did it and, goddamn, I had to follow through.

I learned she was a singer studying music at Berklee College of Music...

“...I’d get HIV first, maybe I’ll never get the Aids...”

That Johnny Depp was her favorite actor...

“...I’ve dealt with strep throats, certainly I can handle the Aids...”

That Guinness was her favorite beer...

“...Magic Johnson’s still alive, right..?”

And that she had a mom and a dad back in Germany. They were both worried sick about her.

Eeeeeeeerrrrrrrcccccccccccccchhhhhhhhhhh!!! Crash!!! Hubcaps rolling on pavement.

And that was that: my buzz was killed.

It was like suddenly snapping out of an acid frenzy and finding yourself in the middle of a desert...a whining wind shivering your bones...vultures circling your head. “What the hell am I doing?” I asked myself. “Where am I?” “Why am I here?” The recollection of rubbers, CVS’s and showers flooded back into my mind, but it seemed like these memories were all part of something that happened years ago - not minutes.

It was the image of her “Mom and Dad” that killed the buzz. Why were they worried sick? Among other things, because of horny drunkards like myself, prowling the streets of Boston. Their daughter was Little Red Riding Hood and I was the Big Bad Wolf - the sleazy guy in the Lifetime movie, the guy at the truck stop in Thelma and Louis, the dog trying to piss on the new fire-hydrant, the…well, you get the point. Yes, I was all those and more. And it made me feel like a horrible person.

So I decided to continue the conversation and pretend like I never had any thoughts of going back to her place and contracting her Aids. And, I must say, it wasn’t that bad of a conversation, though I couldn’t tell you what it was about because I don’t remember any of it.

Two hours later we decided to call it a night. I walked her a little ways down Boylston, asked for her email, and gave her a hug. Part of me still wanted some first base, but by that time I had stale booze breath and figured it would be better to part on a higher note (my hugs are irresistible). Besides, now that the booze was almost completely out of my brain, I realized I didn’t like her that much, anyway. She was just somebody to fill the space before I found Paris Hilton and had her babies.

Anyway, as fate would have it, I ended up losing her email, so this is just my shout out to her. If you read this, I enjoyed the conversation, even though I hardly remember any of it, and good luck with the Aids! Magic Johnson’s done well. You will too!

Love Always,

Matt Burns