Hank walked across the tiled path in the front yard to pick up the cocktail tables from his neighbours. The weather was unexpectedly good for this time of year, usually it rained on his birthday. Therefore he had  decided to have the party in the garden and in case the weather would change horribly, he had put up a gazebo tent.

"lovely weather," Hank said to his daughter when he entered the backyard through the patio door.

Katherine, 17, glanced up from her phone and gave her father a cynical smile. With her fingertips she let the straps of her bra slowly slide down over her shoulders. She did so for two reasons; firstly, to make her skin tan smooth without tan-lines, secondly, to make her single father aware that his daughter was unfolding into a sexual, adult creature.

The neighbour, who was looking from his attic window to see if his cocktail tables were handled properly, grunted approvingly. The tables were unfolded in exactly the right way. Then he turned his gaze to Katherine, who apart from a bra was also wearing so called hot pants. He grabbed his Polaroid camera, took a picture and hung it with a peg on the clothesline next to the others.

"Are you nervous, Dad?"

Hank paused from the scrubbing of the rented beer tap and put the yellow viscose cloth aside.

"Why would I be nervous, Katy?"
"Don`t act like you don't know."

He picked up the cloth again and polished the spotless tap some more.

As the afternoon progressed and the party approached, Hank started sweating more and more. He looked at the thermometer which was stuck to the wall of the shed, twenty seven degrees it read. But he had never trusted that measuring instrument, so it could just as well be above thirty degrees.

It took another half hour before the first guests arrived, but everything was already prepared. The cocktail tables had white paper covering them and trays filled with cocktail nuts on top, the large table was ready for the buffet and he had put up garlands. Hank sat on his chair which he had decorated with balloons, confetti streamers and a sash that read; Hurrah, 50 years.

A little after five o'clock Hank opened the door for the first guests. Two couples: John and Emily and Julia and Guy, which you pronounced like french. Congratulations was said, shoulders were pat and cheeks kissed.

"Are we the first ones?" One woman asked rhetorically.

Richard inquired how she had experienced the trip and was told a story about a new lease car. Then they left the porch and Richard led them through the house to the garden. Hank got two beers, poured some wine  and meanwhile said that he made a test drive in an Audi R8.

Guy nudged John and motioned with his head towards Katherine, who was still sunbathing in her bra and hot pants.

"i wouldn't mind test riding that" he said, just a little too loud.

John took a step backwards and punched Guy down.

"Not already," Julia said to Emily. The women skulled their wine.

John ran to the bench where Katherine was, placed his arm around her and asked if she was alright. He stroked gently over her bare shoulder. In the bushes the neighbor was hiding to take pictures of the scene.

`At Charles de Gaulle, no place can be found where a man, inappropriately, can say goodbye to his girlfriend` Toby thinks. He reckons it is insane and it must be against all human rights. His mind drifts off. `Why there is no intimacy Area? Why are there no farewell cubicles?`If Toby had the choice he would use an empty hangar, after all it doesn't have to be fancy or on top of spotless linens, it's about saying  complete farewell to a loved one. Fuck balloons, Fuck cuddling, fuck blowing kisses until customs has finally swallowed her, He wants to wave goodbye to his girl with his dick. He wants her to smell him as she lands, she wears their sex as a perfume.

He waves and he flaps, but he wants to be inside her. She is the barf  bag and he is lumpy vomit full of  lukewarm airplane food. She is the passport and he wants to stamp a visa stamp in her. In all corners and all fucking pages. He doesn't even know why he acts so sentimental. She`s only going to Florence for five days, ​​it is not like she will spend two years volunteering in a kibbutz or sack racing with HIV orphans in Kenya for a year. But he wants to love her till she is total loss on the busiest runways of Charles de Gaulle. They, their naked bodies are the first and last thing people see of France. American tourists with their twelve chins will be speaking shame of it, but no one will be able to understand those swollen fastfood boars anyway . They are secretly jealous of Toby. He and his girl, flexible carnivores participating in a horizontal buffet. Their bodies form a terminal of flesh, they fuck an airport for themselves and in the control tower they will be talking about them, and how they are disturbing traffic.

God is a balloon artist and they are the balloons. Squeaky plastic. What animal he turns them into, Toby doesn't  know, but he feels butterflies in his sack and seahorses are swimming in her eyes. Toby hates seahorses. They have virtually no natural enemies and they are showing that off as they swim. Like Emperors of state. Seahorses are too tough and very difficult to digest, he hates them, they swim like footballers wifes walk through the Maximilianstrasse in Munich.

