Nico still has good eyes and is not wearing glasses. On television he sees a lot commercials from spectacles stores lately. If you buy one, you get an extra pair as a gift. Which means you have two pair. an outdoor pair and an indoor one so to speak. He does not like gifts. Gifts mean you should just pretend that you are grateful and that is not  like him.

He has a acquaintance who also still has good eyes, but does wear glasses. He shoves those glasses of his from his nose over his forehead on top of his hair. He uses the glasses like a  hair clip. Maybe he thinks he looks like a film or theater director or something.

Once Nico felt like he needed an enemy at that time and stepped towards the acquaintance, jerked the glasses of his hair and stamped on them with his foot which shattered them all over the sidewalk. The acquaintance did not flinch. That was understandable, because he still had his pair of gift glasses.

Nico is thinking about going to the optician and purchase a pair of glasses plus gift glasses. Once he gets home he will then both wear them at the same time, one on his nose, on his hair. He will then look into the mirror and be annoyed by it to his heart's content.

I sit on the couch with Daniel whose eating a bowl of vegetable soup as I browse through next weeks  discount advertisement of `Extra groceries`. I am more excited now when I see two for one fabric softener, than the fact that he and I will dive under softened sheets to fill some shelves in a minute.
That's not true, but I thoroughly do my best to believe it.

I draw a circle around the Dr. Oetker lasagna dishes and watch Daniel slurp his last spoonfull of soup into his mouth. Something with the love of a man and a stomach, they say. With him, I wonder whether he eats so fast because he likes it or because he wants to start on the main course. "That was nice, hunnybun," he says smiling and he puts his bowl on my kitchen counter. He grabs me by the shoulders and lets his hands slip down to my breasts. I put down my pen and print, thinking that I must not forget to mark the clams later. And I especially have to continue to think of clams.

He leads me to the bedroom and pulls my dress over my head. Before he takes off his clothes, he looks at the clock briefly. I resist my orgasm for as long as possible and he is trying his best more and more. I concentrate on his presence, not necessarily his skills. His panting breath and smell make me happy. His hands and lips and other body parts everywhere and nowhere scare me. It should not go too fast, but he's too good.

Even reciting my shopping list is doesn't work. Even the thought of a leek makes me get dirty feelings and  I feel an orgasm overwhelming me. He is not done yet and that's fine, it means he will be a with me a bit longer and I get my second orgasm for free. This time I do not try to resist against it as I would not succeed. When he reaches his climax, I think of how much we have in common. A lot, but not everything.

He kisses me and just like the soup he says  it was nice. He walks away and into the bathroom, I hear water flowing. With closed eyes, I wait until he comes back and I try to pick up his scent from my blankets. Sitting on my bed, he gets dressed and I look at his back. He looks at the clock as he kisses me  'till next time " he says and leaves.
The agreement was to stop at the moment that one of us would fall in love. Because it had to be fun, no strings attached. When I noticed that it had happened, stopping was no longer an option. The confusion it evoked in me was like a rear-end collision. Not that i was madly in love with him, I just had become attached to him just as you became attached to the hamster you had in your youth.

"Here," Ruby yelled as she slammed the Nokia against his newspaper with a swing.
The thing flew against the gray paper wall in her father's hands and then fell to the ground. Her father slowly lowered his newspaper, obviously furious.
"act normal!!, are you fucking crazy ?!"
He grabbed the Nokia off the ground. "YOU ACT NORMAL!" Ruby screamed and ran out of the room.
"Come back, you idiot!" He roared. "Say thank you, that`s the least you could do?! '
She heard how he came after her.
"Get lost, hypocrite!" Ruby yelled from the hallway.
In her room she quickly shoved her bed against the door, so he could not come into her room. Her father stood in front of her door, knocking excessively hard. Boom boom boom.
"Open up, what's going on?"
His voice broke a little bit, like he felt there was really something wrong. Ruby heard her sister come out of her room, she always emerged when she smelled Ruby`s blood.
"What is it?" She asked curiously.
"Your sister has gone mad, she suddenly threw my phone at me" Her father answered.
"She always has been crazy," her sister said haughtily, before disappearing back into her room.
Ruby turned on the radio and heard her father tell her sister: "I just have an errand to run, i`ll be right back."
Ruby decided to let him go. After half an hour she snuck out of her room and called him with the house phone on his cellphone. It went straight to voice mail.
"This mobile phone is busy, please try again later or send a text message" a computer voice spoke.
Bewildered, She hung up and went to her sister's room. Ruby knocked. she normally never did.
"Yes?" Her sister asked, surprised. Ruby went inside and told about the voicemail messages on her dad`s phone. Her sister stood up. She looked very indecisive.
"Maybe it's a colleague?" She wondered aloud.
Ruby looked at her and thought of the words of her boyfriend. "All fathers are unfaithful, all fathers have a mistress."

Nico looks at his garden, he thinks it looks good. Bare branches, rotten leaves, dying plants. With fear he looks forward to spring, when everything blossoms back to life and his acquaintances  will tell him he still has such a beautiful garden. These beautiful flowers, what do they like about them anyway? On the street he dodges flower stalls as much as possible. He can smell the foul odor from a distance away already.

When acquaintances come to visit you, they bring you flowers and you have  to smile about it too. Then, just wait until they go away and you can cram the bouquet into a big bag and spray stench remover to clean up the room.

