You know what? I hate all that can-men-and-women-ever-really-be-friends? crap because I basically want to fuck all my close female friends really badly anyway.
So a girlfriend phoned me up the other night.
“Do you think men and women can ever really be friends?” she asked me.
“Yeah,” I said, “but not Germans and non-Germans. Not really friends, not really close. Just, like, coffee-type friends, maybe Umzug friends, but not proper friends. They’re too anstrengend and judgemental. And we’re too flaky.”
“I had a really good German friend once, actually,” she said.
“You did? What happened?”
“Well, I kind of realized that she was a Jehovah’s Witness and just really, really wanted to convert me. Like, when I met her, I just thought she was really friendly and open and warm and welcoming and stuff. It was when I first got here; I didn’t know any expats yet. I was kind of lonely. I really think she might’ve been able to convert me to something, actually, to be honest – like Kabbalah, something sexy like that – I was really homesick and vulnerable, but not Jehovah’s Witness-dom. I really like birthday parties.”
“And blood transfusions.”
“Yeah.”
“And then?”
“Well, one day she just stopped calling me. I think she just kind of realized she wasn’t going to be able to convert me after all.”
“Yeah. Probably.”
“Oh! I just remembered! I had another really good German friend once, too, a really proper actual friend, a really good one. Not just a coffee person, a proper friend. We were really close.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, I just kind of realized she was a psycho.”
“Was she?”
“Yeah, she was as mad as a cut snake, she was off her head, she was. I mean, first of all, she thought she’d been a Jew in the Holocaust in a past life. I mean, that in itself isn’t that mad. A high proportion of my German friends think they were Jews in the Holocaust in their past lives. I think Germans who think they were Jews in the Holocaust in their past lives like having English-speaking friends, you know? I mean, I am sure the proportion of my German friends who believe they were Jews in the Holocaust in their past lives is not reflective of the population in general. But she took it a step far.”
“What did she do?”
“She thought all these waiters were ignoring her because they could sense her past life Jewishness. She kept on shouting at them that they were racists and Nazis and anti-Semitic and stuff. It was really embarrassing, to be honest.”
“That is fairly mental.”
“And then I slept with her one night and it was all over, Red Rover.”
“Oh, well,” I said, sighing. “Never mind, at least we’ve got each other.”
“Yeah, and if the worst comes to worst, we could always join a sect. Not Jehovah’s Witnesses, though.”
“Maybe Scientology, huh? I saw some really sexy Scientologists at Wittenbergplatz the other day.”
“You know something, Jacinta? That’s a really good idea. We’d make loads of German friends then, we would.”
