Loving like a machine (my German fling)

Photo by: cod_gabriel on Flickr.com

I have told few people my first experience with the bitch called love was a German Mädschen. We were fourteen and held hands for a week before we kissed (no tongues). Months of intense writing followed, long letters. This was before the internet. Then it stopped and no heart was broken.

Years later I tried to make up for experience missed with one of her countrywomen. Now we were twenty-something and the bitch called love had grown. Holding hands had evolved and hearts could be broken. Also, there was internet, although we never became online lovers. This was before Facebook.

Nevertheless, technology had become part of our lives and part of love and this sweet sweet German girl took technology serious.

She was like a machine.

Never have I experienced something as human as a relationship as mechanical as with a German girl. We lived together three months, in Berlin, in her apartment where even the random things had a fixed location. Three days in the week she cooked, three times I microwaved food and once we went out for dinner. Sunday morning, eleven o’clock sharp, we cleaned the apartment. Everything had structure.

Even us, we had structure. We made love on Tuesday, Friday and Sunday. Every Tuesday after thirty minutes she would say, “Okay, I think it is enough for tonight. Tomorrow work awaits.” And like a man she fell asleep.

The world and everything in it had changed since my first experience; love was not the same. What was die Liebe became automatic and what had raised my pulse only raised surprise. Is this German love? Machine like? Mechanical? Planned and structured and exactly how it should be?

My sweet sweet German love, how it disappointed me but became me as – by the book – I broke off our rather perfect fling at the three months barrier.

We chatted a while on messenger, after that, and had there been Facebook we would have said that we “still got along great” which we did but not anymore. Her machine moved on and so did my heart.

Maybe one day I’ll take a third shot at loving a German bird.