I first met Jannick at a bar in a dirty town. I actually didn’t really meet him. He saw me and looked deep into my eyes, standing on the other side of that bar, raised his skinny hand and opened his fist as if to say „hey, you!“. I awkwardly did the same with a weird feeling in my stomach. Looking at him, a feeling of awe struck me. The way he stood there, like a god, and even though he was a stranger, I knew he KNOWS. The moment passed faster than I could think about it. Me and a few friends ran outside afterwards, lay drunk on the street and spray-painted „HATE“ on walls. At the time everyone saw the crazy me, but I started to like and embrace it. Because the people I wanna know, the interesting ones, are the ones who love your craziness, the people who adore it. Jannick was that kind of a person.

The real story actually starts at another party in the same town. The place was full of squares and I got too drunk to care. I had brought some tea to smoke, but didn’t want to do it because of past events in which I drank and smoked and got too fucked up, so I gave it to Jannick and he smoked it with the small gang he came to the party with. One girl of the group was the driver for the night, so she couldn’t smoke or drink and instead just watched them. I was sitting at the bar, getting more drunk, when a girl came to me and yelled „hell, that was some good tea, thank you so much“. I didn’t know who she was, so she introduced herself as Vanessa and said she’s friends with Jannick. I liked her, she was pretty and I didn’t know at the time that I’d see her a lot in the future. She introduced me to her best friend, the driver girl, her name was Viola. I talked to her about some lame stuff, nothing special. The same lame shit that always happens, yet somehow a feeling struck me that this night was something special, something more valuable than other nights. We all (except the driver girl) got even more drunk together and got the attention of all the people around us. We were round pebbles, surrounded by squares. We messed the place up, got rolls of toilet paper and wrapped Jannick with them in the middle of the room as everybody looked at us and we didn’t care.

Three month later I looked at my phone and there was a missed Facebook-call from that girl Viola, with whom I had only talked once after we met the first time. I texted her, asking why she called me and she answered that it was accidentally. Later I found out that she thought she could get my phone number by calling me via Facebook, it didn’t work, of course it didn’t. We started a conversation over the phone and talked all night. I loved it, I loved the feeling of knowing there’s someone a few miles away trying to get to know you just because she’s seen you once. A feeling of warmth and satisfaction. So I asked her if she wanted to meet up. She did and I asked two friends of mine if they wanted to join us, to eliminate the awkwardness of a first date, they said yes. One of the two friends was Jannick, the other one was a girl called Merve, an utterly beautiful girl I once spend a whole night running through a small town talking madly about the wonders of life with. We met up and as I expected, I talked more to my friends than to Viola and she didn’t seem to care about it. We decided to drive to an old abandoned Hospital and broke in. Standing in front of it our minds were filled with thoughts about what could happen. We rushed through the dirty place for kicks and experiences. Scared of the police and the dark, we left and drove off to a tower nearby. We climbed the tower and spend the time smoking cigarettes at the top, staring into the night illuminated by yellow streetlights. It was beautiful, I still didn’t talk to the girl. Off we went to drive Merve and Jannick home. So there was only Viola and me left. The moment we were alone, we started talking. And talked talked talked, drove to my place and talked even more. We sat on the floor of my room, indian style, around a plate on which we rolled up some tea. Like members of an ancient civilization performing a holy ritual. We went outside, smoked and laughed, went back inside and turned on the TV to watch some „Skins“. As I lay next to her on the bed my legs began to shake for no reason, and it didn’t stop. I said „you have beautiful green eyes“, she looked at me wondering why I thought her eyes were green, when actually they were blue. I put my hands around her face, looked deep into her eyes as if I wanted to read her thoughts, said „nah nah, they’re not blue, they’re green!“, pulled her towards me, kissed her, asked if everything’s alright, and continued kissing her. The next morning we felt a connection no one could break. We were in love.

— Smoking cigarettes, snow falling on my head, I can remember this night better than ever before. I shouldn’t, I should try to forget, but the cold just makes it worse. Cigarette daydreams of the winter nights we spent together, getting high on my balcony, shivering, thinking about summer, going back inside and lying on my bed pressing our bodies against each other. She screaming „too cold! too cold!“ when I touch her naked back with my cold hands. Me doing the same when she does it. Her saying „you’ll get used to it“, pressing her hands harder against my back, laughing. The past, oh the past. Screaming at each other, I didn’t think of these moments. Full of doubts, I felt nothing but hate. Doubts, doubts, which I have not now in the luxury of time-past. —