Five Euros

Five Euros Til The End Of The Month 

Hannes & Swahili

“That was the sixth time she called today. She starts drinking midday now. A glass of wine with lunch and, and by three she’s on her second bottle. I turn my phone off usually, to just before I leave the office. My brothers can also deal with her. It doesn’t always have to be me. I almost missed your sms.”
“Well I’m glad you didn’t.”
“I was surprised to hear from you. I thought ‘What can I do for him’?”
“Yeah I was… thinking about you and I thought, ‘Just do it, just… just text him’.”
“Good that you did. So, so what’s up? Are you still living with that uh, that Spanish guy?”
“Guillermo? No. He did his internship and went back already.”
“Tell me you and him… tell me right before he left you and him were drinking on your balcony and… something happened there?”
“Ha! I think that’s your fantasy not mine and not Guillermo’s. He’s so straight like, if the world was gonna end in five minutes and we were trapped together, he would get himself off before anything would happen between, between us.”
“Well that’s a shame! Are you sure he wasn’t sometimes curious?”
“No. I mean, I’m sure he’s not curious, not gay, I guess. I think he’s definitely straight. All the evidence was there, on a regular basis. People want him to not be, and he likes the attention. I think it makes him feel more, maybe more masculine in a way?”
“And how?”
“Every time I used to go out with him girls and guys were all over him but I think with the guys he… I think they worshiped him, his masculinity… and sometimes he, he definitely turned it up…”
“Turned it up?”
“You know the way he moved, his voice, the way he, the way he, he interacted. He’s on Instagram if you want to find him. He’s just an easyjet weekend away. I can’t promise anything but I’m sure you’re invited to visit him.”
“Yeah I don’t think Uwe would like that. He would wanna come with me, but if I was going to see Guillermo… I’m going on my own.”
“You should’ve tried to talk to him when he was here, when you had the chance.”
“Like you wouldn’t have been jealous or angry.”
“You always did what you wanted anyway. Do you remember when we went to that weird party with your cousin?”
“Oh no! No, please?! I’m trying to forget it.”
“Who came up to you?”
“It was so obvious that I was ly… I’m such a bad liar.”
“Mm hm. Yeah you are. It was so bad I remember thinking like, ‘Now I’m pissed because if you think I believe that, then it means you think I’m a fuckin idiot’.”
“I was the stupid one.”
“And I knew when you went to the toilet, cos, I knew that he was sitting in the, in the back room and that he was gonna follow you.”
“Yeah… but I did really have to go to toilet.”
“Whatever! It was… like six years ago.”
“Yeah. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s old shit.”
“So what’s the, the ‘new shit’. You didn’t tell me anything about you. What are you doing, what are you up to? To, to what do I owe this?”
“Jesus… Where do I start? Well Guillermo…”
“The conquistador!”
“...uh, yeah so as I was saying, he moved back. Um… I’m living with a girl from Romania.”
“Romania. Is she from Bucharest?”
“No uh, it’s like Brasov or something I think it’s called.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s studying German.”
“I guess more of them are going to start coming over here too. At least she’s learning the language.”
“She’s not studying German at like Volkshochschule, it’s a masters in German language and culture I think.”
“Ah, okay. But I guess she still wants to get work here. And what about you? What are you doing these days? I went to Dolores a couple of times with Uwe.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, I thought, I thought you would be too busy to notice me, but I could at least see you. Shortly. Then I went for lunch once and I, I asked about you and they told me you didn’t work there anymore. I thought maybe he finally got a proper job.”
“Sigh.”
“I don’t mean anything bad… it’s just I used to worry about you. Always, always out. Always in trouble.”
“I was never in trouble! What are you talking about?! I think that’s one of your other fantasies.”
“And how do you mean?”
“I think you have this fantasy that with me you get to come in and, and fix everything.”
“No, that’s not it.”
“You do though. That’s how you… that’s how it is. You act like I’m, like my life is this disaster and you wanna rescue me from it.”
“You remember when you asked me… no. Forget it.”
“You can’t do that. I hate that shit. If you have something to say, say it. Do I remember what?”
“We’re just going to start fighting. That’s not why you called me I guess.”
“I called you cos I wanted to see you but if you wanna say something to me, just say it. Do it.”
“I do want to say something to you, but I don’t want you to get mad.”
“Well… I can’t promise you that I won’t be mad, because I don’t know what’s up. I don’t know what you’re thinking.”
“It’s about something you asked me. Do you remember? You remember that email you wrote to me one time? Actually with that email and your last email I thought ‘He will not contact me again.’ You said a lot of things in the email, but to me it was like you had been holding these things and keeping them for your own. Some of it, some of it was not what I experienced. Sometimes it was not what I thought. To me there was a lot of assumptions but I have to admit, some of it was… yeah maybe somehow true.”
“Okay you’re talking in circles. What is it? Just say what you wanna say. Don’t… don’t talk around it. Just say it.”
“Can you give me a moment? I’m trying to. Sigh. You asked me, no you told me that you loved me. That’s what you said and you asked me why I didn’t love you.”
“Oh fuck you!”
“Swahili!”
“No seriously, fuck you man.”
“Can you sit down. Don’t, don’t go. I wanna talk about it.”
“Now you wanna talk about it? I didn’t call you for this. I didn’t come here for this shit.”