His girl texts that she has landed and it is very sunny in Florence. Toby is still at the airport and still in  possession of KLM blue balls. He texts he is happy for her that the sun is shining and he`s sitting at home on the sofa with a deepfried meal and a purring cat. "Nothing is as soothing as purring,"  he finishes the text with a smiley. Only mentally retarded finish a text message with a smiley face, but maybe Toby is currently also just a moron. Not only is his girlfriend somewhere else, His brain is also on vacation since he has not  been able to fully say goodbye to her. According to Trey Parker saying goodbye doesn't mean anything, but Toby breaks, he breaks into a thousand tiny pieces on a travelator.
"Sir, you are standing totally wrong on the moving walkway. Left is for walking, right is for standing still. You are on the left, you are standing still on the left. According to etiquette, you are doing it terribly wrong "
Behind him are some dark green corduroy pants impatiently stamping their feet, on his luggage trolley are three suitcases and on top rests a hip laptop bag.
"Fuck, what is this nonsense? I advise you to fade away. Fade, Fade like lightning or else I will knock your lights out with your laptop bag. I had to wave goodbye to my girlfriend today, with my hands. I'm on the edge of the abyss, Do you really want to give the final push? Be my guest, toss some petrol on a Lucifer, I challenge you. Left is for walking? On the right is standing still? But what is the etiquette for wheelchair users? As that is how you will wake up tomorrow. Rolling. "
The man smiles, Toby beats him and steals his trolley. Sex, he needs sex. Now. Otherwise he will hijack a plane.

He enters the men's room with two BigMacs. He eats one of them, the second he is going to fuck. he shoves three fingers in the bottom of the soggy bun and makes a hole. Slowly his dick disappears into the BigMac. He feels the sesame bun, he feels the grilled beef patties, He feels the cold tomato and pickle, and Ohhhhh those heavenly onion rings. The BigMac whispers filthy things in his ear, but he doesn't listen too carefully. He is cutting  the onion rings, because he wants to cry out his dick. A puddle of tears in the scabrous booth. I miss my girlfriend. I miss my girlfriend. Five more days. Fuck it, Toby thinks. Tomorrow I will grab a Whopper from Burger King, but only because I love my girlfriend so madly. Cheating is for losers, real men bang a BigMac,Toby mumbles.

So you miss your girlfriend because she is on vacation? Be sensible, grab a hamburger, because it is not cheating if there is a pickle on it.

I remember how I once told her: I do not believe in monogamy. You should not forever be with the same person, maybe back in the day, when we didn't live past the age thirty-five, but not anymore. And now I sit here in front of her and she tells me how drunk she was last night and how she made out with at least seven men, I think, maybe that's just the same with friendships. You're not supposed to always be together with just one person.

"Maxime?" She says.
She looks at me. Waiting.
"What was his name?" I ask her, I pick up my wine and shake it back and forth in the glass.
"I could not really care much about that last night Max, Do you always ask  the name of the girls with whom you kiss?"
"Men," I interrupt her. She looks confused.
"They are men, they are older than twenty-five. Do you have a lighter? "
She gives me her lighter. And just before she is about to say something she is distracted by her phone. She looks at the screen and then starts laughing.
'Terry. His name was Terry, "she says.

The waitress comes by our table and asks, "Everything to your liking?"
And I want to say, 'No, not really. "
Instead I smile and say, "Yeah, thanks."

I look at Rachel. Her white hair falling over her face, she has spots in her neck caused by her too dark foundation. She then turns to her head toward me and says, 'but yes, we are  here to talk about that incident on my birthday of course. "

When I was eight I called Rachel my best friend. And now that I think back of it, I do not really know if I called her that because she really was the nicest girl in school  to play with, or simply because she was the most popular and she would always braid my hair so beautiful. Later, when we were twelve and went to high school, Rachel and I got back together in the same class. We wrote in each other's agenda, slept  together every weekend. She was there when the police called and said 'are you Maxime? There's something going on with your mother, "and I was there when she was kissed for the first time by Tom. On our fifteenth we made up excuses to tell our parents, if we secretly went out.
We fantasized about student life, Rachel would study Communication science and Id study Media and Culture. We would have classes in the same faculty and perhaps would even become roommates.

"Maybe we just shouldn't do it anymore," I  then say to Rachel.
"What?"
"Just Christmas, dinners, meetings, birthdays."
She looks at me. And  I really just want to leave right now.
"What do you mean, no longer do?"
"Just less. I just do not understand why we always have to do everything together and why we have such high expectations of each other. I just did not want to go out and come to your birthday. Why cant everything just be a little less. '
"That would just mean the end of our friendship then?"
 I think; "Yes it is indeed '.
But I say; "It doesn't have to be."
She nods and says, "Okay, we are not going to live together anymore?"
And I shake my head and think: "Now she must really think that our friendship is over."

Later, when we are saying goodbye, and I can finally go home, we hug each other at the tram stop and then suddenly Rachel says: "I really hope we remain friends forever."
I look at her and with a smile I say: "Me too. I also hope we can remain friends. "

Sometimes I feel as though experiences can only be experienced by those who are ready for them. To illustrate what I mean, allow me to make an analogy with science. Consider en electron in a hydrogen atom, that electron can only absorb light of a very specific wavelength, light tailored for the electron. Even though many other photons may pass, it is only those that the electron is ready to absorb that will be absorbed.

