More than a week ago, biking on Karl Marx Allee, I got the idea to write a short story about a love affair with a street. Writing it with smooth jazz in the background and Seth sitting in front of me, it naturally became a very sensual piece. The story ends with me falling off the bike and laughing in exhilaration. Itâs odd how stories we create for ourselves become reality faster than we could have imagined.Â
Sunday. Seth and I are biking towards Samâs place for the weekly creative writing workshop weâve gotten going here. He passes the slow tram in front of us from the left, I intend to do the same, but another tram comes from the opposite direction. Not a second passes, I donât think about it, I instinctively believe my only chance is to try to survive by biking between the two trams, on the less than 70 centimeter strip I see ahead of me. I see the gap between I, the trams and an inevitable disaster closing, I scream his name, then one of the trams hits my shoulder, the front wheel of the bike is rubble, like myself. Not a second passes, itâs over. Iâm in pain, there are people around me, picking me up, my stuff up, scared and confused and I, after sitting down on the curb, drinking water that got to me in a second, laugh.Â
I am bleeding from my thigh, some bruises all around. The emergency doctor that got there is checking me out and calls the ambulance. I laugh, I laugh, I laugh harder at the absurdity, at the unbelievable luck, completely in shock. I laugh at my broken bike, at the fact that I might have serious internal injuries, after learning that there are no pain killers in the ambulance, at the police man asking me for explanations, at Seth freaking out, at him and Dan drinking wine in front of the hospital while waiting for me.Â
The hilarity actually began when I was reading my story that night to Dan and Seth while eating takeaway Thai food and after having supplemented Ibuprofen with some MJ. Here are the last two paragraphs of the story I wrote earlier that day, Â âA Street Named Desireâ:
The street met my falling body like an iron fist, but I didnât feel pain, not yet at least. I laid down in the sun, succumbed to the streetâs pull. In a newfound wave of life in my every fibre, I stretched my body, opened my hazy eyes and saw her, five metres away, down on the cobblestones, waking up from an orgasmic slumber like myself. Her dress was ruined and so was mine. We were still alone with the street, looked at each other. She was smiling. I felt light, giddy, alive.Â
Her, the street, the summer made me giggle, laugh from my stomach up. It was an unruly type of laughter, the type of laughter one can get lost in. She did, too. She snorted, giggled and chuckled with me, sending a loud choir of joy up to the lazy, all-seeing, burning sun up in the sky.
