I entered into a relationship with a girl from Lower Austria, whom my pal Jonny introduced me to after I laid eyes on her at the Tanzpalast. She enlightened me on our first encounter by saying that she would go either to England or to America to gather some different life experiences besides the few that the snobby little town of Baden provided her with. I believe walking the dog with a friend of her brother was one of the highlights of her life until I appeared on the horizon and turned her little world upside down and inside out. Taking this opportunity to improve her English level would also be on her agenda, it seemed.
She suggested she would aim to leave her hometown just after finishing her studies. I acknowledged her desires half-heartedly but could not subscribe to an emotional expression. It did not move me to pay any more attention to her longings, which included her long-term plans. It was early days, and there were far more interesting things to discover about her than pondering someone’s wild and premature dreams in a nightclub. We were country people from a country whose inhabitants do not exceed the population of greater London. To talk about places like England and America, even to an open-minded musician like me, at such a tender age seemed to me utterly unrealistic and somewhat childish.
Yes, one must have dreams, and the earlier, the better, but it was a pie in the sky as far as I was concerned, coming from someone who rode her bike on a Saturday night to the club and could only leave home in the company of her brother. My parents’ Opel Kadett Caravan, a 1.6-litre estate, was not necessarily a feast for the eyes either, particularly because, until then, it carried two houses’ worth of building merchants between Austria and Hungary. Although, among the blind, the one-eyed is king, and compared to someone who rides up on a squeaky, rusty pink bicycle accompanied by a member of her family, I was the lad. As life has proven, I left a heavy impression on her—and a forever-lasting one too. Just over a couple of years down the road, as the relationship bubbled steadily on, she informed me straight after returning from Greece, where she celebrated with her classmates her diploma issued by the kindergarten school in Floridsdorf, the 21st district of north Vienna.
ÖKISTA and a mediator organisation found her a host family, and she would go to London, England in September to become an au pair. The exact date upon which she set her departure has slipped my memory, but the most important date in this story, which for me it’s always going to be, I will reveal in a short while to you, respected readers. My life was pretty amazing, with her and many others in it. I was working for an acceptable wage for a telecommunications company in Vienna.
Oh, pardon, I prefer to rephrase it and put the record straight. The firm employed me for a respectable amount of money and gave me the opportunity to discover new avenues on the World Wide Web, on the house, with all its endless possibilities in terms of chat rooms, leading to simple, clean, untraceable, easy lays, and goodbyes. I’m out and done. Thanks for your time and body, you gorgeous little mouse! Next, please! Well, I am not interested in jumping into the deep end with you. OK, darling, no hard feelings, but please do not stand in the doorway because you are blocking the traffic. You are just like the other guys! I don’t think so, dear! How many guys did you meet who had a mirror on their ceiling plus on the side of their bed, where you could see yourself during the act? To top it up, I have a Pioneer HIFI with a 25-disc changer and a colour television in my room. You are just a show-off, but I would not mind seeing your room though. OK, call me when you are ready!
This went down on a weekly basis after I discovered the possibilities of the internet. It was the Wild West. I had to ask them to park their cars three streets away from the house because my mother went nuts. When she left in the morning, she saw a red Volkswagen Rabbit, and in the same spot upon her arrival home, there stood a brown Volkswagen Passat. I was pleased that the ginger one, whom I picked up at noon from the railway station to bridge the time till supper, went down undetected by her. I played in a rock band called BEATEXPRESS, where I was the undisputed leader, singer-songwriter, and lead guitarist. The band and the internet catapulted me into a dimension my mates could only have dreamed of.
A few years ago, I had to spend money on gas, clothes, and time going into a club and working like crazy, only to come home empty-handed most of the time. Of course, I was a rock guy, so imagine my feelings and attitude when I had to listen to the Swedish dentist talking about his life in Africa. On one occasion, I sat next to a girl, bought her a Coke, and stroked her arms with the back of my hand while she was arguing with her friend. She suddenly turned to me and asked in a raised voice, “What are you doing?” I replied, “I wanted you to mellow out.” She said, “I thought you exfoliate.”