In the same way I can think of numerable examples of experiences that came and went without being at all absorbed. So the question now is, can these happenings even be called experiences at all if they haven't been experienced?

I think the problem is more complex than I've admitted to. An experience can be thought of as an multi-faceted single happening analogous to white light. Only fractions of the white light spectrum get absorbed, the rest of the light passes right through...but not quite as we have a memory and sometimes past experiences will only be really seen/experienced in the future when we are ready to experience them.

Thomas walks around the bed to join his wife and swings open the blankets on his side. With his back to her, he sits down on the bed. He takes off his low-heeled slippers. Slippers are for the elderly his wife thinks, and they are not even forty. She flips through the pages of a book and sighs. "What`s the matter Helen?" Thomas asks. "Nothing," she replies. Six months there has been nothing. Thomas puts his bare feet under the covers. With closed eyes and folded hands he waits for sleep to arrive.

"Have you ever had anal sex?" She asks.
He opens his eyes. "Anal sex?"
"Yes, anal sex," she says without looking at him. "In the ass."
"I know what anal sex is."
"Well then," she says. "Have you ever had that?"
"Yes."
"How was that?"
"The same as normal sex," he mumbles. "Only it smells a little of poo."
 "O."
They are silent.
 "Is that something you want?" He asks.
 "Well, if it smells like shit ..." she answers and switches off the lights. "Good night."

The next day proceeds as usual. He goes to work. She goes to work. He takes the children to school on the bicycle and she brings them home from school in the evening, also with her bicycle. In total, they have two bikes and four kiddo-seats.

Thomas is already lying in bed while Helen brushes her teeth.
"So, how come you are in bed this early, she says, and lays on her side with a book. Thomas crawls against her, rubbing his hand along the edge of her panties.
"Hey, way too cold," she says.
 "What about about anal sex then?"
 "Do you want it?" She asks.
 "Would you like that?" He asks.
"Maybe tomorrow," she says. "I have not pooped today, so there will be something getting in the way."
 "how about normal?" He tries. "We can also do it normal."
"No, not normally. I just have anal on my mind nowl."

The next day proceeds as usual. When the children are picked up from school, they can watch some telly. Thomas peels the potatoes. Helen reads a book with the children. They have a boy and a girl. Exactly as they would have liked. After reading, They eat dinner together.

Helen and Thomas go to bed simultaneously. With their heads facing each other.
"How did you come up with it all of a sudden? That you want me to fuck you in your ass? "
"We don't use that kind of language here, "she says bitter.
"Sorry," he says. And he thinks back of times when they still used that kind of  language. They used to say suck and fuck all the time and on Friday mornings she would ask if he would go down on her. Which he always did it with pleasure.
"Its just a fantasy. Or more fantasies actually. Guess you have them too, right? I would like to have anal sex once. Sounds exciting. "
" And what else? "
" What? "
" You said several fantasies. "
" Yes, well. "
" Tell me, "he tickles her side. She does not laugh.
"A black guy," she says. "I've always wanted to do it with a black guy."
"Then I'll go for anal," he laughs.

The next day, proceeds slightly different than usual. Helen and Thomas put the children to bed together. Normally one of the two does that and and the other stacks the dishwasher. The prospect of anal sex brings affinity. When the kids are asleep,  they shower together. It all has to be squeaky-clean, Helen had said. Thomas remembers the times when it did not matter if they were clean. They had sex in the morning whilst they stank from their mouths or after a long day of work making their underpants smell of urine and sweat.

After showering they go to bed together. Gently he massages her breast. Rougher he kisses her neck. He bites into her ear. He strokes her belly. Stroking her pubic hair. His finger goes inside.
"That's the wrong hole," she says.
"I'm just warming up a little," he says, and he moves his finger up and down.
"Well," she replied, "go on then."
 He kisses her back. She bents forward. Whether she does so because she does not want her back kissed or maybe to show she's ready for anal, Thomas has no idea. He kisses her buttocks. Licks in between. She makes little noise. He sticks a finger in his mouth and shoves it up her ass. With his other hand he caresses her love cavity. Two fingers go inside. He spits on her ass.
 "Hey Jesus," she shouts. "Did you really just spit?"
 "Yes, it doesn't get wet by itself, you know," he says. And then he softly mumbles: "On the other side nothing is happening either."
 "Are you hard already" she asks?.
"That I am."
 "Well, go on then."
 "Go on!"
 "I told you didn't I."
With his hand he spread her buttocks. She takes a deep breath. He goes inside a little. It feels warm to his penis. Warmer than normal.
"Wait," she hisses.
 "The tip is already in there now," he hisses back.
 She wiggles her bottom. She wiggles her ass like you do when a turd keeps clinging onto your ass.
 Then she gets up. Thomas looks at her. To the belly where his children came from. Her nipples, which have not gotten stiffer from his hands. He knows what she has to say.
"I've been fucking a black guy for the past six months."