I also felt a bit homesick for home, but still. This group was so much fun to be a part of.
___
During a short job as a salesman of soap products, I was also allowed to use the work van in my spare time. This was delicious! Together with a comrade I drove towards Hasselt to pick up his girlfriend.
“Look!” he shouted.
We drove through Hechtel and saw two girls, completely naked.
“Where are you going?” I asked them.
“To Helchteren!”
“Just get in the back of the bin!”, I said.
They opened the doors and nestled as best they could among the bags of soap granules stacked in the trunk. We drove on. Dost in party clothes, who were hitchhiking.
I stopped in Helchteren to let the girls out.
“Shit! What is this?” I shouted.
Several bags of soap were broken – there were soap granules all over the trunk – I looked at the girls' shoes and they had heels on. They had broken bags. I looked behind the car and –nondedju it won't be true –behind the
car was a long trail of soap grains. The rear door of the van never closed completely, there was always some space at the bottom of the door, which allowed them to roll out while driving. It had rained. Who knows where and how far the soap granules had already started rolling on the road, a wet road surface...
Terror came over me. Together with the comrade I started cleaning and stacking the broken bags so that they were safe and could not lose any more grains. We drove on to Hasselt to meet my friend's boyfriend and then drove back to Hechtel via a different road. I went to a cafe
Enter Suzan, a local pub. Suzan and I were chatting quietly at the bar, when her
son, Dirk, entered.
“Say, did you hear anything?” he said. “Someone has one
lost a load of soap and now the whole main road is full of foam!”
My ears turned red.
"Oh! Do you know anything about that?”, Suzan asked me. "You are
Have you been to Hasselt yet?”
“Uhu, yeah, but we came back through another job, we
still had to go via Leopoldsburg. Didn't notice anything! Are there accidents?
happened?” I asked.
“Not that I know of,” said Dirk. “But the National Guard is there
to sort things out."
I could sink to the ground from shame. I felt so bad and irresponsible – I secretly hoped that my license plate hadn't been written down, that no one had seen me... I never heard anything about it afterwards. II was in love with the comrade who was with me in the van. I could
don't do anything about it. He had his sweetheart, his girl – this was, anyway, impossible – but… I was so in love.
And I couldn't say anything to anyone. I was so ashamed.
____
I liked boys and... couldn't stomach this. Shame. Feelings of guilt. I felt like everything was fake. That no one is my real iI knew – I felt deeply ill, depraved, hidden behind a fake
mask that wasn't real. I was alone.
_____
“How long have you had this problem?” the pharmacist asked.
“A few weeks, anyway,” I said.
“Oh, yes, then this will help you,” he said. I was given sleeping pills.
_____
When I was 23, things went wrong, on a carnival evening, in the Joker. Among the revelry, I sat alone on a stool, among the people, on my island, behind my mask. Unreachable. Unbridgeable deep loneliness. The weight of my terrible, dirty secret weighed on me. I could not hold on any longer. I didn't like it anymore - and wanted to leave, get out - the love of my parents, brothers, sister, family or friends was no longer important, because they didn't know the "real me" anyway. Everything was fake, everything felt wrong,
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