Look, bringing flowers to a funeral, Thats alright with Nico. Good riddance. In obituaries he sometimes reads,  `Annie loved red roses`.
Go ahead, like that does not cost money.
Small effort to bring some wilted tulips picked up from the ground with a pinched nose when the market is being broken down. Occasionally there is `No flowers`. in the obituaries, that must be a soul mate or Nico.

Last week a particular acquaintance  brought a few flowers in a vase when she visited Nico . When she was gone, the flowers ended in the bin swiftly. The vase was also dealt with rather quickly. Bang, his heel landing on it with force and all that remained was picking up the shards.

There have been guests at Nico`s place and these guests have stayed too long, which has ruined his day and left Nico behind among the debris. What to do?
The best thing to do would be to do nothing, but the difficulty level of this is high. It involves sitting still and breathing. He plans to stop breathing, even tries it for a moment, but the life in him is stronger. With greedy reluctantly, he gasps for breath. There is no other option than to live on. The idea that everything comes to an end once gives Nico some comfort.
Easily said, doing nothing is difficult. Sitting motionless is just about possible, but how do you stop your thoughts? They keep on chasing each other in his head. They evade Nicos will, which never has been very powerful. His willpower muscles are too weak, as evidenced when he was been taken care of by a mental coach for a while.

Sitting motionless tends to be very exhausting in the long run. Mopish, he obliges himself to go for a walk. Outside into the sun, bent down under his rain provoking umbrella. He has barely started his walk as he runs into an acquaintance. `So, Nico, gone for a healthy walk, have you? But why the umbrella? '
He only
just prevents himself from spitting the acquaintance in the face. Which brings some obnoxious satisfaction about himself.
When he gets back home, he finds strength to sit motionless again. From his most uncomfortable chair he overlooks his little world. He feels happy and that is bad enough already.

All in all her boyfriend had developed an obsession for safe sex and father figures through these experiences. Something he whined about every day, and today was no difference.
"I do not know," Ruby simply said.
She was raised by a father who liked her and her sister enough to stay with them. So maybe she had had it easy. Her mother was at home her whole youth, with morning breakfast, afternoon tea with a cookie plus a admiring eye for every ugly drawing she made and a listening ear for any equation she did not know how to solve. Around five o'clock her father would always come home, just in time to cut the meat for dinner. It all seemed so safe. Still, she felt that something was wrong, even though she could not wrap her head around it.
The age of  cellphones was slowly starting to come. Ruby had a gigantic Motorola that you could flip open and ran on credit. Usually she spent all her money on gas for her moped and since she did not have a job, she often asked her father if she could send a message with his phone to her boyfriend. Usually her dad allowed her to. Sometimes she could even call her boyfriend. Her father had a Nokia 3210. It had rubber buttons and the thing was kind of cute, because it was so small compared to all the other devices she knew. It was New Year's Eve, Ruby`s mother was at a friend and her sister had locked herself in her room. There was nothing on TV and once again she found herself without credit. Sighing, she therefore for the umpteenth filed an application to send a message at her father. `No problem` he said. In those days, her father switched his phone off when he was at home, so on Ruby`s special request, he turned it back on.
"Here you go," he grumbled, continuing to read his newspaper.

She ran towards her bedroom,with the cute device. It started beeping. The screen read: "You have one new message." She laughed and thought: 'Who would be calling my father now ?! "She decided to listen to the voicemail. In the three seconds that followed, Ruby lost her youthful naivety.
"Hi L. S. here"
Ruby heard a husky female voice, which carried a degree of hurt in it that gave away a great lack of self-esteem. It was the voice of a woman that because of her low self-esteem lets her hair stay long, even though she is 40 already, as she is afraid that her stupid husband will leave her otherwise. She continued:
"I wanted to let you know that our coffee appointment can not go on this afternoon`followed by a cheeky giggle. `I'm going to help my mother with the groceries`. A happy new year already! "
In one second Ruby understood everything. Like a row of dominos, this voicemail tumbled down everything that she thought her parents were. Hysterically, she tried to erase the voice, kept pressing all the buttons, as if she was possessed. Ruby totally forgot to text her boyfriend.
After weeping into her pillow, Ruby walked back to the living room. As always, her father sad there behind his newspaper.

With a pleasing aversion Nico reads some poetry. It was recommended to him by an acquaintance. `Maybe it will make you somewhat more mellow` the acquaintance said . `Well, i doubt that will ever happen` Nico said. `You just never know` the acquaintance, that belonged to the by Nico maligned group of optimists, said.

He browses through the poems of a certain Tennyson who is dead and rightly so. Rightly so, given the following lines;

 Move eastward, happy earth, and leave
Yon orange sunset waning slow:
From fringes of the faded eve,
Oh, happy planet, eastward go:
Till about thy dark shoulder glow

etc, etc. It it clear that Tennyson must have been dropped on his head a lot as a child. With a firm blow Nico hopes.However, he does have a few lines that are to his liking;

`Death, Oh death
gloomy gloomy gore of red
come, oh come`

 And;
`Our heads weep and are inclined
 against each other weep and weep

Though he can not imagine a head which he would be fond of, unless it would be an ugly head. He thinks of his acquaintances, but unfortunately they are all handsome. By reading poems a poetry vein burst open within him. He picks up his pen and writes:

`Black blood
extracted from red
my gray soul
is made of lead
oh death , oh death`