“I’m not trying to make you angry. I’m trying to, to explain it to you. I never meant to hurt you. This was not my intention. I really care about you and I have a kind of, a kind of love for you. I love you. I will always remember our special times together. You said why didn’t I love you, but I did. It’s… It was because I knew it would never work. We are complete opposites. Your… lifestyle it’s, it’s not mine and we would never be good together. And I did worry about you when you would come to my house and you would be shaking or crying or confused, and I would be at work thinking about you and thinking if you’re if you were okay. And sometimes when I came back you were gone then, or you would still be sleeping and you would leave in the middle of the night and… yeah, what to do?”
“You knew.”
“I can say the same about you. I told you. I never lied to you.”
“Well that’s not true.”
“But I did tell you. I didn’t lie to you about that.”
“If I came to you, you always let me in. You always answered when I wrote to you, except for that letter.”
“I let you in because I was worried about you.”
“See that’s what I mean. There you go again.”
“Why did you come to my house? Why did you text me?”
“Because I wanted to see you, I wanted to be with you.”
“Even though you knew that I was never gonna be your boyfriend?”
“I didn’t think that we were going to get married and that I would live with you that penthouse life, but the way you took care of me, the way we… I did things with you that I wouldn’t normally do, things I didn’t do with anyone else.”
“And I did things with you that I also didn’t share with anybody else. Be honest, you also called me just for that. Our connection, it’s also that. It’s can I say, ‘Very strongly that?””
“Yeah, because I knew that you wanted it, that you wanted to do it too.”
“But you asked me why I did answer and that’s also a part of it. No one, no one takes care of me the way that you do. Sometimes I think you should teach the others how to. You, you drive me crazy. What? What’s the matter?”
“Sigh. Nothing. Why are we talking about this?”
“I don’t know but, I’m… happy, if I can say this. I’m this way because I do want to tell you that I never meant to hurt you.”
“I wish you would stop saying things like that.”
“But I mean it. I do. I’m worried that I maybe hurt you and this was not my intention.”
“Yes, you did hurt me. You did, and?”
“I’m sorry. It was confusing for me too. I thought, I thought you also just wanted sex and sometimes just the, the good time, because I told you. I already told you about me and what I was thinking.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Ha!”
“For me it was more. You know that. Yeah I texted you, but not like you think. Yeah we fucked, but… but you kissed me, and you held me, It never felt like, like I was just doing it. I went there with you. It was like all the way and… it was always good.”
“For me it was always… like you said, but…”
“Sigh… I’m gonna say it, and I don’t, I don’t think you’re gonna admit it but you know that I have feelings for you. I didn’t think we we’re gonna be together forever. I didn’t think we were gonna be a thing at all, but I can’t stop my feelings. It was sex, yeah, but it was… I don’t wanna say more but it was… that’s what made me have these feelings. And I don’t think that y… I don’t think that when you said yes, when you met me or told me to come over, that you didn’t know that I came because of that.”
“I don’t think I knew? No I don’t think so.”
“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe that!”
“I’m honest. Really! You have a lot of other boys. I… I didn’t feel like when you were calling me that it was about me.”
“Ha. Ha ha ha. ‘I have a lot of other boys’? Okay…”
“Isn’t it true?”
“They’re not you.”
“Sometimes I thought you were texting me because no one else was answering or no one else was… no one else… it was only me that you could come to. Isn’t that also true?”
“If it is… so?”
“It can’t be both ways Swahili. I mean… that’s not what I mean. Why isn’t it both ways?”
“Because you’re not ‘in love’ with me but I am with you.”
“Why do you get to decide that? You get to decide that I should do… I don’t know what you want me to do? Do you want me to… was I supposed to ignore everything and not see you. At all? You want me to know how you feel and to say ‘no’ to you, and you want to call me and I’m supposed to be there and to let you into my place or come to your place whenever you want. What about me?”
“It’s not the same. You’re not in love with me. That’s what i’m saying. It’s just not.”
“But I do have a love with you. I told you.”
“Your love hurts.”
“That’s why you sent me an sms? To tell me that?”
“No… I didn’t want to talk about this at all. It just… it went there and then it… happened.”
“I am sorry. I know that I hurt you. I do care about you and I don’t think you like it, for me to say it, but I do love you. I do. Maybe it’s not like you want but, that’s how I feel and I want to tell you that.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? You don’t wanna say anything else?”
“What else can I say?”
“I don’t understand you sometimes.”
“Ha ha.”
“Haha haha ha. Do you wanna, do you wanna leave here and get a drink in some bar? Maybe we walk and we just, we just try to talk. We talk more about things and see how the other thinks and if we can, if we can… how we can talk, about these things.”
“Yeah sure why not.”
“No, do you… do you want to?”
“Yeah! Let’s do it.”
“Okay. Then let me get this and…”
“No, I’ll get it!”
“No. I invite you for this, and you, you get the drinks.”
“Fuck!”
“What?”
“Shit... Fuck!”
“What is it? What happened?”
“Sigh. I think… I hope I left my wallet at home… but it’s not here. Shit!”
“Okay but don’t worry. I can take care of this, I invite you, and the drinks too, and next time you can take care if we meet. If you ever contact me.”
“Are you sure? Fuck, I’m really, really sorry. I… I always have my wallet with me.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it. I hope you will find it at home. Maybe your Romanian flatmate needed it for her school fees. I can take care of this. If you want, but only if you want, we can go back to the penthouse. That’s also an idea. I have everything there and we can sit on the terrace and I can make the fire. Uwe, he, he’s doing training in Amsterdam. He won’t be back until next Tuesday. Just, just so you know.”

Written by Isaiah Lopaz, Anthology / Appendix 2021