“So,” said my boyfriend, after I’d violently smashed the alarm clock off on Sunday morning, “you going to come out for breakfast with me?”
“No,” I said.
“What?” He said.
“I can’t come out for breakfast with you,” I said.
He looked at me in surprise.
“What?” He asked.
“I don’t wanna have German breakfast with you,” I explained. “Well, I can’t, anyways.”
He stared at me and blinked a bit.
“I’ll pay,” he said, after he’d blinked for, like, 10 seconds or something. “I’ll pay for the breakfast.”
“No,” I said. “I’m meeting up with a friend.”
I prised myself out of bed and started getting dressed. It was a Sunday, I told myself, it didn’t matter what I wore – I could have holes in my tights, I could put on mismatching socks. I could even, like, fish around in the dirty washing for knickers if I wanted to – and that’s what I did. I save my clean knickers for when I’m being paid, you know. My boyfriend sat up very straight in our bed and blinked at me disapprovingly while I got dressed.
“A friend?” he asked. “You’re meeting up with a friend for breakfast?”
“Not just any friend,” I said. “A German friend.”
“A German friend?”
“A German friend.”
“When you say German,” he began.
“I mean German-German,” I said.
“You mean a Russland-Deutsche,” he said.
“No,” I said. “I mean German-German.”
“You mean, like, someone who’s like an army brat,” he said. “Their mum’s German but their dad’s American. You mean someone who’s like, almost German.”
“I fucking don’t,” I said, insulted. “For once in my life I am fucking verabredet for fucking breakfast with a fucking German. A German-German-German-GERMAN.”
“You mean, like, a Turkish German,” he said.
“I’m meeting a German for breakfast!” I shouted at him.
He blinked at me, like a newt in the sunlight, and, after a few minutes of blinking, he said, sceptically:
“You’re meeting up with a German-German-German-GERMAN-German for breakfast?”
“Yes,” I answered. “And I better leave now, or I might be late.” I turned around at the door and asked, hesitantly:
“Do I look alright?”
He gave me a look that was half a grimace and half a wince. In fact, to be honest, we need a new word dafür. I’d suggest wimace. Or grince.
“Hmmmm,” he said, “maybe you better change your top. You look a bit, you know, scruffy and that. How you’re dressed. At the moment.”
“You reckon?” I asked.
“You’re better auf einer Nummer sicher gehen and all that. I mean, it’s not every day you get to have breakfast with a German-German-German-German-GERMAN-German.”
“No,” I said. “You’re right there.”