I was remembered the following story by probably the most offending and funniest Shirt I ever saw.
This was provided by my favourite polemicist (Paul Joseph Watson) on Twitter. It seems this T-Shirt made the rounds in all kinds of media, so it´s hard to find the real source. This one is taken from PJWs Twitter.
I asked myself, how it would be to appear as the heteronormative Cis gender, white anarchist, that I am on Christopher Street Day (CSD) with that shirt. I was told that this would probably end with a sudden beating (Thanks @ines-f). I had a friend, Chris, who´s last name sounds very much like the German word for "sudden beating". This was the missing part for remembering the following story:
How it all began
About 20 years ago, a friend of mine (Chris) prepared a weekend for his dream girl. He wanted to impress her deeply, so his plan was to take her to Cologne ( about 300 miles away from where we lived ) into a nice Hotel for 2 nights. He wanted to dine with her twice, go to a concert ( it was something with step-dancing ), visit an exhibition "Body Worlds", which was very popular at the time, and finally he wanted have a nice walk through the inner city of Cologne. The rest of his plans were... let´s say improvisatory. He prepared everything perfectly, booked everything (which was a pain, for there was no real internet like today).
The end of this part of the story was, that the girl went ill and couldn´t come with him. He was furious. As the good friend that he was to me, I was the fifth person he asked to come with him. I guess he asked all girls he was fond of at the time, and his best friend. All of them had no time (or no interest), this short-noticed. So he called me and told me to get my best suit and tie and prepare for a nice weekend in Cologne... in two hours from now.
Travelling to Cologne
As I had nothing to do, I accepted and was ready at time. Four hours later we checked in at the Hotel. Both in our best clothes, fresh shaved and slightly giddy. Chris had the decency to ask for another room with two separated beds instead of the king-size bed he had booked. The receptionist (a very pretty girl) looked very strangely from one of us to the other. She finally said that she was sorry and that there is probably not one free room in the whole city at the time. She again smiled strangely and added in a conspiratorial voice towards me: "... by the way, the king-size bed is much better for reconciliations." At this moment, I really felt as if she wanted to chat me up. At the time I was always interested in pretty girls so I was very pleased with myself, my looks and the decision to join my friend for this weekend. Probably my face brightened up a little, so her smile became wider as well. There are some moments in life, when you feel invincible. This was one of them. My friend still was in a bad mood, for his dream-girl had let him down. . We then moved up to the room to freshen up after the journey. Sometime later we found ourselves in the lobby again, to have our first dinner and to go to the step-dance musical later. The young pretty girl from the reception showed us our table and again smiled at us (and especially me in an encouraging way).
She asked us for our plans and how long we would stay and what we will do tomorrow for the "big day". So we told her... dinner, musical, some drinking, next day exhibition and some trolling around in town.
This was clearly not the normal behaviour of a hotel employee: She gave us her phone number and asked if she could join us on our drinking tour. She and probably some friends want to show us the city, if we don´t mind and agree to it. We did... Well... now my friend was interested as well and agreed that this girl was interested in me. Perhaps her friends could be as pretty... the law of probability distribution.
Girls, girls, girls
We finished dinner, and went to the step-dancing thing. It was nice, but not really impressive. Today I can´t even recall the name of the artist or the show or anything that happened during this show( and no, it was not "Riverdance" or something like that.) I guess this has to do with the fact that my mind was focussed on the pretty receptionist. Already during the break, we decided not to get back in, but to call the girl and have some fun in the city and hopefully later, as well...
Fortunately we already had mobiles ( NOKIA 3110 if I remember it right) and messaged her, that we were ready to go out, if she still wanted to.
It took her less than a minute to answer, that she and 3 of her girlfriends were waiting for us in a Bar, about 10 minutes walk from the show. Filled with enthusiasm and plans about wing-man and what to do about the hotel room in THE case, we joined the girls, and her three friends were as beautiful and eager as our receptionist. We had some beer and some small talk. Where we were from, what we do as jobs, how long we know each other and how we met.
Chris and I then decided to direct the girls into a dancing hall where we could do "classical" dancing, like Cha-Cha-Cha, Rumba, Disco-Fox and such dances where a lot of "touching" is involved. This is even today a much better idea than any Club with hopping-around-single-dance-moves (sorry, I feel really old today, visiting what we once called a "disco"). We both were acceptable classic dancers, and knew that we could gain some extra points with the girls...
Said-done. The girls were so happy to have some guys wanting to "really" dance with them that we spend the whole rest of the night drinking and dancing with four of the probably most beautiful young woman in Cologne. This could have been the night of our lives... but unfortunately one of the girls somehow slipped and probably broke one of her fingers (we will never know). So this absolutely great Friday night ended with some kisses on the cheeks and the promise to meet again the other day after our exhibition.
Still, Chris and I felt like kings. Back to the hotel, it didn´t matter that we had only one big bed and no girls in it. We´ve been perfect as a team, the evening was splendid and we knew that we were real pickup-artists, even though this term did not exist at that time.
The day after (Revelations)
The next day we skipped breakfast and slept long. Chris had booked the exhibition on 2 pm, so we used the remaining time to do our walk through the town.
We talked a lot about the night before and how great we were as team. We thought a lot about what was on the mind of the girls and talked shop about our greatness of understanding a girls mind. The exhibition was gruesome. Everybody who has seen "Body Worlds" will understand it in another way than people that have only read descriptions or seen some pictures. It was interesting, but really, really disturbing at the same time. Dead bodies preserved and cut open in the strangest situations and positions. It was a mix of morbid art and high-tech medical information lecture.
We left the exhibition after two hours in a very dark and grim mood, just to find ourselves in the middle of the Cologne Christopher Street Day parade. Thousands and thousands of happy gay party people dancing and partying on the streets in the most coloured and fanciest outfits.
I have never in my life experienced such a cultural shock . We were instantly ripped of our dark moods and thrown back into pure life. But there was more. A strange feeling of understanding and doubt. Could it be...?
We looked into each other's eyes and each of us knew what the other was thinking!
Could it be the girls were thinking we were gay?
What followed was a very strange phone call (after finding a calmer spot), where it became all too clear, that the girls really thought of us as a gay couple and for that had no "fear" to dance, touch and even kiss with us. Chris on the phone was furious and resolved the misunderstanding. The result was, that the girls didn´t want to meet again. (That´s why we´ll never know about the finger). They as well were furious versus us for "playing" the gay couple to drag them into something (which was clearly not the case).
The good thing about that was, near us a group of gays and lesbians overheard our phone call and were dying of laughter. They came over, invited us to a beer and made us tell the whole story. This was the beginning of one of the best party nights I ever had. I am still in contact with some of those, I met there.
Conclusion and aftermath
I learned a whole bunch of things this weekend.
1) Never overestimate yourself.
2)Tolerance and intolerance can be given and found in the strangest situations and from the most unexpected people.
3)You can have a great party with girls especially when they think that you are gay.
4) You can have a really amazingly great party with gays although they know you are not.
5)The official date for the CSD is 28th of June and in Germany the party normally takes place the following weekend.
6)There are no rooms available in Cologne on that day...
7)Heteronormative Cis genders call it "the big day" while talking to gays about CSD
I reserved the strangest part about this whole story for the end: I am married for 15 years now and know my wife for 18 years. One day, probably after being married two or three years I told her about this weekend. The dream-girl that didn´t want to come with my friend Chris was her... no doubt.
Unfortunately Chris left for Australia shortly after that trip and we lost contact. So he still does not know, that I am married with his dream girl, whose place I took for an unforgettable weekend in Cologne.
(All used pictures were taken from Pixabay, free to use)