On another occasion, five of us lads were sitting in a pub in our outgoing army uniforms. I popped up on the radar of a vitamin bomb, with greasy hair, broken and filthy fingernails, missing teeth, and banana knockers. She resembled a whiskey barrel with two arms and legs attached to it! She approached me with a folded piece of crumpled paper in her hand, planted it in my palm, and continued walking to the exit! Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have wasted a single glance on her, but, of course, since I was trapped with 1,000 men in a place for several months, and they let me out for a few hours, I was ready to pop the knot out of a wooden fence slat, so I thought, big girl, big bang! Without wasting a single second, I unwrapped the paper, expecting an exact address and time slot where the rumble in the jungle would take place, or worst-case scenario, a phone number! It read: “What’s green and stinking in this bar?”
Fast-forward three years, and suddenly, I took a picture of myself, uploaded it onto Uboat.com, and beefed it up with a few sentences about me. Within ten minutes of arriving at work on a Thursday morning, everything was set up. Just after lunchtime, as I came back from the pub, I had 56 messages. Thirty of them liked what I wrote and my picture too, but they were shop window gazers, time wasters basically. Nineteen of them were interested and willing to mingle. Admittedly, some of them weren’t even single. Four of them wanted to meet me soon. Two of them had already decided to drive to my place, and one needed a pickup from the closest railway station on Friday. All I needed to do was to sort out the logistics and timings immaculately before leaving work, because I had no internet at home and I did not want to pay 1 Schilling for a text message. I had to make sure that I left myself sufficient time to wipe the tool and to stock the changers with the right disc to fulfil the individual’s musical taste and desire. I knew I would call in sick tomorrow, so I dropped my mother a line on company time and cost to inform her that my employer was performing maintenance on all computers and that I would get the day off.
For good or for bad, Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee changed the game. In hindsight, I am critical, but back then, instead of one bird in a blue moon, three landed on my red matters on a random Friday. Of course, at 4 pm, my girlfriend texted that she was bored and would be happy to see me. As soon as the fling went to the toilet, I dropped a message informing her that I was doing overtime, which technically was not a lie, and that I could be all hers just before dinner. Upon this, I told the one returning from the restroom that we needed to wrap this up and if it would be possible for her to drop me off on her way home to Vienna in Baden at the railway station because I was meeting a few friends to grab a few beers! The brown Volkswagen Passat pulled into the station, but before the car physically stopped, I was already out, closed the door, and told her simply: Bye, I’ll call! To this very day, I am still looking for my phone! I took a leisurely walk and a couple of shortcuts to her place. She knew I was coming from work. I entered the shower and washed off several layers of lust, and by the time I finished, the food was prepared on the table, accompanied by a bottle of Zipfer Urtyp, which she confiscated from her alcoholic father’s beer stash. The dinner gave me time to reload the gun. About an hour later, I was ready to shoot from the hip while we listened to “Stiff Upper Lip” by AC/DC on her inexpensive Grundig Stereo mini tower. We had a wonderful weekend together, and I departed for work on Monday from her place feeling completely relieved of all kinds of pressure. I recall having a vacuum in my tummy on the way to work.
I had a Citroën BX RD 1.8-litre to my name and fully at my disposal, and owned a SAGEM DMC-830 Dual Band Mobile Phone with Vibrocall, Speakerphone, and an illuminated LED light, which flashed green when it was on and charged and changed colours, between green and red, when there was a missed call or a text message. While this may seem amusing in 2022, it was the best and only phone available near where I lived in the year 2000 that was brand new, had all those features, and cost less than 1,000 Austrian Schillings, which was roughly 50 British pounds. I was always on budget because it never occurred to me to spend more than I had or what was absolutely necessary. There was this insider joke going between the lads and me, that everything I had was French, except for my girlfriend! I ought to reply! Yes, but she is fabulous at giving French! They asked: Does she really speak French? I replied, “No, not a single word,” but under the duvet, words are secondary to actions! For me, she was a well-established French kisser and was pitch-perfect on the pipe.
We had plenty of banter with the band and half a dozen friends, who mostly followed us wherever we gigged. Those were genuinely the best days of my life, which spanned from September 9, 1999, when I formed the band, until November 11, 2000, when I left for England from Schwechat, Austria.
Having said all this, my girlfriend really put the words where her mouth was, and departed in early September 2000, without showing too many emotions at the airport. Maybe also because when we dropped her off, I pulled out my Les Paul Epiphone from the boot of the car and pushed it into her hand to take it in the cabin with her to England, so I only had to take my Yamaha FG-360 when I arrived.