E-Book, Englisch, 120 Seiten
Lukas Alive to Love and Strive
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-3-943876-48-2
Verlag: Periplaneta
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
Berlin without compromise
E-Book, Englisch, 120 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-943876-48-2
Verlag: Periplaneta
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
Clint Lukas' relentless hero works hard, although he despises work; he produces movies, even though he hates movie people; he fancies himself a 'ladies' man', but constantly gets into fights with them. Why does everything always have to be so complicated? He's not the one to blame. At least, that's what he thinks. The Berlin author, stage poet and movie director presents a marvelous collection of brutally honest, headstrong and self-deprecating short stories, stories of himself as a byronic hero, a dawdling globetrotter, a sarcastic observer, always far from normal or ordinary. Defiant, furious, sarcastic, vivid and entertaining close to the pain threshold. WORK OF MOUTH is a showcase of popular Berlin stage literature, based on the MundWerk edition by Periplaneta publishing. The works are brief, concise, sometimes simply hilarious, sometimes quite painful, daring more often than not, and, as a rule, off-beat. They are written by authors with experience on stage, in capturing an audience, and in weekly deliveries of the best text they can provide.
Weitere Infos & Material
Public Disturbance
aka Monkey Business
Everyone else had left the flat, leaving Sophie and me in the living room by ourselves: Bored to hell. Sophie smelled nice. She also had adorable eyebrows and a little more than that to offer. I would have loved to get it on with her right there, but instead we just hung around, drank red wine and talked.
I don’t mind conversation. Seriously. It’s just that Sophie was sort of reluctant to come out of her shell. Not that she had really much to say, either—she had an opinion on everything, but knew hardly anything, and she opposed drugs without ever having tried anything harder than a joint. Which did not even have that much of an effect on her, she said. And she objected to violence. She could not relate to the feeling of inner calmness that possessed you when pushed yourself to your very limits after a proper blow. Above all that, she was catholic. “And have you heard the news?” she was just ranting. “This weekend someone tried to steal Baby Jesus from its crib!”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah! You know—that enormously huge one, in front of the Marienkirche!”
“Yeah—yeah. I know.”
“They ripped an arm off that poor child! But they got caught.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it said so in the paper. Someone spotted them and they gave up. Only took the arm with them—who would do something like that?”
“No idea.”
“Would you hold my glass for a moment? Gotta pee.”
‘Just leave it on the table’, I thought. Some people are just peculiar.
When she was well out of sight, I got up from the couch to grab something from the table that needed to be stored someplace else quickly. But where? I squashed it under the couch pillows, but it struck me as an insufficient hiding place. I ran around the room frantically—desperately searching for a better place to make it disappear from sight, still clinging to it when Sophie returned from the bathroom. The instant she spotted the object in my hand she became pale. “This … is … is that … that is not …?”
“Umm, well. Yeah, I’m afraid it is Baby Jesus’ arm.”
“How’d you get that?”
“It was a crazy night, you know.”
“What? You mean it was you who fooled around with little Baby Jesus tonight?”
“Me and the boys, yeah.”
“And you were caught doing it?”
“What a stupid way to put it—‚caught‘, really! And anyway: That damn doll was nailed—how barbaric is that? Nailed straight through its little tummy and fixed to its crib—with a goddamn carpenter’s nail! What a foreshadowing, huh?”
“But why, in the name of God, did you want to steal Baby Jesus?”
“How should I know? At that time it just felt like a reasonable thing to do, somehow.”
She sat down and sulked, even though she knew very well where the door was—she just remained seated and kept drinking.
“If you want, we can just go back and glue the arm back to the stump.”
“And that makes everything alright again, you think?” she yelled.
“Guess not. You got wood glue by any chance?”
“Sure, somewhere.I still can’t believe you would do something like that…”
“Honestly, those good Christians that hammered the nail into the belly of an infant are far worse, don’t you think?”
“Maybe it was not a Christian, after all.”
“Sure. They let Achmed from Ankara build their cribs.”
“You’re a racist asshole.”
“Missy,—don’t go there with me. More than half of my buddies are immigrants and my ex-girlfriend’s from Israel.”
“I really have no idea why I agreed to date you.”
“Me, neither. It’s like a damn missionary school in here.”
“And I could actually report you to the police!”
“Feel free to do as you please. Do you think I care even one bit? Been there, done that. A thousand times over.”
She thought this through for a while, and I continued drinking and conjuring up mean things to verbally assault her with in my mind. “Okay,” she finally sighed. “We’ll just go back to the church right now and put things straight again. You’ll never do it on your own, as I see it. Afterwards, we part our ways. Agreed?”
“Fine with me. Let’s go.”
I opened a bottle for the way while she zipped her coat, and together we stomped through the night, silently. When I offered her the wine for the third time, she finally reluctantly took a sip. “Have you really been involved with the police?” she asked.
“Sure. Hasn’t everyone?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Well, I used to be a punk once, you know? So obviously they had to cuff me at various street demonstrations and put me in jail for the night.”
“Rightfully so?”
“What do you mean, ‚rightfully‘? I wouldn’t drive across half of Europe for a NATO-summit without stirring up some trouble, would I? Or get into a fight with some fascist frat boys.”
She shook her head and put on a dead serious and overly mature face.
“Oh, of course,” I scolded her. “You were never one of those, right? Such behavior would have been way too crude for you!”
“So I reckon you have a criminal record?”
“Sure, babe, for ’grievous bodily harm’, as a matter of fact,” I replied, rather proudly.
“What did you do?”
“I allegedly broke some nazi’s jaw.”
“Allegedly?”
“Just give it a break, will you? It doesn’t matter. Rather hand me that wine, okay?”
“I just wanna know, that’s all!”
“You’ve made up your mind about me already, anyway—so, what’s the point?”
“No, I have not. Yet.”
“Okay, if you have to know. No, it wasn’t me. That guy was a wimp, and there were six of us. I don’t play by such rules—nazi or not.”
“So, how did you get your conviction, then?”
“They caught me, and I’m not a snitch.”
This shut her up for good. When I shot her a sideways glance, I asked myself what it was I had ever seen in her. Well, I had to admit, she was definitely gorgeous. Damn Jesus and his stupid arm.
When we arrived at the church, Sophie got all nervous. Standing next to the fence that was supposed to keep vandals like me away from the crib, she looked around for any possible witnesses. Once the coast was clear, I helped her over the barrier and then followed suit. Right at the top of the fence, when I was entirely focused on avoiding steel spikes penetrating my groin, the wood glue slid out of the pocket of my pants—only to fall down on the wrong side of the fence, forever out of reach. I cursed a good deal, failed to lift my leg across and pitied myself, accordingly, for the entirely crappy situation I had gotten myself into.
“Hey, look,” said Sophie all of a sudden.
“Argh. What?”
“The doll already has a new arm. Just climb over, won’t you?”
“Yeah, Goddamnit—don’t you see that I’m stuck, woman?”
“Why’s that?”
“Because my fucking pants got caught in the fence somehow. Or my belt or something. Will you help me now or what?”
“Be quiet, someone’s coming!”
“What?”
“Quick, get in here! There are two people up ahead!”
“Goddamnit.”
“Hush!”
My head was pounding and beginning to get alarmingly hot, while I was still trying to break free from the fence. I felt my sweat run down my back in hot streams, finding its path into my asscrack. I pulled and twisted until something tore loose and I was free. Into the crib I went.
“Hurry up, now!” shouted Sophie.
“But—the glue!”
“Just let it be—they are almost here.”
She was already crouched underneath the large statue of the Virgin Mary, where she beckoned me to join her. I crept behind Joseph and carefully inspected the condition of my pants. My expensive and impressively well-fitting Mustang jeans were torn to shreds, and I could even make out some blood. The two assholes who had caused all the trouble were standing at the fence now. And of course they saw the can of glue—and of course they stomped on it, shooting each other looks of sincerest stupidity. Just go home and do yourselves or have some spare-ribs, but mind your own business and leave! I looked at Sophie, who was close to hyperventilating.
“Look,” the guy behind the fence said. “Isn’t someone over there, next to the statue?”
“Udo, let’s just go, okay?”
“No, really—just look. Two people, right there!”
The situation felt so bizarre that I honored it by banging my head into Joseph’s back a couple of times, for good measure. It seemed like my head did have unexpected energy reserves, because somehow Joseph broke free from his socket, even swayed for a moment or two to laugh in gravity’s astonished face and then smashed into Caspar, who went sailing into Balthasar, who couldn’t help but hit Melchior. Eventually, Melchior was flung into Baby Jesus’ crib and crushed it—leaving it in a heap of splinters and shards. For a couple of seconds, all Udo and his girlfriend could do was stand there and stare—open-mouthed and seemingly paralyzed. Enough to gather strength for simultaneous outbursts....
